Fifty years after the US, Russia and other powers reached a landmark deal to halt the spread of atomic weapons, an arms race and shifting US alliances risk triggering a new scramble for the bomb, experts say.
Signed on July 1, 1968, six years after the Cuban Missile Crisis took the world to the brink of an atomic war, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been credited with dramatically reducing the threat of a nuclear apocalypse.
The treaty attempted to strike a balance between the security concerns of nuclear-armed powers and the atomic ambitions of the have-nots.
The five countries that already had nuclear weapons — the US, Russia, China, France and Britain, all permanent UN Security Council members — were allowed keep them, in return for commitments on reducing their arms stockpiles.
Non-nuclear-armed states agreed never to develop such weapons, in return for help from the so-called P5 countries in developing peaceful nuclear technology.
The treaty became the cornerstone of non-proliferation efforts, with 191 countries signing up.
“The NPT has been amazingly successful in keeping the number of nuclear armed states to less than ten,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington.
On the disarmament front, the treaty has also exceeded expectations, with the global stockpile of nuclear warheads falling by 85 percent as the US and Russia dismantled the bulk of their huge Cold War arsenals.
