Now, the NPT is far from perfect, but, today, only four additional countries possess nuclear weapons—India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—and the number of nuclear weapons in existence is less than a quarter what it was in 1985, when the figure peaked at more than 63,000. But it's important that we think about the achievements of the NPT when we criticise its failings, not because New Zealand is not ambitious for nuclear disarmament—because we very much are—but because the best weapon against the current cynicism and pessimism about the prospects for disarmament is to remember what the NPT has achieved, often in very difficult times. 