Nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the way ahead

Almost the entirety of each city and its inhabitants were wiped out in an instant. Survivors of the holocaust suffered great physical and mental pain. For many, the nightmare still continues. The hypocenter of the "Little Boy" bomb was slightly offset to the southeast of the prefecture office building, now displayed as the Genbaku Dome-Mae (A-bomb Dome).

The Uranium-235 gravity bomb exploded about 600m above the dome with a destructive power equivalent to 1.5 kilotons of TNT. Witness accounts of the destruction following the Hiroshima bombing speak of "a white flash, at the same instant searing heat and blast whirlwinds." The radius of total destruction was about 1.6 km, while resulting fires spanned 11.4 sq. km.

As many as 140,000 people died from the Hiroshima blast and its associated effects.

On the morning of August 9, the US B-29 Bockscar carried the nuclear bomb "Fat Man," with Kokura as the primary target and Nagasaki as the secondary one. By the time the plane reached Kokura, a cloud covered the city. After several runs over the city, causing fuel to run low, it headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.

At 11.01 (local time), the "Fat Man," containing a core of 6.4 kg of Plutonium-239, was dropped over the city. Forty-three seconds later it exploded 469m above the ground. The resulting explosion converted 1.176kg of fuel to energy with an equivalent blast yield of 21 kilotons of TNT.

The total number of people killed was around 80,000 including those who died from radiation poisoning.

The first public display of materials related to the atomic bombing took place on September 9, 1949 and began with the establishment of the A-bomb Memorial Hall in the Hiroshima City Central Public Hall. Subsequently, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall and the Peace Memorial Museum were established in the Peace Memorial Park in 1955. Unesco declared it a World Heritage site in 1996. Every year for the last 60 years the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been observed the world over. The question, however, that everybody wants to know is: how many atomic weapons are there and are we any nearer to eliminating them?

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Anan, provides some of the answers. According to him: "Some 35,000 nuclear weapons remain in the arsenals of the nuclear powers with thousands still deployed on hair-trigger alert. Whatever rationale these weapons may once have had has long been dwindled. Political, moral and legal constraints on actually using them further undermine their strategic utility without, however, reducing the risks of inadvertent war on proliferation. The objective of nuclear non-proliferation is not helped by the fact that the states that have nuclear weapons continue to insist that these weapons in their hands enhance security, while in the hands of others they are a threat to world peace. If we were making steady progress towards disarmaments, this situation would be less alarming. Unfortunately, the reverse is true."

The observations by the UN chief indeed make grim reading. Are we to assume then that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has lost its potency in the chessboard of 21st century state securities and politics? Not so, believe the experts.

In 1961, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a bill to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries. At that time only the US, the Soviet Union, the UK, and France had nuclear bombs. China exploded a nuclear bomb and joined the league in 1964. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allowed these five states (P-5) to have nuclear weapons and they subsequently became the five permanent Members of the UN Security Council. The treaty was signed in 1968.

The NPT allowed the five nuclear weapons states (NWS) to have nuclear weapons. All other signatories are non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). The treaty now has 189 members including the P-5. The NNWS promised not to have nuclear weapons and agreed for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, India, Pakistan and Israel refused to sign the treaty, and North Korea withdrew from it.

The NPT was originally designed to decelerate the growth of nuclear weapons, if not totally stop their development. Though the lofty goals of total nuclear weapons elimination have not been achieved in the last thirty-eight years since signing the treaty, it is still believed the NPT has been a reasonable success.

If there were no NPT, we probably would see more than two dozen countries with nuclear weapons. There are fewer nuclear weapons and possibly fewer states with nuclear weapons programs now than there were some twenty years back. However, with constant changes in the geo-political scenario of the world, the treaty regime had to be constantly updated and improved.

The IAEA Comprehensive System of Safeguards, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Bangkok and Pelindaba Treaty establishing Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones, and the IAEA Additional Protocol to Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements of 1997 etc. are a few additional non-proliferation measures. Many believe the NPT is undermined not by the NNWS trying to acquire the nuclear weapon status, but by the NWS not down-sizing their stockpile of weapons and gradually eliminating them altogether.

The problems are further exacerbated by the fact that the US and China are still refusing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that bans testing of all nuclear weapons.

Against the above background, are we any closer to eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons? How effective is the NPT? What might we face in the coming years? These are difficult questions to answer. What we do know, however, is that the NPT will only survive as a viable international regime if it is supported and its principles adhered to both by the nuclear weapons states and the non-nuclear weapons states.

Dr. Mohammed Muniruzzaman is Professor, Department of Physics, Jahangirnagar University.