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Commentary: NPT "RIP"
By Itty Abraham East-West Center Fellow
HONOLULU (May 18) The debate continues over Iran's purported peaceful nuclear program. And, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejao continues to say his country will walk away from the 35-year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if there is no benefit to Teheran. In reality, there may not be anything for Iran to walk away from.
The NPT is now effectively dead. February's Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement, that grandfathered India's nuclear weapons program into the NPT fold, drove the final nail in the coffin of a treaty that was flawed from the outset and reeling from recent violations. Some would give credit to the NPT for disproving President Kennedy's dire prediction that by 1964, there would be "ten, fifteen or twenty" new nuclear weapons states. In fact, only four countries have acknowledged developing, or are understood to have acquired, nuclear weapons since that time, namely, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan. The number would be five if we include North Korea whose nuclear status remains ambiguous. Can the NPT take the honor of having successfully prevented more countries from going nuclear, whether as an international norm or as a mechanism for enforcement?
The NPT can hardly be credited with developing an enforcement mechanism that prevented countries from going nuclear. This is most easily demonstrated by the ease with which Pakistani Dr. A. Q. Khan was able to circumvent existing legislation and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors to peddle illicit nuclear wares to NPT signatories around the world. For countries committed to developing weapons, the civilian nuclear energy projects that were encouraged by the NPT, large numbers of skilled personnel trained around the world, and the presence of willing suppliers of high tech components, usually based in the West, were more than adequate to do so. NPT outsiders Israel, Pakistan and India would not have been able to develop their weapons programs as readily as they did without the help of NPT signatories France, China, and Canada. Iran and North Korea's ongoing efforts likewise draw on both domestic and international resources, licit and illicit. Further, for much of its existence the IAEA was a relatively toothless organization, operating most often as a pawn of Cold War geopolitics.
The so-called norm against the development of nuclear weapons, allegedly embodied by the NPT, is likewise absent as an inhibiting factor. What drove the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 was a unique global coalition of smaller non-nuclear weapons states seeking to put pressure on the nuclear weapons states, or NWS, to live up to the terms of the original treaty. Article VI of the NPT enjoins countries to "pursue negotiations in good faith" to end the arms race, get rid of existing nuclear weapons, and start the process of developing a new treaty of "general and complete disarmament." The countries this article was addressed to, the NWS, did little in this direction during the first quarter century of the treaty's existence. Complementary international accords controlling proliferation or establishing limits on the possession of arms, whether the comprehensive test ban or fissile material cutoff treaties, the proposed ban on weapons in space and efforts to control the spread of missile technologies, remain incomplete or legally in limbo. Given this history of unconcern by the countries that possess nuclear weapons, the signal to countries seeking nuclear weapons is unambiguous.
As long as the NWS show no signs of disarming, ignore the landmark 1996 ruling of the World Court, and insist on holding on to their own weapons of mass destruction, they reinforce the already strong association of nuclear weapons with power and prestige. The differential treatment meted out to North Korea as opposed to Iraq in recent years has only confirmed the skepticism surrounding non-proliferation, leading to its understanding as a selectively applied punitive tool, demonstrating little other than an unequally weighted international system. Sixty years on, nuclear weapons remain the internationally preferred means for getting respect and attention and for protecting a country from pre-emptive attack.
The roots of the NPT's shortcomings lie in the original exception it made, allowing countries that developed nuclear weapons before 1968 to stand apart from all others. Giving an exception to India now is very much in the spirit of the original NPT, not something new. If the spread and possession of nuclear weapons is the primary threat to the international system, and the presence of countries like India, Israel and Pakistan outside the treaty is a significant problem, then the lesson of the Indo-U.S. agreement is that there is no alternative to starting again. This time the objective should be to develop a truly universal treaty that exempts no one, applies the same conditions to all, and that does not confuse the promise of a technological heaven with the torments of an arms-abundant hell.
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Itty Abraham is a research fellow at the East-West Center's Washington office. Previously he served as Program Director, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Global Security and Cooperation, Social Science Research Council; Visiting Associate Professor, Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University; and Postdoctoral fellow, Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford University. Dr. Abraham may be reached via email at abrahami@eastwestcenter.org
The views expressed in this commentary/analysis are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the East-West Center, its officers or staff .