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The recent targeted strike resulting in the death of Qassem Soleimani has received extensive attention for its violations of international law by the US. However, one area that has not been considered following the 3 January 2020 attack is the possible consequences this may have for Iran's nuclear non-proliferation legal obligations. Iranian officials have previously alluded to the possibility of Iran withdrawing from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) 1968 following the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in May 2018 and re-imposition of targeted economic sanctions against Iran. This article considers whether Iran can withdraw from the NPT, thus freeing Iran from its legal commitments not to develop nuclear weapons. It revisits the withdrawal provisions found in Article X of the NPT and examines the invocation of the ‘extraordinary events’ clause by other states in relation to other instruments too. In light of this, the discussion considers whether Iran can legally withdraw from the NPT, before concluding with some thoughts as to whether it should in fact pursue this option.

В статье рассматриваются основные вызовы Договору о нераспространении ядерного оружия и основанному на нем международному режиму нераспространения ядерного оружия, а также анализируется роль, которую эти вызовы будут играть в работе Обзорной конференции участников ДНЯО по рассмотрению действия Договора.

On July 7, 2017, the United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons concluded with the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons ...

This article critically reviews scholarship on the role of conflict and cooperation in conditioning nuclear proliferation. We start by laying out the trajectory of scholarship on the causes of proliferation, organizing it in three waves: (a) security and (b) nonsecurity drivers of proliferation, and (c) supply constraints on nuclear acquisition. We then examine the recent turn in the proliferation literature toward a strategic interaction approach, focusing on how conflict and cooperation between proliferators, their adversaries, and their allies shape the spread of nuclear weapons. We argue for an integrated framework for analyzing the tools states can deploy to foster or stymie proliferation. Finally, we sketch an agenda for research on nuclear proliferation. Here, we argue that scholarship should (a) incorporate nonsecurity dynamics into the strategic interaction approach to the study of proliferation and (b) combine rigorous theory with careful historical research to further our understanding of the causes of proliferation.

In this trio of decisions, the International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court) rejected applications in which a small island state claimed that three larger states known to possess nuclear weapons had breached their international obligations to undertake and conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. The Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Court acknowledged, had been the location of repeated nuclear weapons testing from 1946 to 1958, when the United States administered the archipelagic nation under the trusteeship system of the United Nations. The Court further recognized that the applicant, “by virtue of the suffering which its people endured as a result of it being used as a site for extensive nuclear testing programs, has special reasons for concern about nuclear disarmament” (para. 44). Nevertheless, it ruled that the cases could not go forward because the requisite legal dispute was absent at the time that the Marshall Islands filed its applications against India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom.

In 1995, South Africa was in a special position. It was: a new party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the first country to voluntarily renounce nuclear weapons, led ...

Existing literature usually portrays Brazil as a country that set out to build nuclear weapons but ended up “rolling back” its original plans while keeping a nuclear “hedge” for an uncertain future, evidenced by Brazil's investment in uranium enrichment and its commitment to building a nuclear-powered submarine. This article draws on the historical record to offer a more nuanced view of Brazil's nuclear intentions as they evolved. It also focuses on the role of external pressure—mostly from Argentina and the United States—in shaping those motivations.

The Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) is a unique bilateral nonproliferation regime created by Brazil and Argentina after a long process of negotiations and confidence building. The creation of the agency in July 1991 marked a paradigmatic shift in the Brazilian-Argentine relationship, converting their long rivalry into a profound strategic partnership. This article presents a historical overview of the creation of ABACC and discusses how it paved the way for the integration of Brazil and Argentina into the nonproliferation regime. The article also shows how ABACC tackled nonproliferation challenges in the twenty-first century, helping Brazil and Argentina continue their nuclear programs with fewer risks to the autonomy and development goals traditionally defended in their foreign policies.

Focusing on the tenure of the Workers' Party (2003–16), we appraise the tensions between the Brazilian government and international nuclear governance mechanisms after the end of the Cold War. We e...

This article addresses the historical relations between Brazil and the international nonproliferation regime. It also discusses the current position of the Brazilian government regarding the Additional Protocol and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as well as some aspects of the Brazilian nuclear program.

What are the political and strategic consequences of nuclear deployments overseas? The United States continues to maintain around 200 nuclear warheads in Europe, and some observers have called for the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula. This article reviews the insights from recent research on the effects of foreign-deployed nuclear weapons. It asks two central questions. First, does the evidence support the view that foreign nuclear deployments contribute to deterrence? Second, do these deployments strengthen or undermine the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? The evidence suggests that foreign nuclear deployments contribute less to deterrence than previously believed. Further, nuclear deployments probably have mixed effects on proliferation. Unanswered questions for further research include the extent to which nuclear-sharing arrangements reassure allies, and the political and strategic consequences of canceling them.

South Africa had active nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs during the 1970s and 1980s. South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapon program prior to its 1991 accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Similarly, it terminated its chemical weapons program prior to its 1995 ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Only the dismantlement of Pretoria's nuclear weapons program was subjected to international verification—albeit ex post facto—following a 1993 decision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference to verify the correctness and completeness of South Africa's declarations under its NPT safeguards agreement. During the 1980s, South Africa also developed and purportedly used biological weapons, violating its obligations under the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, which it had ratified in 1975. T...

Since the 1950s, the United States has engaged in nuclear sharing with its NATO allies. Today, 150-200 tactical nuclear weapons remain on European soil. However, the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapon states. The potential discrepancy between text and practice raises the question of how the NPT's negotiators dealt with NATO's nuclear-sharing arrangements while drafting the treaty that would eventually become the bedrock of the international nonproliferation regime. Using a multitiered analysis of secret negotiations within the White House National Security Council, NATO, and US-Soviet bilateral meetings, this article finds that NATO's nuclear-sharing arrangements strengthened the NPT in the short term by lowering West German incentives to build the bomb. However, this article also finds that decision makers and negotiators in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration had a coordinated strategy of deliberately insertin...

There have been calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons from the day they were invented. Over the last fifteen years, some indications can be found that such calls have been getting louder, among them Barack Obama's famous 2009 speech in Prague. In this article, we investigate if support for a comprehensive norm that would prohibit development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons is really growing. To assess the current status of that norm, we use the model of a “norm life cycle,” developed by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. We then analyze 6,545 diplomatic statements from the review process of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as well as from the UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security, covering the years 2000 to 2013. The evidence shows that a comprehensive prohibition can be considered an emerging international norm that finds growing support among states without nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon states alike. Only a core g...

THE YEAR 2015 WILL BE A MEMORABLE YEAR IN THE HISTORY OF THE TREATY on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It will be forty-five years since this unique treaty--with 189 states parties, the most widely subscribed to a multilateral disarmament treaty--entered into force and twenty years after its historic indefinite extension and reinforcement in 1995. For me, it will mark a thirty-year association with the NPT since I chaired the Third Preparatory Committee Meeting of the Third NPT Review Conference in 1985 and Main Committee I of that Review Conference. Ten years later, I presided over the NPT Review and Extension Conference. Countless words have been written in exegesis of the final packages of the Three Decisions and the Resolution on the Middle East adopted in 1995, all of which will no doubt be regurgitated as we approach the 2015 NPT Review Conference. On 12 May 1995, in my closing statement as president of the historic NPT Review and Extension Conference that extended the treaty for an indefinite duration, I stated: "The permanence of the Treaty does not represent a permanence of unbalanced obligations, nor does it represent the permanence of nuclear apartheid between nuclear haves and have-nots. What it does represent is our collective dedication to the permanence of an international legal barrier against nuclear proliferation so that we can forge ahead in our tasks towards a nuclear weapon-free world." Since then, despite the emergence of India and Pakistan as nuclear weapons-armed states and the unprincipled concessions made through the US-India nuclear cooperation deal, the continued outlier status of Israel with its undeclared nuclear weapons possession, and the withdrawal of North Korea from the NPT and its outrageous nuclear weapons testing, the nuclear nonproliferation norm has held firm for the 184 non-nuclear weapons states in the NPT--especially after the 24 November 2013 interim agreement over Iran's nuclear program. Article VI--the disarmament article of the NPT--remains unimplemented despite the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The "Thirteen Steps" agreed on at the 2000 NPT Review Conference and the 2010 Review Conference's sixty-four-point Action Programme, together with the agreement on the Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (MEWMDFZ) proposal and the conceptual breakthrough on recognizing the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, augured well for the strengthened review process. However, the report cards meticulously maintained by civil society on actual achievements, the return to Cold War mind-sets by the United States and Russia, and the negative record of all the nuclear weapons states have converted the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world into a mirage. Unless the Ninth NPT Review Conference reverses these ominous trends, it is doomed to fail and imperils the future of the NPT. Taking Stock Some stocktaking is relevant. In 1995, we had five nuclear weapons states and one was outside of the NPT. Today, we have nine nuclear weapons-armed states--four of them outside the NPT. One of them (India) is being given special privileges by the entire Nuclear Suppliers Group in violation of Article I of the treaty and paragraph 12 of Decision II in the 1995 package. Another (Pakistan) has received two power reactors from China, a nuclear weapons state within the NPT. In 1970, when the NPT entered into force, we had a total of 38,153 nuclear warheads. Today we have 16,300--just 21,853 fewer--with over 4,000 on deployed status and the promise by the two main nuclear weapons states to reduce their deployed arsenals by 30 percent to 1,550 each within seven years of the new START (the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms) entering into force. Another NPT nuclear weapons state, the United Kingdom, is on the verge of renewing its Trident nuclear weapons program. …

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South Africa's nuclear disarmament is a unique historical case, notable in part for the dramatic shift from deception to cooperation. The unprecedented transparency it demonstrated in order to convince the international community of the veracity of their disarmament is heralded as an exemplar for verifiable denuclearization. Less known is how this case affords insights into how a nuclear weapon program can be clandestinely hidden by the ambiguity provided by an otherwise completely legitimate, peaceful, nuclear energy program. Using a variety of open sources, including newly declassified internal South African and US government reports, it can be shown that South Africa employed a variety of deceptive tactics before it disarmed, and even for nearly two years after becoming a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. This article reviews that information to derive instructive lessons on the lengths that a nuclear proliferant state might go to conceal its true capabilities...

The 2014 Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in The Hague was a resounding success, both in organizational terms and in terms of substance. The new substance can be found in the Communique, as well as in innovative joint statements by participants, all of which may be considered as implementation of actions decided upon in the Final Document of the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The next two years in the NSS process cannot be business as usual. This viewpoint makes some suggestions for NSS states to undertake between now and the final summit in 2016, including preparations for winding down the NSS process as we know it.

This article questions the predominantly pessimistic assessments over the future of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). After analysing available evidence on states’ interests and interactions within the NPT’s framework, it argues that several negative expectations are unwarranted. Conversely, the article identifies three potentially threatening scenarios. Therefore, it scrutinizes the likely impact of reactive nuclear proliferation; analyses the probability of significant actors challenging the existent nuclear architecture; and explores whether the treaty’s enforcement might soon be diluted. The article concludes the NPT is unlikely to face fundamental threats in the foreseeable future.

This article examines Kazakhstani nuclear decision making from December 1991 to May 1992. The study is based on unique archival data and reveals how Kazakhstan's policy makers solved a nuclear dilemma that the nation faced in its first years of independence. The article reconstructs the internal policy-making process behind the decision made by President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his circle of advisors to accept non-nuclear status. The author argues that Almaty elaborated a deliberately ambivalent strategy toward the republic's nuclear status with the aim of maximizing the state's strategic interests. The article reviews external pressures affecting Nazarbayev's course of action and discusses policy options articulated during this period.

The second session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Review Conference (RevCon) of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) highlighted two issues in particular—progress toward a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction–Free Zone and the Joint Statement on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons—that may not only greatly affect the health and vitality of the NPT and the 2015 RevCon, but possibly also have implications for the international nonproliferation regime as a whole. Dr. William Potter, director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, interviewed Ambassador Cornel Feruta, chairman of the 2013 PrepCom, to discuss these and other issues related to the meeting and the future of the treaty and its review process.

The authors propose five principles for addressing the major deficiencies of the current treaty-based approach to nonproliferation. These involve: effectively closing the door to withdrawals from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT); defining which nuclear technologies fall within the NPT's “inalienable right” provision, so as to maintain a reasonable safety margin against possible military application; expansion of International Atomic Energy Agency inspections to include greater readiness to use its “special” inspection authority; creation of an NPT enforcement regime, to include a secretariat; and universalizing the NPT so as to apply to all states, while creating a path for current non-parties to come into compliance. There is no illusion here about the prospects for the adoption of this approach. At a minimum, the world needs to be frank about the gap between nuclear programs and current nonproliferation protection. Encouragement of greater use of nuclear power should be predi...

Despite a political environment fraught with core policy differences, between 1979 and 1983, six governments and two international safeguards directorates—the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Euratom Safeguards Directorate—negotiated an agreement to preserve the core verification principles behind the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). At first, even agreement to talk was in doubt. Other governments questioned US motives; they wondered whether US motives in promoting the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation had been to evaluate or to prevent non-nuclear weapon states from deploying uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing technologies. In addition, Germany and Japan disagreed with the United States on whether NPT safeguards were to address undeclared materials or activities. Notwithstanding this environment, the participants reached agreement first to negotiate, and then on specific technical measures, even when the approach implied a policy consensus where no...

Governments are increasingly recognizing the problem posed by internally weak nuclear-capable states. The problem, however, is under-theorized. This article brings together literature on sovereignty and international order, the nonproliferation regime, and weak states, and introduces new concepts to provide a more structured understanding of this problem. Insight comes from focusing attention on the function and governance of two nuclear estates (termed the production and operational estates), and on their resilience to decay and disorder occurring within the state and society. Drawing on empirical observation, the authors suggest a typology of weakness in nuclear states, involving state fragmentation typified by the former Soviet Union, the “hard weak state” typified by North Korea, and the internally conflicted state typified by Pakistan. Although these types give rise to distinctive difficulties, their alleviation depends heavily on the maintenance of internal authority within the state and estates, th...

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) will not be effective until all the 44 states listed in its Annex 2 ratify it. A special link has been established between the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the CTBT. The disarmament obligation set by Article VI of the NPT, which has not yet been complied with, remains highly controversial. The relevant subsequent practice of the states parties to the NPT shows that the ratification of the CTBT is to be considered the first of the practical steps towards compliance with Article VI. However, as the practical steps do not set any legally binding norms, there is no legal obligation to ratify the CTBT, not even for the 44 states listed in Annex 2 whose ratification is essential. The paper deals with the position of nuclear powers party to the NPT that have not yet ratified the CTBT (most prominently the US and China) and demonstrates that these states should at least provide detailed motivation for their conduct. Otherwise, other states parties to the NPT could consider them as not complying in good faith with Article VI of the NPT and invoke theinadimplenti non est ademplendumrule to justify breaches of their own obligations under the same treaty.

Weapons (NPT) and the determinants of Iranian attitudes. Using data from a 2008 survey of 710 Iranians administered by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, we find that that a significant minority of Iranians (10 percent in 2006 and 14 percent in 2008) would prefer that Iran withdraw from the NPT. Our statistical analysis shows that Iranians who fear a US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and distrust the International Atomic Energy Agency are more likely to want to quit the NPT. We therefore argue that those who do not trust other nations are most likely to oppose the NPT. In response to increasing international concern about Iran's nuclear brinkmanship, numerous organizations have fielded public opinion surveys in Iran. These surveys cover a range of issues related to Iran's domestic and foreign policies, including Iranians' support for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and Iran's commitment to it, their beliefs about other states' commitment to the NPT, and their views on the development of nuclear weapons. 1 All of these polling efforts and/or residual products present media-friendly tabulations rather than in-depth analysis and thus offer few, if any, explanatory insights on Iranians beliefs about the NPT and related issues. 2 Furthermore, most firms that have conducted these surveys in Iran do not make respondent-level data available to the public, giving scholars no opportunities to expand upon these ultimately unsatisfying analyses. This report aims to advance contemporary understanding of Iranian beliefs about the NPT. 3 As discussed below, there is considerable debate over whether or not Iran is using its civilian nuclear technology program to mask an attempt to acquire nuclear weapons. Despite Iran's claims that its program is entirely legal, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which oversees NPT compliance, has repeatedly reported that Iran has not satisfactorily established ''confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature'' of its nuclear program. 4 This report, however, does not enter into the debate regarding Iran's intentions. Instead, using data from a 2008 survey of 710 Iranians administered by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), it explores Iranian attitudes toward Iran's participation in the nonproliferation regime, as well as the determinants of those attitudes. The 2008 survey offers the most recent and most reliable data on Iranian

On October 1, 2008, Congress enacted a proposal that originated with President George W. Bush in 2005 to approve an unprecedented nuclear trade pact with India by removing a central pillar of US nonproliferation policy. Despite the numerous political challenges confronting the Bush administration, the initiative won strong bipartisan support, including votes from Democratic Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. The four-year struggle to pass the controversial US-India nuclear trade agreement offers an exceptionally valuable case study. It demonstrates a classic tradeoff between the pursuit of broad multilateral goals such as nuclear nonproliferation and advancement of a specific bilateral relationship. It reveals enduring fault lines in executive branch relations with Congress. It vividly portrays challenges confronting proponents of a strong nonproliferation regime. This article is based on an analysis of the negotiating record and congressional deliberations, including interviews wit...

The negotiating history of Article IV of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is analyzed using previously overlooked archival sources. Contrary to received wisdom, there was a lively debate in the spring of 1968, much of it restricted to behind-the-scenes exchanges between Washington and London, over the proliferation risks of gas centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment. The United States put its faith in classification, safeguards, and peaceful use. The United Kingdom feared that clandestine enrichment using centrifuges would render the NPT a dead letter.

In nuclear nonproliferation negotiations, many governments pursue multiple objectives, and changes in policy can occur rapidly—and often unexpectedly. For these reasons, understanding nonproliferation requires empathy and imagination rather than just historical fact. This article considers one teaching tool to encourage such insight—simulations—and demonstrates how teaching and scholarship can interact to improve our understanding of the complex decisions and negotiations involved in nuclear nonproliferation. The article consists of five parts: first, it explains the benefits of simulations as both a policy development tool in Washington and as a teaching tool in universities; second, it describes the pedagogical strategy of the Stanford University simulation program; third, it shows how the simulations have identified and highlighted theoretical and substantive insights that are often neglected in scholarly studies of nonproliferation; and fourth, it describes how students are tested to enhance the learn...

Interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, by Daniel H. Joyner. Oxford University Press, 2011. 192 pages, $100.

The announcement by American President G.W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Singh on 18 July 2005 of an agreement on civil nuclear co-operation marked a fundamental change in three decades of American policy on trade in nuclear equipment and applied technology which brooked no exceptions.

The 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) produced a Final Document calling for an extension of the principles of the nonproliferation norm as well as steps toward complete disarmament. This article looks beyond the rhetoric, however, to examine recent decisions by great powers to expand nuclear trade with non-NPT countries and the implications of these decisions on the traditional nonproliferation norm of restraint. This article seeks to contribute to constructivist theory by supplementing existing accounts of norm creation and establishment with a new model of norm change. The article develops a case study of the 2008 US-India nuclear deal to highlight the role of elite agency in key stages of norm change, including redefinition and constructive substitution through contestation. It concludes that the traditional nonproliferation norm may be evolving in new directions that are not well captured by existing theoretical frames.

This article assesses the prospects for a strategy of incrementalism to lead to achievement of the core bargain of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: non-nuclear weapon states' nuclear nonproliferation in exchange for nuclear weapon states' nuclear disarmament to the point of “global zero.” Game theory, prospect theory, and liberal international theory are used to evaluate the potential of a strategy of incrementalism. While separately each has insights to offer, it is when all three theoretical approaches are used in tandem that meaningful explanatory gains emerge. The article concludes that incrementalism probably cannot lead to complete nonproliferation and global nuclear zero. Instead, signal events (as described by prospect theory) are needed to “punctuate” incremental processes in negotiations (best explained by liberal international theory) in order to move past hindrances such as international structural constraints (exemplified by game theory) and the conservative risk-taking...

The most important short-term success of President Barack Obama's nuclear weapons policy has been to halt the erosion of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Obama's policies helped extract a minimum positive result from the 2010 NPT Review Conference, a favorable outcome compared to the chaos that his predecessor's representatives had created at the 2005 conference. However, the result is only a compromise of the least common denominator between the nuclear weapon states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The nuclear weapon states refused to agree to any specific actions or deadlines for disarmament, while the NAM states rejected any strengthening of the nonproliferation toolbox. The 2010 conference's final document is thus an exercise in minimalism, with the notable exception of the section addressing the Middle East. As measured by delegates’ statements, the Obama policy was welcomed as a positive development. This factor enabled key players, such as Egypt and Brazil, to striv...

"Despite its flaws and weaknesses, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) remains an invaluable instrument for international security… There is no alternative but to support and strengthen the NPT…" Foreign Affairs, Defence and Armed Forces Committee of the French Senate

Radioactive sealed sources have a long history and a much wider worldwide distribution than do weapons-usable fissile materials. This article compares the mechanisms for controlling radioactive sources with those of weapons-usable materials and makes the case for improved policy making on the safe and secure management of radioactive sources (often referred to simply as “sources”). Such sources have been widely distributed with commercial and government support to nearly every country, yet there are no legally binding, international agreements or regulations to control any aspect of their life cycle. This is problematic because some sources that are disused, abandoned, or otherwise fall out of regulatory control could be used in the form of a radiological dispersal device (RDD, or dirty bomb). An RDD could pose significant economic and psychological impacts with the potential for detrimental effects on public health. The lack of international measures to control sources is troubling for several reasons: c...

The nuclear weapon states (NWS) have different perspectives on the desirability and feasibility of a world without nuclear weapons. A review of each of the current nuclear doctrines, postures, and disarmament policies of the five NWS shows that there is a clear divide between them, with some showing relatively determined leadership (the United States and the United Kingdom) and others expressing skepticism, if not complete disinterest (France, Russia, and China). Nevertheless, the prospects for progress on disarmament by the NWS at the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons remain reasonably good. Yet complete success will require much time as well as sustained and applied efforts from the NWS, first and foremost to improve their performance as international security guarantors.

This article explores the potential impact of U.S. disarmament leadership on the nuclear diplomacy of North Korea and Iran, the “defiant states.” The first part of the article introduces the concept of “interaction capacity,” which measures a state's integration into international society, based on its physical communication systems and its adoption of shared norms. The theory predicts that lower levels of interaction capacity will generate a greater propensity for nuclear defiance, as the affected states reject and try to resist integration pressures. In the second and third parts of the article, this conceptual framework is applied to the cases of North Korea and Iran. The analysis suggests that efforts to reassert U.S. disarmament leadership could increase the alienation of North Korea and Iran, leading to provocation and escalation of nuclear tensions. The final part of the paper explores the policy implications of this analysis for the potentially defunct six-party talks, for hopes of renewed negotia...

The goal of abolishing all nuclear weapons has often seemed unrealistic, if not utopian. The Cold War posed intractable apocalyptic dangers, and the post-Cold War “peace dividend” proved scant. But over the decades, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation successes have been as important as the setbacks, and in 2010 the abolition aspiration has made something of a comeback. This article surveys the most important challenges facing nuclear disarmament progress today. The article considers the interrelationships among the positions of the key categories of states shaping the contemporary global nuclear order, for good or ill, as a capstone to the other pieces in this special section, which focus on those categories individually. The article concludes that progress toward disarmament will not be easy or fast. Weaning states off their reliance on threats to either use or acquire nuclear arms requires progress in improving the conditions of global governance more generally. But the goal of eliminating the th...

This special section examines the disarmament dynamics being generated by President Barack Obama and other world leaders in their advocacy of a nuclear-weapon-free world. It explores the responses of five groups of states (nuclear weapon states, threshold states, advocacy states, holdout states, and defiant states) to the new disarmament momentum, assessing whether a global consensus on—and concrete progress toward—nuclear elimination is likely. The main goals of this special section are: to generate scholarly debate on this important subject (the literature has tended to focus on understanding proliferation rather than disarmament dynamics); and to examine the potential consequences of reinvigorated disarmament leadership for the upcoming Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which will be held in New York City in May 2010.

The rejection of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the U.S. Senate in October 1999 could have been avoided, and the consequences of that vote still loom in the minds of supporters of the treaty. President Barack Obama has embraced the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and a key element of the Obama administration's arms control agenda is delivering on U.S. CTBT ratification. In order to secure the two-thirds majority in the Senate necessary to ratify the treaty, senators that remain skeptical of nuclear disarmament must also be convinced that the entry into force of the CTBT is in the national security interest of the United States. This article provides an analysis of the issues surrounding U.S. CTBT ratification divided into three segments—verifiability of the treaty, reliability of the U.S. stockpile, and the treaty's impact on U.S. national security—and concludes that CTBT ratification serves the security objectives of the United States. The CTBT constitutes an integral comp...

For more than forty years, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has provided major security benefits to the international community; however, the treaty is suffering from internal and external pressures, and benign neglect on the part of its members is undermining its authority. To ensure the treaty's continued viability, it is time for member states to start showing the NPT the respect it deserves and to renew their commitments to its fundamental purposes. Achieving this requires remedial action in at least four areas of vulnerability: reinvigorating nuclear disarmament; strengthening nonproliferation; overcoming the NPT's institutional deficit; and fostering a rapprochement between NPT and non-NPT states that does not abandon the goal of treaty universalization. There is still time before the 2010 NPT Review Conference for concerted action to restore the NPT's vitality and for the United States to resume its leadership role on behalf of the treaty and its membership.

How do we assess the health of international regimes? Many analysts have insisted recently that the nuclear nonproliferation regime is in urgent need of repair or that it should even be discarded because of its supposed ineffectiveness. However, it is essential that statements about the regime being in crisis be scrutinized for veracity and utility. While the spread of nuclear weapons poses an undeniable and serious threat to international security, a mistaken crisis mentality with respect to the regime could lead to rash attempts to alter it in unnecessary or ineffective ways or, at worst, to discard it completely. This paper returns to a theoretical framework that differentiates regimes, across both issue areas and time, to provide a more specified evaluation of regime health. By disaggregating the nuclear nonproliferation regime and assessing the individual and interactive health of multiple dimensions, a number of dimension-specific, regime-strengthening policy recommendations emerge.

This article assesses the successes and failures of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) since its creation in 1968 by developing and applying a set of “metrics” to each of the NPT's substantive articles as well as to its withdrawal provisions. In light of this analysis, the article also puts forward some specific proposals for strengthening the NPT and its implementation, with a view to the debate and decisions at the upcoming 2010 NPT Review Conference. A concluding section turns explicitly to the 2010 NPT Review Conference and proposes pursuit of agreement on three NPT Action Plans: one for nonproliferation, one for peaceful uses, and one for nuclear disarmament. Combining vision and practicable steps, these Action Plans would set out a roadmap for action between the 2010 and the 2015 NPT Review Conferences. They could provide a foundation for substantive exchanges—in this case, on progress toward their implementation—during the preparations for the 2015 conference.

After the conclusion of the 2008 Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Nonproliferation Review interviewed Ambassador Yukiya Amano of Japan, who presided over the 2007 session of the PrepCom in Vienna. He provided valuable insights into his preparations for the PrepCom and shared his thoughts on some of the most pressing issues that confronted his chairmanship and the PrepCom as a whole. The interview also provides useful perspectives on the future of the strengthened review process.

The author offers a close analysis of Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the treaty’s only article dealing with disarmament, focusing upon both its text and negotiating history, and assesses its applicability as a standard for judging treaty compliance. The author critiques comments on Article VI made by the International Court of Justice in a 1996 case as legally ill founded and conceptually incoherent as a compliance yardstick. The only interpretation of Article VI consistent with its text and history, the author argues, is that it * as it says * merely requires all states to pursue negotiations in good faith; specific disarmament steps are not required. Claims that the 2000 NPT Review Conference imposed new legal obligations for disarmament or altered the meaning of Article VI are found to be mistaken; although the conference could theoretically have adopted interpretive criteria for understanding the meaning of Article VI, it did not in fact do so. Applying his Article VI compliance standard to the case of U.S. compliance, and comparing modern circumstances with those during the Cold War, the author also describes what he says is an excellent U.S. record of Article VI compliance.