M. Hoell¹

¹ELN (European Leadership Network)

Abstract:

A half-century has passed since the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) embedded into international law a normative and legal barrier prohibiting the horizontal proliferation of nuclear armaments. Once praised by President Lyndon B. Johnson 'as the most important international agreement since the beginning of the nuclear age’ , the NPT has come under intense pressure in recent years, due to a mosaic of endogenous and exogenous dynamics. Despite a plethora of propositions for strengthening the NPT the international community and the academy have paid little attention to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) as a viable NPT stabilizer. This is puzzling for two reasons. First, the prospect of the CTBT appeared to play a major role in effecting the unconditional and indefinite extension of the NPT at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference. Second, support for the CTBT is stronger than ever, with 184 signatures and 167 ratifications. This thus begs the following these research questions: is there a link between the CTBT and the NPT? and why is the CTBT often at the fringes of arms control discussions, despite its near-universality? Therefore, this paper focuses on finding answers to the above questions.