The Spreading Spark ― The Nuclear Club and the Contradiction of the NPT

In the previous chapter, we saw the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the United States and the Soviet Union held back at the brink of nuclear war and opened a small door to dialogue, the fire of the nuclear weapon was ceasing to belong to those two great powers alone.

In this chapter, we trace the history of how the number of nuclear-armed states grew, and the treaty that was born to hold it back. While many nations shared the goal of curbing proliferation, the means gave rise to an inequality that divided ‘haves’ from ‘have-nots’ ― the mechanism known as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) holds a contradiction that continues to this day. Not in order to condemn any particular country, but to see why this contradiction arose and why it remains unresolved, we will follow the public record.

The Growing Number of Nuclear States

The first to acquire nuclear weapons was the United States (1945), followed by the Soviet Union (1949). After these two protagonists of the Cold War, other nations too set out on nuclear development.

Britain succeeded in its first nuclear test in 1952. France conducted a nuclear test in 1960, in the Sahara Desert of Algeria, then under its rule. And in 1964, China succeeded in its first nuclear test. These five nations ― victors of the Second World War and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council ― became nuclear-armed states one after another.

There is said to have been a shared logic behind each nation’s pursuit of the nuclear weapon: the view that possessing it served as a marker of great-power status and as a trump card for security. If one country had it, a rival country would seek it too ― by its very nature, the nuclear weapon was a force that spread in a chain.

The Treaty to Halt the Spread ― The NPT

Around the time the number of nuclear-armed states reached five, momentum grew to halt any further spread. Its fruit was the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It was opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force in 1970.

This treaty is said to be built on three broad pillars. First, ‘non-proliferation’: that nuclear-armed states will not hand nuclear weapons to others, and that states without them will not newly acquire them. Second, ‘nuclear disarmament’: that the nuclear-weapon states will negotiate in good faith toward disarmament. Third, ‘peaceful use’: recognizing the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes such as power generation. Many nations joined, and the NPT became the foundation of the international order surrounding nuclear weapons.

The NPT is regarded as having achieved a certain measure of success. Before the treaty existed, there were predictions that far more nations would come to hold nuclear weapons, but many member states held back from possession. In curbing the pace of proliferation, the treaty can be said to have worked.

The Line Between ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’

Yet the NPT held a single contradiction from the start. The treaty recognized the five countries that already possessed nuclear weapons (the US, the USSR / later Russia, Britain, France, and China) as ‘nuclear-weapon states,’ and asked all other countries not to possess them ― in other words, it was a structure that drew a line dividing the world into ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’

This line-drawing has drawn criticism: the question of inequality ― why only some countries may continue to hold nuclear weapons. The treaty has the nuclear-weapon states promise efforts toward disarmament, but the side of the have-nots has repeatedly pointed out that this progress is slow. The privilege of the nuclear-weapon states alone is fixed in place, while the promise of disarmament goes unfulfilled ― such a view coexists, even now, with the view that under the realities of security, there is no choice but to proceed step by step. Assessments are divided, and this series sides with neither.

There were also nations that remained outside this line. India and Pakistan did not join the NPT, and in 1998 they conducted nuclear tests in succession and declared their possession of nuclear weapons. Against the backdrop of the two nations’ long rivalry, a new nuclear tension arose in South Asia. There are also nations said to take an ‘ambiguous’ stance ― officially neither confirming nor denying possession ― and not to have joined the NPT. Outside the frame of the treaty, nuclear weapons spread quietly, but surely.

Bearing the Contradiction

In this way, nuclear weapons spread, changing shape as they went, from the US and the USSR to the five victor nations and further still, beyond that frame. While the NPT played a role in curbing the pace of proliferation, it continues to this day bearing the contradiction of the line dividing ‘haves’ from ‘have-nots.’

What we wanted to see in this chapter is not a hunt for who is to blame. When the calculations of nations seeking safety pile up, the world as a whole grows more, not less, precarious. And the treaty that tried to curb that danger gives rise, in turn, to another inequity. The force called nuclear power carries with it such hard-to-resolve contradictions. No one has yet shown a complete solution, and the debate continues.

And on the far side of nuclear weapons spreading across the world, another price was quietly mounting. The unseen scars left upon sky, sea, and earth by the countless tests repeated in order to possess nuclear weapons. In the next chapter, we will trace the history of nuclear testing and radiation exposure that spread from a small atoll in the Pacific to all corners of the world.