Nuclear Proliferation

Given the immediate explosive and incendiary force of the atom and the long-term human and environmental consequences from release of radiation, curbing nuclear weapons use has been of special concern since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atomic energy can serve military purposes (weapons of mass destruction [WMDs] and powering submarines) or peaceful purposes (nuclear power to light the land).

Major multilateral treaties seek to discourage proliferation of the former while facilitating the latter: the 1956 Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT); the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT); the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1996 (CTBT), not yet in force. Other efforts against proliferation include the so-called Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and the related initiative of the UN Security Council to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and other WMDs to non-state actors. Particular countries are also subject to current council attention, namely the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Iran, seen as backsliding from the basic nonproliferation instruments. Iraq was subject after 1991 to (apparently successful) efforts to strip it of nuclear weapons (and other WMDs).

The IAEA is part of the United Nations family of organizations and has 143 nation members. Its purpose is to promote the peaceful use of atomic energy to improve health and prosperity throughout the world and to ensure, so far as it is able, that its assistance does not serve to further any military purposes. It can apply safeguards, at the request of the parties, to any bilateral or multilateral arrangement or—at the request of a state—to activities in the field of atomic energy.

One strategy to inhibit proliferation, both by aspiring nuclear states (horizontal proliferation) and by old ones seeking new weaponry (vertical proliferation), is to limit testing. Thus, the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water (“Partial Test Ban Treaty”) obligated parties to prohibit, to prevent, and not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion, or any other nuclear explosion, at any place under their control in the environments listed in the title of the treaty. It also prohibited explosions elsewhere if they cause radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the state under whose jurisdiction or control the explosions are conducted. China and France were the main holdouts to this treaty. After Australia and New Zealand brought actions against it in the International Court of Justice for testing in the Pacific, France moved its tests underground in the early 1970s, as did most other testing states. The PTBT stipulated that the parties seek to achieve, in the long term, a treaty resulting in the banning of all nuclear test explosions. That proved daunting.

Meanwhile, the NPT sought to confront proliferation frontally. The NPT lists several premises in its preamble: the potential devastation of nuclear war, the dangers from proliferation of nuclear weapons, the value of peaceful nuclear technology and of IAEA safeguards, and the desirability of nuclear and other [Page 627]disarmament. Substantively, the NPT draws a distinction between nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states. The former—the United States, the USSR (now Russia), the United Kingdom, France, and China—were those openly possessing nuclear weapons technology at the time (not altogether coincidentally, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council); the latter was everybody else. These five countries agreed that they would not distribute nuclear weapons or explosive devices or give the control over such weapons or explosive devices to any other nation. Non-nuclear-weapon states agreed not to seek possession of nuclear weapons and to accept safeguards against diversion of peaceful nuclear energy in agreements to be negotiated with the IAEA. Stopping proliferation is not enough, however. It is necessary to rid humanity of existing stockpiles capable of destroying Earth many times over.

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