The roots of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) go back to 1946 when the U.S. proposed that all nations renounce nuclear weapons and that it turn over all its enriched uranium and its atomic weapons to the United Nations. Opposed by the Soviets, the so-called "Baruch Plan" died.
There is no doubt that nuclear weapons, first and only once used to compel behavior, immediately lost the ability to compel behavior as soon as the Soviets acquired them in 1949. So strategy shifted (even if the general public was not aware of it) to deterrence: A credible threat to retaliate against Soviet tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap extended the American nuclear umbrella over Western Europe, bolstered by Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which treats an attack against any member as an attack against all.
President Eisenhower’s 1953 “atoms for peace” proposal eventually resulted in the 1956 creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency focused on assisting development of non-military nuclear facilities and for policing them to ensure that nuclear technologies and materiel not be diverted to weapons production.
In 1961, a unanimous U.N. resolution called on the then four nuclear powers (U.S., Britain, France and the Soviet Union) to not transfer control of nuclear weapons or required technologies to other states and asked all other states to pledge not to build them.
The incredible tension and near miss of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis drove home to both superpowers, and to the rest of the world, that nuclear weaponry needed to be brought under some sort of control. Less than a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy proposed to ban nuclear weapons testing, resulting in the 1963 treaty banning atmospheric (but not underground) tests.
As détente stabilized Soviet-American relations, nuclear arms control rose in priority. In 1968, the NPT was signed by all the nuclear powers, now including China, barring them from assisting others in the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weaponry. Non-nuclear signatories pledged not to seek assistance or otherwise develop nuclear weapons, but the treaty does not bar any NPT signatory from exercising its “inalienable right to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”
Often overlooked is the NPT requirement that the nuclear-power signatories also “negotiate in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Both non-proliferation and nuclear arms reduction have been consistent threads in American policy.
It was Ronald Reagan, no starry-eyed idealist, who first proposed total elimination of nuclear arsenals to an astonished Mikhail Gorbachev in their 1986 Reykjavik summit. This led to the first round of strategic arms reduction (START) talks and the first START treaty that required both countries to begin cutting their nuclear weapons. With the new START treaty signed last month, Russian and American nuclear weapons will be reduced by 90 percent from their Cold-War totals.
All the nuclear powers supported the 1968 NPT as a method to slow, if not arrest, the spread of nuclear weapons, viewed increasingly as destabilizing the fragile peace of the Cold War era. India and Pakistan did not sign, and developed weapons. Israel also did not sign, and is known to possess nuclear weapons despite its deliberately ambiguous public stance.
Pakistan’s chief nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, is known to have supplied weapons technology to both Libya and North Korea -- since renounced by Libya and confirmed by North Korean nuclear tests. Khan may also have supplied weapons technology to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Iran.
Confirmed in the new START treaty signing ceremony in Prague, both Russia and the U.S. view nuclear proliferation as a significant threat to world peace. April’s nuclear security summit in Washington focused on controlling nuclear materiel and reducing the new threats posed by non-state actors such as al Qaeda as well as rogue states with nuclear weapons
Iran defends its current nuclear program as its “inalienable right” as an NPT signatory to develop peaceful uses of nuclear technology. That is not at issue. What is at issue is its continuing charade of “compliance” with NPT obligations and the IAEA inspection regime while simultaneously accelerating enrichment capacity and creating secret underground production facilities in violation of its obligations to declare them. Such continued actions by Iran are inevitably leading the rest of the world, including the major powers, to question Iran’s credibility and motives behind its nuclear program.
The recently released U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), says that the U.S. will “not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations …” Clearly aimed at Iran, this is one further step to ratchet up international pressure on the Iranian regime to abide by its NPT obligations.
Sixty years of nuclear history have traced from compelling Japanese surrender, to balance of terror and deterrence through mutually assured destruction, to nonproliferation and control not only of nuclear arms but also of nuclear technologies that can be used to develop arms.
The focus has shifted from major states to potential rogue states and to non-state terrorist groups who may be able to buy, if not to build, a nuclear weapon. So we see, among the major powers, a further shift from deterrence to prevention of successful attack – heightened detection efforts, cargo screening, and the like, designed to prevent a nuclear bomb from being smuggled into the target country.
This month's NPT review conference - kick-started this week under U.N. auspices - will no doubt spotlight the Iranian nuclear program and play a role in the major powers’ efforts to agree on appropriate sanctions despite the significant economic and trade ties that China and Russia as well as some European states have with Iran.
