This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's coming into force. Despite its central role in shaping the global nuclear order, the NPT's future looks anything but promising.
The main challenges the NPT now faces come from within its regime, not from the nonparties. The nations outside the NPT fold that wanted to go nuclear have done so. And having acquired nuclear weapons, those states are in no position to join a treaty that essentially is rigidly structured and is thus not amendable.
It has been widely forgotten that the NPT originally was intended to prevent countries like Japan, West Germany and Italy from acquiring nuclear weapons. Japan, did not ratify the treaty until 1976 — eight years after the NPT was concluded, and six years after the pact took effect. Over the years, however, the challenges to the NPT have come from outside the list of its original targets.