A large-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, which together possess over 90% of all nuclear weapons, “would end life as we know it,” says Dr. Ira Helfand, a co-founder and immediate past president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Most of New York City “would be vaporized, and 12 to 15 million people would simply disappear. Across both countries, an estimated 200 to 300 million people would be killed in the first half-hour.”
Enormous fires would send vast amounts of soot into the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to plunge to Ice Age levels, food production would collapse, and according to a 2022 study, six billion people – or three-quarters of humanity – would starve within two years.
As the world approaches the 80th anniversary of the August 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – to date the only wartime uses of nuclear weapons – representatives of the 191 states that are parties to the United Nations’ Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) are gathered at UN headquarters in New York City, preparing for the treaty’s 2026 Review Conference.
Also participating are representatives of civil society organizations around the world, and on April 30, they presented their thinking to the gathering.
The Nonproliferation Treaty was negotiated in the 1960s with participation by the United States and the Soviet Union, and entered into force in 1970, with 46 nations as signatories. Under its provisions, nuclear-weapons states – at that time the U.S., United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union and China – pledged to pursue general and complete disarmament and not to help non-nuclear states develop or acquire nuclear weapons, while non-nuclear states promised not to develop or acquire them.
Specifically, Article VI of the Treaty commits each party to the treaty to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
Now, with 191 states-parties, the NPT has the broadest participation of any arms agreement. Only India, Pakistan, Israel and South Sudan have not joined the treaty.
Civil society representatives shared their concerns that the nuclear arms race continues, increasingly dangerous weapons are being developed and existing arms control treaties are being abandoned.
Matsui Kazumi, mayor of Hiroshima and president of Mayors for Peace, warned of “a growing trend among nuclear weapon states, and even some non-nuclear weapon states to advocate for the possession of nuclear weapons or participation in nuclear sharing as an effective means of national defense.” Matsui said those views increase the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used, undermining not just the NPT but also “the very ideals” of the United Nations, established as a peacebuilding system following World War II.
Reminding conference delegates of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in 2024 to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, Matsui said those survivors have transformed their plea that “no one should suffer as we have,” into a noble cause advocating peace for all humanity.
He said Mayors for Peace, founded over 40 years ago, has grown into a global network of some 8,500 “peace cities” around the world, and called on conference delegates to press world leaders to “adopt diplomatic policies for a peaceful solution through dialogue, and advance reliable nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation measures in good faith.”
Matsui was joined by Nagasaki Mayor and Mayors for Peace vice president Suzuki Shiro, who said his city became a “scene from hell” after the U.S. nuclear strike on Aug. 9, 1945 – “a city instantly reduced to ruins under the mushroom cloud, charred remains scattered amongst the rubble, mothers standing dumbfounded beside the charred bodies of their babies, people with their skin hanging from their bodies, wandering in search for their loved ones.”
Invisible damage caused by radiation
Suzuki added that the difference between nuclear and conventional weapons is “the invisible damage caused by radiation,” which causes ailments like leukemia and cancer that atomic bomb survivors experience, or fear, throughout their lives.
“Nuclear weapons must never be used. The only way for humanity to escape the nuclear risk is through abolition,” Suzuki said, as he called on all the states-parties to maintain the NPT and continue to work for total elimination of nuclear weapons.
In fact, the U.S. atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ultimately resulted in the deaths of some 210,000 Japanese people had just a fraction of the destructive power of bombs now in nuclear arsenals across the world.
Citing the NPT’s Article VI and its provision obligating five of today’s nine nuclear powers to negotiate in good faith to abolish nuclear weapons, Dr.Helfand reminded delegates that the U.S., Russia, the UK, France and China “have ignored this obligation for six decades.” Meanwhile, the U.S. and Russia have abandoned every nuclear arms control pact except for the New START Treaty, and it will expire in February 2026.
“When 120 non-nuclear nations came together to uphold Article VI of this treaty and negotiated the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” he said, the nuclear-armed countries boycotted the talks and have since tried to scuttle it. “The nine nuclear-armed countries … must come together, agree to a detailed timetable to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, adhere to the TPNW’s provisions, and join that treaty at the earliest possible date.
“The world is at a crossroads. We have before us the choice of life or death. Do not let the nuclear armed states lead us down the path to death.”
Mere Tuilau, representing the Fiji Nuclear Veterans and Families Association, shared the concerns of the people of Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Bikini Atoll and other island nations in the Pacific Ocean as she described the continuing, devastating effects of nuclear weapons tests conducted there before the Partial Test Ban Treaty took effect in 1963.
“It is terrifying to know that hydrogen and atomic bombs were tested on our ocean, land and people long before anyone truly understood the full magnitude of their destructive force,” she told the delegates. “Even more terrifying is that research and development of nuclear weapons continues today, with devastating potential implications for our environment and our humanity.”
Tuilau said Fiji’s people, and especially the veterans who were sent to the island of Kiritimati in the late 1950s to help with British nuclear tests, “live with the permanent scars of these weapons … These men were openly exposed to the fallout without proper protection, without informed consent and without any long-term support.”
Urged full implementation
She urged all UN member nations to fully implement the Nonproliferation Treaty, to end all nuclear weapons research, provide reparations to affected communities and environmental rehabilitation to affected areas, and to include affected communities in global nuclear disarmament dialogues.
Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of Western States Legal Foundation, shared WSLF’s statement, which has been signed by 60 nongovernmental organizations in 13 countries including the U.S., France, India, Japan and Australia. The organizations challenge the doctrine of nuclear deterrence, an “elastic ideology which has outlived its Cold War origins and is used by nuclear-armed states to justify the perpetual possession and threatened use – including first use – of nuclear weapons.”
So far, nuclear deterrence has been used to provide maneuver space to project conventional military power, but the longer wars like those in Ukraine and Gaza continue, Cabasso said, “the greater the threats of wider regional conflicts and the potential for nuclear escalation become.”
The modernization programs pursued by all five original nuclear powers “clearly run counter to their NPT obligation to pursue negotiations in good faith on cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date,” while open discussions about the possibility of acquiring weapons are taking place in non-nuclear countries.
Cabasso called on the world’s nations to heed the words poet Olzhas Suleimenov, deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet and founder of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk antinuclear movement in Kazakhstan, wrote in 1990:
“It’s time to reject the dictates of the Roman Empire, ‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’
“If you want peace, prepare for peace.”
Speaking for over 50 nongovernmental organizations and disarmament leaders around the world, Shizuka Kuramitsu of the Arms Control Association called out the NPT’s five nuclear-armed states for failing to engage in productive talks on disarmament while spending huge sums to modernize, upgrade and expand their arsenals “as if they intend to keep nuclear weapons indefinitely.”
With no nuclear arms control or disarmament negotiations underway between the U.S. and Russia, China rejecting risk reduction talks and building up its smaller but still deadly nuclear force, and other nonproliferation and disarmament agreements being ignored, she said, “progress on nuclear disarmament is stalled, and an unconstrained three-way nuclear arms race is on the horizon.”
Kuramitsu said the statement’s signers call on all states-parties to the NPT to join in four action steps:
- Demand that the U.S. and Russia immediately return to talks and agree on new ways to cap and reduce their nuclear arsenals before New START expires next year, and that the treaty’s other nuclear-armed states freeze the overall size of their arsenals and stop producing fissile materials for weapons;
- Call on the five NPT nuclear weapons states to engage in high-level dialogue for a joint commitment to reduce nuclear risks and halt and reverse a new nuclear buildup;
- Jointly reaffirm their support for the current de facto moratorium on nuclear testing and urge the nine countries that haven’t ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty to do so before the NPT Review Conference; and
- Condemn threats of nuclear weapons use as “inadmissible” and illegal.
“Presidents Trump, Putin, Xi and the other leaders of the nuclear-armed states are gambling with the lives of every person on the planet,” the signers said. “At some point, nuclear deterrence will fail, with catastrophic results.
“To improve humanity’s odds of survival, we demand that they follow through on their obligation under Article VI of the 1968 NPT to engage in good-faith negotiations to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons and to achieve nuclear disarmament.”
Preparatory Committee meetings will continue through May 9, with the NPT Review Conference expected early in 2026, exact dates to be announced.
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