In the late 70s, I was appointed at that time as a young member of the Egyptian delegation to the United Nations in Geneva responsible for international security issues and disarmament at the Palais des Nation. The current events reminded me of how I was quickly startled then, as both Soviet as well as American delegates vehemently argued and promoted the strategic logic, sustainability and intrinsic deterrent value of nuclear weapons and concepts like of “mutually assured destruction.”

Even as a diplomat just starting to gain professional experience these concepts sounded odd, more relevant to Hollywood Dr. Strangelove movies and only a partially lucid dangerous game of Russian Roulette, neither of which were strong on rational thinking or definitively calculable circumstances.

The Game of Nuclear Proliferation

To my satisfaction and that of many others, wise leaders in the United States and Russia soon realized the fallacy of these concepts as well the significant potential dangers of military miscalculation or even inadvertent nuclear engagement because of human or systems error. The 80s and 90s, thus, saw serious and sustained engagement of these two powers to curtail growth of stockpiles, de-target nuclear weapons and create crisis management systems.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), The Intermediate -Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) were negotiated and entered into force as an expression of the joint realization that flaunting and threatening the use of nuclear weapons was not sound and in fact a dangerous policy. Regrettably, however, the two powers with the largest military arsenals could not agree to eliminate or comprehensively reduce nuclear weapons from their respective arsenals or prohibit their use. Noteworthy is the fact that the reports indicated that US President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev actually agreed to these ambitious objectives at The Reykjavik Summit on 11-12 October 1986, before their respective institutions walked them back, promoting instead what was to become The Intermediate - Range Forces Treaty (INF), ultimately concluded in 1987.

Decades long the two major powers essentially adopted a policy of global nuclear containment, insisting on their right to preserve their nuclear weapons, while only accepting grudgingly acquisition by other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council France, United Kingdom, and China. Needless to say, this policy was not proliferation-effective as we witnessed India, Pakistan and North Korea publicly declare their nuclear weapon capacity. Furthermore, Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapon capacity is an open secret and there have been worrisome programs from other states that did not reach the same veracity, the most recent being the Iranian nuclear program.

Continued acquisition of nuclear weapons constantly threatens international peace and security, as has been the lack of universality of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons (NPT), in particular with regards to the Middle East, where Israel is the sole regional state not party to the Treaty.

However, after decades of refraining from doing so, in recent months we have witnessed a recurrence of reciprocal nuclear saber rattling by Russia and the United States. In an interview to the Russian nation President Putin said his country had “various weapons of mass destruction” and would “use all the means available to us” adding “I am not bluffing.”[i] The EU’s Josep Borrell said the Ukraine war had reached a “dangerous moment.. and (Putin) threatening using nuclear arms is very bad.”[ii] President Biden described Putin’s nuclear threats as “a reckless disregard for the nuclear nonproliferation regime.”[iii]  When asked about the United States response if Russia used nuclear weapons, he affirmed they would be “consequential.”[iv] Other American and Russian officials have even been more explicit. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that amid global tensions: “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”[v]

Multilateralism in Need

The International Community must act now to roll back the dangerously heightened and tenuous spirally nuclear posturing, which is truly a threat to us all.

To address this, it is imperative now to create a two-legged format that would bring Ukrainians and Russians towards the negotiating table to establish a ceasefire and initiate negotiations between them. The objective, however, should actively extend to enabling the two major powers to cease and walk back from their nuclear posturing as well as reactivating   procedures that contain and prevent nuclear weapons misunderstandings or inadvertent action.

The United Nations and particularly the Security Council’s duty bound to take the lead here. Realistically, speaking given tensions between the western permanent members and Russia, I do not believe that consensual Security Council decisions on these matters can be envisaged. Consequently, I suggest that talks to be proposed under the joint auspices of the UN Secretary General jointly with the ex-officio support of the presiding president of the Security Council. The Secretary General played a similar role in the convening of the Geneva Arab-Israeli Conference after the October 1973 War, where he cohosted with US and USSR.

Under article 99 of the United Nations Charter, the Secretary General can take the initiative in this respect without requiring a security council resolution, as presidents of the Council have often taken ex-officious initiatives without it adopting a resolution. The appeal of such a formula is that it places within the talks in the context of the United Nations Charter and provides distinguished Shepherds. One leg of the process would be about the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and the other on reducing nuclear threats between Russia and the United States.

As an Arab from a non-aligned country, I recommend that this proposal first to be formally suggested by one or more representatives of willing non-affiliated non-permanent member states of the Council.

Time is of the essence. Complacency is a luxury, which we cannot afford without risking dangerous nuclear weapons threats proliferation and once again becoming a tool in global and regional grandstanding and geopolitics.