In a new article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Olamide Samuel, ONN Network and Engagement Specialist, and Kudakwashe Mapako argue that the future of arms control cannot be left only to nuclear-armed states.
The article, “Beyond managed rivalry: The non-nuclear-weapon state perspective on the future of arms control,” examines what the collapse of formal nuclear arms control means for countries without nuclear weapons. With New START expired, verification regimes thinning, nuclear modernization accelerating, and strategic dialogue under strain, Samuel and Mapako argue that the issue is no longer only one of strategic stability between nuclear powers. It is also a crisis of credibility in the wider nuclear non-proliferation bargain.
At the centre of the article is a clear distinction: arms control is not disarmament. While arms control can reduce immediate nuclear risks through data exchanges, launch notifications, crisis communication, verification, and limits on destabilizing behaviour, it cannot become a substitute for the longer-term disarmament obligations contained in Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Samuel and Mapako place particular emphasis on the principle of good faith under the NPT. They argue that good faith is not simply diplomatic language. It has operational content: serious negotiation, transparency, verifiability, restraint, and conduct that keeps future agreements possible. Without these conditions, arms control cannot be credibly initiated, sustained, or enforced.
The article also explores how non-nuclear-weapon states can influence nuclear arms control debates, even when they cannot compel nuclear-armed states to negotiate. It argues that these states can shape the agenda, define what counts as legitimate, strengthen verification expertise, defend nuclear-weapon-free zones, raise the political cost of inaction, and insist that nuclear risk reduction remains connected to disarmament.
For the authors, the future of arms control should not look like a narrow arrangement among the powerful. It should become a layered architecture of verifiable restraints, defended norms, widened security concepts, and explicit disarmament pathways.
