The world community will gather in New York from April 24 to May 19 for the first review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty since it was indefinitely extended in 1995. Unfortunately, the nuclear future looks a lot less rosy than it did five years ago. Since then, India and Pakistan have crashed through the NPT barrier, the U.S. Senate has rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Russia has adopted a more assertive nuclear posture, North Korea's intentions remain worrisome and Iraq's activities are no longer subject to international inspection.
We have to choose from among four nuclear options: the status quo, proliferation, nuclear rearmament or abolition.
A restoration of the 1995 status quo would require a rollback of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan, and only them. But trying to denuclearize South Asia is no more realistic than demanding immediate nuclear abolition. It cannot be achieved by finger-wagging at their nuclear naughtiness. The 1998 tests confirmed the folly of believing that five powers could indefinitely retain their monopoly over one class of weapons.