ABSTRACT
When the third conference to review the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) convenes in Geneva this September, the halls and headlineswill be filledwith acrimony. Diplomats fromnon-nuclear-weapons states will charge the superpowers with discrimination, hypocrisy, and failure to live up to their commitments to disarm. Should this drama be taken seriously? No and yes. Excessive rhetoric is a hallmark of such conferences, and it will not necessarily signify an imminent collapse of the treaty. Yet these charges underscore a more basic, longrun security problem that the superpowers have tended to neglect in recent years and that could lead to the failure of the NPT when it comes up for renewal in 1995. In the 40-year history of nuclear weaponry two remarkable facts stand out.
The first is that in a world of sovereign states in which the right of self-defense is enshrined in the United Nations Charter as well as in international law, many countries have agreed to forgo acquiring the most destructive weapons of self-defense. The second is that although nuclear weapons technology has spread somewhat over four decades, it has not spread as widely as expected. In 1963 President John Kennedy envisaged a world in the 1970s with 15 to 25 nuclear weapons states posing “the greatest possible danger.” Instead, today there are about seven: five declared weapons states, one state that has exploded a nuclear device but not produced weapons, and one or two that may have produced weapons but that have not yet set off an explosion. Nuclear reality has been less alarming than predicted for several reasons, includ-
ing the restrictive policies of the weapons states; the calculated self-interest of many nonweapons states in forgoing nuclear weapons; and the development of an international regime of treaties, rules, and procedures that establishes a general presumption against proliferation. The main norms and practices of this regime are found in the NPT and in regional counterparts such as the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which aims to keep Latin America non-nuclear; in the safeguards, rules, and procedures of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); and in various U.N. resolutions. With a few important exceptions, the great majority of states adhere to at least some of these norms. But can such a situation last? Some charge that the nonproliferation regime is doomed because of its discrim-
inatory nature; they view the regime as an artificial superpower creation that must
sooner or later give way to the principle of equality among states. Some countries will argue in Geneva that the policy of nonproliferation is pure hypocrisy. In the abstract, much less than in its imperfect practice, the NPT regime cannot be expected to last if this view is correct. In the abstract, however, it is quite possible to justify nuclear inequality.
Imagine that an international security conference convened without publicity and that the diplomats did not know in advance which countries they would represent. If they knew nothing of world politics today or of the probable consequences of acquiring nuclear weapons, they might reason that if sovereign states have an equal right to self-defense, then either all or none should have nuclear weapons. But if they were informed that, in current circumstances, the efforts to create either of these two conditions might significantly increase the risk of nuclear war, they may well, under certain conditions, accept nuclear inequality. Such conditions might include: the limitation of nuclear weapons use to selfdefense; the unusually careful treatment of such weapons in order to reduce risk of use; some compensation for non-nuclear-weapons states that preserves their independence and benefits created by the nuclear balance of power; and concrete steps to reduce the risks – particularly to third parties – of reliance on nuclear deterrence, including weapons dismantlement when circumstances permit. In other words, the abstract justification for the uneven possession of nuclear weapons would depend on the existence of limits on ends and means, as well as on continued attention to the relative risks created by deterrence and its alternatives.
