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The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty has weaknesses, but it’s all that we’ve got

Fractious, divided but still essential, Economist  Lack of progress on nuclear disarmament could lead to an ill-tempered non-proliferation treaty review May 2nd 2015 THE conference of the 191 signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) got under way at the UN headquarters in New York this week. The last such meeting, in 2010, produced agreement over a 64-point action plan. This time it is likely to be a much more divisive affair.

The aim of “RevCon”, as it is known, is to take stock of progress (or otherwise) over the previous five years in strengthening the three pillars on which the NPT’s “grand bargain” rests: the commitment to pursue disarmament by the five “official” nuclear weapons states—America, Russia, Britain, France and China, also known as the P5; action to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons; and promotion of the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

At least one bit of good news for the four-week conference was the announcement on April 2nd of a framework agreement to overcome the decade-long crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme. If a comprehensive deal can be reached by the end of June and then successfully implemented, it will go a long way towards vindicating the NPT and the tools it provides to bring those who violate its safeguards back into compliance. Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, believes that the agreement has strengthened two of the NPT’s pillars by upholding the right to a civil nuclear programme and confirming the role of intrusive inspections to ensure that all related activity is indeed peaceful.

Progress in most other areas since 2010 has been modest.The countries that do not have nuclear weapons are most concerned by the failure of the five that do to take further steps to reduce the size of their own nuclear arsenals. The previous RevCon was held in the afterglow of a New START deal between America and Russia to limit the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 on each side, and the inspirational speech in Prague a year earlier by Barack Obama, America’s president, in which he held out the prospect of a world without nuclear weapons.

Since then, despite the establishment in 2009 of the so-called P5 process as a forum for discussing multilateral disarmament, not much has happened. ……….

May 6, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war