Fraying Consensus

The consensus embodied by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is beginning to fray, Vice President Biden warned today.

In a speech at the National Defense University, Biden said the United States is "rallying support for stronger measures to strengthen inspections and punish cheaters" of the NPT. Specifically, he said:

The Treaty’s basic bargain -- that nuclear powers pursue disarmament and non-nuclear states do not acquire such weapons, while gaining access to civilian nuclear technology -- is the cornerstone of the nonproliferation regime.

Before the treaty was negotiated, President Kennedy predicted a world with up to 20 nuclear powers by the mid-1970s. Because of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the consensus it embodied, that didn’t happen.

Now, 40 years later, that consensus is fraying. We must reinforce this consensus, and strengthen the treaty for the future.

Biden acknowledged the difficulty of negotiating a ban on the production of fissile materials that can be used in nuclear weapons, but said the Conference on Disarmament "must resume its work on this treaty as soon as possible."

The vice president also reiterated the administration's desire to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty:

A decade ago, we led this effort to negotiate this treaty in order to keep emerging nuclear states from perfecting their arsenals and to prevent our rivals from pursuing ever more advanced weapons.

We are confident that all reasonable concerns raised about the treaty back then -– concerns about verification and the reliability of our own arsenal - have now been addressed. The test ban treaty is as important as ever.

As President Obama said in Prague, “we cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.”

Some friends in both parties may question aspects of our approach. Some in my own party may have trouble reconciling investments in our nuclear complex with a commitment to arms reduction. Some in the other party may worry we’re relinquishing capabilities that keep our country safe.

With both groups we respectfully disagree. As both the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, and as a strong proponent of non-proliferation, the United States has long embodied a stark but inevitable contradiction. The horror of nuclear conflict may make its occurrence unlikely, but the very existence of nuclear weapons leaves the human race ever at the brink of self-destruction, particularly if the weapons fall into the wrong hands.