It is time for the West to develop a new policy on nuclear proliferation. The highly partisan Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, which allowed only the US, Russia, Britain, France and China to retain nuclear weapons, has been gradually eroded, as Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea and, briefly, apartheid South Africa, have unofficially joined the club. Now Iran, too, may be trying to develop the bomb, and has threatened to withdraw from the treaty, as North Korea did in 2003.

LRB 22 June 2006 | PDF Download