By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the US has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran and other states with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons.
Proposed agreements with India compound this quagmire and further undermine the global pact for peace represented by the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
At the same time, no significant steps are being taken to reduce the worldwide arsenal of almost 30,000 nuclear weapons now possessed by the US, Russia, China, France, Israel, Britain, India, Pakistan and perhaps North Korea. A global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the Cold War.
The key restraining commitment among the five original nuclear powers and more than 180 other countries is the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Its key objective is "to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology ... and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament."
In the last five-year review conference at the UN in 2005, only Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea were not participating -- the first three have nuclear arsenals that are advanced, while the fourth's are embryonic.
The US government has not set a good example, having already abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, binding limitations on testing nuclear weapons and developing new ones and a long-standing policy of foregoing threats of "first use" of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. These recent decisions have encouraged China, Russia and other NPT signatories to respond with similar actions.
Knowing since 1974 of India's nuclear ambitions, I and other US presidents imposed a consistent policy: no sales of nuclear technology or uncontrolled fuel to India or any other country that refused to sign the NPT.
Today, these restraints are in the process of being abandoned.
I have no doubt that Indian leaders are just as responsible in handling their country's arsenal as leaders of the five original nuclear powers. But there is a significant difference: the original five have signed the NPT and have stopped producing fissile material for weapons.
Indian leaders should make the same pledges and should also join other nuclear powers in signing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Instead, they have rejected these steps and insist on unrestricted access to international assistance in producing enough fissile material for as many as 50 weapons a year, far exceeding what is believed to be India's current capacity.
If India's demand is acceptable, why should other technologically advanced NPT signatories, such as Brazil, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Japan -- to say nothing of less "responsible" states -- continue to restrain themselves?
Having received at least tentative approval from the US for its policy, India still faces two further obstacles: an acceptable agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 45-country body that -- until now -- has barred nuclear trade with any nation that refuses to accept international nuclear standards.
The non-nuclear NSG members are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.
The role of these states and the IAEA is not to prevent India's development of nuclear power or even nuclear weapons, but rather to assure that it proceeds as almost all other responsible countries on earth do, by signing the NPT and accepting other reasonable restraints.
Nuclear powers must show leadership, by restraining themselves and by curtailing further departures from the NPT's international restraints. One-by-one, the choices they make today will create a legacy -- deadly or peaceful -- for the future.
Jimmy Carter is a former president of the US. Copyright: Project Syndicate
In the first year of his second term, US President Donald Trump continued to shake the foundations of the liberal international order to realize his “America first” policy. However, amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability, the Trump administration brought some clarity to its policy toward Taiwan. As expected, bilateral trade emerged as a major priority for the new Trump administration. To secure a favorable trade deal with Taiwan, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: First, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” chip business from the US, indicating that if Taipei did not address Washington’s concerns in this strategic sector, it could revisit its Taiwan
The stocks of rare earth companies soared on Monday following news that the Trump administration had taken a 10 percent stake in Oklahoma mining and magnet company USA Rare Earth Inc. Such is the visible benefit enjoyed by the growing number of firms that count Uncle Sam as a shareholder. Yet recent events surrounding perhaps what is the most well-known state-picked champion, Intel Corp, exposed a major unseen cost of the federal government’s unprecedented intervention in private business: the distortion of capital markets that have underpinned US growth and innovation since its founding. Prior to Intel’s Jan. 22 call with analysts
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) challenges and ignores the international rules-based order by violating Taiwanese airspace using a high-flying drone: This incident is a multi-layered challenge, including a lawfare challenge against the First Island Chain, the US, and the world. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines lawfare as “controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy.” Chen Yu-cheng (陳育正), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies, at Taiwan’s Fu Hsing Kang College (National Defense University), argues the PLA uses lawfare to create a precedent and a new de facto legal
International debate on Taiwan is obsessed with “invasion countdowns,” framing the cross-strait crisis as a matter of military timetables and political opportunity. However, the seismic political tremors surrounding Central Military Commission (CMC) vice chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠) suggested that Washington and Taipei are watching the wrong clock. Beijing is constrained not by a lack of capability, but by an acute fear of regime-threatening military failure. The reported sidelining of Zhang — a combat veteran in a largely unbloodied force and long-time loyalist of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — followed a year of purges within the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
RSS