Reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)
Cód:
491_9781780395180
As currently interpreted, it is difficult to see why the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) warrants much support as a nonproliferation convention. Most foreign ministries, including that of Iran and the United States, insist that Article IV of the NPT recognizes the inalienable right of all states to develop peaceful nuclear energy. This includes money-losing activities, such as nuclear fuel reprocessing, which can bring countries to the very brink of acquiring nuclear weapons. If the NPT is intended to ensure that states share peaceful benefits of nuclear energy and to prevent the spread of nuclear bomb making technologies, it is difficult to see how it can accomplish either if the interpretation identified above is correct. Some argue, however, that the NPT clearly proscribes proliferation by requiring international nuclear safeguards against military diversions of fissile material. Unfortunately, these procedures, which are required of all non-nuclear weapons state members of the NPT under Article III, are rickety at best. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear inspections, which are intended to detect illicit nuclear activities and materials, certainly have a mixed record. Not only has the IAEA failed to find existing covert reactors and fuel-making plants, which are critical to bomb making, the agency still cannot assure the continuity of inspections for spent and fresh reactor fuels that could be processed into bomb usable materials at roughly two-thirds of the sites that it currently inspects. What is easily as worrisome is that even at declared nuclear fuel-making sites the IAEA routinely loses count of many bombs worth of production each year. Finally, in the practical world, the NPT hardly admits of modification and is far too easy for violating states to withdraw from. Under Article X, treaty members are free to leave the NPT with no more than 3 months notice merely by filing a statement of the extraordinary events [relating to t
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