Description
The advent of nuclear weapons at the end of the Second World War altered the global power dynamics. Although the United States, Britain and Canada jointly worked on the Manhattan Project under the Quebec agreement, the United States, through the Atomic Energy Commission Act of 1946, tried to monopolise nuclear technology and knowledge. This monopoly could not be sustained and gave way to the formation of a nuclear oligopoly which got manifestation in the formation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), where the states that had already tested nuclear weapons till 1967 were declared as nuclear weapon states (NWS).
There is abundant literature available that reflects upon various perspectives on the Non- proliferation treaty. In almost all of them, emphasis has been given to self-centric national interest. System stability is often seen as the outcome of self-interested behaviour, much like Adam Smith’s invisible hand in economics, where self-interested behaviour of individual firms ultimately leads to the collective good. However, NPT does not lead to the fulfilment of the self-interest of NWS. The provisions of NPT do not explicitly or implicitly include the assurance that one NWS will not attack the other NWS (or NNWS, for that matter). This is evident by the fact that the nuclear arms race continued even after the formalisation of NPT. Hence, NPT essentially reflects the consensus among the NWS that nuclear weapons should not be proliferated to other states so that stability in the international nuclear order could be maintained.
This paper will explore the feasibility of a perspective that looks at NPT as establishing the international nuclear order’s stability. It tries to shift the focus from self-centric national interest to system stability within the context of a non-proliferation treaty.
