The head of the organisation overseeing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has warned that if the United States, Russia or any other nation resumes nuclear testing, other countries will follow. Robert Floyd, executive secretary of the CTBT Organisation, told UN correspondents on Wednesday that such a move would start a spiral that “may never be able to be stopped”.
Both the US and Russia, which possess the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, threatened to resume testing late last year, triggering global concern. Floyd noted that when the treaty opened for signature 30 years ago, over 2,000 nuclear tests had taken place, but since then fewer than a dozen have been conducted, including six by North Korea.
The CTBT was adopted in 1996 but has not entered into force because it requires ratification by 44 specific countries, nine of which have not yet done so. The US, China, Iran, Egypt and Israel have signed but not ratified; India, Pakistan and North Korea have neither signed nor ratified; Russia signed and ratified but revoked its ratification in 2023.
Floyd urged a coordinated approach for China, Russia and the US to ratify the treaty together, which he said would be “a powerful step forward”. He recently visited Moscow and argued to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that no state benefits from an unconstrained return to testing, and he has also met with US State Department officials.
The CTBT’s international monitoring system can detect even a relatively small nuclear explosion anywhere in the world, Floyd emphasised. Any state considering developing a nuclear weapon would need to test one, and “if they did it will be known to all,” he said.
