Is the Non Proliferation Treaty outdated?

www.RightViews.com ^ | 2/8/05 | OJ

[Johannesson]

The Non Proliferation Treaty, signed in 1968, was designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons technology beyond the then five nuclear powers – the US, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China. Beyond this, it outlined obligatory procedures for all signatory nations that wanted to obtain peaceful nuclear technology while expressing the intent of the original five to share their peaceful research and work towards eventual disarmament. Hailed as a diplomatic milestone, most (185) of the world's governments signed the treaty. The NPT is legally open to amendments every five years and the next scheduled window is to take place this year.

So in 2005, can we say that the NPT accomplished what we set out to achieve? A quick glance at the state of affairs of nuclear proliferation today should expressively indicate that the NPT, though not deemed an outright failure, has failed at achieving great success. The IAEA estimates that 40 nations, should they want to, have the technical wherewithal to develop nuclear weapons. Beyond the original five we are now looking at nine nations possessing atomic weapons while an additional three have been persuaded to abandon their pursuit, namely South Africa, Ukraine and Libya. Although it has not yet gotten real traction, the nuclear weapon development debate is slowly creeping up in places such as Japan and Brazil. Waiting in the wings are a handful of regimes with questionable motives and troubling activities.

I will be the first to argue that we need some framework within which we can work to halt the spread of the technology. The problem though, lies in some of the details outlining what a country can and can't do while bound to the treaty. Expressively, the document only forbids