| North Korea has nuclear weapons, there’s suspicion that Iran is clandestinely working on a nuclear weapons program, and the U.S. is in the process of creating new nukes such as the so-called "bunker bomb," which would penetrate deep underground targets.
But despite these growing threats to world security, month-long talks between the 188 countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended in complete failure on May 27. Signatories of the 1970 treaty meet only once every five years to try and address emerging nuclear issues.
Tracey Pickup of Project Ploughshares attended the New York conference for the first week. She says the deadlock resulted in part because the U.S. refused to allow commitments it had agreed to in previous treaty reviews to be included on the agenda. At a treaty review conference in 1995, the U.S. agreed to sign on to a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. President Bill Clinton signed the CTBT in 1996, but the Bush administration is now opposed to ratifying the treaty. The U.S. has also backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Treaty in order to pursue a continental missile defense system.
In 1995, the U.S. promised not to use nuclear weapons against countries that didn’t possess any unless they were attacked by a country that was in an alliance with a nuclear weapon state. But since then the Bush administration has stated in official documents that it would be prepared to use nuclear weapons against a country not possessing any nuclear weapons if that country threatened the use of chemical or biological weapons against the U.S.
"The United States… clearly have no interest in keeping with their obligations," says Pickup, adding that the country has gone beyond "any excuse of defense for nuclear weapons" in its military strategy.
Meantime, Iran was angered at being singled out as a "proliferation concern," claiming it is only pursing peaceful nuclear technology, not working on the technology for nuclear weapons. Egypt and Iran demanded that a nuclear-free zone be declared in the Middle East, where Israel currently has nuclear weapons.
James Keeley, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, says preventing new countries from developing nuclear weapon capacity is a huge issue. He adds once countries have developed the technology to enrich uranium to be used in a nuclear reactor, "you have the means of getting it to weapons grade."
Keeley says the actual likelihood of a nuclear attack occurring somewhere in the world may be greater now than during the Cold War because more countries have nuclear weapons or are close to acquiring them.
Since the treaty was signed 35 years ago, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea have acquired nuclear weapons (none of them are signatories to the treaty), and now there’s concern that other countries, such as Iran, will disguise their intent to create nuclear weapons by claiming they’re only developing peaceful technology, such as nuclear reactors. Under the 1970 treaty, non-nuclear states were given the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful means; non-nuclear states agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons; and nuclear powers agreed to reduce their arsenal. The number of nuclear weapons in the world reached 70,000 at the height of the Cold War. Pickup says that has been reduced to about 27,000, but estimated that as many as 3,000 of those are operational and capable of being launched within minutes.
"In listening to a number of worldwide NGOs (non-governmental organizations), people who really understand what’s going on, they actually think we’re in a worse situation than we were during the Cold War…. Countries that do not have nuclear weapons right now look at those who do and say they’re obviously not really getting rid of their nuclear weapons…. Then they will get nuclear weapons so you’ll see a half dozen more countries getting nuclear weapons," says Pickup.
Pickup is hopeful that the failure of the talks will force people out of complacency.
"We’re hoping people will start getting energized on the issue. Once people have some sort of feeling that this is important, and they have the imagination that it’s possible to get rid of nuclear weapons, we’ll actually inspire leaders," she says.
Pickup and fellow Project Ploughshares member Bev Delong will share their experiences from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference on June 8 at St. David’s United Church (3303 Capital Hill Cres. N.W.) at 7:30 p.m. |
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