Two sides to the NPT

Funny, you never hear about this watching CNN or reading the Times but, shocking as it seems, there were two parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons—the haves and the have-nots.

As shady as certain non-nuclear states' activities might seem, the Big Five have clearly not come close to respecting their side of the bargain.

Conn Hallinan writes in Counterpunch:

The theory behind [the NPT] 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.

For almost 38 years the vast majority of the world's nations have adhered to the NPT. Only India, Pakistan, Israel, and possibly North Korea have joined the Big Five, although, at the time the Treaty was signed, a dozen more were on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. In short, the vast bulk of the signers have held to what they agreed to.

The Big Five, however, have ignored the obligation to dismantle their nuclear arsenals or to even discuss general disarmament. At the NPT Review Conference last summer the issue did not even come up, a shortcoming which UN General Secretary Kofi Annan called a "disgrace."

Not only have the Big Five refused to consider eliminating their nuclear arsenals, in 2002 the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) unilaterally overturned the 1978 pledge, and the White House threatened to use nukes on Syria, Iran, and Iraq, all non-nuclear states.

A brief reminder:

The fireball that consumed Hiroshima reached 18 million degrees in one millionth of a second. It evaporated 68% of the city, demolishing structures built to withstand an 8.5 earthquake. It charred trees five miles from ground zero, blew out windows 17 miles from the city's center, and killed 100,000 people in a single blow. Another 100,000 plus would follow in the months ahead.

The bomb that flattened Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. The standard warhead in the U.S. arsenal today-the W-76-is 100 kilotons. A substantial number of our weapons are 250 kilotons, and they range as high as five megatons. One of the latter can eliminate a small country.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there are presently about 27,000 such warheads in the world, many of them capable of being launched within a half hour. In accepting the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, said "More than 15 years after the Cold War, it is incomprehensible to many that the major nuclear weapons states operate with their weapons on hair-trigger alert." This is the price the world is paying for not insisting that the Big Five do what they agreed to do.

Read the whole essay...