.jpg)
1 The Non-Proliferation Treaty
For decades, the cornerstone of the international disarmament and non-proliferation regime has been the structures of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This landmark international treaty, signed in 1968 and entering into force two years later, aimed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, while providing safeguards and inspection regimes. Since then, 191 countries have signed the treaty, including the five who had nuclear weapons at the time: the US, the USSR, France, the UK and China. The NPT sought to prevent further countries from developing nuclear weapons. At the same time, the existing nuclear weapons states agreed to gradually reduce their own nuclear stockpiles and to work towards nuclear disarmament.
Over the years, however, the limitations of the NPT have become apparent. Contrary to the Treaty’s objectives, four countries have since progressively developed nuclear weapons of their own: India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. (As you have seen, South Africa, while not an NPT member at the time, developed its own nuclear weapons before disarming and joining the NPT as a non-nuclear armed country.) There is also widespread resentment that the treaty’s hierarchical and undemocratic structure serves to enshrine the ‘nuclear haves’ and permanently resign all other countries to being ‘nuclear have-nots’, a division that has even been likened to ‘nuclear apartheid’. Furthermore, the original five nuclear weapons states have made scant progress towards getting rid of their own nuclear weapons and working towards nuclear disarmament.
Indeed, in the twenty-first century countries such as China are rapidly expanding their nuclear arsenal despite being a signatory to the NPT, while others continue to modernise theirs. With rising international tensions and irresponsible rhetoric from leaders of nuclear weapons states, recent years have seen a revival of nuclear anxieties around the world and renewed efforts by activists to rid the world of nuclear weapons once and for all. As the following table shows, despite attempts to limit, if not remove entirely, the threat that nuclear weapons pose to the world, the number of countries who own them has increased.
