Bonehead Non-Proliferation

The Review and Extension Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will convene in 1995. The primary issue to be considered at the Extension Conference is whether the NPT, universally regarded as the most important bulwark against the spread of nuclear weaponry, should remain in force. In this article, David A. Koplow argues that the United States must negotiate a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in order to maintain the non-proliferation regime and promote its own long-run security interest

The Jurisprudence of Non-Proliferation: Taking International Law Seriously

This essay is about the power of the international law of nonproliferation- its mounting power in the world today and its properly augmented power in an enlightened future. The article focuses on three primary areas in which international law may play a greater role than is commonly appreciated in affecting the behavior of potential proliferators, their suppliers, and their resolute opponents. The three topics-areas in which the essay pleads for law to be taken even more seriously, and by a wider audience of governments and the international public-are: (a) treaties (especially the provisions of those treaties that commit the parties to pursue further incremental measures of disarmament); (b) customary international law (especially those aspects of behaviorbased jurisprudence which provide unwritten, but nevertheless binding, constraints upon the preparation for and conduct of state violence); and (c) disarmament institutions (especially those novel multilateral organizations that have recently sprung up to play a variety of fact-finding, confidence-building, and dispute-resolution functions). In all of this, the core notion is the suggestion that international law works, and that it would work even better if more people would notice it and come to understand how lawfulness advances their own self-interest

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

This is an encyclopedia article

Strategic Concept for the Regulation of Arms Possession and Proliferation

In practice there is still a “piecemeal approach towards proliferation” and argued that a genuinely comprehensive and global approach to non-proliferation would involve the integration of policy “on nuclear and other WMD non- proliferation, arms control, and disarmament with strategy on conventional weapons to implement a holistic approach within a new Strategic Concept for the Regulation of Arms Possession and Proliferation. A major push is needed, not just to control the conventional weapons trade, but also to “reduce holdings of major weapons systems, ordnance stocks and production. There are longstanding legal commitment in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to “general disarmament” of all weapons apart from those needed for internal policing. In terms of timescale, one could look at getting the job done in the course of a decade. If we have timetables for global warming, and if we think that it is practical to get to grips with the entire climate of the planet, we should also see that it is practical to get to grips with weaponry