Controlling the spread of nuclear weapons:

How effective are international institutions and international law?

Controlling the spread of nuclear weapons:

How effective are international institutions and international law?

One of the major concerns of today's world is the threat of nuclear proliferation. States today are attempting to acquire, or have already acquired, nuclear materials and systems for the production of these weapons, along with delivery systems such as missiles and airplanes. Today, after decades of the first display of the tremendous power of nuclear explosives, there exist many international political and legal mechanisms, which include treaties, agreements, security measures, and export control systems that are used to attempt for putting a barrier to the spread of nuclear weapons.

The testing of the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 during the WWII embarked the world on new race of nuclear arms. The power that was possessed within it was astonishing for everyone, even for those who constructed it. During the war, the US decided to use the atomic bomb for surrendering the Japanese leadership and dropped one on the city of Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki that brought deaths to thousands of people or nearly more than half of the population of the two cities (Sidel & Levy, 2007). Following the two attacks, Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, which was then followed by calls for a ban on nuclear weapons so that the arms race of this devastating nature could be put to a stop. The United States and the Soviet Union were in agreement that this bomb should be kept under foolproof international control (Noble Prize, 2013). Although the declarations were made, there was nothing done in this regard, while the Soviet Union launched secret programs to align with the progress that US had made so far. The failure to prevent a nuclear arms race was followed by the development of Hydrogen bombs, which were thousand times more powerful than those used by the US on the cities of Japan. The next few years saw Britain, France, and China also following suit to the practices of US and Soviet Union.

This raised fears of many military experts and political leaders that such a spread of nuclear weapons was to continue if there was not done anything in this regard. An attempt to put a barrier to such developments, an international agreement was negotiated with an aim to prohibit the spread of nuclear weapons without banning the use of this energy for meaningful purposes. Hence the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened for signature in 1968. When the Treaty came into effect, the states were placed in two categories, with the five states possessing nuclear weapons at that time, placed in one category while all the other non-nuclear states in the other category. With the signing of the treaty, the nuclear states agreed on not helping anyone in acquiring or building nuclear weapons while those non-nuclear states agreed on not acquiring or developing nuclear weapons or explosives ...