By Henry Sokolski
The whispering campaign against the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), an international pact that aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, has begun. Several US officials recently asked me, “What good is the NPT?”
The developing world uses it to gang up on us to push disarmament. China and Russia use it to argue against forward-deploying American nuclear weapons. Nobody enforces it against the true proliferators, like North Korea and Iran. Wouldn’t it be best if we just let it die with malign neglect?
Why not float a few criticisms, fail to defend the treaty at next year’s NPT Review Conference, and allow the agreement to die from indifference? That, in turn, would relieve American nuclear exporters from burdensome nonproliferation restraints and level the playing field to capture nuclear power markets that would otherwise go to China and Russia.
No one has yet uttered this out loud. However, the administration will have to decide whether it wants to do so soon. The NPT Review Conference is now only seven months away. The question is: will we double down on clarifying what the NPT ought to prohibit—nuclear fuel-making in places like Iran—and enforce it? Or will we instead badmouth it and bug out?
The United States has nearly let this happen before with the NPT and other nonproliferation agreements. Washington looked the other way when North Korea left the NPT in 2003. Pyongyang did not immediately receive punishment despite being in violation of the NPT and withdrawing. The UN only sanctioned North Korea after it detonated a bomb three years later.
Washington also blinked in 1974, when India—a country that never joined the NPT—detonated a nuclear bomb after it promised to keep its nuclear program “peaceful.” For this transgression, the United States ultimately rewarded New Delhi in 2005, lifting all NPT prohibitions against commercial nuclear commerce.
In 1979, Israel violated the Partial Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty by launching a nuclear test in the Indian Ocean. The United States looked the other way and even publicly explained the event away as a scientific oddity.
Given these past lapses, it wouldn’t take much to walk away from the treaty today. There is one persistent and worrisome problem, though—Iran’s nuclear misbehavior and its would-be imitators. Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently insisted that Iran must give up making nuclear fuel. Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff explained why: fuel-making (enriching uranium) “enables weaponization.”
Is the administration serious? Does it intend to apply this point only to Iran or to other non-weaponized NPT states like Saudi Arabia and South Korea? Putting its foot down against previous liberal readings of the NPT “right” to make nuclear fuel certainly is defensible.
During the treaty’s negotiation, various nations tried to amend it to guarantee the right to the entire fuel cycle. The proposed amendment was rejected. The treaty’s drafters understood that they had to ban nuclear activities that came so close to bomb-making that there would be no way to prevent states from taking the last steps toward weaponization.
On this point, the United States and other like-minded nations have blinked. In the 1980s, the United States allowed Japan to make nuclear fuel, as did several EURATOM nations. It also humored Iranian rhetoric about Iran’s right to enrich uranium when it cut the 2015 nuclear deal, allowing Iran to continue to do so. Those mistakes, however, should not be repeated.
There are those, however, who disagree. They insist America should help its friends get bombs (or get near them). This, they argue, is smarter than trying to prevent states from engaging in dangerous nuclear activities. More allied and friendly nuclear weapons or near-weapons states will deter America’s enemies.
The fact that two World Wars occurred despite Allied frantic attempts to deter the aggressors suggests this is magical thinking. If anything, more countries going nuclear will make nuclear deterrence far more unreliable and expensive, and drive up our missile and air defense requirements, including the Trump administration’s “Golden Dome” missile defense initiative.
This recommends doubling down on the NPT. The president has taken the first step with his insistence that Iran abandon its uranium enrichment program. He needs to follow through by insisting that future US deals with non-nuclear weapons states require that they steer clear of nuclear fuel-making as well.
This recommends doubling down on the NPT. The president has taken the first step with his insistence that Iran abandon its uranium enrichment program. He needs to follow through by insisting that future US deals with non-nuclear weapons states require that they steer clear of nuclear fuel-making as well. Enforcing the NPT beyond bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would help, too.
America believes laws are meant to be broken. But, many important states—including Japan and Germany—think just the opposite, that laws are meant to be followed, unless they’ve been generally renounced. Doubling down on the NPT would strengthen this point and keep the current nuclear club from growing into a crowd.
Henry Sokolski is founder and executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and the editor of the book “Nuclear Proliferation’s Next Iteration,” published May 29. He served as deputy for nonproliferation policy in the office of the U.S. secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993.
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