Israel Matzav

The NPT: A status quo that's 40 years out of date

Bret Stephens is spot-on about why the nuclear non-proliferation treaty no longer works.

There's a reason the NPT has failed the administration. It enshrines a status quo that is 40 years out of date. Today, four of the world's nine nuclear-weapons states are not signatories to the treaty. Of those four, three—India, Israel and Pakistan—are democracies and allies of the U.S. And yet the NPT treats them as pariahs for not subscribing to a treaty that fails to recognize their imperative national security interests, at least as they themselves perceive them. The Canadas of the world may be happy to go along with the NPT, secure as they are under America's nuclear umbrella. That was a luxury India, Israel and Pakistan did not enjoy when they embarked on their nuclear programs.

Now Iran, in connivance with the usual Middle Eastern suspects (and their useful idiots in the West), is trying to use the NPT as a cudgel to force Israel to disarm. That makes perfect sense if you subscribe, as Mr. Obama does, to the theology of nuclear disarmament. It makes no sense if you think the distinction that matters when it comes to nuclear weapons is between responsible, democratic states, and reckless, unstable and dictatorial ones. Nobody lies awake at night wondering what David Cameron might do if he gets his finger on the U.K.'s nuclear trigger.

The world today is rapidly moving toward what strategist Andrew Krepinevich calls the "second nuclear age," in which deterrence no longer works as it did during the Cold War. "It may be," he writes, "that leaders of the newly armed nuclear states do not calculate costs and benefits in a manner similar to the United States." Yet we haven't even begun to think seriously about how to navigate these waters. Hillary Clinton's mindless calls yesterday about strengthening the NPT won't do.

One day a Pathfinder with tinted windows may park itself in Times Square with something more than propane tanks in the back seat. We may not be able to stop it. But we will live more securely if the driver of that car knows exactly what we intend to do next.

Well, yes, although I have my doubts about Pakistan and I do worry about others with whom they may have shared their nuclear technology. But as to the rest of it he's correct, and it would behoove the big powers like the United States to deal with the world as it is and not as they would like it to be.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:48 AM