http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/title-3/ April 27, 2010, 8:48 pm
Deep Thoughts Before Armageddon
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Beginning any moment now, you’ll see a month-long trickle of news articles, op-eds and blog posts about the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference, which gets underway in New York City this Monday and lasts through May 28. Since the fate of the world could hinge on stemming the spread of nuclear weapons, and this goal could in turn hinge on strengthening the treaty at these every-five-years review conferences, you may feel you should read much of this coverage. And your likely failure to do so may cause guilt feelings.
I’m here to help. This column may not give you everything you need to know about what’s likely to happen at the conference, but I’ll do my best to make you feel you’ve paid your dues without a huge sacrifice of time.
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The basic idea of the nonproliferation treaty, you may recall, was to keep nuclear weapons from spreading beyond the five nations that had them in the 1960s, when the treaty was born — the United States, Russia, China, France and England. Other parties to the treaty — pretty much the whole rest of the world — agreed to foreswear nukes in exchange for a) a pledge that the big five would gradually get rid of all their nukes, and b) assistance in using nuclear energy peacefully (which would entail international monitoring of the peaceful use to make sure it stayed peaceful).
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In sum, if you want to list specific policies that gratuitously offend the have-nots, and thus dim the chances of progress at conferences like this, the leading proliferators of such policies are Boltonesque conservatives, both back in the Bush administration and, still today, in the Senate.
True, the very structure of the nonproliferation treaty — notably its requiring unanimity for revision — makes reform hard. And I’m among those who think that we can’t continue to muddle through under the current structure for very long without courting grave risk. We need to radically rethink international arms control, paving the way for something much stronger than the current treaty.
But the fact that we still have time to do some visionary thinking before the apocalypse sets in is a tribute to the nonproliferation treaty. In the 24 years before it was opened for signature in 1968, five nations had acquired nuclear weapons; in the 42 years since then, only four nations have, notwithstanding the mushrooming of nuclear know-how. The treaty has basically worked, and for now keeping it as strong as possible is crucial. And if you ask, along with some of its conservative critics, why it isn’t even stronger, part of the answer is their past and present behavior.
Postscript: This column benefited from informal conversations with several people over the past couple of months: Jeffrey Lewis, whose blog Arms Control Wonk is essential reading if you plan to go around bragging with any credibility at all that you’re an arms control wonk; Jacqueline Shire of the Institute for Science and International Security; and Richard Parker of the American Foreign Policy Project. And here’s a very nice guide to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference prepared by the Arms Control Association. … And, by the way, I realize that Bush’s nuclear deal with India is framed by some as a triumph for arms control because it brings India’s civilian nuclear facilities under international inspection. But the fact is that the deal is seen as legitimizing defiance of the whole point of the nonproliferation treaty, and makes nuclear have-nots who joined the treaty wonder why they should have bothered to join if you can get American assistance with nuclear energy technology even after building a bomb.
edit to add: I want to point out on one thing mentioned in the last paragraph: it says, "it brings India’s civilian nuclear facilities under international inspection" - but basically the deal was that half of India's reactors would be labeled "civilian" and half would be labeled "military" so they could continue making bombs at those reactors - and those reactors are not under international inspection.
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