Armscontrolwonk.com is always an interesting read if that's a topic that floats your boat. But today's post by Jeffrey Lewis should be of interest to a wide audience interested in foreign affairs. Lewis tackles the assertion, found in a recent retrospective by Foreign Policy magazine, that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is the number one disappointment in the past thirty-five years.

Lewis takes us back to the situation in the early 60s, when the US was realistically looking at anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five countries having nuclear weapons by the 1970s. As Lewis notes:

Before the NPT, nuclear weapons were seen by many people as just another weapon, part of any modern military’s future arsenal. In fact, virtually all the non-Warsaw Pact countries on this list seriously considered a nuclear weapons program.

Australia, Sweden and Switzerland all had active nuclear weapons programs. The NPT helped changed that.

Lewis also explains why he thinks it's a bum rap to hang on the NPT the failure to stop Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The NPT may be in the need of some overhauling, especially as nuclear energy returns to the power menu in reaction to the limits on oil and gas for meeting global energy requirements and to concerns about global warming. But as Lewis argues, it's a good idea to understand what the NPT has indeed accomplished before we trash it.