The Making of a Nuclear Order: Negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

1-2 March 2014, Zurich

The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is widely regarded as the cornerstone of the broader nonproliferation regime aimed at forestalling the further spread of nuclear weapons and related technologies. Though it imposes restrictions on the principle of sovereign equality of states, the NPT has been signed by 189 states and was indefinitely extended in 1995, making it the most successful arms control treaty in history.

While the NPT continues to be central to current global nonproliferation efforts and is routinely cited as a successful compromise (‘a grand bargain’) between the competing priorities of nonproliferation, disarmament, and access to peaceful nuclear technologies, the treaty’s underlying mechanisms are less widely discussed. Historical research on the origins of the NPT has mainly focused on the negotiations between the superpowers in the 1960s, the role of nonproliferation in the wider politics of détente, and especially on the central importance of the future nuclear status of the Federal Republic of Germany. As a consequence, there has been very little investigation of the motivations and strategic calculi of the various middle and small powers in joining the treaty despite the accompanying imposition of an unequal status and obligations vis-à-vis the five ‘legitimate’ nuclear weapons states.