Does the NPT Matter?

Abstract

As we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), interest grows in assessing the contribution and importance of the treaty to averting the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the five states that possessed them when the treaty was opened for signature in 1968. With the end of the cold war, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the withdrawal of the superpowers from a global competition that largely contained the risk of nuclear proliferation, the issue of the spread of nuclear weapons has taken on greater urgency and the importance of the NPT has increased accordingly. In one sense, little has changed. The treaty, in Article IX.3, defines a nuclear-weapon state (NWS) as “one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967.” By that definition only India, with its detonation of a nuclear device in 1974, is known to have crossed the line.