Re-writing the Constitutional History of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Mission Statement

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons—commonly known as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—was created to bring order to a world abounding in fissile materials, fission reactors, and nuclear armaments. From the moment the treaty entered into force on February 5, 1970, its constitutional meanings—the marriage of its negotiating history, binding articles, preambular statements, and contemporary interpretations—has been hotly contested. Although over the intervening 50 years the agreement has become the most widely adhered to security compact apart from the United Nations Charter—from whose own constitutional substance the NPT draws legitimacy and force—consensus over the treaty’s principles and provisions remains elusive.

“Re-writing the Constitutional History of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” generously supported by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY), is an effort to bring historical knowledge to bear on the treaty’s past, present, and future. The project comprises an international consortium of 21 scholars who are currently studying the NPT’s making, opening for signature, entry into force, and implementation from the standpoint of nineteen different countries and one international organization—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). By making previously unknown documents available and using them to generate new insights from a more diverse range of national and international perspectives, the consortium is strengthening general knowledge about the NPT’s founding moment, with new information and lessons for the conduct of international nuclear nonproliferation diplomacy today.

The mission of this multi-year research project is threefold. First, it brings academic expertise and rigor to bear on an issue of supreme global importance—the fading consensus behind the NPT—with decisive implications for present-day international security and peace. Second, and relatedly, the project expands our knowledge of the treaty’s original intent and ensuing controversies. The divisions in international opinion about the treaty’s meaning have run along various lines, most notably between those who emphasize the nuclear club’s closure to new entrants and those who stress a “grand bargain” balanced atop three pillars: nuclear nonproliferation, the promotion of peaceful nuclear technology, and progress toward nuclear disarmament. To come to grips with the NPT’s present circumstances and future prospects, policymakers and publics from states that adhere as well as those who do not should revisit the common ground they shared in the past as well as the reasons why key states opted not to ratify the treaty as drafted.

Third, the project will democratize our knowledge about the treaty’s origins, not only by traditional academic publications but also a series of Sources and Methods posts hosted here by the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project under the auspices of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ History and Public Policy Program. These posts will contextualize from archives around the world primary sources that cast light on the attitudes and positions taken by key states: nuclear-club members such as the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France; threshold states such as Japan, Israel, India, Sweden, West Germany, Italy, and Brazil; neutral countries such as Ireland, Egypt, Yugoslavia, and Mexico; and uranium and thorium exporters such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, and Czechoslovakia. These primary sources will also be incorporated in the Wilson Center’s Digital Archive and organized into an Interactive Treaty Guide connecting preambular statements and operative articles to documents that speak to why they were drafted how they were. The Interactive Treaty Guide will also feature a photo archive, a chronology, and biographical sketches of the treaty’s major architects. These features will be rolled out over the next six-to-twelve months with the goal of making available to policymakers, practitioners, academics, and the global public a comprehensive and trustworthy resource on the treaty’s historical origins.

The NPT embodies a nuclear charter for humanity. We believe the best way to improve current debates about the meaning and purpose of the treaty is to make information about the efforts of those who collectively fashioned it as widely available as possible. In “Re-writing the Constitutional History of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” we not only affirm the importance of diplomacy to the rise of global nuclear governance. We better appreciate the reasons why so many embraced an inherently unequal treaty in the contexts of Cold War, territorial disputes, decolonization, and the globalization of nuclear science and technology.

Consortium Members

Scholar

Institutional Affiliation

Principal Investigator

Professor Kendrick Oliver

University of Southampton

Deputy Investigator + USA/USSR/France

Dr Jonathan Hunt

U.S. Air War College

United Kingdom

Dr Malcolm Craig

Liverpool John Moores

Australia

Professor Joe Siracusa

RMIT University

Japan

Dr Fintan Hoey

Franklin University

Canada

Dr Jack Cunningham

University of Toronto

Egypt

Dr Hassan Elbahtimy

King’s College London

Israel

Dr Ori Rabinowitz

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

India

Dr Joshi Yogesh

National University of Singapore

Sweden

Dr Thomas Jonter and

Dr Emma Rosengren

University of Stockholm

West Germany

Junior Professor Andreas Lutsch

German Federal University of Administrative Sciences

Yugoslavia

Marko Miljkovic

Central European University

Italy

Professor Leopoldo Nuti & Dr Giordana Pulcini

University Roma Tre

Ireland

Dr Mervyn O’Driscoll

University College Cork

Czechoslovakia.

Dr Michal Onderco

Erasmus University Rotterdam

South Africa

Dr Anna-Mart van Wyk

University of Johannesburg

Brazil

Dr Carlo Patti

Federal University of Goiás

IAEA

Dr Elisabeth Rohrlich

University of Vienna

Mexico

Luis Rodriguez

Stanford University

This blog post forms part of a project on the constitutional history of the NPT funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.