Is the NNPT dead?

I'm afraid that I didn't buy the New York Times story that Israel were attacking a Syrian nuclear site in the earliest days of it's development, as it made utterly no sense to me why Israel would be so very coy about what she had done.

The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state. The Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of Israel’s strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature.

Perhaps it did happen just as they say. Perhaps even the Israelis couldn't reasonably argue that an imminent threat was coming from a nuclear site which won't be completed for a decade, which is perhaps why they are being so coy about it. Perhaps another reason for the attack was to warn Iran that she might be next.

But even taking Israel at her "leaked-but-never-officially-confirmed" word that this was a nuclear reactor - and adding to this the US and Israel's objections to Iran developing nuclear power, despite this being legal under the rules of the NNPT - one must come to the conclusion that with Israel behaving in this way, and with the US apparently conniving in this Israeli behaviour, that the NNPT is dead in all but name.

I agree with LGM on this one:

The treaty has always been open to charges of unfairness, since it legitimized the nuclear programs of a select number of states while delegitimizing similar programs in other states. This was a deal worth upholding, based on the principle that fewer nuclear states is better than more nuclear states.

The deal also ensured that signatories would have the capability to engage in peaceful nuclear activity, some of which is indistiguishable from the opening steps of a long term weapons program. American complicity in this strike means that the deal is as good as dead, and has been replaced by a de facto arrangement in which states that the US approves of are allowed to have nuclear power, while states we dislike get airstrikes.

Remember, one of the obligations of the NNPT was, not only that states should desist from acquiring nuclear weapons, but that nuclear states should take steps to disarm. It was bad enough when the United States announced their plans to build a new range of bunker busting nuclear weapons, which is illegal under the treaty, or when Blair announced a new range of Trident submarines, again sending the signal that the NNPT was for others to obey whilst we carried on regardless building our new nuclear arsenals.

However, Israel's attack on Syria - if, indeed, it was an attack on the kind of facility they claim - takes preventative strikes into a new area altogether.

We are now being asked to accept that it is legitimate for Israel to attack another country because they may represent a threat ten years down the line.

And this attack is being carried out by a nation which is herself a nuclear power who refuses to sign up to the NNPT.

This is now becoming a nuclear club where certain nations have reserved for themselves the right to possess certain weapons and also the right to attack other nations if they attempt parity. We no longer even pretend that there is any sense of fairness to this arrangement. It is do as we say, not as we do.

No wonder no official from the US or Israel will go on the record here. This is simply shameful and immoral bullying.

Tags: NNPT, Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, US, Syria, Israel, UK