Abstract
The nuclear non-proliferation regime, centred around the 1968 treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, presents us with a paradox. It is arguably the world’s most successful and important global security regime, and its most vulnerable. This chapter provides some important historical and analytical background to the regime, and outlines its major benefits and achievements. It then considers areas – such as vertical proliferation, and new nuclear states – where it has been unsuccessful, and considers the profound contemporary and future stresses it is under. There is considerable internal division about its purpose and the pace of disarmament, challenges of nuclear security and energy safety that escape its boundaries, and concerns that it is ill-equipped either for a future of deep disarmament or proliferation breakout. Against this background, the chapter maps out emerging reform proposals and considers those most compelling and promising.
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Notes
- 1.
The origins of the NPT date back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the spread of nuclear technology to additional states sparked fears of uncontrolled nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear holocaust. These fears were made all the more compelling by advances in nuclear technology: the capacity of thermonuclear weapons to dwarf the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Against this backdrop, and following a string of failed efforts to kick-start multilateral disarmament negotiations in the UN General Assembly, in 1965 the United States and USSR threw their weight behind a proposal (put forward by representatives of the global South) calling for a treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and to bring about nuclear disarmament. That proposal became UN General Assembly resolution 2028 (1965), which led to the formation of an eighteen-nation committee tasked with negotiating a treaty text. The text that emerged from these negotiations became the NPT. The treaty opened for signature on 1 July 1968 and entered into force on 5 March 1970, when it had been ratified by forty states. For an accurate account of the negotiations, see ‘Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 1968,’ United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law, http://legal.un.org/avl/pdf/ha/tnpt/tnpt_ph_e.pdf.
- 2.
This distinguishes the NPT from the other two legal frameworks that deal with unconventional weapons: The Biological Weapons Convention, and the Chemical Weapons Convention, both of which are single-class regimes, with all states parties subject to the same rights and obligations.
- 3.
The NAM was formed during the Cold War as an organization of countries that did not want to formally align with the United States or the Soviet Union. It comprises the largest grouping of states engaged on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation issues, representing more than two-thirds of NPT members.
- 4.
This might have scuppered the treaty but for the fact that the NWS passed Security Council Resolution 255 on 19 June 1968, pledging to uphold their obligations under the UN Charter in the event of a nuclear attack on the NNWS. The resolution represented a political commitment and was not legally binding.
- 5.
The relationship between non-proliferation and disarmament is sometimes downplayed by scholars and practitioners (Grotto 2008; Ford 2010). However, more nuanced discussions that examine direct and indirect linkages conclude that although the relationship is sometimes exaggerated, it is nonetheless significant (Knopf 2014).
- 6.
This idea was first proposed in the 1940s, revisited in the 1970s, and looked at again by the IAEA in the early 2000s. Other proposals that also aim to prevent the misuse of nuclear programs for non-peaceful purposes focus on efforts to minimise the production and use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) by encouraging states to shut down HEU-fuelled reactors and replace them with less proliferation-sensitive low-enriched uranium (LEU) alternatives. For practical details of both types of proposal, see Evans et al. 2015, pp. 234–236 (multinational control of the fuel cycle) and pp. 197–207 and 230 (HEU minimization).
- 7.
The basic idea behind IFNEC is that nuclear suppliers would commit to provide nuclear consumers with long-term whole-of-life fuel service assurances. Suppliers would provide fresh fuel and take back used fuel, or otherwise assist with used fuel management. IFNEC members include: Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Estonia, France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Lithuania, Morocco, Netherlands, Niger, Oman, Poland, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Slovenia, Ukraine, UAE, UK, and US. For further information, see the IFNEC website: http://www.ifnec.org.
- 8.
The IAEA is mandated to verify the non-diversion of nuclear materials under Article III.
- 9.
For example, there are twelve states in which IAEA comprehensive safeguards agreements are not in force, let alone the AP: Benin, Cabo Verde, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Micronesia, Sao Tome & Principe, Somalia, and Timor-Leste. None of these states are of proliferation concern in terms of their potential breakout intentions or capacity.
- 10.
There have also been questions about the nuclear ambitions of Myanmar and Venezuela, although both have very limited nuclear infrastructure. Venezuela continues to resist signing the AP, but Myanmar recently signed and has promised to bring it into force as soon as possible.
- 11.
From 2004–2007, IAEA inspectors and third parties uncovered evidence that Egyptian scientists had engaged in undeclared nuclear activities (Goldschmidt 2009; Rublee 2009). Syria‘s illicit nuclear activities have been more extensive. This, combined with the country’s failure to cooperate with the IAEA in its investigations, led the Board of Governors to declare Syria to be in non-compliance with its safeguards obligations in 2011.
- 12.
- 13.
The IPNDV, which was launched by the United States in December in 2014, brings together the United States, United Kingdom, France, and more than twenty-five NNWS in a collaborative effort to understand the technical problems of verifying nuclear disarmament. It builds on an earlier UK-Norway initiative.
- 14.
The humanitarian initiative, which was launched in 2013, brings together states, NGOs, and civil society at a series of international conferences to discuss the risks associated with nuclear weapons and the impact of their use. The United States, United Kingdom, India, and Pakistan attended the December 2014 conference in Vienna, and China sent an observer.
- 15.
In 2015, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to convene an OEWG to ‘substantively address concrete effective legal measures, legal provisions and norms that would need to be concluded to attain and maintain a world without nuclear weapons’; and ‘other measures that could contribute to taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations’ including transparency measures, measures to reduce and eliminate the risk of accidental launch; and measures to increase awareness of the humanitarian consequences that would result from any nuclear detonation (A/RES/70/33 2015).
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Ogilvie-White, T. (2017). Challenges Facing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In: Burke, A., Parker, R. (eds) Global Insecurity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95145-1_11
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