Strategic Panorama 2009 - 2010 - IEEE

Vicente Garrido Rebolledo
regime for the aforementioned reasons. This makes the NPT the most
universal international legal instrument (after the Charter of the United
Nations), but also a rare example of the establishment of institutionalised
discrimination in international law.
The nuclear non-proliferation regime, of which the NPT is the maximum
expression, is based on an essential premise and a balance of commitments
in three different areas of nuclear activity. The premise is not
to recognise any new nuclear states, only those which have conducted a
nuclear test before 1 January 1967 (article IX.3). The commitments consist
of: 1) non-proliferation of nuclear weapons for states not in possession of
them prior to that date (article II); 2) nuclear disarmament for states possessing
them (article VI); and 3) the guarantee that nuclear energy be used
for peaceful purposes for all states (a particularly controversial aspect
which is addressed in article IV of the Treaty).
Unlike other treaties, such as the Convention on Chemical Weapons
and that on Biological Weapons, the NPT establishes two «categories»
of states with different binding regimes depending on whether they are
nuclear or non-nuclear states. It entrusts an existing organisation, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), set up in 1957 to provide
technical assistance and encourage peaceful uses of nuclear energy, with
responsibility for verifying the nuclear activities of the States Parties to the
Treaty, through nuclear safeguards. However, the implementation of the
safeguard system is uneven, as the military activities of the nuclear states
are expressly excluded.
The NPT legitimates possession of nuclear weapons by a few states
and bars the vast majority from manufacturing (including technical assistance
for this purpose), acquiring, receiving (directly or indirectly) and
storing nuclear weapons and other explosive nuclear devices (article II). In
practice, only the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China are
considered de iure nuclear states. The rest of the states are given the consideration
of non-nuclear-weapon countries and accordingly must accede
to the Treaty with a non-nuclear status. This is the case of the nuclear
former Soviet republics of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which undertook
through the Lisbon Protocol to START I, signed on 23 May 1992, to
sign the NPT as non-nuclear states (23).
(23) On the debate on the ratification of the Lisbon Protocol see GARRIDO REBOLLEDO,
V., «El futuro del arsenal nuclear soviético», Anuario del CIP 1991 - 1992, Edit. Icaria,
Barcelona, 1992, pp. 125-138; «Problemas Nucleares en la CEI: ¿un futuro incierto?» in
Cuadernos del Este, No. 8, editorial Complutense, Madrid, 1993, pp. 79-86.
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