The NPT was opened for signature on 1 July 1968, with the US, the Soviet Union, and the UK defining themselves as nuclear weapons states. France and China joined the treaty about 25 years later. These five permanent members of the UN Security Council exploded nuclear devices before 1 January 1967, fulfilling the treaty´s definition of a nuclear weapons state. Nuclear weapons coupled with the power to nuke UN Security Council resolutions vest disproportionate power in these states.

It has gone largely unnoticed until recently that Israel has been a de facto nuclear weapons state since that time, thanks to the covert support of the governments of France, the UK, and the US, which do not appreciate being reminded of their shared responsibility for this major proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world´s most volatile region. Israel has been a fly in the nuclear ointment from the very outset.

Perhaps the most glaring deficiency of the NPT lies in the hierarchy at the heart of the NPT regime since it entered into force in 1970. The treaty distinguishes between the privileged nobility of the nuclear weapons states and the lumpenproletariat of the non-nuclear weapons states. This is scarcely surprising, as its key drafters were the US and the Soviet Union, then at the height of their cold war power, each with its international retinue of camp followers and despots. Although the two superpowers possessed vast arsenals of nuclear weapons, they wanted to ensure that no one else would challenge their already overwhelming superiority.

But if the superpowers were to launch a multilateral non-proliferation treaty, it would be meaningful only if it was universally accepted. How could they lure a politically diverse and self-interested international community into depriving itself of the very nuclear weapons that were at the heart of their own power and influence?

The three nuclear weapons states offered a Faustian bargain. In return for a binding and strictly verifiable undertaking not to proliferate nuclear weapons, non-nuclear weapons states were promised participation in the “fullest possible exchange” of equipment and materials for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. At this time the world still harboured the innocent conviction that the peaceful use of nuclear energy offered a solution to many of its most pressing problems. For many years states were able to enrich and stockpile even large quantities of uranium with a minimum of fuss and bother. For their part, the nuclear weapons states looked forward to enormously profitable nuclear contracts worldwide.

The international community would never have bought into the NPT if it had believed that it was affirming the exclusive right of nuclear weapons states to possess nuclear weapons in perpetuity. To defuse such concerns, the treaty included undertakings to achieve “at the earliest possible date” the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to take effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament. States signing up to the treaty even undertook to pursue negotiations on “general and complete disarmament under effective international control”. Last year the US produced more than half of total world exports of conventional arms, with Russia and the other nuclear weapons states also playing key roles.

As the treaty does not rule out concurrent negotiations on conventional and nuclear disarmament, there has been no legal impediment to beginning negotiations on general and complete disarmament. In the meantime some Russian voices have been saying that Russia may consider nuclear disarmament only if there is parity between its conventional forces and those of the US – a wildly improbable scenario. In clear contravention of the treaty, conventional rearmament is becoming a precondition for nuclear disarmament. By making their progress towards nuclear disarmament contingent on ever-changing and unfulfillable conditions, the nuclear weapons states have subverted their own undertaking to disarm.

To neutralize any concerns that the two superpowers of the day might take advantage of their massive nuclear overkill capacity to intimidate others, the treaty affirmed that states “must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” It is no secret that the US and some other nuclear weapons states have been violating this important treaty provision almost daily, yet have been immune from scrutiny by either the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or the UN Security Council. While the IAEA´s decision-making organs exhaustively monitor the implementation of the NPT´s non-proliferation provisions, they omit to subject the fulfilment of this and other treaty requirements to the same rigorous scrutiny, or to any scrutiny at all.

This discriminatory application of the treaty is partly based on the treaty itself, which, in Article III, excludes nuclear weapons states from inspection and verification of compliance with the treaty´s safeguards requirements, while committing non-nuclear weapons states to an intrusive and demanding inspection regime requiring the reporting of anything that might remotely resemble a nuclear facility. The nuclear weapons states, on the other hand, are not required to provide the IAEA with any information at all about their own compliance with the treaty. Their nuclear weapons and facilities are immune from IAEA inspection and verification procedures. When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advised the world of just how many warheads are currently held in the US arsenal, she was inadvertently testifying to the flawed and discriminatory character of the NPT regime. The IAEA should have been in possession of such information from the very beginning, and should have the power to inspect and verify its accuracy. Whereas the Chemical Weapons Convention, for example, mandates the inspection and verification of all chemical weapons facilities, including on the territory of declared possessors, the NPT is silent on this point, while the IAEA tiptoes around this embarrassing question.

If nuclear weapons states maintain that they are not enhancing the effectiveness of their nuclear stockpiles, the IAEA is currently not empowered to inspect and verify those claims. Although a growing body of research suggests strongly that the US has been refining and improving the effectiveness of its nuclear warheads for some time now, the IAEA and the UN Security Council, which have both been dominated by the nuclear weapons states, remain silent in the face of this.

While the nuclear weapons states coyly conceal their nuclear parts beneath the fig leaf of the NPT, they are now applying pressure on wavering non-nuclear weapons states to sign an Additional Protocol authorizing even more intrusive inspections. The time has come for non-nuclear weapons states to make their signing of the Additional Protocol conditional on the acceptance by nuclear weapons states of comprehensive and intrusive inspections of all their nuclear facilities. If the NPT is to enhance its shattered credibility, it must be perceived as non-discriminatory and as applying in equal measure to all players.

There is, however, a ray of hope: although nuclear weapons states are currently exempt from inspection and verification of their nuclear facilities, the treaty´s wide-ranging definition of the purpose of review conferences mandates the unrestricted application of all treaty articles other than Article III, to all states party to the NPT. This is currently not being done. Although the treaty defines the function of review conferences as ensuring “that the purpose of the preamble and provisions of the treaty are being fulfilled”, the IAEA does not report systematically and comprehensively on the role played by individual states parties in relation to each and every article of the NPT.

If the NPT fails to become a level playing field enjoying the respect of all states, it will continue to fall prey to its own discriminatory and contradictory character, with all the consequences of that.