When I sat down with Seth Shelden, UN liaison for the Nobel Prize-Winning International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the UN last month, we were in the middle of it, and the outcome was still unknown. I wanted to know what was going on inside the negotiations, while the stakes were real and the result unwritten.
Now it’s over. For the third time in a row, the conference ended without a concluding agreement. What does it mean for global security, and where do we go next?
That’s the frame for this episode. The first part of what you’ll hear is our live conversation from inside the UN — Seth explaining what the NPT is, why it matters, and what “failure” actually means when a treaty conference collapses. In the second part, I went back to get the postmortem. What broke down. What he witnessed. What comes next.
Even the document that would have been adopted was, in Seth’s word, abysmal. AI risk language was stripped out entirely. References to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons were whittled to near nothing. And — the thing that stopped me cold mid-conversation — the US spent time arguing that there is no norm against nuclear testing. Not that testing is premature, or inadvisable. That the norm itself doesn’t exist.
Seth’s read on what that means: they’re laying the groundwork to resume testing.
There’s also unexpected brightness here. For the first time, the 99 countries that have signed or ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons acted as a unified bloc — making group statements, echoing them with regional statements, refusing to be pushed out. The TPNW review conference comes in November. Seth thinks it’s the off-ramp.
Seth is the general counsel and UN liaison for ICAN, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. He left corporate law after visiting Hiroshima on a Fulbright fellowship. He’s also, it turns out, performing in a play about the TPNW — which is exactly as interesting as it sounds.
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Timestamps
0:00 — Introduction: Seth’s background and what brought him to this work
~5:00 — What the NPT is, and what “failure” means when a review conference collapses
~12:00 — The TPNW as the “keystone” completing what the NPT started
~17:00 — Survivors at the NPT: why they’re present but not heard
~20:00 — The nuclear deterrence paradox: you have to trust your adversary
~28:30 — [BRIDGE] The conference is over: Annelise’s narration returning to Seth post-NPT
~29:00 — The verdict: “It did not do that.” Seth on the final outcome
~30:00 — The final days: the TPNW bloc acting as global majority for the first time
~33:00 — The US arguing there is no norm against nuclear testing
~36:00 — What language survived and what was stripped: humanitarian consequences, AI, CTBT
~41:00 — A day in the life: how civil society actually operates inside the NPT
~43:00 — Meetings with the Trump administration: “people are people”
~47:00 — AI risk language deleted from the final document
~48:00 — Is the cornerstone cracking? (Even the chair said yes)
~52:00 — The theater production: a play about the TPNW, workshopped across New England
~56:00 — His honest five-year assessment: frightening trajectory, but the TPNW is the off-ramp
Links
ICAN — icanw.org
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (full text)
ICAN Cities Appeal — find out if your city has joined
Don’t Bank on the Bomb — check whether your bank or pension fund invests in nuclear weapons manufacturers
Nihon Hidankyo — 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winners, representing Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors
Everyday Ambassador is a podcast and Substack for people who think deeply about how conflict gets resolved, and what each of us can do about it. New episodes monthly.
