Unreal exercise

The second NPT Review Conference started on May 2. If no one in India has taken notice, the reason is that while the Non-Proliferation Treaty may be alive in letter, in spirit it is quite dead.

Ever since the NPT was wheeled out by the nuclear powers 37 years ago as a means of maintaining their oligopoly over nuclear weapons, the haves have expressed their worries over proliferation and the have-nots have asked for disarmament.

The unvarnished truth is that neither has got what it wanted. Far from disarming, countries have acquired more nuclear weapons and there has not been a single decade when more countries did not acquire nuclear capabilities.

The nuclear club of five that the NPT created looks as out-dated as the British monarchy, and the rules it creates are no better""as becomes evident when the Articles of the NPT are examined.

Articles 1 and 2, for example, say that members should neither provide nor receive assistance for making bombs. Article 3 prohibits transfer of nuclear technology, except under IAEA safeguards.

Article 5 envisions a happy sharing between members of the benefits of the peaceful applications of nuclear technology. And then there is Article 6, which the US has itself disowned under President Bush.

This requires disarmament by all. The US says nuclear weapons are essential to its security. And it has turned a blind eye to blatant violations by China and France.

On the other hand, the strict observance of provisions by India, even without being a signatory to the treaty, has been ignored. Under the circumstances, it serves little purpose to pretend that the NPT is alive and well. The time has come to consider a new framework.

Such a new framework must start from the opposite premise of the old one, namely, that it is possible to prevent proliferation.

The assumption today must be in tune with reality, which is that lots of people have got a bomb and more will acquire it""and all of them need not be state players.

Many countries have drawn their own conclusions from the respective experiences of Saddam Hussein and Kim Il Jong""namely, that nuclear power is a currency that the US understands and which therefore buys you security from attack.

A new framework must therefore look for establishing universally applicable multilateral obligations that minimise (elimination is impossible) the risk of accidents when many players are assumed to have a nuclear weapon, and not just a handful.

The need for this becomes evident when one sees the disadvantages of contiguity or proximity. India-Pakistan-China, North Korea-China-South Korea-Japan, Iran-Iraq-Israel, the UK-France-Russia""all illustrate this and more pairs, triplets, quadruplets and quintets will spring up.

The US-USSR non-contiguity or proximity was an exception. But even if all this happens, the problem of non-state threats (the idea of a rogue state is self-serving, considering that only the US has so far used the bomb) will remain.

But that is not something which a treaty can provide for; it needs other measures to be taken and those cannot and need not be the subject of treaty discussions.