Nuclear weapons control deals ineffective due to states' plans to build them up — expert

WASHINGTON, March 5. /TASS/. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) have been weakened because some states are eager to boost their nuclear arsenals, said Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University Peter Kuznick.

"The wild card in all of this is what role the U.S. under Trump will play in fanning the flames of nuclear war and proliferation, as he did during his first term, or dousing them. To his credit, he called for the U.S., Russia, and China to all substantially reduce their nuclear arsenals," he told TASS in connection with the 55th anniversary of the entry into force of the NPT.

"So the world may have taken a small step back from the nuclear brink in Ukraine these past two weeks, but it has inched closer in the Middle East and in the Pacific," he said, referring to the peace talks for Ukraine.

Kuznick criticized Vladimir Zelensky’s proposal that if his country's NATO entry was delayed or denied, Ukraine should be given nuclear weapons to defend itself.

"Overall, we are insanely close to the abyss. That insanity is magnified by the fact that many understand that the threshold for triggering nuclear winter and the resulting near total annihilation it would bring is actually lower than initially projected in the 1980s," he said.

"Hence, this is all to say that the NPT and, even more urgently, the TPNW are needed now more than ever but both have been rendered impotent by the nine nuclear powers, all of which are modernizing their nuclear arsenals to make them more effective and more lethal, and most of which are in the process of expanding them or have plans to do so."

The NPT is a multilateral international treaty developed by the UN Disarmament Committee to stem the expansion of the range of countries possessing nuclear weapons and reduce the possibility of an armed conflict with the use of such weapons. The Treaty was approved on June 12, 1968, at the XXII session of the UN General Assembly and opened for signature on July 1, 1968, in London, Moscow, and Washington. The depositories are Great Britain, the USSR, and the USA. It entered into force on March 5, 1970, after the deposit of the instruments of ratification of 40 countries. Currently, 191 states are parties to the treaty.