Left Flank

TNR's J. Peter Scoblic attacks the cynical conservative argument against the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

While pressuring the nuclear states to disarm, the NPT's most significant accomplishment has been to reassure non-nuclear states that they don't need the bomb, and in the past four decades more countries have given up nuclear weapons programs than have started them. In hindsight, the NPT seems like a diplomatic no-brainer.

But in 1968, it wasn't. Conservatives like Senator Barry Goldwater and right-wing organs like National Review railed against the NPT because it didn't fit into their binary, us-versus-them view of U.S. foreign policy. Conservatives distrusted international entanglements, and they feared that participating in a global security compact would simply embroil the United States in the problems of others. More specifically, they saw the Cold War as a battle between good and evil, and not only did negotiating the NPT require talking directly with the Soviet Union, they feared the treaty would undercut the fight against communism by forbidding us from giving nuclear weapons to our allies.

The Johnson administration had considered these arguments but ultimately decided that the proliferation of nuclear weapons had changed the way the world operated, undermining a zero-sum worldview in which a gain for us was automatically a loss for our enemies and vice-versa. Whatever the ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons had made security interdependent--not only between the superpowers, but among all nations. As a presidentially appointed commission reported, «the Soviet Union, because of its growing vulnerability to proliferation among its neighbors, probably shares with us a strong interest in preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons.»

The treaty, then, was more than just a good deal for the nuclear-weapons powers; it was a manifestation of a growing emphasis on collective security--like the United Nations, but more effective, because the United States and the Soviet Union were working with, and not against, each other despite their rivalry. It marked a different way of conducting international diplomacy.

Powered by ScribeFire.