Comment: Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (1999, 20 Marks)
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) grew out of the Irish Resolution of 1961, which called for an agreement against the spread of nuclear weapons. Drafted by the US and the USSR, with the UK a third depositary, it opened for signature on 1 July 1968 and entered into force on 5 March 1970. It remains the central and most contested instrument of the nuclear order, because it is near-universal and unequal at once.
The bargain and its provisions
- Non-proliferation (Articles I–III): the five recognised weapon states may not transfer weapons or help others build them. Non-weapon states renounce them and accept IAEA safeguards on all their nuclear material.
- Peaceful use (Article IV): an inalienable right to civil nuclear energy, with a duty to share technology.
- Disarmament (Article VI): all parties are to pursue negotiations in good faith towards ending the arms race and towards nuclear disarmament.
- Architecture: Article VII encourages nuclear-weapon-free zones, Article VIII provides for five-yearly review, Article IX(3) defines a weapon state as one that tested before 1 January 1967, and Article X allows withdrawal. Its 25-year term was extended indefinitely in 1995.
Why it matters
- Containment of spread: John F. Kennedy feared 15 to 25 nuclear states, and there are nine. South Africa dismantled its arsenal, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan gave up Soviet warheads, and Libya abandoned its programme in 2003.
- Regime foundation: it underpins safeguards, export controls and the zonal treaties. Robert O. Keohane‘s liberal institutionalism explains its value: regimes reduce uncertainty and make restraint verifiable, so each state can trust its neighbour’s abstention.
- Normative force: with 191 parties, non-possession has become the expected behaviour of a state. This reinforces what Nina Tannenwald calls the nuclear taboo.
Its critics
- Discrimination: Hedley Bull (The Anarchical Society, 1977) treated great-power management as a pillar of order, but the treaty writes that hierarchy into law, and Article VIII lets any of the five veto an amendment. Jaswant Singh called it nuclear apartheid (1998).
- Article VI unfulfilled: the International Court of Justice (1996) held that the duty is to bring to a conclusion disarmament talks. Yet SIPRI counts 12,187 warheads in January 2026, and New START lapsed in February 2026.
- Structural loopholes: Article IV lets a state build enrichment capacity lawfully, and Article X lets it leave afterwards. North Korea did exactly this, withdrawing in 2003 and testing from 2006.
- No enforcement of its own: cases go to a veto-bound Security Council. After the June 2025 strikes on safeguarded Iranian sites, inspectors were shut out and the IAEA Board referred Iran to the Council in September 2026, with Russia and China opposed. The 11th Review Conference (April–May 2026) failed for the third time in a row.
India’s position
- India helped negotiate the treaty in the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee but refused to sign. Its delegate V. C. Trivedi had argued in 1965 that non-proliferation was an undertaking by nuclear powers not to proliferate, and M. A. Husain called the peaceful-explosion clause an atomic commercial super-monopoly (1967).
- India tested in May 1998, declared no first use and a moratorium, and was accommodated by the 2008 NSG waiver without accession. The outcome showed both how flexible the regime is and how inconsistent.
Conclusion
The NPT has achieved one of its two great aims. It has kept proliferation slow but has not brought disarmament, and its legitimacy depends on the second. A treaty that freezes inequality survives only while the five are seen to be reducing it. That is why the present deadlock is more dangerous to the regime than any single proliferator.