Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

Chapter 15. NPT: The Right to Withdraw291violations of the Treaty at all, however, other states still theoreticallyhave the right to openly and legally withdraw from the Treaty aftergiving the three-month notice stipulated in Article X.1, having acquiredthe nuclear material, technology, and experts over time underand through it.This risk has been further compounded as the non-nuclear stateshave developed components of the nuclear fuel cycle, in particularthe capabilities of enriching natural uranium (especially if it ismined in the particular country) and reprocessing spent nuclear fuelto recover its plutonium. 4 Such technologies can allow a state to reducesubstantially the amount of time it takes to accumulate enoughweapons-grade nuclear material to produce a number of nuclear devicesafter withdrawing from the NPT.The Right to WithdrawThe right to withdraw from the NPT (as is true for any treaty, in particularthose dealing with disarmament issues) is an integral elementof the national sovereignty of all of the Treaty participants. Any attemptto curtail this right (such as in the mid-1980s, when the SovietUnion proposed concluding an agreement with the United Stateson setting a timeframe within which they would agree not to exercisetheir right to withdraw from the ABM Treaty) would be legallyabsurd and politically unacceptable. After all, the grounds for a stateto withdraw from agreements of this sort are “threats to its supremeinterests,” thus, to demand that a state waive its right to withdraweven in the case of a threat of this magnitude would be preposterous.Moreover, any effort to block a state’s right to withdraw in contradictionto the provisions in the NPT could actually have an oppositeeffect: its disintegration. Since each country when joining the Treatyhad accepted its provisions in their entirety, including Article X.1on the right to withdraw, any attempt to redo any single key provisionretroactively could “dump” the whole bundle of articles.Nevertheless, withdrawal from the NPT must not become a routine,formal, or fully arbitrary action. As explained in Article X.1,withdrawal is to be preconditioned upon serious circumstances,the justification of which is not to be a matter of mere legal formalitybut logically entails a set of procedures. Given the logicallyindisputable nature of the spirit of the NPT, most experts