Introductory Remarks by Shahla Ali

Good afternoon. It is very good to see all of you here. I think we are going to go ahead and start. Our topic is strengthening UN architecture to prevent twenty-first century nuclear and security risks. What you will notice is that there is a sense of optimism built into the title itself, the idea that we can reconfigure institutions and relationships to be more effective, while examining some of the barriers blocking that process.

There has been interesting recent research about the role of cynicism and optimism.

Jamil Zaki at Stanford, did some very interesting work about science of cynicism and optimism. In one of his projects, he surveyed thousands of students, and in one set of surveys, he asked them about their level of empathy or their interest in helping others, their interest in helping their community, and to what extent were they engaged in productive, constructive actions around them. And he found very high levels of engagement, of empathy, percentiles in the nineties. Then he asked the question, well, what do you think on average students think about in terms of their level of empathy or their level of interest in helping the world or the community? And it was very low. So we tend to think other people have little interest in improving the condition of life, but in fact, if we talk to people themselves and we look at their actions, it is quite high.

Over the last one hundred years, our efforts toward this process of global collaboration, has proceeded in forward movements and regressions. In 1919, we had the first effort of the world community to consider this idea of global coordination, and consider how security arrangements could be designed in such a way that were universally acceptable. The Paris Peace Conference following World War I, resulted in the establishment of the League of Nations.

The League of Nations, unfortunately, did not have robust deterrent mechanisms in place to prevent World War II, which claimed the lives of 85 million people. We then had the United Nations, which was born after that crisis and was stronger and more robust and had stronger mechanisms in place. But, again, now we come to this point of increased polarization and fragmentation.

Charles Oppenheimer, the grandson of Robert Oppenheimer, observed that unity is our only path to survival. So the question is, how can we move toward that in terms of our global structures? What are the barriers? What are the challenges to overcome? And what are the ways of looking at this challenge?

It is a great pleasure to introduce this distinguished panel who will help us work through some of these questions. I would like to first introduce—on my left Tong Zhao. He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and he works for both Nuclear Policy Program and Carnegie China. He is trained as a physicist, and he conducts research on strategic security issues, such as nuclear deterrence, non-proliferation, arms control, and emerging military technology.

Next we have Maja Groff, an international lawyer. She leads the Climate Governance Commission, which proposes and develops governance innovations to meet climate challenge, and serves as the co-chair and senior treaty advisor of the International Anti-Corruption Court, and she is currently chair of the Planetary Governance Program, the New Institute, and co-author of the book “Global Governance and the Emergence of Global Institutions for the 21st Century.” And Maya was very much instrumental in the design of this session, so I thank her for her contribution.

Dr. Richard Ponzio is Director of the Global Governance, Justice & Security Program and senior fellow at the Stimson Center, where he also co-directs the Global Governance Innovation Network. He serves on the steering committee for the Mary Robinson-led Climate Governance Commission, and he is also widely published. He served in senior peace-building roles with the UN and also the U.S. State Department.

We have a highly qualified panel to explore some of these questions, and we will also make sure to leave space for you to raise your questions.

Our first question—is to elaborate on how you would describe the most pressing global security and earth system risks that we are facing at the present time. I will start with Tong.

Remarks by Tong Zhao

Thank you so much. I worry about issues like climate change, but at the same time, I worry if mankind has the ability to sort out our internal disputes so we can maintain the civilization long enough to worry about climate change.

I am saying that because I think increasingly people agree we are in a new Cold War, and the risk of that turning hot, turning into a hard conflict among major powers is rising. We saw the Ukrainian war, the risk of nuclear escalation in Eastern Europe. We see increasing military tensions over the Taiwan Strait, the most likely military hotspot where two leading powers could fight a comprehensive war that, again, can escalate to the nuclear level. And when we entertain the idea of major power war, the nuclear arsenals they possess are sufficient to cause nuclear winter and pose an existential threat to humanity.

If we look at the history, ironically, it is because of mutual nuclear deterrence that countries have a sense of security and protection and that actually encouraged countries to face their disagreements and try to resolve those disagreements and rivalries. However, their rivalries have continued escalating to the point today that there is so much distrust. There is so much concern about each other’s hostility that they are increasingly willing to risk nuclear escalation to protect their perceived core national interests. Nuclear weapons did not provide sustainable security and actually increasingly are causing a greater risk of nuclear weapons use. And when countries prepare for nuclear conflict, as they do today, the risk of a nuclear arms race is increasing at a global level, and with that, we have a lot of opportunity cost. All the resources we could have used to advance living standards, public health, dealing with climate change and pandemic concerns, better uses for technology to cure disease and explore, all the opportunity cost is actually not very much talked about, but I think that is also huge. Thank you.

Remarks by Maja Groff

Thanks so much, Shahla, and lovely to be here with you.

To get even or to add to the sobriety of those first comments, I will take the lens primarily of Earth system risks. As Shahla mentioned, I have been running this Climate Governance Commission together with co-chairs Mary Robinson; Johan Rockström, a leading planetary scientist; Maria Fernanda Espinosa, former president of the General Assembly; amongst other foreign heads of state and former heads of state and interdisciplinary experts to try to look at the climate and broader ecological challenges from an international law and global governance perspective. Our conviction and feeling on the commission is that we will have to at some point meet these climate and earth system challenges at the planetary scale. That is the essential nature of these problems, and we have yet to cross that psychological threshold and understand what we have to do. The Climate Governance Commission is trying to help with thought leadership, norm entrepreneurship, in putting forth international law governance proposals to the international community, working with governments, international organizations, and experts around the world.

Earth system risks are something that are not well understood even by policymakers engaged in climate negotiations. The Earth system is the interacting physical, chemical, and biological processes on the planet, which have now been very seriously disturbed. We see that with climate change, which is accelerating, but then there are also the other planetary boundaries proposed by scientists about a safe operating space for humanity in terms of all of those biophysical systems which have kept us and our civilizations in a safe operating space for about 12,000 years in the Holocene era. You have probably heard of scientists saying we are now in the Anthropocene era, a proposed new geological era because of human effects. And what we are seeing from scientists, the most recent report-outs are getting more and more dire as the science gets clearer and clearer.

Six of nine of those planetary boundaries have already been crossed. Climate is one of those, and in terms of Earth system stability, scientists have identified about twenty-five tipping elements in the Earth system, which can have cascade effects across the planet, interdependent with each other, and can be non-reversible on human time scales, think the Amazon rainforest or Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets, et cetera. There are very serious signs now that some of these tipping elements are showing instabilities in terms of potentially starting to shift into a different state. Think of ice sheets completely melting in various places as one of these shifts, forests to grasslands, et cetera, et cetera. Scientists believe that a number of these tipping points have already happened or there is a risk of crossing them, such as the Paris Agreement 1.5 to 2 degree temperature limitation threshold. There is a lot of uncertainty.

We are running these tremendous international risks as an international community. In the work that we are doing, we find that the policymakers are having a hard time getting their heads around the nature of these new novel risks, which are in essence security risks, planetary security, human security. They have military security implications in terms of military readiness. Climate change has been known to be a threat multiplier for armed conflict.

We have been proposing a new paradigm. We have to think of Earth system security, planetary security, and one of our proposals, for example, is for an early warning system risk assessment for the planet. The UK has started such a facility for several tipping points. That is a snapshot of some of the risk landscape from our perspective, and I think the optimistic part is that I think there can be movement forward. Our international governance across the board is very fragile and incomplete, and we see huge opportunities to move forward in various respects. But I know we will get into that a bit later in the panel. Thank you.

Shahla Ali

Thank you. Richard?

Remarks by Richard Ponzio

Maya has just spoken eloquently to the climate challenge. I would say, I think many of us would agree, emerging new technologies, especially when applied to weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), autonomous nuclear weapons, Tong’s reference. I would add a third to complement my colleagues on the panel, something at the heart of the ASIL community, erosion of the multilateral system and international legal order.

The last two months in this town, those watching U.S. politics, has had massive reverberations in New York. The financial, but now extreme, liquidity crisis, but many other steps to erode the 1945 multilateral system. One senior diplomat I met with just on Monday, I could not believe when he quit reflecting on these trends, that we could be facing a League of Nations moment at the United Nations. It is that grave, and it is felt within the Secretariat, whose jobs are on the line.

As you know, the Paris Climate Agreement, Human Rights Council, just like in the first-term Trump administration, the United States has pulled out and is trying to leave UNESCO and WHO. Equally of concern, the fact that Secretary of State Rubio skipped the G20 foreign ministers meeting in February, a year before the United States is scheduled to serve as the presidency of the G20.

In the papers earlier this week, those reading The Washington Post would have seen the article about the Office of Management and Budget just completely zeroing out contributions, not only to the UN, but to NATO and twenty other international organizations. We will see what the pushback is in the next few days by the State Department and the actual request from the White House to the Congress, which has the power of the purse, but we have not seen Congress doing its normal role of pushing back against grave cuts, to put it mildly.

The timing could not be worse. The issues at the heart of multilateral system, some important milestones coming up in the next questions. I am going to talk about the follow-through to this document, the Pact for the Future. The Summit of the Future happens every twenty years. Many of you might have followed the reform effort that Mr. Guterres has spearheaded, but it is the fourth financing for development conference, first time in ten years since Addis. Those are the issues that the global majority countries care deeply about.

The climate crisis, back to Maya’s points, has the most critical COP in a while, probably since Paris in 2015, the COP30 meeting overseen by Brazilian President Lula.

But back to the peace and security issues—and I will finish on this point—we should not understate what happened on February 24, the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine. The United States changed its vote in the General Assembly against a huge number in favor of ending the aggression of Russia, reminding them of their legal duties vis-à-vis the UN Charter. The United States voted on the side of Russia. It is astonishing, and then links to the Gaza situation and UNRWA not being funded anymore by the Democrats and now the Republicans. But, finally, it is affecting the real bread and butter work of the multilateral system, the forgotten conflicts from Sudan. South Sudan might erupt again, as we are seeing in the news, and Eastern Congo. These are all grave risks that the international system needs to remain engaged in.

Shahla Ali

Great, thank you

The next line of exploration is looking at what would each of you say is the relationship between fragmentation between countries and our ability to address these systemic risks? Let us start with Tong again.

Tong Zhao

When it comes to addressing the risk or the threats from weapons of mass destruction, I think the existing international institutions are eroding very seriously. When it comes to treaties and norms that contain nuclear arms race, we have only one international treaty left, which is the U.S.-Russian bilateral agreement on their nuclear arsenals, the New START treaty. But that treaty will expire very soon in February next year. And given the political relations between the two sides, it is hard to imagine that they will be able to negotiate a follow-on treaty or even to maintain the current level required by the treaty. There is a real risk that they may increase their arsenals beyond the current limit.

But, more importantly, other nuclear weapons states are now included in the current national arms control regime. China is building up its nuclear arsenal very fast, but China is not engaged in any bilateral, trilateral, or P5 arms control system.

Countries like India, Pakistan, they are also increasing their nuclear arsenals but were never part of a formal arms control regime.

North Korea is another outlier whose nuclear capability is increasing very quickly and pushing other regional countries—South Korea, Japan—to consider their own potential options in the future.

That leads to the breakdown of the existing international regime on preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons, the non-proliferation regime, and that has a lot to do as well with the major power competition. Major powers now prioritize their own geopolitical interests over non-proliferation norms. Russia has been waiting to acknowledge North Korea’s nuclear status and increasingly providing North Korea with sensitive military technologies, and China is also basically looking away from North Korea’s nuclear buildup, providing political protection at the UN that would help North Korea get away from sanctions and punishments.

Under the Trump administration, there is some concern that the United States might start to entertain the idea of friendly proliferation, basically allowing friendly countries to acquire their own indigenous nuclear capabilities, which could further erode non-proliferation regime. None of the major powers is prioritizing strengthening non-proliferation regime. It is not just an issue of lack of capability; it is more importantly an issue of lack of will.

Shahla Ali

Thank you. Maya?

Maja Groff

In our view, there is a direct link between our lack of coordination mechanisms and our inability to confront various global risks. There is no real centralized authority or platform for, as I was mentioning, monitoring the current Earth system risks, full Earth system functions, including the tipping point. That is an abdication of responsibility of the international community to date.

A lot of it is simply about the scientific knowledge and raising scientific awareness and understanding, and this is why we have put so much energy and time into proposing this first monitoring platform for full Earth system functioning and risk and then trying to figure out how this could dock on to the current international system.

For example, we have been workshopping with some Security Council experts. Could it be tabled with a friendly member, probably non-permanent Security Council, to propose that the Security Council should implement a monitoring facility for governments around the world to know what the current risks we are running?

Then another proposal we have that deals directly with the fragmentation and lack of coordination issue is a possible emergency platform facility that the secretary-general proposed in our Common Agenda report and then wrote a policy brief in the lead up to the Pact for the Future and the Summit for the Future in late 2024. There is operative language in the Pact for the Future accepted by all states about strengthening UN’s response to complex global shocks, which was this emergency platform facility that the secretary-general proposed, which would be no new institutions, just bringing together our current architecture, validating our current achievements, current institutions, and focusing the energy of the international community on planetary emergency and Earth system risk.

We have some interesting options that do have some buy-in already within the international system, and I would add with many states around the world, because we are used to the nuclear weapons, et cetera, the large states often not being 100 percent committed to the multilateral order in the best of times. There are plenty of states at the moment to work with to defragment, to coordinate, to build up international legal regimes and facilities.

Shahla Ali

Thanks. Richard?

Richard Ponzio

When it comes to the framing of your question about the future of global coordination and governance, it is probably not an overstatement to say we are at a fork-in-the-road situation. For the past few decades, most countries have taken multilateralism in the international legal order for granted as a vital way to navigate complex and interconnected transnational environments. For much of the UN’s history, in particular, I think people felt that the UN at major organs and its programs, funds, and agencies would move toward greater effectiveness, inclusion, efficiency. This was at the heart of the summit of the future that I will say a few words about in a minute.

The past decade, I would argue, starting the financial crisis 2008, 2009, 2010, rise of the BRICS, we saw more tension among the great powers. That is all the rage in this town among think tanks for the last seven, eight years. But equally of concern for those who follow the greater multilateral system, the distrust and division between the global majority countries and the Global North on issues of delivering on commitments from the 2030 agenda and financing of the SDGs to Paris and the climate agreement follow-through.

A proxy for the health of the multilateral system and its ability to keep pace with these global challenges that we referred to earlier in this panel has been this last September Summit of the Future. There is a moment to rebuild trust, but to innovate and rethink the international architecture to keep pace with today’s global and emerging over the horizon challenges.

I will say in the next round of discussion, and hopefully during Q&A, what I see as the opportunities to build coalitions with unlikely partners, given the erosion of the multilateral system I referred to earlier.

But I must give two more examples of setbacks or missed opportunities. One was this group called the Like-Minded Group, many powerful, influential countries besides Russia and sometimes China coming involved. It has been led by Pakistan—Cuba when it was leading the G-77 grouping, so they had particular influence at the beginning of the negotiations toward this document. And you can imagine that they undermined discussions around human rights, civil society, gender, and climate. But at the heart of it, what Russia was digging at always was infringing on sovereignty and diverting financial resources away from what they saw as their priorities.

The biggest issue that deals with one of our three major risks that we have been talking about in this panel, the climate one, is the fact that an entire chapter was advocated by the Climate Governance Commission and many other countries and actors and never got the attention. It was mainstream throughout the five chapters of the Pact for the Future. There are two particular actions, 9 and 10, that deal with climate and broader environmental governance. But in terms of a conceptual, let alone operational breakthrough, it leaves much to be desired, and it was a major missed opportunity. That is why the APEC’s climate COP meeting that is happening again at the end of this year is all the more important as the vehicle for innovating work on the climate challenge.

Shahla Ali

Great, thanks.

Some have suggested that a historic feat of statesmanship is necessary to forge these relationships. That leads us into the next question: what are some of the paths of reform available given the current situation. I will start with Maya.

Maja Groff

As I mentioned, the proposals that we have prioritized on the Climate Governance Commission side are already gaining momentum, and we have more interest from governments and other influential actors than we have time and resources to keep up with. That indeed shows that policymakers in response to these big challenges are looking for credible, helpful solutions.

We are seeing also at the national level, some projects that mirror what we are trying to advocate for at the international level. For example, in the UK project, they have a project under their ARIA program to monitor a couple of the tipping points for preparedness nationally, and it will have implications internationally. Brazil has proposed also a type of climate council that mirrors or echoes a number of our proposals and in part came out of our proposals. There are governments that are thinking in the ways that we need to think in light of the Earth system challenges.

At the same time, we have seen these extraordinary bottom-up advocacy efforts. For example, the World Youth for Climate Justice that worked with Pacific Island states and then others to get the General Assembly resolution for an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, absolutely extraordinary historic General Assembly moment. Also the climate youth negotiators, which many might not be as familiar with, but now dozens of youth negotiators officially on the negotiating teams of various countries in climate and other key environmental treaty negotiations. Some of those youth negotiators have been made head of delegations within two years, for example.

There is extraordinary movement and a set of very interesting actors in the international system, and these so-called smart coalitions of global civil society and like-minded states have been extremely successful in the past for making big shifts in the international system. We are working on that, building a tailored platform to advocate and accelerate the uptake of our key governance proposals. It is called the Mobilizing Earth Governance Alliance.

Shahla Ali

Great. Thanks. Richard?

Richard Ponzio

Building on Maya’s points and what I was referencing earlier, this is a critical time, a fork in the road, so to speak. It is critical that states and civil society that care about this system of the last eighty years and what happened to its predecessor, the League of Nations; this is a critical moment.

But, fortunately, when fully leveraged, we have one roadmap, but a whole set of vehicles across not only the five chapters of the Pact for the Future, but there are two other instruments, a Global Digital Compact and a declaration on future generations. Just getting into something those in academia are familiar with, forecasting, futures thinking, it has taken the UN by hold, and given the nature of the issues it is grappling with, starting with the climate challenge, it is critical that it does so. It thinks about consequences of generations unborn.

There are seventeen intergovernmental tracks overseen by the president of the General Assembly that are looking at different actions within each, fifty-six actions to be precise, in the five chapters of the Pact for the Future. There are discussions in town here at the executive boards of the IFIs. G20 will take up many of these issues, especially as they did last year under Brazil’s leadership, this year, South Africa, WTO, the COPs, so many things that happen outside of New York proper.

A big three, though, that I would like to put out and I think complement what my colleagues will be speaking to, certainly on nuclear and other hard security risks, the Security Council reform is the holy grail of UN reform issues. There are three actions, 39 through 41, which many scholars, let alone diplomats, certainly touted we have more wind in our sails than we have seen since the 1960s, last time the UN was reformed, expanded by several seats.

The big issue is permanent seats and what to do, veto power, but there is a lot of headway, as some of you are following, on modifying the use of the veto in cases of mass atrocities, an initiative by the French and Mexican governments over a decade ago.

Biennial Summit on the global economy is a new innovation to create an economic security council over time, but by bringing the G20 that exists and has moved to the heads-of-state level since the Washington summit of November 2008, and we have seen the role it is played coming off the pandemic. But driving six actions in this document on international financial architecture reform, financing for development, climate finance, there needs to be a heavyweight grouping of states, and that is with this Biennial Summit that would happen during UNGA High-Level week on the sidelines as part of the UNGA High-Level week gatherings.

Third and finally, the Global Digital Compact, we have been advocating at least consideration of the ideas around why we set up the International Atomic Energy Agency in the Cold War, given the gravity of what we know about lethal autonomous weapons, autonomous nukes, and some of the issues that Tong and others have raised today. But this gets at the heart of sovereignty, regulatory concerns that are out of vogue at the moment, to put it mildly.

At least there are two new instruments to watch, an IPCC, some of you are familiar in the climate space, the Panel on Climate Change scientists, maybe those from green tech industry, same methodology applied to AI, we know where the innovation is coming from, bring those smart people together and advise on policy. That is being set up by the Spanish and Costa Rican governments as we speak in New York.

And then finally, an AI governance dialogue. Nobody is quite sure what it will work on, if it will be given any kind of teeth, but the fact that 117 of the 193 UN member states do not belong to any of the seven known AI governance frameworks or bodies that exist is a big step forward. Let us not forget the far majority of the world’s population and countries being engaged in dealing with these most critical technologies and the associated risks.

Shahla Ali

Thank you so much.

In one of the earlier remarks we talked about this idea that unity is our primary path to survival as a human race. That leads to our final question, which is what are the barriers to deeper collaboration among states, and how might they be overcome? Tong, I will start with you.

Tong Zhao

I think most people would agree with that, but the challenge is can we still achieve unity. I think the greatest obstacle is today’s information environment. Even in a free society like the United States, people have free access to information, they still develop divergent views on a range of things, leading to a lot of polarization, and between nations this problem is much more serious because there are non-democratic countries that have been blocking the free flow of information across borders for decades. There have been systematic government efforts to manage public opinion, to the point that today among the major powers—United States, Russia, China—at the societal level people have developed opposite views on even basic factual issues, who is right, who is wrong, what happened in history, who is on the right side of history now, who is the aggressor, who violated international law and norms, completely opposite views.

With that, it is hard to see how we can maintain basic unity when we have different facts. I think we need to deal with the challenge of the new information environment. I think open societies still can try to promote a healthy debate about how to strike the balance between ensuring access, freedom of information access, freedom of expression, speech, and containing the negative impact of this information and then to set example for those less open societies to think about these fundamental issues.

Short of that, our last hope, perhaps in terms of maintaining peace, is perhaps to rely on our shared concern about mutual destruction from nuclear weapons or other catastrophes. But, historically, we still needed major crises to bring countries to appreciate our shared concern about mutual destruction. It took serious crisis like Cuban Missile Crisis to make the Soviet Union and United State seriously consider the risk of nuclear use and negotiate risk reduction measures, and today many experts in China, they are saying we probably need another Cuban Missile Crisis between the United States and China to make the leaders from these two countries to seriously consider arms control or risk reduction measures, which means there is increasing stake that is dependent on luck and other uncontrollable factors.

Shahla Ali

Thank you. Maya.

Maja Groff

In the climate space, as we go deeper into the climate crisis and there is a greater and greater awareness of the real risks that we are running, I think that will at a certain point awaken policymakers, decisionmakers, as Tong was saying, in the nuclear and arms control area to the gravity of the circumstances that we are in. I do agree the information environment, information ecosystem integrity is extremely important to building some shared perspectives, and I am actively working with historians on peace projects to have transnational history books and history dialogues. This is absolutely vital in terms of those geopolitical dimensions also and regional peace efforts.

Something else that we probably do not think about very much but is something the Spanish ambassador to the UN said at the UN’s seventy-fifth anniversary, he said we as an international community have a crisis in our faith in our own capacity also, which is like the statistics or the study you were citing about actually most people or young people do want to work on solutions together. I have seen research again—and Stimson has done some of that research—on citizen views around international cooperation, international governments. It is very powerful, and it is the majority of citizens around the world.

On the decisionmaker side, I meet a lot of diplomats who want to do more, but they need some support with high-quality expert proposals. It is a broader crisis of doubt in the international communities and then the human capacity, can we collaborate, can we solve these problems. And from our vantage point, the communities to solve the problems are growing at the same time as we see this deterioration, those communities of collaborative problem solvers are growing stronger and stronger.

Some of the dysfunctional leadership we see, it seems to be a similar archetype across countries and cultures. My question is, how can the moral majorities, the cooperative majorities—and that includes very high-level experts and diplomats around the world—work together to forge this unity and shared vision and awareness of what we need to do to safeguard humanity’s safety?

Shahla Ali

There is an overlap between what we would call the big four emitters and also the nuclear powers of the world. What are some of the approaches that might be available to address rising nuclear threats, and Earth systems risks, I will start again with Tong.

Tong Zhao

I think, in some sense, the climate change and nuclear weapon threats are intrinsically linked because of the dual-use nature of nuclear energy. It can, of course, cause nuclear incidents, Chernobyl and Fukushima. But, more importantly, it can produce fissile materials for nuclear weapons.

Historically, there has been this grand bargain between existing nuclear weapon states, the major powers, the P5 countries, and the rest of the world, which is the major powers would increasingly disarm their nuclear arsenals in return that the rest of the world would promise not to develop their own nuclear weapons. But that bargain is under threat now, mostly because the major powers cannot resolve their own problems with each other, and that is why the disarmament process is stuck and as a result it is harder to pressure the rest of the world to keep away from developing their own nuclear weapons.

Now as the United States under the Trump administration is further reducing security commitment to allies, it also makes more countries who are currently under the American nuclear umbrella to consider their own indigenous security options raising further nuclear proliferation risk.

I see two types of solutions. One is technical. We probably can do more to promote the type of nuclear energy that is safer, that is less prone to proliferation, such as fusion and small modular reactors. There is also a political-level solution, which is the civil society together with other members of international community could jointly pressure the major powers to fulfill their legal obligations under NPT to disarm their nuclear arsenals.

Especially, I think the key is how to find a way to equally pressure the democracies and the autocracies to fulfill their disarmament obligation. There are some legal instruments being advanced including on the UN. A nuclear ban treaty was negotiated in 2017, the treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, and that was very much a result of civil society efforts. But the problem is it is always the democracies that have nuclear weapons that are under greater pressure from this campaign and international movement, whereas the non-democratic nuclear weapon states, they can just hide behind and continue doing their own nuclear build-up without having to make commitments.

I see the challenge of how to again equally pressure them so that both democracies and non-democracies would face strong enough pressure to make real progress toward at least reducing their reliance on nuclear weapons.

Shahla Ali

Thank you. Maya?

Maja Groff

Just briefly, we made a proposal in our flagship report in late 2023 that powerful actors, private sector and at the international level, should be taking responsible actions, and we propose a big four emitter’s grand bargain as happened after the Second World War. The large powers put aside their various differences and banded together for the good of the world. We think such a similar movement or gesture is absolutely vital at this time, and it could be done very simply with a one-page agreement, for example.

We will see as conditions deteriorate whether such different steps forward might become more realistic, but certainly, in narratives and discourses, I think this narrative of ethical action is very important, as Tong was saying, and the MPT, the grand bargain, Article 6, the obligations that nuclear weapon states made a pact, a deal. We have to keep pushing for that responsibility.

But, again, as I was saying earlier, if that is not forthcoming, the rest of the international community has to move forward, and the 2017 treaty to ban nuclear weapons was indeed one of these steps forward by the rest or the majority of the international community to uphold certain ethical standards.

Richard Ponzio

I am happy to come in here also on Rebecca Schutte’s points about the examples of civil society engaging these issues in the role that international legal scholars, those within international legal profession. There is a long history in just the last three decades with the international criminal courts’ work. Many of you are familiar with the Coalition of the International Criminal Court, led for many years by Bill Pace. And Rebecca is currently leading the Washington ICC working group, which is part of that larger coalition and forms the basis for this one of twenty-three multi-stakeholder impact coalitions to come out of a major global gathering a year ago to this month almost in Nairobi. But it is basically covering everything under the sun in this Pact for the Future and the two other instruments that I referred to.

I will share that another community—you might remember your former executive director, Charlotte Ku. She has been a president of the Academic Council on the UN System, key partner for the summer workshop some of you might have participated for PhD-level scholars. The point is the academics and ACUNs, as it is known, are heavily embedded and integrated into many of these impact coalitions, including the one that Rebecca referred to on international judicial institutions. One that I think might be a particular interest among scholars who looking to upgrade and change the system starting with its foundational document, the charter, is a Charter Reform Coalition that is putting together some interesting ideas. Both Maja and myself are active in that, in that work as well.

But, on the last question, I will be brief. There is a group of emitting countries. The G20 has been actively engaged, especially in the last few years under Brazil’s leadership and South Africa and India looking at putting climate first, and these are the major emitting countries, of course.

On nukes and wider disarmament issues, we know what the paralysis has been, whether the bilateral and the START talks are bringing China in or the difficulties and practically all but defunct status of the conference on disarmament in Geneva, maybe too large a grouping.

Back to the G20, in particular, because there seems to be a lot of rhetoric at least in New York about a new Cold War emerging that is anchored around two groupings, the G7 and the BRICS, now the BRICS. The G20, of course, is the forum that is the key to bringing together many of those same major powers. We must utilize it. I hope at the very least, it will be a moderating influence on some of the worst instincts of the Trump administration if it takes on the leadership role that it must next year as the president of the G20. But there is never going to be just a simple design, architectural fix to these issues. It has a lot to do with political leadership and vision and, again, back to civil society pushing our leaders to demand what is what is needed at the time.

Shahla Ali

Great. Thank you. Another question that is related to these large players is the role of regional groups, and we have seen a rise in in terms of the role of regional groups. But a question often that comes up is how to avoid exclusionary tendencies. Often, regional blocs can be inclusive, or they can create distrust, depending on how they are constructed. How to play a constructive role as a regional group to advance coordination, that is the question. Tong has kindly offered to address this one.

Tong Zhao

It is important to recognize that often, in many cases, existential threats do not respect regional boundaries. Again, in the nuclear field, there have been regional efforts such as to set up nuclear weapon-free zones in Central Asia, in Latin America, in South Pacific respectively. But consider future nuclear war, even a limited nuclear exchange between any of the two nuclear powers will affect the rest of the world. The nuclear fallout will spread eventually and affect the public health and environmental integrity of other regions, and future nuclear war is likely to also spill over to other military domains, outer space. Russia is reportedly developing a space-based nuclear capability. If that happens, everyone’s future capability to use outer space for civilian purposes would be seriously undermined.

We probably need some global mobilization to establish liability for anyone that would initiate a nuclear conflict. The General Assembly just authorized a UN study to conduct research on the impact of nuclear war, and I think the international community could make use of the result of this study to basically establish liability for nuclear use, making new carbon states realize they will be asked to pay both for the near term and long term, both for the regional and global consequences of any nuclear use. I think that could help raise the bar of nuclear use.

Shahla Ali

I see we are at time. Unfortunately, we have to close this session, but I would like to welcome you to join me in thanking our panelists.