Babylon Concerned Over Pakistan’s Deployment Of Nuclear Weapons

US Expresses Concerns Over Pakistan’s Deployment Of Nuclear Weapons
 
Press Trust of India | Updated: Mar 19, 2016 00:06 IST

New Delhi: Days ahead of the crucial Nuclear Security Summit, the Obama Administration has expressed concern over the deployment of “battlefield nuclear weapons” by Pakistan, calling it “destabilising aspects of their nuclear programme”.

“We have been very concerned about Pakistan’s deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons,” the US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Rise E Gottemoeller told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing yesterday.
“Battlefield nuclear weapons, by their very nature, pose security threat because you’re taking battlefield nuclear weapons out to the field where, as, you know, as a necessity, they cannot be bade as secure,” Gottemoeller said in response to a question.

“So, we are really quite concerned about this, and we have made our concerns known, and will continue to press them about what we consider to be the destabilising aspects of their battlefield nuclear weapons program,” the top Obama Administration official told lawmakers ahead of the crucial Nuclear Security Summit here later this month.

Heads of States of a large number of countries including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif are expected to attend the Summit on March 31 and April 1 at the invitation of the US President Barack Obama.

India, she said, is at an early stage of establishing their own Center of Excellence for nuclear security, but they are also working with the US quite extensively and vigorously in the Nuclear Security Summit context.

“Prime Minister Modi will be here for the Nuclear Security Summit and we have seen quite a bit of advancement in India’s working on this problem in recent years,” Gottemoeller said in response to a similar question from Senator Jeff Flake on assessment of overall nuclear security in India and Pakistan.

“I was able to visit Pakistan’s Center of Excellence a few years ago and they have really done an excellent job to establish a program there that is not only serving Pakistan’s interests, but is also serving on a regional basis to provide training with the help of the IAEA, and so forth,” she said.
Senator Ben Cardin said it is very distressful that Pakistan will not work with the US on a fossil material treaty and that they are producing materials at a very fast rate.

“When we look at our relationship with Pakistan, we look at a partner that we hoped would be fighting ISIL and dealing with the safe havens and their border areas, the mountainous border areas with Afghanistan. So the attentions that they’re paying on their nuclear development seems to be inconsistent with where the priorities need to be in that region,” he said. Senator Bob Corker said the threat of nuclear conflict is greater than ever.

Pakistan Refuses To Reduce Its Nuclear Arms (Daniel 8:8)

Pakistan ‘breaches obligations’ on nuclear arms, UN court told

By AFP

Published: March 8, 2016

PHOTO: ISPR

THE HAGUE: Pakistan is violating its “obligations” to the international community by failing to reduce its nuclear arsenal, the Marshall Islands told the UN’s highest court on Tuesday.
The small Pacific Island nation is this week launching three unusual cases against India, Pakistan and Britain before the International Court of Justice.

Majuro wants to put a new spotlight on the global nuclear threat, its lawyers said on Monday, by using its own experience with massive US-led nuclear tests in the 1940s and 1950s..

“Pakistan is in breach of its obligations owed to the international community as a whole,” when it comes to reducing its nuclear stockpile, said Nicholas Grief, one of the island nation’s lawyers.
Islamabad and its nuclear-armed neighbour India “continue to engage in a quantitative build-up and a qualitative improvement” of their atomic stockpiles, added Tony deBrum, a Marshallese government minister.

DeBrum warned that even a “limited nuclear war” involving the two countries would “threaten the existence” of his island nation people.

The ICJ’s judges are holding hearings for the next week and a half to decide whether it is competent to hear the lawsuits brought against India and Pakistan — neither of which have signed the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

A third hearing against Britain — which has signed the NPT — scheduled to start on Wednesday will be devoted to “preliminary objections” raised by London.

The Marshalls initially sought to bring a case against nine countries it said possessed nuclear arms: Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United States.
Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons.
But the Hague-based ICJ, set up in 1945 to rule in disputes between states, has only admitted three cases against Britain, India and Pakistan, because they have accepted the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction.
Pakistan’s lawyers did not attend Tuesday’s hearings.
It did however file a counter-claim against Majuro’s allegations saying “the court has no jurisdiction to deal with the application” and insisting that the case is “not admissible”, said ICJ President Ronny Abraham.

Obama’s Policy STARTs To Unravel (Ezekiel 17)

The New START Treaty and Russia’s nuclear surge

Putin’s strategic force grows while Obama’s shrinks

By Keith B. Payne and Mark B. Schneider –
Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Russia is surging its nuclear capabilities. This may be surprising because the Obama administration’s 2010 New START Treaty was supposed to have put a brake on such old Cold War bad behavior.
The U.S. State Department claimed that the treaty would require Russia to cut its strategic nuclear forces by about one-third. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed counterclaims by treaty critics who feared that it would not require Russia to make cuts, stating that such claims were a “perfect example” of how “analysts who just don’t believe in arms control treaties at all from my perspective are, very unfortunately, slanting a lot of what they say.” Yet, as former Vice Chairman of the Russian Duma Defense Committee Aleksey Arbatov later observed with obvious glee, “[New START] is essentially a treaty on limiting the American strategic forces.”

When the treaty entered into force, Russia already was below New START’s ceilings on deployed warheads and deployed delivery systems, and thus, would have to make no cuts in those systems. Indeed, since the new START Treaty came into effect, Russia has proceeded to build up its nuclear forces, not reduce them.

By mid-2015, in all three categories of nuclear capability limited by New START — deployed warheads, deployed delivery vehicles, and the combined number of deployed and nondeployed delivery vehicles, Russia had increased nuclear numbers to levels above those that existed when the treaty entered into force. In contrast, the United States has reduced its deployed nuclear forces in every category. As a result, the number of Russian deployed strategic nuclear warheads has surpassed American by 110 weapons. Amazingly, State Department annual reports on New START have failed to remark that Russian strategic nuclear forces are increasing under the treaty, not decreasing.
A disparity in deployed U.S. and Russian warhead numbers also is likely to come from Russia’s exploitation of treaty loopholes. These are the result of how the treaty defines weapons that are accountable, and thus, limited under the treaty. Bombers are deemed to carry a single nuclear weapon when, in fact, they typically can carry many more. As a result, Russia’s Sputnik News says Russia will have 2,100 actual deployed strategic nuclear warheads rather than the treaty’s 1,550 ceiling. The Federation of American Scientists estimates that the actual number is approximately 2,500. Russia has announced it will produce at least 50 more Tu-160 nuclear bombers. Each reportedly can carry 12 nuclear cruise missiles, potentially creating another 550 unaccounted Russian nuclear warheads and bringing the total Russian number of deployed warheads to about 3,000, almost twice the New START ceiling. In addition, Russia has announced its plans to modernize 98 percent of its ICBM force by 2021 and deploy eight new Borey-class submarines carrying new Bulava-30 submarine-launched ballistic missiles by 2020.

In contrast, the number of deployed U.S. warheads and delivery systems is apparently about to drop further. In late September, the Air Force announced 30 of the U.S. nuclear-capable B-52s had been denuclearized.

Russia may not intend to ever make any numerical reductions under New START. In February 2014, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Security and Disarmament Issues, Mikhail Ulyanov, stated that U.S. missile defense deployment would create “a situation where Russia will be forced to exercise [its] right of withdrawal from the [New START] treaty.” A year later, he said that Russia might withdraw because of U.S.-imposed Ukraine sanctions. If so, the only impact of New START will have been the reduction of U.S. nuclear forces.

Perhaps even more dangerous are Russian threats to use nuclear weapons first to support its military attacks on neighboring countries such as Georgia and Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia was ready to alert its nuclear forces during its takeover of Crimea in 2014; other Russian officials have said openly that Russia was similarly ready to alert its nuclear forces during its military attack against Georgia in 2008. The use of nuclear forces in such an aggressive fashion is considered unthinkable in the West and in 2015, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work said Russia “is literally playing with fire.”

The accepted wisdom in Washington for more than two decades has been that the United States and Russia will cooperate in a benign new world order in the post-Cold War era. Western thinking about defense clearly has been geared to this optimistic presumption. Yet, Russia under Mr. Putin now pursues military aggression in Europe, increases its nuclear arsenal, makes nuclear first-use threats to U.S. allies, disdains new nuclear arms control agreements and violates previous agreements.
As the late Yogi Berra’s said: “The future ain’t what it used to be.” A new, realistic understanding of the post-Cold War era must begin to underlie U.S. defense planning. Continued U.S. unilateral nuclear force reductions are likely to be viewed by Mr. Putin only as a sign of weakness and encourage him to even greater provocations.

• Keith B. Payne is the director of the Graduate School of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense. Mark B. Schneider is a senior analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy and a former senior official in the Defense Department.

Iran Already Breaks Nuclear Treaty (Dan 8:4)

 
U.S. envoy says Iran tested nuclear-capable missile, violating U.N.
 
By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters | United Nations
Friday, 16 October 2015

The United States has confirmed that Iran tested a medium-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon in “clear violation” of a United Nations Security Council ban on ballistic missile tests, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

“The United States is deeply concerned about Iran’s recent ballistic missile launch,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said in a statement.

“After reviewing the available information, we can confirm that Iran launched on Oct. 10 a medium-range ballistic missile

“This was a clear violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929.”

Armageddon Shall Happen (Revelation 16)

Nuclear Weapons: Making Us Feel Secure by “Threatening Armageddon”

“We prepare for our extinction in order to assure our survival” – Jonathan Schell (American author)

By Jim McCluskey
Global Research, May 26, 2015

Laying the Foundations for Preemptive Nuclear War Against Iran

The terrifying film ‘The man who saved the world’ has been showing in London. Stanislaw Petrov, who appears himself in the film, was the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Russian early warning system when the electronic alarms blared deafeningly and insistently in his command centre. All checks confirmed that there was no malfunction. They confirmed a nuclear attack from the US was on its way. It was not possible to wait for radar confirmation of the incoming ballistic missiles because by that time it would be too late to retaliate. Petrov knew that if he reported the alarm to the high command they would immediately order a retaliatory strike1 initiating a global nuclear war and the end of most of the human race. On his own imitative he decided that he did not trust the computers and did nothing.

The author Steve Taylor, in his book ‘The Fall’, expresses the view that the human race became, to a significant degree, insane about six thousand years ago when we introduced warfare as a way of ‘solving’ disputes. It is difficult to deny that it is insane to set up a system in which it is down to the humanity of one man to save the planet. The insanity is compounded when we realise that, rather than learning from the past, we have perpetuated the same mad system. We even call it MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).

Over a thousand nuclear weapons are held, right now, ready for launch at the press of a button. Missiles travel at more than fifteen thousand miles an hour so we are entirely dependent on computers to warn of an attack. We know that computers malfunction. But those manning the early warning centres are rigorously trained to follow orders to the letter. They have a protocol and they are trained to follow it robotically. It seems most unlikely that the next time the alarms go off there will be a Stanislaw Petrov present with the immense courage to go against his training. Putting his humanity first under enormous pressure to obey orders was heroism of the highest order. This was recognised when he was honoured at the United Nations and it is reiterated by Kevin Costner in the film (Stanislaw Petrov is a fan of Costner and Costner is a fan of Petrov so they met when Petrov visited the US). Introducing Stanislaw to his film crew Kostner said ‘I act heroes. Here is the real thing’.

There will be a next time. Unbelievably, in spite of this terrifying experience, we continue to perpetuate the same arrangement; with missiles ready for immediate launch at the press of a button and the only way of deciding to do this is on the basis of incoming electronic signals from a system which we know cannot be trusted!

The threat is escalating

The more nuclear weapons states there are the more likely that the weapons will be launched by accident or malfunction. The number has been escalating since the US used nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945. Already there are nine; US, Russia, China, UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Inevitably the leaders of other states want them. The leaders think it gives them status. According to a Sunday Times report Saudi Arabia has given Pakistan billions of dollars in subsidized oil, while the latter has unofficially agreed to supply the Gulf state with nuclear warheads2. An anonymous British military official told the Sunday Times “The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers — Turkey and Egypt — may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race”2

Yet not all states want to take the nuclear path. A wide range of countries capable of building nuclear weapons, including many living in actual or potential “conflict zones,” have elected not to pursue this option, including Japan and South Korea. Countries such as South Africa and Ukraine have dismantled existing arsenals.

Deterrence

The logic of the deterrence concept leads to more and more states wanting nuclear weapons. If one state needs a deterrent then, of course, other states need a deterrent. It also leads to the ones which have these weapons upgrading and extending them since it is thought that the more in number and the more in destructive power your arsenal is the more it will be an effective deterrent.

Apart from the appalling risks from malicious and inadvertent use, misunderstandings and terrorist attacks, there are major safety risks. A recent Whistleblower, a Royal Navy submariner, William McNeilly, exposed the safety risks in an 18 page report and says the Trident deterrent is a ‘Disaster Waiting To Happen’. He tells us “ We are so close to a nuclear disaster it is shocking, and yet everybody is accepting the risk to the public.” He also tells us that poor security checks could leave the door open for the “worst terrorist attack the UK and world has ever seen”.

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty

In an attempt to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to get rid of the existing ones The Nuclear Non proliferation Treaty (NPT) was drawn up and came into force in 1970.

The NPT is an international treaty of which a primary goal is to rid the world of nuclear weapons. A treaty review conference is held every five years and this year it extended from 27th April to 22nd May. This treaty is the only binding international commitment to the goal of nuclear disarmament of all states. 190 states are now party to the treaty. Four UN member states have never joined the NPT: India, Israel, Pakistan and South Sudan.

Nuclear states who are signatories to the treaty undertake to pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals. The UK has been legally bound by the treaty since 1970. In spite of this the signatories to the Treaty, including the UK, essentialy ignore the obligation they have incurred.

In view of the refusal of the nuclear states to disarm the matter was taken to the International court of justice for an Advisory Opinion on the obligations of the states which have signed up to the treaty. Their opinion was unequivocal. They declared ‘There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control’. Can’t be much clearer than that.

Never mind. In terms of getting the nuclear states to honour their obligations to humanity and their treaties, the recent NPT Review Conference has been another disastrous failure. It contains no meaningful commitments on nuclear disarmament. Our leaders are following their own power/influence focussed agenda and are ignoring the wishes and wellbeing of the people just as they did with the Iraq war.

The primary nuclear weapons states, all founder members of the United Nations Security (!) Council, are doing the exact opposite of ridding us of this curse. They are all rebuilding their nuclear arsenals; US, Russian, China, UK and France. The determination of the main ‘Security’ Council state leaders to ignore the wishes and real security of peoples of the world has become clear as a result of the 2015 NPT Conference. The leaders of these states are parking their humanity and putting their power politics before the safety of the people. The enormity of this crime is arguably even greater than that of Blair and Bush in starting the Iraq war.

It is even more clear now, after this conference, that the non-nuclear weapons states must make nuclear weapons illegal without the participation of the nuclear weapons states. And this is what they are doing.

A crime against humanity

There are 193 states in the United Nations. So there are 184 states which do not have nuclear weapons. Realising the intransigence of the nuclear states many of the non-nuclear states decided on another approach to having them banned. The existence of nuclear weapons threatens the commission of crimes against humanity. They are weapons for committing genocidal-scale attacks on civilian populations. There have now been three conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons (in Oslo, Nayarit and Vienna). At these the non nuclear and less wealthy states were able to have a much greater impact than at the NPT conferences which were dominated by the nuclear states 159 states supported a joint statement on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons arguing that nuclear weapons have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and must never be used again under any circumstances. These states have affirmed that elimination is the only way to prevent use.

Having nuclear weapons is, of itself, a crime against humanity. It implies the willingness to use them ‘if our vital interests are threatened’ as ex-Prime Minister Blair put it in his 2006 White Paper, ‘The future of the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent’. It is also criminal because it puts us all at totally unnecessary risk. As President John F Kennedy put it:

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

This is as true now as it was when he declared it.

The Humanitarian Pledge

The non-nuclear states are putting the interests of humanity before power in the teeth of opposition from the nuclear states.

Consequently the major outcome of the 2015 NPT is the Humanitarian Pledge which has over 100 endorsements3by states round the planet. It was proposed by the Austrian government and includes the pledge to join efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons in light of their unacceptable humanitarian consequences and associated risks.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) tells us,

‘Based on the evidence of the humanitarian impacts from any nuclear weapon detonation and an acknowledgment of the increasing risk of use of nuclear weapons, the humanitarian pledge reflects a fundamental shift in the international discourse on nuclear disarmament over the past five years…
The wide and growing international support for this historic pledge sends a signal that a majority of the world’s governments are ready to move forward with the prohibition of nuclear weapons, even if the nuclear weapon states are not ready to participate.’

The executive Director of ICAN, Beatrice Fihn, said from the conference,

“Regardless of what has happened here today, the humanitarian pledge must be the basis for the negotiations of a new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons. It has been made clear that the nuclear weapon states are not interested in making any new commitments to disarmament, so now it is up to the rest of the world to start a process to prohibit nuclear weapons by the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

What citizens must do

600 million people demonstrated round the world to stop the Iraq War. But the war happened. Blair and Bush were determined that it would. The leaders had their own agenda. The lust to kill won out. It has been said that one of the reasons that this massive demonstration was not successful is because it only happened once. Stopping the rabid militarists and MAD yielders of nuclear weapons will require massive people-power. And protesting will have to be relentless; it must persist until the goal is achieved. Mass demonstrations cannot happen everyday but they could happen once a month. They can be supplemented by vigils, acts of civil disobedience, bombarding the media with letters and articles promoting the passion of the people for peace. We are many and they are few.

The Next Disaster Won’t Be Averted (Rev 15:2)

A Nuclear Nightmare, Averted

A decades-old treaty offers clues to evaluating the potential deal with Iran.
Library of Congress / Reuters
GRAHAM ALLISON
MAY 22, 2015

This week, with little fanfare, one of the world’s key restraints on the spread of nuclear weapons came under scrutiny, as a month-long review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) concluded at the United Nations. Negotiated over the 1960s, the NPT was signed in 1968 and became international law in 1970. As specified by the treaty, members hold a conference every five years to assess the agreement. The exercise offers insight into our nuclear age, and perspective ahead of the coming debate about a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy determined that the nuclear order of the time posed unacceptable risks to mankind. “I see the possibility in the 1970s of the president of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons,” he warned the world. “I regard that as the greatest possible danger.”

Kennedy’s estimate reflected the conventional wisdom during that period. As nations acquired the advanced technological capability to build nuclear weapons, most analysts expected them to follow in the footsteps of the first five nuclear powers and build their own arsenals. Kennedy’s purpose in stating his fears so starkly was to call for imaginative, unprecedented initiatives to avoid that future.

In response to this call, the United States and Soviet Union established a hotline to allow direct communication during crises; signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which outlawed nuclear tests in the atmosphere; and began negotiations to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. That effort eventually produced the NPT. States that joined the treaty foreswore nuclear weapons in exchange for other states, including their adversaries or potential enemies, making an equivalent pledge. In addition, the five nuclear-weapons states of that time promised to provide other members with technological assistance including nuclear-generated electricity and additional benefits of peaceful nuclear energy, as well as to work to reduce and ultimately eliminate their own nuclear arsenals.

Ever since the NPT became international law, skeptics in the United States have opposed successive arms-control agreements with arguments that have become virtually canonical. This canon begins by rejecting the concept of striking deals with sworn enemies. If the real objective is to change an adversary’s regime, or even destroy it, these skeptics say, how can the U.S. accept their commitments in agreements?
Ronald Reagan, for instance, was challenged by fellow conservatives when he began negotiating deals like the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the nation he named the “evil empire.” As George Will wrote in 1987, “Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West—actual disarmament will follow.” William F. Buckley’s National Review editorial asked: “Why is [the INF Treaty] bad enough to be called a ‘suicide pact’?” Because “the Soviets do not intend it to contribute to a general lessening of their worldwide operations.” Reagan insisted that he was capable of brokering agreements to reduce the risks of accidents or unauthorized actions that risked nuclear war with one hand, while redoubling his efforts to undermine the Soviet regime with the other. And he did just that. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
One argument advanced by critics of the NPT noted that many nations who signed up for the treaty were known cheaters; expecting them to comply with their commitments was naive, and verifying whether they were actually doing so would be impossible. Moreover, it was delusional to presume that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the official watchdog for the NPT, would be able to identify violations in states that could hide nefarious activity in hundreds of thousands of miles of territory. The IAEA has undoubtedly found that assignment challenging, and it has failed in this regard on several occasions. On balance, however, its record compares favorably with that of national intelligence agencies whose budgets are hundreds of times larger.
Critics also argued in the case of the NPT, as well as subsequent arms-control treaties with the Soviet Union, that success in signing agreements would lead the U.S. government to imagine that the problem of nuclear proliferation had been solved and shift its attention elsewhere—that it would, in effect, make leaders less vigilant about such a high-priority threat. But four and a half decades on, the U.S. intelligence community is hugely more capable and more focused on the spread of nuclear weapons than it was when the NPT was born.
The results, reflected in the chart above, are hard to deny. As of today, 185 states have signed up to the NPT and voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons. That is, virtually every state other than the declared nuclear-weapons states and a few outliers: India, Israel, Pakistan, South Sudan, and depending on who you ask, North Korea (Iran is a signatory). Members of the treaty include many countries that set out on the road to nuclear weapons and had the technical capability to complete the journey, but reversed course: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Libya, Romania, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, and the former Yugoslavia. In contrast to the 15 or 25 nuclear-weapons states JFK envisaged, today just nine have nukes: Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States. One state, South Africa, built nuclear weapons in the 1980s but then eliminated them during the transition from apartheid.
The NPT, of course, has been only one pillar of the global nuclear order. Others include the American “nuclear umbrella” (pledges to defend allied, non-nuclear states), U.S. security guarantees to Germany, Japan, and NATO members, credible military threats like those posed to Iran if it should seek to build a bomb, and even wars. Ironically, the U.S.-led military response to Saddam Hussein’s attempt to annex Kuwait in 1991 uncovered his secret nuclear-weapons program and destroyed it.
Still, given JFK’s nightmare that could have been, it’s worth recognizing the forces that bent this arc of history. The negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program represent a distinct case that must be examined on its own terms with careful attention to its specific facts. But the NPT’s record provides a backdrop against which to assess the latest round of canonical objections.

Non-Proliferation Treaty Fails Again (Rev 15:2)

  
Dispute over Mideast nuclear arms ban torpedoes U.N. conference

By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS | Fri May 22, 2015 7:58pm EDT

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A month-long review conference on the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ended in failure on Friday after its members were unable to overcome disagreements on an atomic weapons ban for the Middle East.

After four weeks of negotiations at the United Nations on ways to improve compliance with the pact, there was no consensus among its 191 signatories. U.S. Under Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller announced there was “no agreement” and accused some countries of undermining the negotiations.
Gottemoeller did not specify any nations but diplomats said she was referring to Egypt.

“We have made clear throughout the process that we will not accept the efforts by some to cynically manipulate the (conference) or try to leverage the negotiation to advance their narrow objectives,” she told attendees.

Egypt denied trying to wreck the conference.

The U.S. concerns were echoed by Canada and Britain. Cairo’s top delegate, Assistant Foreign Minister Hashim Badr, blamed Washington, London and Ottawa for the failure to achieve consensus, saying it was a “sad day for the NPT.”

Last month, Egypt, backed by other Arab and non-aligned states, proposed that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convene a regional conference on banning weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as called for at the 2010 NPT review. The conference would be with or without Israel’s participation, without agreement on an agenda and with no discussion of regional security issues.

Those conditions are unacceptable to Israel and Washington.

Decisions at NPT review conferences, which are held every five years, are made by consensus.
Israel neither confirms nor denies the widespread assumption that it controls the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal. Israel, which has never joined the NPT, agreed to take part in the review meeting as an observer, ending a 20-year absence.

The call for a 2012 conference on a regional WMD ban, approved at the 2010 NPT review meeting, infuriated Israel. But diplomats said Israel eventually agreed to attend planning meetings. The 2012 conference never took place, which annoyed Egypt and other Arab states.

Egypt’s proposals, Western diplomats say, were intended to focus attention on Israel. Washington and Israel say Iran’s nuclear program is the real regional threat.

Iran says its program is peaceful. It is negotiating with world powers to curb it in exchange for lifting sanctions.

Israel has said it would consider joining the NPT only once at peace with its Arab neighbors and Iran.
There were disagreements on other aspects of the NPT but delegates said the Middle East issue was the most divisive.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Grant McCool and Lisa Shumaker)

Babylon The Greatest Breacher Of The Non-Proliferation Treaty (Ezekiel 17)

Who Are the Nuclear Scofflaws?

Lawrence S. Wittner / History News Network @myHNN
March 30, 2015

Surprise: The US is on the list. So is Russia. But Iran? Nope

Given all the frothing by hawkish U.S. Senators about Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons, one might think that Iran was violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
But it’s not. The NPT, signed by 190 nations and in effect since 1970, is a treaty in which the non-nuclear nations agreed to forgo developing nuclear weapons and the nuclear nations agreed to divest themselves of their nuclear weapons. It also granted nations the right to develop peaceful nuclear power. The current negotiations in which Iran is engaged with other nations are merely designed to guarantee that Iran, which signed the NPT, does not cross the line from developing nuclear power to developing nuclear weapons.

Nine nations, however, have flouted the NPT by either developing nuclear weapons since the treaty went into effect or failing to honor the commitment to disarm. These nine scofflaws and their nuclear arsenals are Russia (7,500 nuclear warheads), the United States (7,100 nuclear warheads), France (300 nuclear warheads), China (250 nuclear warheads), Britain (215 nuclear warheads), Pakistan (100-120 nuclear warheads), India (90-110 nuclear warheads), Israel (80 nuclear warheads), and North Korea (10 nuclear warheads).
Nor are the nuclear powers likely to be in compliance with the NPT any time soon. The Indian and Pakistani governments are engaged in a rapid nuclear weapons buildup, while the British government is contemplating the development of a new, more advanced nuclear weapons system. Although, in recent decades, the U.S. and Russian governments did reduce their nuclear arsenals substantially, that process has come to a halt in recent years, as relations have soured between the two nations. Indeed, both countries are currently engaged in a new, extremely dangerous nuclear arms race. The U.S. government has committed itself to spending $1 trillion to “modernize” its nuclear facilities and build new nuclear weapons. For its part, the Russian government is investing heavily in the upgrading of its nuclear warheads and the development of new delivery systems, such as nuclear missiles and nuclear submarines.

What can be done about this flouting of the NPT, some 45 years after it went into operation?

That will almost certainly be a major issue at an NPT Review Conference that will convene at the UN headquarters, in New York City, from April 27 to May 22. These review conferences, held every five years, attract high-level national officials from around the world to discuss the treaty’s implementation. For a very brief time, the review conferences even draw the attention of television and other news commentators before the mass communications media return to their preoccupation with scandals, arrests, and the lives of movie stars.

This spring’s NPT review conference might be particularly lively, given the heightening frustration of the non-nuclear powers at the failure of the nuclear powers to fulfill their NPT commitments. At recent disarmament conferences in Norway, Mexico and Austria, the representatives of a large number of non-nuclear nations, ignoring the opposition of the nuclear powers, focused on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. One rising demand among restless non-nuclear nations and among nuclear disarmament groups is to develop a nuclear weapons ban treaty, whether or not the nuclear powers are willing to participate in negotiations.

To heighten the pressure for the abolition of nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament groups are staging a Peace and Planet mobilization, in Manhattan, on the eve of the NPT review conference. Calling for a “Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just, and Sustainable World,” the mobilization involves an international conference (comprised of plenaries and workshops) on April 24 and 25, plus a culminating interfaith convocation, rally, march, and festival on April 26. Among the hundreds of endorsing organizations are many devoted to peace (Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pax Christi, Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Veterans for Peace, and Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom), environmentalism (Earth Action, Friends of the Earth, and 350NYC), religion (Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Unitarian Universalist UN Office, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist General Board of Church & Society), workers’ rights (New Jersey Industrial Union Council, United Electrical Workers, and Working Families Party), and human welfare (American Friends Service Committee and National Association of Social Workers).

Of course, how much effect the proponents of a nuclear weapons-free world will have on the cynical officials of the nuclear powers remains to be seen. After as many as 45 years of stalling on their own nuclear disarmament, it is hard to imagine that they are finally ready to begin negotiating a treaty effectively banning nuclear weapons―or at least their nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, let us encourage Iran not to follow the bad example set by the nuclear powers. And let us ask the nuclear-armed nations, now telling Iran that it should forgo the possession of nuclear weapons, when they are going to start practicing what they preach.

Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. He is the author of “Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement” (Stanford University Press).

Babylon The Great Rejects Nuclear Treaty

U.S. rejects calls for treaty eliminating all nuclear weapons immediately

AFP-JIJI

• Japan Times
• Dec 10, 2014

VIENNA – The U.S. representative at a major conference on nuclear weapons rejected calls Tuesday for a treaty immediately eliminating them, saying Washington prefers a gradual approach.

“We think the most practical and realistic approach is to pursue reductions step by step,” Adam Scheinman, special U.S. representative for nuclear nonproliferation, told reporters on the sidelines of the conference in Vienna.

“As security conditions permit, we can move to still deeper reductions, as President Obama has committed to. But the idea of moving automatically to a treaty that would immediately eliminate all nuclear weapons is probably not the most practical option,” he said.

The comments came at a conference of some 800 representatives from 160 countries and civil organizations in Vienna looking at the potentially catastrophic consequences of a nuclear explosion.

Organizers hope it will inject momentum into stalled efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles, with some participants calling for a treaty calling for the immediate scrapping of all the world’s atomic weapons.

It was the third gathering of its kind and the first that the United States, together with Britain, has attended. Fellow nuclear-armed nations Russia, China and France were absent.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan also attended, but other no-shows were North Korea, which has conducted three nuclear tests, and Israel, widely believed to have atomic weapons.

The numbers of nuclear weapons — 90 percent of them U.S. or Russian — have fallen dramatically since the end of the Cold War thanks to treaties like the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the Moscow Treaty and New START.

But there remain around 16,300. Some 4,000 of these are “operationally available” but 1,800 are on “high alert” and ready for use on short notice, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists group.

The follow-through on an “action plan” adopted at a 2010 meeting of signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), in particular 22 disarmament steps, has been “very disappointing,” said Kingston Reif from the Arms Control Association.

Since New START entered into force in 2011, Russia and the U.S. have failed to commence talks to further reduce their nuclear stockpiles, and progress toward an entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is stalled, Reif said.

Efforts toward further measures, including at a new NPT review conference in May 2015, have also been stymied by tensions between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine crisis, experts say.

Britain’s representative in Vienna, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque, agreed with her U.S. counterpart. “Some have argued that the way to this goal (of a world without nuclear weapons) is to ban nuclear weapons now, or to fix a timetable for their elimination,” she said. “The U.K. considers that this approach fails to take account of, and therefore jeopardizes, the stability and security which nuclear weapons can help to ensure,” she said.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Is An Illusion (Revelation 15:2)

To Go Nuclear or Not: Does the Non-Proliferation Treaty Really Matter?

“For many, the NPT is the foundation of nuclear order. Actually, the NPT is much less influential in international security than is commonly believed.”

 

Christine M. Leah Andreas Lutsch | The National Interest

November 18, 2014

The nuclear status quo of the world is in flux. The rise of China and the growing Russian challenge have implications for proliferation incentives. This poses an extraordinary challenge to the nuclear order, which is codified by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a fundamentally status quo–oriented treaty. The 2015 Review Conference takes place in New York next year. For many, the NPT is the foundation of nuclear order. Actually, the NPT is much less influential in international security than is commonly believed. The decision by countries of whether or not to go nuclear is first and foremost about strategy and geopolitics given a state’s specific position in contingent historical situations. The focus in current debates on “strengthening” the NPT and the nonproliferation regime to assure non-nuclear states that they are safer without nuclear weapons per se misses the point. Rather, it is a feeling of long-term security that diminishes the incentives for states to go nuclear. Signing the NPT may have a certain value in making states feel safer, but it is not the central factor.

One should not fall victim to a nonproliferation-centered perspective. This perspective is alarmist by tendency. It attributes highest value to the NPT regarding individual nonproliferation choices. But it puts the superior politico-strategic perspective into brackets, which has greater influence on individual proliferation choices than often assumed. In a stimulating essay, Elbridge Colby argued that the United States should favor geopolitical considerations over the goal of nonproliferation in its alliance policies. Alliances may be regarded as nonproliferation tools. But first of all, they should be seen as geopolitical tools that will not necessarily “prevent” proliferation. Additionally, new research on nuclear history has shown that the United States is far from having a consistent nonproliferation track record. Nonproliferation policy was not an end in itself, but rather one of many competing foreign-policy interests.

Our own research on West Germany and Australia during the Cold War confirms that the NPT had no effect on Bonn and Canberra’s decision whether or not to go nuclear. Additionally, our research shows that U.S. alliances should primarily be regarded as political instruments to maintain U.S. interests and the U.S. power position in geopolitical terms.

In the case of West Germany, the NPT had in fact no nonproliferation effect. Even if the Federal Republic of Germany’s (FRG) accession to the treaty (signing 1969, ratification 1975) cemented the non-nuclear status of the FRG, the NPT was not a necessary or sufficient tool to keep Germany non-nuclear. Given the persistence of the Cold War, the division of Germany, the FRG’s undisputed Westbindung and the national interest to achieve reunification, there was no “danger” that the FRG would go nuclear sooner or later without the NPT. Bonn had constantly pursued a limited nuclear revisionism since the late 1950s when West Germany had started to develop a peculiar form of nuclear policy that was oriented towards NATO and the U.S. nuclear umbrella. In Bonn, any assessment of costs (like a potential loss of protection in NATO and a military intervention at least by the Soviet Union) and gains let the policy option to strive for a national nuclear capability look totally unbearable. The German government even shared a basic thesis of nonproliferation policy: the spread of nuclear weapons would be destabilizing. The German government was in favor of nonproliferation policy. But it did not accept any means to deal with the prospect of proliferation. It rejected the NPT as a means of power politics to consolidate the relative “margin of power” of the nuclear beati possidentes. Originally, the German government rejected the NPT for a couple of other complex reasons, but not because of an interest in becoming an atomic power. According to Germany’s limited nuclear revisionism, Bonn envisaged to bolster the FRG’s position in NATO as a nuclear alliance and to expand Bonn’s influence in nuclear matters without becoming an atomic power. The overall function of German nuclear policy was deeply political. By pursuing a limited nuclear revisionism, West Germany intended to fortify her ties to the West. Thus, Bonn’s nuclear policy ultimately had a geopolitical function. Consequently and regarding West Germany during the Cold War, U.S. extended nuclear deterrence and NATO can be regarded as geopolitical tools and not as positive security assurances, which decisively incentivized Bonn not to seek the national control of nuclear weapons.

As a new book shows, in Australia’s case, the decision about whether or not to go nuclear was not determined by U.S. security guarantees, which were pitifully weak anyway. It was because by the early 1970s, the Asia-Pacific had become a much more stable region. That and the conclusion made by policy makers that Australia would not face any major nuclear or conventional threats without the United States being involved. Furthermore, Washington did little to dissuade Canberra from seeking the bomb. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara admitted himself it would be an entirely sensible option for Australia. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam signed the NPT in 1973, effectively classing Australia as a Non-Nuclear Weapon State (NNWS). It would be misleading to believe, however, that consequently policy makers did not consider nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence as integral to Australian security. A careful examination of the language contained in successive Defence White Papers since the 1970s shows quite the opposite to be true. For example, the 1994 Defence White Paper would state:

… the use of nuclear weapons remains possible… although it is hard to envisage the circumstances in which Australia could be threatened by nuclear weapons, we cannot rule out that possibility. We will continue to rely on the extended deterrence of the US nuclear capability to deter any nuclear threat or attack on Australia.

The decision to sign the NPT did not mean that Australia did not strongly believe in maintaining nuclear deterrence, but rather that policy makers were willing to “outsource” deterrence to Australia’s new primary security partner—the United States; strategically, it was a more cost-effective option. This decision, however, was premised on the fact that Asia had become a pretty stable region in which to live.

Our research about two non-nuclear U.S. allies, West Germany and Australia—which were located in two entirely different political and strategic environments, but both profited from U.S. extended nuclear deterrence—suggests that historical analysis of individual proliferation choices should above all appreciate paramount politico-strategic calculations by decision makers and administrative elites. In both cases, the NPT had no effect on individual proliferation choices. It was really strategic and geopolitical considerations that were integral to remaining non-nuclear and thus being able to accede to the NPT. Now the geopolitical order that underpinned the NPT is on shaky foundations, which should push us to think about the real value of the NPT in international security.

Christine Leah is a Chauncey Postdoctoral Fellow in Grand Strategy at Yale University. Andreas Lutsch is an Assistant Professor, Modern History, University of Wuerzburg, Germany. Both are members of the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.

It’s All Political Fertilizer

3 Questions: Jim Walsh on the elusive U.S.-Iran nuclear treaty

Expert thinks treaty to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program faces more barriers domestically than in negotiations.

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office

September 30, 2014

Can the U.S. and Iran reach a permanent agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program? For several months, the countries have operated under an interim agreement limiting Iran’s activities, but it expires this fall. MIT will host a public event on the topic this Tuesday, Sept. 30, from 7-9 p.m. in the Stata Center’s Room 32-155, co-hosted by the Technology and Culture Forum at MIT. The forum features Jim Walsh, a research associate in MIT’s Security Studies Program and an expert in international security and nuclear nonproliferation. MIT News spoke with Walsh about the prospects for a deal. 

Q. What is the status of U.S.-Iran negotiations right now, as you see them, with the expiration of the interim agreement just two months away?

A. I think we’re both very close and far away at the same time. There has been a very successful interim agreement in place, where all the parties have fulfilled their commitments. Iran stopped producing 20-percent-enriched uranium and eliminated the stockpile it had accumulated, and implemented the verification measures in the agreement. So that’s been working very, very well.
In addition, the negotiators appear to have made progress on some of the very tough issues — the Arak heavy-water reactor, the Fordow underground enrichment facility, the issue of monitoring. I’d say there are two main sticking points as we enter the final lap; one is fairly solvable, and the other is solvable in principle, but holding up a final agreement.

The issue that is resolvable … relates to Iran’s behavior in the past. It had a nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. intelligence, from 1998 to 2003, and then shut it down. But as part of the process of resolving a nuclear dispute, there has to be some accounting for those past activities. We’ve had to do this with South Africa, Iraq, South Korea, and Egypt, and my guess is we will resolve this. Those who oppose diplomacy want Iran to get down on their knees and publicly admit to everything they did, and that is just not going to happen, but it didn’t happen in the other cases, either, and I think they’ll find some resolution to that.

That leaves the major issue of the size and contours of Iran’s enrichment program — in particular, its centrifuges. The U.S. position has been that 1,500 centrifuges [can remain in Iran] … there’s no way that’s sustainable politically in Iran. Iran has about 20,000 centrifuges, of which it operates about 10,000. So their proposals of late have hovered in the 7,000 to 10,000 range.

That gap has very little to do with nonproliferation. … It’s the politics back home, in Washington and Tehran, that’s making this last issue difficult.

Q. So how can each side settle on some number of centrifuges and sell it politically?

A. The negotiators on both sides have told me that if it were left up to the negotiators, they’d have a deal already. As with all things political, it’s going to come down to the leaders and whether they have the political will to accept the deal and then win support for it.

There is a burden on President Obama. The reality is, there are people in the U.S. Congress who don’t want any negotiated agreement with Iran. And no matter what the deal is, they’re going to oppose it. My own view is, trying to get an agreement they’ll support is fool’s gold; that’s never going to happen. And so at some point you just have to say, “This is a good agreement, and I’m going to go out and sell it.”

The political advantage with an agreement in hand shifts to the president. He can say, “Look, I have this. It’s not just me, it’s Britain, France, Russia, China, this is the international community, we’ve come up with an unprecedented agreement, and if you vote against it, that’s a vote for taking us down a path toward war.” Because if there’s no agreement, Iran’s program will now be unconstrained and they can build all the centrifuges they want. … The U.S. will respond with sanctions, and the result will be Iran’s program will grow and then you’ll hear calls for military action.

So I think the president with an agreement in hand has the advantage, if he is willing to get out and lead on it. But that’s the calculation both President Rouhani and President Obama have to make. My own sense is they will get this done, and then there will be a tremendous battle in each capital.

Q. So your view is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, when it comes to nonproliferation?

A. As someone whose core scholarly interest is in the reasons why states who start down the nuclear path stop and reverse course — 30 countries have [done that], three times the number that became nuclear-weapons states — I can tell you this is a moment of opportunity that, if it passes, we may not ever get back.

The [U.S.] Director of National Intelligence has publicly testified that as it stands today, Iran has not yet made a decision to build nuclear weapons. And so Iran is at a crossroads. An agreement constrains their program, changes the politics within Iran, and has a chance of putting this whole issue on a different trajectory. But if you lose that opportunity, that will help the hardliners and bomb advocates in Iran, and we will end up in a very different place.

The history of nonproliferation and arms control agreements demonstrates clearly that you don’t need a perfect agreement to have success. The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970, in my view the single most important factor in explaining success in nonproliferation, changed the internal politics within states. The treaty has no enforcement mechanism, and the original verification measures were very weak by today’s standards, but they got stronger over time. The NPT was not perfect, but it was effective.

So I don’t think it has to be a perfect agreement with Iran; it has to be good enough. An agreement would likely change the political relationship between Iran and the U.S. as well as the domestic policies within Iran. Rouhani’s status would improve, giving him credibility and the ability to move forward with his vision for Iran. Yes, the numbers [of centrifuges] are important, but they’re not as important as people would think, because agreements are really about political relationships.

Australia An Obvious Nuclear Horn of Prophecy (Daniel 7:7)

A blatant violation of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Yusra Mushtaq

Simply because they can.

Amongst the various accords of arms control and disarmament, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is widely adhered by most of the countries which gives a testament to the worth of this treaty. Unfortunately, it has a fate of being violated again and again by its own signatory members like very recently Australia signed a uranium deal with India, a de facto but a non-signatory state. Before that, US, a big proponent of NPT, paved way for this kind of illegal nuclear cooperation with non-NPT state India by signing a deal back in2005. The blatant violation of NPT left no room for India to sign this treaty because it enjoys full benefits as if it’s been a NPT member state without any restricted conditions.

Largely based on three pillars of non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses of nuclear energy, NPT serves as a central bargain. “The NPT non-nuclear-weapon states agree never to acquire nuclear weapons and the NPT nuclear-weapon states in exchange agree to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and to pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals.” There are 190 states which have joined the club of NPT. It is extended for indefinite period of time which reflects its obligatory status. In order to make Global Nuclear Non-Proliferation and particularly NPT more fruitful, many substantive initiatives have been taken. They are dominated by export controls regimes like Nuclear Suppliers Group and enhanced verification measures of IAEA Additional Protocols. The sole aim of all these efforts is to end every possible means to acquire nuclear weapons. Within this context, success becomes a far off cry as NPT is in a fix between global and national interests of respective states.

Australia signed a deal to sell uranium to India to cash in on the natural blessing of one third of world’s uranium reserves in the name of its national interest. It is the first non-NPT signatory nation with whom Australia has inked a nuclear deal. Australia is 10th country in the world which has signed a nuclear deal with India. Both the states are joining hands happily by violating the norms of NPT so blatantly. There is a sheer absence of handwringing editorials at the international news desks. Between the celebrations of this so called triumph, no one talks of the sanctity of international arms treaties.

Just recall a few years back, Australia continuously refused to export uranium to India only because of the reason that it was not an NPT signatory. But in 2011, Australian Prime Minister came up with the desire to allow exports to India. Australia upturned its long standing ban on exporting uranium to non-NPT India. A statement was made that ‘we should take a decision in the national interest, a decision about strengthening our strategic partnership with India in this Asian century.” Of course it came with the understanding that India will not use Australian uranium for its nuclear weapons. But what about the use of surplus left over uranium in India after imported uranium is consumed for civilian purposes? Quite vividly, Australia chose national interest over global to have an enhanced strategic partnership with Asian country India.

The deep silence of the world over NPT’s continued violation is not an unusual thing. The US agreed to violate the same NPT a few years ago by sharing nuclear technology with India in exchange for buying India’s vote against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) platform. The US congressional opposition disappeared after that. It claimed that this deal would strictly revolve around the non-military nuclear usage but certainly lowered the pressure on resources to be used for non-civilian use in India.

The innate goal of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is to make it almost impossible for states to go for development of nuclear weapons. Leo Tolstoy has very aptly stated in his book War and Peace that ‘Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.’

Article 4 gives ‘inalienable rights to every non-nuclear weapon state’ to pursue nuclear energy for power generation. In this case, India is neither a member of NPT nor non-nuclear weapon state. These kinds of nuclear cooperation especially by NPT member states to a non-NPT state, like India, are instrumental towards nuclear proliferation and question the viability of a treaty. Despite setting a stage for adherence, the very members showed a path of violation. There exits not a single privilege in NPT which allows signatories to make such exemptions anyway.

This open violation is justified by declaring India as an exceptional case. Ironically, if that’s the case, why is Pakistan left far behind from these privileges? It became a de facto nuclear weapon state simultaneously with India and shares certain equal nuclear traits. It’s nothing more than a discriminatory approach towards Pakistan by the international community.

For India, NPT merely hatches a club of ‘nuclear haves and have-nots’. It was stated by Indian External Affairs Minister in 2007, ‘If India did not sign the NPT, it is not because of its lack of commitment for non-proliferation, but because we consider NPT as a flawed treaty and it did not recognise the need for universal, non-discriminatory verification and treatment.”

This is an irony for global non proliferation regime that there are voices for NPT to be adhered to, but at the same time its own members prefer national interests over the security of the whole globe. All are quiet on this violation of the treaty because it’s a matter of national interests of great powers. For this Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher, stated: “The more law and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”

India And Pakistan Refuse To Stop Making Nukes

Pakistan and India refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

April 14, 2014, 5:42 pm
Reuters

India and Pakistan Refuse NonProliferation Treaty

VIENNA- The United States and three European allies want a global body controlling nuclear exports to consider whether to establish closer ties with non-members including Israel, despite its assumed atomic arsenal, a confidential document showed.

The issue is sensitive as Israel is outside a 1970 international pact designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and the Jewish state is widely believed to be the only country with such arms in the volatile Middle East.

Arab states and Iran often criticize Israel for not signing up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
With the spread of nuclear technology, and the fears of it falling into the hands of militants or states the West fears could illicitly work on a weapons programme, trade transparency and cooperation are seen as becoming more important.

In view of this, the United States, Britain and the Czech Republic sponsored a Dutch paper submitted ahead of a meeting last week of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), set up in 1975 to ensure that civilian nuclear exports are not diverted for military purposes. All members have signed the NPT.
Currently, Israel is the only non-NSG country that fulfills the criteria regarding “adherence” to its guidelines although India and Pakistan have informally indicated that they also follow them, the Dutch Foreign Ministry document said.

Like Israel, Pakistan and India have both refused to sign the NPT, which would oblige them to scrap their nuclear weapons.

Washington, London and others say India should be allowed to join the NSG, arguing that it qualifies because of the size of its civilian atomic industry and its commitment to stopping the spread of military material. But other member states have voiced doubt about accepting India, which would be the only member of the suppliers group that has not signed up to the NPT.

Any decision on Indian membership or closer relations with others outside the NSG would need the support of all members of the cartel that regulates nuclear trade.