The Nuclear Test Ban and Europe’s Next Security Order

Europe’s security architecture lies in ruins. A new one must be designed before it can be built.

The transatlantic partnership is fraying. Current EU security policy resembles a farce. And much of the legal framework that for decades underlay European security has been dismantled or rendered ineffective: the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on intermediate-range missiles is gone; the START framework governing US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons has largely unravelled; the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) has collapsed; and both the Open Skies Treaty and the NATO–Russia Founding Act have lost their practical significance.

One of the few institutions to survive the past decade’s erosion of international security agreements is the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) – the agreement banning nuclear test explosions in all environments.