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David Krugler, The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam, Journal of American History, Volume 111, Issue 3, December 2024, Page 612, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaae234
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Extract
The Nuclear Club provides an in-depth history of the fitful international negotiations that produced the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Npt). The treaty's greatest accomplishment, limiting the possession of nuclear weapons to a handful of states, overshadows baneful effects. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction has so far deterred nuclear powers from direct war with one another but, Jonathan R. Hunt argues, “the scourge of war continues to afflict those denied membership in the world's most exclusive club” (p. 3). The creation of an international nonproliferation regime has also empowered the nuclear club, especially the United States, to intervene in other nations' affairs to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons. At the same time, the Npt “extended to nuclear science and technology a world order based on the imperial presidency” (p. vi).
A merit of The Nuclear Club is Hunt's delineation of the conflicting motives driving nonproliferation. For many, nonproliferation was essential to save humankind from annihilation. This view led to the 1958 Irish Resolution, which called for nuclear-free regions of the world. Similarly, the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco, brokered by Mexico, pledged to keep nuclear weapons out of Latin America. The United States and the Soviet Union broadly shared the goal of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, but the United States insisted that a nonproliferation agreement allow the deployment of nuclear weapons in the territory of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) allies. Soviet and Warsaw Pact member opposition to such deployment impeded negotiations. Nations freeing themselves from colonial control (most notably, India) worried that nonproliferation would enable continued Western domination of them. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson both recognized the domestic political utility of nonproliferation. In early 1964, Johnson outlined to the Soviets an agreement based on nontransfer of nuclear weapons technology, no further sharing of fissile material, a testing ban, and limits on strategic arms. However, Johnson waited until the eve of the 1966 election to put his full support behind a draft treaty in an attempt to offset concerns about the Vietnam War and a growing backlash against the Great Society.
