Perspectives on the Revival of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Regime in the Wake of President Barack Obama's Prague Speech

Abstract

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States promised a shift in the fortunes of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime after a near decade of intransigence and frustration. This article examines what has been achieved in the wake of Obama's speech in Prague in April 2009, where he articulated the goal of a world free from nuclear weapons. Since the Prague speech, the effective norm of the NPT has been re-energised through a number of initiatives, including UN Security Council resolution 1887, the New START agreement and the agreed final document at the NPT review conference in May 2010. However a number of big challenges continue to face the NPT regime, including the nuclear programs of Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the continued fallout from the US-India civil nuclear deal. The article concludes that the NPT continues to play a role in creating parameters within which powerful states face some constraints; and, crucially, that the Treaty maintains an international consensus that proliferation of nuclear weapons, even by democratic states, is a threat to global security. However, the NPT has not and will not replace power politics.