The advantages of a fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) for the nuclear non-proliferation regime appear straightforward: Nuclear weapon states would be limited regarding a further production of nuclear weapons and non-nuclear weapon states would face immense difficulties in producing nuclear weapons at any future point. Despite this promising outlook, the international community has so far failed to negotiate and implement an FMCT due to very diverse opinions regarding the nature, content, and instruments of such a treaty. Particularly the scope of the verification mechanism and the definition of “fissile material” are a major source of disagreement among member states of the Conference on Disarmament (CD), frequently leading to deadlock in the multilateral forum.
Using insight from the delegation literature and regime studies, we seek to explain the nonattainment of a comprehensive treaty to proscribe the production and proliferation of fissile material. This approach will allow us to systematically assess the principals’ preferences, the degree of cohesion among them, as well as the effect of these aspects on the design of an FMCT and its verification system. Empirical data will be drawn from CD discussion documents and publications by the International Panel on Fissile Materials. From this, the study deduces necessary implications for future negotiations on nuclear disarmament. Considering the significant disagreement among nuclear weapon states, a focus will be laid on those states that are assumed to possess nuclear weapon stocks (NWS), namely the United States, Russia, France, United Kingdom, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.
