In March 1967 while the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was in its final stages of negotiation, a conference was held at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana at which strategists, diplomats and academics from the us and Canada presented their views of what the Treaty was about. The Soviet and Polish embassies in Washington also sent representatives, while various European members of nato sent written statements outlining their position. The draft then under discussion was essentially that signed the following year, but there are differences. The proceedings of the Conference thus provide a useful guide to the npt’s aims, its limitations and the difficult issues at stake when it was signed.footnote¹ The final draft was agreed by the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament (endc) and the un General Assembly in June 1968, ten months after the ussr and us had presented identical versions to the endc. It was opened for signature on July 1, 1968 and came into force on March 5, 1970. No amendment has been made to it, so the npt signed in 1968 is the same one in force today and invoked every time the ‘Western community’ (i.e. the current us administration) worries that ‘rogue’ state X or Y may have a nuclear-weapon programme.

The French Embassy in Washington—De Gaulle was President at the time—sent a note to the Notre Dame Conference explaining the Elysée’s position on the npt: ‘France is against proliferation. But she considers that the draft treaty, as it currently stands, settles nothing. It does not represent any progress towards disarmament. It sanctions the supremacy of some countries over the rest of the non-nuclear nations.’ The letter goes on to quote Couve de Murville, the French Foreign Minister:

Non-dissemination [the initial and more specific word for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons] is, assuredly, a problem. There is no advantage, there would even be great danger, in having more and more countries manufacture nuclear weapons. But one thing is much more important—those who possess nuclear weapons should not manufacture more but destroy the ones they have. Yet what is being proposed seems to us to arrive at the opposite result: preventing those who do not have and who, for the most part, cannot have nuclear weapons, from manufacturing them. But this in no way prevents those [possessing] such weapons from continuing to manufacture them and from maintaining their stockpiles. Consequently, this is not disarmament, and we think that we should not, by taking paths of this kind, lead the world [to] believe there is disarmament where, in fact, there is only a strengthening of the monopolies of the great powers.

As was so often the case, De Gaulle’s view was far-sighted. France, however, did eventually ratify the Treaty, as did China, which had originally agreed with France. The purpose of this article is to explain what the npt forbids and what it does not; the obligations assumed by its parties; its successes and failures; and whether it can be maintained. I start from the premise, shared by France, the us and Britain, that a world in which most countries possessed nuclear weapons would be less secure than one in which only a few do. Not everyone agrees: Kenneth Waltz argued that the increased responsibilities the weapons bring would reduce the likelihood of wars between nuclear powers.footnote² The majority view, with which I agree, is that whilst this may be the case, a war involving nuclear weapons would be so horrific that the eventual elimination of these weapons by all states should be the goal; the npt together with other measures such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty—signed in 1996 but still not in force—are necessary steps towards that end. This discussion of the npt does not aim to be complete. Mason Willrich and especially Mohamed Shaker have given full accounts of the negotiations leading to the Treaty and its interpretation.footnote³ I try to deal with those subjects still relevant to the present international situation, but leave aside some, such as the Cold War security guarantees, which have little meaning now.

The final report of the Notre Dame Conference summarized the npt’s expected aims:

A treaty should be drawn up which (1) binds the military nuclear powers not to transfer nuclear weapons to other states, (2) commits the other states not to build or acquire nuclear weapons, (3) assures all signatory nations of the opportunity to develop and share in the benefit of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and (4) contains an agreement on an international inspection system. It should be drafted in such a way as to attract the early adherence of the nuclear powers and to facilitate other steps towards arms control and disarmament.

These aims were in accordance with the ‘Irish Resolution’ 1576, passed unanimously by the un General Assembly in December 1961, entitled ‘Prevention of the Wider Dissemination of Nuclear Weapons’. This envisaged an international agreement under which weapon states pledged not to transfer control of their nuclear arms or information necessary for their manufacture to non-weapon states, while states without nuclear weapons agreed not to acquire them.