The relationship of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with India has been an interesting subject in the field of security studies. The nuclearisation of India and its subsequent rise are further forcing the world to redefine its relationship with the treaty. However, the international response is quite mixed. The old mindset still thinks that India may join the treaty as a Non-Nuclear Weapon State. Scholars appear divided whether India should join the treaty as a nuclear weapon country. The book discusses current crises of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which are going to figure in the 2010 Review Conference of the treaty. This book was published as a special issue of The Strategic Analysis.
The 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty has proven the most complicated and controversial of all arms control treaties, both in principle and in practice. Statements of nuclear-weapon States from the Cold War to the present, led by the United States, show a disproportionate prioritization of the non-proliferation pillar of the Treaty, and an unwarranted underprioritization of the civilian energy development and disarmament pillars of the treaty. This book argues that the way in which nuclear-weapon States have interpreted the Treaty has laid the legal foundation for a number of policies related to trade in civilian nuclear energy technologies and nuclear weapons disarmament. These policies circumscribe the rights of non-nuclear-weapon States under Article IV of the Treaty by imposing conditions on the supply of civilian nuclear technologies. They also provide for the renewal and maintaintenance, and in some cases further development of the nuclear weapons arsenals of nuclear-weapon States. The book provides a legal analysis of this trend in treaty interpretation by nuclear-weapon States and the policies for which it has provided legal justification. It argues, through a close and systematic examination of the Treaty by reference to the rules of treaty interpretation found in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that this disproportionate prioritization of the non-proliferation pillar of the Treaty leads to erroneous legal interpretations in light of the original balance of principles underlying the Treaty, prejudicing the legitimate legal interests of non-nuclear-weapon States.
This volume offers a critical historical assessment of the negotiation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and of the origins of the nonproliferation regime. The NPT has been signed by 190 states and was indefinitely extended in 1995, rendering it the most successful arms control treaty in history. Nevertheless, little is known about the motivations and strategic calculi of the various middle and small powers in regard to their ultimate decision to join the treaty despite its discriminatory nature. While the NPT continues to be central to current nonproliferation efforts, its underlying mechanisms remain under-researched. Based on newly declassified archival sources and using previously inaccessible evidence, the contributions in this volume examine the underlying rationales of the specific positions taken by various states during the NPT negotiations. Starting from a critical appraisal of our current knowledge of the genesis of the nonproliferation regime, contributors from diverse national and disciplinary backgrounds focus on both European and non-European states in order to enrich our understanding of how the global nuclear order came into being. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, Cold War history, security studies and IR.
This book examines the state of the nuclear non-proliferation regime and the issues it faces in the early 21st century. Despite the fact that most countries in the world have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) there is growing concern that the NPT is in serious trouble and may not be able to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons. If so, international stability will be undermined, with potentially disastrous consequences, and the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world will become utterly unrealistic. More specifically, the NPT is exposed to four main challenges, explored in this book: challenges from outside, as three countries that have not signed the Treaty – Israel, India and Pakistan – are known to possess nuclear weapons; challenges from within, as some countries that have signed on to the Treaty as non-nuclear weapons states have nevertheless developed or are suspected to be trying to develop nuclear weapons (North Korea and Iran being cases in point); challenges from below in the shape of terrorists and other non-state actors who may want to acquire radioactive materials or even nuclear weapons; and, finally, challenges from above due to the perceived failure of the five legal nuclear weapons states to keep their part of the ‘double bargain’ made by the parties of the NPT and take serious steps towards nuclear disarmament. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, international security, war and conflict studies and IR in general.
A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. This book examines the current debate on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, notably the international non-proliferation regime and how to implement its disarmament provisions. Discussing the requirements of a new international consensus on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, this book builds on the three pillars of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT): non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It reviews the impact of Cold War and post-Cold War policies on current disarmament initiatives and analyses contemporary proliferation problems: how to deal with the states that never joined the NPT (India, Pakistan and Israel); how states that have been moving toward nuclear weapons have been brought back to non-nuclear-weapon status; and, in particular, how to deal with Iran and North Korea. The analysis centres on the relationship between disarmament and non-proliferation in an increasingly multi-centric world involving China and India as well as the US, the European powers and Russia. It concludes with a description and discussion of three different worlds without nuclear weapons and their implications for nuclear disarmament policies. This book will be of great interest to all students of arms control, strategic studies, war and conflict studies, and IR/security studies in general Sverre Lodgaard is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo
Publisher Fact Sheet The definitive history of India's long flirtation with nuclear capability, culminating in the nuclear tests that surprised the world in May 1998.
This book suggests a new bargain between the NPT nuclear weapon states and the non-NPT nuclear weapons possessor states, mainly India and Pakistan, through a regional arrangement to help move towards universalization of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The author analyses nuclear proliferation drivers to understand why states acquire and justify possession of nuclear weapons even though most nuclear weapon states no longer are faced with an existential threat to their national security. This study also identifies various challenges being faced by the NPT based nuclear nonproliferation regime, which if left unaddressed, could unravel the nonproliferation regime. It also offers the history of confidence building measures between India and Pakistan, which could be a useful reference for negotiating a Regional Nonproliferation Regime (RNR) in the future.
This volume appears at a time when the prospects for banishing the threat of nuclear annihilation are brighter than at any time since the first atomic device exploded over the desert at Alamogordo. The last few years have seen an ex traordinary change in the climate of East-West relations. The programme of political and economic reform which President Gorbachev initiated in the Soviet Union and which is now spreading throughout most of Eastern Europe has been parallelled by serious efforts to reach agreement on measures for conventional and nuclear disarmament. This has led to new hope that international peace and security can at last be built upon the firm foundation of justice, respect for in ternational law and a determination to approach problems in a spirit of genuine co-operation rather than one of distrust and confrontation. This new climate encourages us in the belief that the obvious common sense of preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons will come to be shared by all nations. At the same time, we have to recognize two very disturbing facts, which imply that there can be no slackening of our efforts to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.
India has come a long way from being a nuclear pariah to a de facto member of the nuclear club. The transition in its nuclear identity has been accompanied by its transformation into a major economic power and underlines a pragmatic turn in its foreign-policy thinking. This book provides a historical narrative of the evolution of India’s nuclear policy since 1947, as the country continues its pursuit for complete integration into the global nuclear order. Situating India’s nuclear behaviour in this context, the book explains how India’s engagement with the atom is unique in international nuclear history and politics. Aided by declassified archival documents and oral history interviews, it focuses on how status, security, domestic politics, and the role of individuals have played a key role in defining and shaping India’s nuclear trajectory, policy choices, and their consequences.
