Between Shadow and Light: The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Forty Years On

摘要

The NPT was negotiated during the Cold War period to prevent the emergence of new nuclearnplayers by distinguishing between “nuclear-weapon states” (NWS) which had carried outnnuclear testing before 1 January 1967, that is the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom,nFrance and China, and “non-nuclear-weapon states” (NNWS). Under the NPT, the two groups ofnstates commit to comply with a series of commitments formulated around “three pillars”: