It’s a 50-year-old compromise that helped pull the world back from the brink of nuclear war. And today, it’s future hangs in the balance.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),  signed in 1968 by the United States, Russia and other major world powers, stipulated that countries with nuclear weapons would take significant steps to reduce their stockpiles, and those without arsenal wouldn’t attempt to acquire them.


As our latest Above the Noise video points out, the treaty  didn’t stop nuclear proliferation altogether, but it did help dramatically slow the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. As a result, 16 nations agreed to abandon their budding nuclear programs. Nearly every nation in the world has now signed on to it (with a handful of notable exceptions). And while Russian and the U.S. still posses the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, the total number of warheads worldwide has dropped sharply:  there are roughly 15,000 today, down from around 70,000 in the 1980s.

But with renewed U.S.-Russian tensions again on the rise, and leaders from both nations pushing to rebuild their nation’s nuclear arsenals, the NPT faces its biggest challenge yet. That’s particularly worrisome given the pace of nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Iran, among the handful of countries not part of the deal and who pose a threat to the U.S.


Who’s involved (and who isn’t)?

  • The NPT designates five parties as nuclear-weapon states (NWS): China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  These are nations that exploded a nuclear device before January 1, 1967. The 185  others are classified as non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS). The NPT is effectively a “grand bargain” between the nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”

What was the NPT created to do?

  • The NPT has three “pillars” or core objectives: disarmament, nonproliferation, and peaceful uses of nuclear technology.
  • Complete elimination of nuclear weapons is the treaty’s ultimate goal, leading to general and complete disarmament. That goal has never been attained.
  • As part of the treaty, the five nuclear states agree to not transfer nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states or encourage them to acquire these weapons; not provide them with any nuclear material for peaceful purposes or technology for its production, except under certain circumstances, must pursue, together with other parties to the treaty, “negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” and  pursue negotiations on a legally-binding treaty on general and complete disarmament.

How is the treaty upheld?


How to Stop a Nuclear War: The Non-Proliferation Treaty, Explained 23 April,2018Matthew Green


Matthew Green


Email:; Twitter: @MGreenKQED

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