S8 Ep546: ### Segment 7 Headline: Nuclear Proliferation Challenges and the Future of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Summary: Henry Sokolski discusses China's nuclear ramp-up, the upcoming NPT review conference, and how the war in Iran impacts global efforts to contro

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I'm John Bachelor, nuclear weapons, the nature magazine, the premier magazine of science

from Europe reports that China tested a nuclear weapon in 2020, China, the peoples of

public of China.

I welcome Henry Sikowski, the executive director of the nonproliferation policy education

center because that fact that has been advanced by authority in the Trump administration puts

into motion a lot of talk about different arrangements to control the proliferation

of nuclear weapons these last 80 years.

Henry, a very good evening to you, the new start treaty is gone.

There are no controls to my knowledge between Moscow and Washington about their nuclear

arsenals.

One reason it's gone is that China did not participate, anticipating another meeting in the spring

of this year, nonproliferation treaty organization, which has been in place since 1970 is my

memory is meeting because it may be broken or need repair.

Right now, the president of the United States in his explanation to the American people

why the attack on Iran now, which has roiled markets and is going to cost a great deal

of blood and treasure.

The argument is that Iran was close to a nuclear weapon that it could use against the United

States.

Therefore, proliferation is in the wind.

Where do we go, Henry, with an NPT, where do we go with controlling the nuclear arms spread

that's now underway or could be underway, given the number of states that are suggesting

they need a weapon?

Good evening to you.

Good evening.

Always great to be on your program, thank you.

Where we're headed with regard to the NPT review conference of the end of April is we're

going to send a pretty senior delegation, I'm told, and their aim is to hammer away at

the point that Article 6 of the treaty says that nations who have nuclear weapons need

to negotiate good faith to control and eventually eliminate them, and that China has repeatedly

refused, quote unquote, until we get to equality with you, which is not what the treaty says.

Not only that, they're getting close, they get 600 weapons supporting the Pentagon on

their way up to God knows where.

They're acquiring warheads, like there's no tomorrow, it's quite a ramp up.

All right, so the question then occurs, if we go to this meeting and we will, and we

want to talk about China, a lot of other members of the NPT, which is almost the entire

world, they're going to want to talk about, well, Iran, and you say that you're fighting

proliferation literally by bombing Iran, is that the right way to do it?

We have provisions in the treaty that could control it.

I think the question then is do we want to interpret those provisions in a tough fashion

so that we have a justification for the war or that would have NPT cover, or do we not

want that?

I mean, we want to be able to operate freely of any rules and make our minds up on our

own as to who's a proliferator, and who do we bomb?

Certainly, if we go down that route, one danger is every country will take that as their

model.

It could lead to a lot of bombing.

How the story ends, I don't know, but that's what's in play at the end of April.

Do we entertain the possibility that the nonproliferation treaty is inadequate and that it's

going away?

Well, the whispering campaign on that front began arguably when we kicked the old lady

of the NPT down the stairs with the India agreement where we winked and said, well, India

has nuclear weapons, but we, and normally that would mean they can't get the benefits

of civil nuclear energy until they give up their bomb, but we'll look the other way and

say, oh, well, we like to do business with India so much we don't care.

So that effort to disobey or ignore the NPT began at least a decade ago or more.

And I think it can go further, but if we're going protesting that China isn't obeying

Article 6, we're kind of everywhere or, you know, we're schizophrenic on this.

I think there are people in the current administration that think treaties are for chumps and they're

not wild about being restricted and besides, we don't like enrichment in Iran, but we're

going to help Saudi Arabia.

It's pretty clear, make nuclear fuel and enrich it with nuclear cooperation and the deals

already can cut, they just haven't decided for whatever reason to put this before Congress

and get the clock ticking yet, but that's in tow.

So maybe we want freedom of action, you know, such that we go to the NPT, we beat up China,

we don't get what we want and then maybe afterwards we say, well, the heck with that, we're

just going to go every which way we want.

I don't know where we're headed.

I don't know.

Mr. McCraw and the president of France has spoken of using French weapons to be deployed

in Europe, that parts of Europe that are under threat.

I don't know whether that means he will continue to control them or not.

It wasn't clarified in the report that I read.

Well, it was quite clear, he will.

All right, then it will be similar to what Mr. Putin tells us that he deployed nuclear weapons

in the Belarus, though he remains in control of them.

Well, there's one difference.

Macron made it very clear that the deployment would not be to a permanent storage area.

It would be planes flying in with perhaps the weapons on them and flying out as soon

as the crisis was over, whereas the Belarus and the NATO deployments are permanent in

that the weapons are put in storage bins, if you will, or in bunkers, and left there

on the soil.

So there'd be that difference as well.

I think they call it forward deterrence instead of extended deterrence, is how the academics

are addressing with distinction between these two things.

As a non-academic and an amateur, that sounds like what Oscar Wilde would say, a distinction

without a difference.

Well, I don't know.

I think there's a bit of a distinction.

You know, the Norwegians, I believe, and certainly the Swedes, have said, well, we will possibly

accept nuclear weapons on our soil in time of war.

Now, what exactly is war time now is become quite a topic of academic theology, or, you

know, I mean, God knows when are we in a state war?

The argument is, we don't want them on our soil permanently, but if there is a crisis,

we would welcome a visit, and we would expect that visit to be concluded and fly away back

home to where it came after the crisis was over.

I think it's subtle, but I do think it is different.

The Iran War right now, is it about the nuclear weapon that Iran can have in future?

And does that tell states that acquire a nuclear weapon or seek to without the permission

of NPT or the U.S. or New Start, whatever the transnational organization is?

If you try to acquire a weapon without permission, we will bomb you, is that the message?

Well, yeah, I think it becomes that, and I'm not sure we've fought through with that,

what the implications of that message are.

I think the administration has moved to a number of explanations of why it started the war

when it did, and has begun to settle on the idea, well, we have to do this preemptively

this war because they were going to get nukes, and they were going to use them not only

on the neighbors, but on us.

And the question is, well, who gets to determine when you go bomb a country?

Putin, of course, has argued that Ukraine has reactors, and therefore they're covertly

making bombs with them, or that Britain and France are helping them get dirty bombs.

This becomes sort of a free-for-all, where nothing is modulated by anyone's judgment

other than the country that feels threatened or has a desire to bomb another country.

It's kind of wild, wild west.

Now, I know we're not supposed to support anything that constitutes international law because

it doesn't have an enforcement, but you might want to encourage people to live up to

a certain criteria before they start wars.

I mean, this is sort of the project, if you will, of Western international diplomacy since

the Congress of Vienna in 1815, so it's not nothing.

It's just the question is, do we want to defer to it at all?

That's what's in play.

Within the month, the non-proliferation treaty organization will gather and consider

the facts of the Iran War and the threat of proliferation uniformly in Europe.

Henry Sikowsky is the executive director of the non-proliferation education policy education

setter.

I'm John Batschler.

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Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right

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