Does the NPT Matter?

Abstract

As the twenty-fifth anniversary of the NPT approaches, 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 at the time that the treaty was opened for signature in 1968. 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, has crossed the line. India’s insistent denial that it has become a weapon state and that its 1974 test was anything more than the test of a peaceful nuclear device, reinforced by the absence of any evidence of a second nuclear test or the weaponization of its nuclear program, permits the conclusion that the number of states qualifying as NWSs under NPT criteria remains the same as it was twenty years ago.