Apocalypse Never

7. The Grand Bargain of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Rules of the Nuclear Game Today

Chapter 7 The Grand Bargain of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Rules of the Nuclear Game Today The year 2008 was filled with anniversary commemorations and remembrances of the many epochal historic events that had taken place four decades earlier, during the seminal year of 1968: The Tet offensive in Vietnam, which for the first time caused many Americans to comprehend that this was a war we might actually lose; the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the riots that ensued around the country; the assassination of leading presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy two months later; the melee at the Chicago Democratic convention; the black power salutes of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Mexico City Olympics; the tumultuous three-way November presidential election and the victory of Richard M. Nixon. And—at the very end of the year, on Christmas Eve—the flight of Apollo 8 from the earth to the moon, and the first view that any humans had ever been granted of our single, borderless, breathtaking planet, lonely and fragile and whole, suspended among the blazing stars. Not to mention the 1968 opening of John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Yet one anniversary, that largely escaped public notice in 2008, may have consequences in the end greater than any of these. The 1968 Deal After you finish reading this chapter, try an experiment. Visit a Starbucks , or some locally owned alternative, and talk to a hundred people 111 CH007.qxd 2/4/10 11:02 AM Page 111 waiting in line. There are always people waiting in line at these places. Tell them that on July 1, 1968, world leaders in Washington, London, and Moscow signed something called the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the NPT. Then ask each person to tell you what it says. In this era of vast civic disengagement, probably about ninety will respond, “I don’t know. I never heard of it. But my mocha grande yaya is ready and I’ve got to go get my dry cleaning now.” Of the remaining ten, probably eight or nine will tell you, “It’s about preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. It’s about keeping countries like North Korea and Iran from getting the Bomb.” Those eight or nine respondents will be half right. In the NPT, the human race endeavored to offer a permanent solution to the great problem of the nuclear age. The grand bargain of the treaty was that the many nuclear have-nots agreed to forego nuclear weapons, while the few nuclear haves agreed to get rid of their nuclear weapons. No, that is not a misprint. More than forty years ago, the U.S. government really did commit itself to eliminate its entire nuclear arsenal, and, in conjunction with the other nuclear weapon states, to abolish nuclear weapons from the face of the earth forever. The NPT does not just impose nonproliferation obligations on countries such as Iran, Syria, and Libya. It also imposes disarmament obligations on us. The treaty requires all nuclear weapon states “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, and to nuclear disarmament . . . under strict and effective international control” (article 6). If anyone perceives any ambiguity in those words, she needs only turn to the treaty’s preamble, which states that the signatories are “desiring to further the easing of international tension and the strengthening of trust between States in order to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons.” It was the first time since the dawn of the age of atomic weapons, nearly a quartercentury earlier, that the human race had formally expressed its intent to bring that age eventually to a close. “The NPT is supposed to lead to a nuclear-free world,” says Ben Sanders, a member of the Dutch delegation to the 2000 NPT Review Conference. “The non-nuclear countries see it as a bargain which the A p o c a l y p s e N e v e r 112 CH007.qxd 2/4/10 11:02 AM Page 112 weapons states have failed to keep.”1 “The NPT does not simply aim to maintain the nuclear status quo,” says Ambassador George Bunn...