ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the NPT regime marked a transition from “nuclear anarchy” to a “global nuclear order.” There seems to be a broad consensus that such an order” actually exists, but the understanding of it remains still vague. This chapter is first going to describe how the concept of a nuclear order has been used until now and then go on to describe its multi-layered structure, arguing that it is appropriate to think of it as the “1968 Global Nuclear Order.” The emergence of this order was the result of a multitude of changes in the international society between 1957 and 1968, occurring in four layers. At the top, we find the two nuclear superpowers, the USA and the USSR. In the second tier are the “minimum deterrence powers”; the United Kingdom, France, and China. In the third tier are the countries covered by the nuclear deterrence of the existing nuclear powers—the non-nuclear allies of the United States and the USSR. Finally, another tier emerged by the late 1950s: the neutral and the nonaligned countries. Crucial for this development was that the end of the Second World War brought the nation-state system to the world outside the Global North. Year after year, formerly colonized countries gained independence. By the early 1960s, this formed a continuous stream, gradually becoming a block of nonaligned countries, forming part of the renewed global consciousness and a sense of community. Hitherto very quiet neutral countries of Europe were encouraged to act increasingly actively from the late 1950s, partly because they were encouraged by the growing block formation of the nonaligned states. The raising of the nonproliferation issue by the Irish foreign minister, Frank Aiken, is a very good example of this. While the final phase of the NPT negotiation was conducted in a relatively closed environment with few actors, the process itself, from the very start in 1957, was driven by a variety of actors with diverse motives. During the negotiations and the period till the treaty’s full activation with the start of the major safeguard systems of the IAEA in the 1970s, more and more new actors became active in this emerging regime. In the end, the NPT appears to have been a complex deal between all four tiers of the 1968 Global Nuclear Order.
