Nuclear disarmament, not non-proliferation, is the true solution to the issue.

Islamabad: We have all heard it said and repeated that the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been a great success since all countries have signed it, with the exception of India, Pakistan and Israel, as well as North Korea which withdrew from the NPT in 2003. This treaty specifies that (Article VI) “each of the Parties to the treaty undertakes to carry on, in good faith, negotiations on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”. Non-nuclear weapon countries therefore interpreted this treaty as a process of eliminating nuclear weapons.

Now, beyond the initial “enthusiasm”, the NPT has quickly revealed itself ineffective: in fact, the number of states possessing nuclear weapons at the time of its adoption in 1968 – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council with the right of veto: the USA, the USSR, Great Britain, France and China – is almost doubled, as four other states (India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) also acquired nuclear weapons.

As mentioned above, North Korea, which was a signatory to the NPT, withdrew in 2003, saying its “security” was under threat. This possibility is foreseen in the very statute of the NPT, so that this withdrawal could cause othersstarting, for example, with Iran which, following Donald Trump’s violation of the 2015 Vienna Agreement in 2018, resumed the enrichment of natural uranium in fissile uranium (U235) up to at least of 60%, which means that the threshold of about 90% for the production of nuclear bombs could be reached quite quickly: it is mainly now a political choice.