The Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime – Policies and Regulations towards Non-Party States

Measures introduced to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons are commonly related to the non-proliferation regime. This regime comprises an integrated network of treaties and standard setting arrangements (unilateral, bilateral and multilateral) which provide a comprehensive framework to regulate the behaviour of states in the nuclear area. The participation of all states in the system was envisaged by the rules framed by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the most understudied aspect of the non-proliferation regime. Most states adhere to a greater or lesser extent to the terms initiated by the NPT, but India, Israel and Pakistan never joined the NPT although they developed nuclear arsenals. India and Pakistan have declared themselves to be nuclear weapon states whilst Israel has maintained the policy of nuclear opacity and ambiguity. North Korea is not a parallel case because it first joined the NPT, then withdrew in 2003 and later tested nuclear devices thus violating the treaty norms. India and Pakistan maintain their sovereign right and possess strong concerns about the rules initiated by the NPT, regarding it as a discriminatory treaty. However, the non-proliferation regime appears, and is, incomplete when three nuclear weapon states (India, Israel and Pakistan) remain outside the NPT treaty. Therefore, it is important to study non-proliferation policies and regulations through the themes of regime theory to regulate non-party states’ behaviour. Within regime theory, there are differences between three schools of thought (power-based realism, interest-based neo-liberalism, and norms-based constructivism), each of which emphasize a different variable to account for international regimes. The contributions of these schools to the creation of institutions are compaexamine the role of the NPT as an element of the non-proliferation regime.