The US of A's Weapons of Mass Destruction
May. 2nd, 2005 03:45 pmAustralia's former UN ambassador, Richard Butler, on the five-yearly review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"The bargain in the treaty is breathtakingly simple: those who do not have nuclear weapons promise never to acquire them and those five who do have them promise to get rid of them," explains Butler, but the five "official" nuclear states - the US, the UK, Russia, China, and France - have failed to do so, and the US has made more nukes and added them to its "regular battlefield arsenal".
If you live in one of the five "official" nuclear states, or one of the states which refuses to sign the treaty (India, Pakistan and Israel), or a state which may be clandestinely developing nuclear weapons, why not drop a note to your leaders asking them to do more to eliminate nuclear weapons from the planet? (I'll be writing to Australia's Foreign Minister to support a diplomatic effort to convince the US to fulfil its agreement.)
"The bargain in the treaty is breathtakingly simple: those who do not have nuclear weapons promise never to acquire them and those five who do have them promise to get rid of them," explains Butler, but the five "official" nuclear states - the US, the UK, Russia, China, and France - have failed to do so, and the US has made more nukes and added them to its "regular battlefield arsenal".
If you live in one of the five "official" nuclear states, or one of the states which refuses to sign the treaty (India, Pakistan and Israel), or a state which may be clandestinely developing nuclear weapons, why not drop a note to your leaders asking them to do more to eliminate nuclear weapons from the planet? (I'll be writing to Australia's Foreign Minister to support a diplomatic effort to convince the US to fulfil its agreement.)