Nuclear technology and political power in the making of the nuclear order

At the core of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) lays the fundamental asymmetry between the unequal rights and obligations of the five recognized nuclear-weapon states (NWS) – the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France – and all other adherents to the treaty, the non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS).2 Given this unique arrangement, it comes as no surprise that the same questions of balance, justice, and fairness that already dominated the public utterances during the treaty’s negotiation resurface persistently, both during the NPT’s periodic diplomatic meetings and within the accompanying policy publications.3