Nuclear Regime in Peril (Yale Global)

[struggle4progress]

Without full US engagement, the talks to limit nuclear weapons will collapse

Joseph Cirincione
YaleGlobal, 17 May 2005

NEW YORK: The fate of the most successful international security pacts in history hangs in the balance, as envoys from around the world meet to review the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at a United Nations conference. But US leadership is nowhere to be found. It is the latest sign that the Bush administration's counter-proliferation strategy has failed.

The NPT has united the world against the spread of nuclear weapons for 35 years and has permitted only one defector: North Korea. Today, this important security system is mired in such discord that it is in danger of crumbling. North Korea is ratcheting up the pressure, unloading yet another batch of plutonium-rich fuel from its reactor. Iran, meanwhile, threatens to end its suspension of uranium enrichment, a process that can make fuel for nuclear reactors and also for bombs.

These two nations get the daily headlines, but there are other dangers. There are still 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world held by eight nations (and possibly North Korea). Fifteen years after the Cold War, the United States and Russia account for over 26,000 of these warheads, with thousands still on hair-trigger alert, ready to launch in 15 minutes. There are also hundreds of tons of bomb material – highly enriched uranium and plutonium, much of it poorly guarded – in the stockpiles of the former Soviet republics and in civilian research reactors in some 40 nations. Al-Qaida is known to have an interest in acquiring these materials or weapons, yet programs to secure and eliminate them crawl along at a snail's pace. <snip>

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5728