The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021 35 for example, has only occasionally been able to produce a consensus final document in its 50-year history. It faces even rockier times ahead (the 10th Review Conference should have taken place in April 2020 but has been twice postponed due to COVID-19 and is now set for August 2021). Widespread impa- tience among NPT member states over the pace of nuclear disarmament (mandated in the NPT’s Article VI) led to the separate negotiation and approval in 2017 by 122 states of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This treaty will enter into force on Jan. 22, 2021, now that the 50th required country has ratified. None of the five official nuclear weapons states (also dubbed the P-5: the U.S., U.K., Russia, China and France), the de facto nuclear weapons states (India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel) or those allies under the “nuclear umbrella” have joined the TPNW. Nevertheless, this new treaty will inevitably pit its adherents against those outside the regime. While there is little likelihood the latter ranks will soon embrace the TPNW, there is a real need to seek some common ground between these two camps—and at a minimum conduct a civil dialogue—or risk erosion of the nuclear proliferation firewall. Many in the inter- national arms control community will welcome a lessening of the often heated and damaging polemics commonly heard in the Trump administration in official statements, whether issued in formal plenaries or via Twitter. The NPT does not include nuclear-capable states India, Pakistan and Israel. The last is a special case: Israel neither The State Department also needs to tap expertise beyond the government, especially as newer fields of cyber, artificial intelligence and space issues impact the nuclear field.