So John

A. Did China help create an NPT system that suited and legally protected its nuclear weapons aspirations?

B. Was the NPT timetable (centred around 1968) geared by the Big Five to permit the Big Five (US, UK, Russia, France and China) to alone have nuclear weapons.

Put another way did the Big Five decide on its own terms to make it illegal for less mighty states to possess nuclear weapons for self defence?

C. But surely it was Ireland that proposed the NPT, uninfluenced by the power of the Big Five Permanent Members of the Security Council?

D. Isn't there an obvious and effective disarmament obligation on the Big Five under the NPT?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty#Second_pillar:_disarmament

Pete :)

The question of Ireland wrt the NPT is interesting.

It is clear that the NWS had and have no intention to ever disarm. Indeed they all have programs of computer simulation, laser implosion experiments and subcritical testing so that they may continue to design even more advanced weapons. They may cut their arsenals but that is a refection of their operational needs, not any commitment to disarmament.

Was Ireland satisfied with the nuclear order? Did it hope that the P5 and no others would possess nuclear arms? Or did it allow itself to be deluded? To be used by the NWS?

Did it make the mistake of assuming that the NPT is a disarmament treaty rather than an arms control treaty?

Article 6 of the NPT simply promises negotiations towards disarmament. It does not give any time frame for this. So negotiations make take a thousand years or ten thousand. It is an open ended promise that the NWS can claim they are not violating since they are all working in good faith towards this aim. The Nunn, Perry, Kissinger and Shultz initiative also puts forwards the promise of working towards the aim of disarmament but does not actually require it. The aim is always in the distant future. The NNWS on the other hand must give up their NPT rights to enrichment and reprocessing technology.

Disarmament treaties simply outlaw classes of weapons. After WW1, certain classes of ammunition that produce great suffering were no longer to be used. Recently the chemical weapons convention and the land mine treaties have abolished possession of such weapons by their signatories.

By contrast the NPT did not outlaw nuclear arms. It simply created two classes of states - those that were allowed to have nuclear arms and those who were forbidden to have them. The NPT is thus about arms control. It seems that the NNWS are actually quite happy with this since they extended the NPT indefinately in 1995 without amending the treaty to impose a cutoff date for disarmament.

Thanks John

So it seems that there is no real hope or requirement that the thousands of warheads belonging to the Big Five (P5) will be disarmed under the NPT and perhaps under any other agreement.

As Permanent members of the UN Security Council they have potent political power. They have organised the NP treaty in such a way as to give them potent and exclusive military power through being the only "legal" owners of nuclear weapons.

I'm interested in the timing of the NPT. Was there a groundswell of international feeling in the 1960s that suggested all Permanent Members of the Security Council should have the Bomb?

Was this considered fair play or was it a recognition that China would not agree to an NPT structure until it to had the Bomb?

Was principle set aside in order to accommodate political reality - to accommodate China?

I suppose few outside intelligence agencies knew that on 26 May 1990 China conducted a nuclear test on behalf of Pakistan. This test occurred in a vertical underground shaft. The test was of a Pakistani CHIC-4 derivative. The yield was estimated at 10 kilotons.

http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_61/iss_9/47_1s.shtml

Here's a 1966 CHIC-4 test in China's atmosphere. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbDqnUufnrQ

Further corroboration of Chinese breaches of the NPT http://www.nti.org/db/China/nsaspos.htm "The May 1998 nuclear tests in South Asia focused international attention on China's role in the development of nuclear weapons in South Asia. Although China has had some nuclear trade and cooperation with India, China's more significant nuclear relationship in South Asia is with Pakistan. Indeed, China's nuclear trade with Pakistan has caused as much or more concern than China's nuclear trade with any other country..."

I wonder if Mr Rudd considers this when agreeing that Australian uranium should be supplied to China but not India.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/