Angela Kane on Reinforcing Negative Security Assurances

On 10 October 2018, VCDNP Senior Fellow Angela Kane participated in a panel discussion on negative security assurances (NSAs) as practical steps towards nuclear disarmament. The panel, which also featured Robert Einhorn of the Brookings Institution and Paul Ingram of the British American Security Information Council, was part of a series of discussions on negative security assurances that aimed to promote NSAs in the broad context of declaratory policy.

While she also discussed other aspects of NSAs, Ms. Kane began her remarks with reference to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and how the conclusion of legally-binding negative security assurances to non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS) could help to depolarize aspects of the modern nuclear debate.

"The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is already under strain, with the non-nuclear weapon States supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a new norm against nuclear weapons, and the nuclear-weapon States dismissing the TPNW as irrelevant and ineffective, and claiming that the TPNW undermines the NPT, a claim that the Ban Treaty supporters are rejecting. To advance on the issue of NSAs would show the willingness of the NWS to address the concerns of the NNWS, albeit in a limited manner. [...] Clearly, a way has to be found to build bridges before the 2020 NPT Review Conference. States should therefore perhaps more urgently ask how to prevent potential nuclear weapons use between NWS in today’s world and whether NSAs could play a role in that regard."

The panel discussion was hosted by the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations in New York. There has since been a report of the panel published on the UN website.