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Nuclear Proliferation: A Gathering Storm

Treaties are rarely scintillating, but the 30-year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has a certain sparseness of language and precision of meaning that makes it an engaging read. Boiled down, it commits the 177 non-nuclear nations that signed it not to acquire nuclear weapons and the Big Five nuclear powers—the United States, Britain, France, China, and the USSR—to dismantle theirs.

The theory behind it was simple: non-nuclear weapons states would forgo developing nukes on the conditions that,

1) they are never blackmailed with nuclear weapons, and
2) the Big Five get rid of their arsenals.

All of this seems to have gotten lost in the recent uproar over Iran. While Tehran is being accused of trying to scam the NPT by secretly developing nuclear weapons, the open flaunting of the Treaty by the major nuclear powers is simply ignored.

The most important thing,” El Baradei told the Financial Times, “is to make the big boys understand that the major league is not an exclusive club. If you are not going to dissolve that club, others are going to join it. A world of haves and have-nots is not sustainable.”

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posted by Annamarie at 7:56 PM