YOU could be forgiven for not noticing it, but international endeavours to chart a path to nuclear disarmament fell to pieces this month as two weeks of fraught negotiations in New York between 188 countries ended in failure. The event went unremarked by the world鈥檚 media.
Though the intrigues and intricacies of nuclear diplomacy can undoubtedly become tedious, there are few things more critical to the future of humanity. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force in 1970, but it has not prevented four countries from going nuclear: Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Nor has it succeeded in persuading the US, the UK, France, Russia and China to kick their nuclear habit, despite their repeated promises to do so. At the last review of the NPT in 2000, they all signed an 鈥渦nequivocal undertaking鈥� to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
The NPT鈥檚 central task has been to control the spread and stockpiling of nuclear bombs. In that it has clearly failed. So perhaps no one should be surprised that the nuclear haves and have-nots were at each other鈥檚 throats in New York, and that the talks degenerated into rancorous confusion. There were faults on both sides, plus some weak chairing. But it was the US, abetted by France and the UK, which was primarily responsible for the breakdown. President Bush鈥檚 under-secretary for arms control, John Bolton, kept blocking anything that would have reminded the world of the US鈥檚 promise to disarm five years ago, and this stance was never going to be acceptable to most other countries.
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The world in 2004 doesn鈥檛 feel a safe place, as many delegates in New York pointed out. The meeting was meant to prepare the ground for next year鈥檚 quinquennial NPT review conference. In the event it couldn鈥檛 even agree an agenda, or the documents that should be discussed. Still haunted by the threat of nuclear annihilation, the Doomsday clock on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists stands today at 7 minutes to midnight, exactly where it was in 1960 and in 1980.
None of this means that the NPT should be abandoned. It remains one of the world鈥檚 best hopes for nuclear disarmament. But until the US and its nuclear allies are at least prepared to start talking about giving up their bombs, we can forget any hope of real progress.