Unending Crisis: National Security Policy After 9/11

Eight: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

170 E I G H T The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty T he nucleaR non-PRolIfeR atIon tReat y Is the centR al security instrument for the United States and the world community. Thus far it has to a large degree been successful. Soon after the end of World War II, as a symptom of the Cold War that commenced shortly thereafter, a vast nuclear-arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union came into being. The United States conducted its first atomic weapon test in April 1945 and a few months later used nuclear weapons against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union carried out its first nuclear test in 1949. The bomb used against Hiroshima had an explosive yield of fourteen kilotons, the equivalent of fourteen thousand tons of TNT. This weapon completely devastated the city of Hiroshima, killing some 200,000 people out of a total population of approximately 330,000.1 But with the first thermonuclear weapon tests by the United States and the Soviet Union just a few years later, in the early 1950s, nuclear-test explosions reached the megaton range, equivalent to 1 million tons or more of TNT—roughly a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. During the Cold War and thereafter, the United States built more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union 55,000; at the peak of the arms race, the United States had 32,500 weapons in its stockpile and the Soviet Union about 45,000.2 There was a perceived risk that these weapons might spread all over the world. During the Kennedy administration, there were predictions that there could be more than two dozen nuclear- The NUCLeAR NoN-PRoLIFeRATIoN TReATy 171 weapon states by the end of the 1970s. As noted in the introduction, in 1963, President Kennedy said that he feared that by the end of the 1970s there could be considerable proliferation of nuclear weapons, with up to twenty nations possessing the ultimate weapon. He regarded that prospect “as the greatest possible danger and hazard.”3 Early on, President Kennedy displayed an intense interest in nonproliferation. To the end of his brief presidency, President Kennedy tried diligently to restrain the Israeli program, perhaps concluding that if the United States could not restrain its ally Israel, how could it say no to Germany? If such anticipated proliferation had happened, there could indeed be far more than two dozen nuclear-weapon states in the world today. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressed this concern in 2004 in a speech in Washington, saying, “The danger is so imminent . . . not only with regard to countries acquiring nuclear weapons, but also terrorists getting their hands on some of these nuclear materials—uranium or plutonium.”4 In another speech around the same time, ElBaradei opined that more than forty countries were capable of building atomic weapons. Thus, if widespread nuclear weapon proliferation had occurred, potentially, every significant conflict could have brought with it the risk of going nuclear, and the weapons would have been so widespread that it might have become extremely difficult to keep them out of the hands of terrorist organizations. President Kennedy’s nightmare did not happen, at least not yet; in 1970, at the time the treaty entered into force, there were five NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states: China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom , and the United States. Israel and India were very close to being nuclear weapon states in 1970, but since then, only two states, North Korea and Pakistan, have acquired nuclear weapons, a far cry from Kennedy’s fears. What the treaty accomplished was of immense benefit to national and international security. It converted what had been an act of national pride into an act of international outlawry. Witness the banner headlines in French newspapers at the time of the first French test in 1960, “Vive la France” and “Vive de Gaulle,” and compare it with the international condemnation India received when it conducted its first test in 1974. What had intervened was the entry into force of the NPT. No international instrument is more important to the United States and the world community; it must be protected at all costs. From the earliest days of the nuclear era, it was clear that it was nec- 172 ChAPTeR eIghT essary to prevent the...