The ailing nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires ‘effective measures’ to regain its health, writes Dr Marianne Hanson, Co-Chair of ICAN Australia.

Last week marked the 54th anniversary of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The treaty was designed to freeze the number of states with nuclear weapons – beyond the five countries that had already developed these weapons prior to 1967 – in the hope of averting what John F Kennedy warned was ‘the darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth’.

Australia ratified the NPT in 1973. It has since been a self-declared champion of the need to prevent nuclear proliferation. But it continues to ignore a key requirement spelled out in the NPT, namely, the need to take ‘effective measures in the direction of complete nuclear disarmament’.

The most effective of all measures that could be taken – and indeed the logical outcome of the NPT – was the decision made in 2017 to make all nuclear weapons illegal, and to ban them under the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Yet Canberra has not yet signed up to this vital step.

Instead, it continues to give unwavering support to the NPT, despite the fact that this treaty is suffering from several maladies, and may not remain a viable treaty for much longer unless effective measures such as the TPNW are supported.

The NPT: a success story for curbing nuclear proliferation

President Kennedy had warned in the 1960s that unless global restraints were put in place, the world might see 25 or more nuclear weapon states by the late 1970s. Thanks to the normative and legal pressure of the NPT, the vast majority of states disavowed nuclear weapons. Only four states (India, Pakistan, Israel, and since 2003, North Korea) have rejected the treaty and gone on to develop their own nuclear arsenals – and while the failure to stop these four states is regrettable, we must give credit to the NPT for these numbers mercifully low.

The NPT was based on an extraordinary bargain: the five existing nuclear states – at that time the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China – wished to........

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