|
The reasons NOT to gain nuclear weapons as a small country are numerous. If you are a rogue/unique (depends on your perspective) nation like N. Korea or Israel, then it might be worth it, but nukes are incredibly expensive and a liability as well as an asset. Building a few nukes for say a terrorist type of attack is not so hard, but maintaining a viable nuclear deterrant indefinitely is a major national program. Nations which once were a 'rogue/unique' case but ceased to be such later have abandoned their nuclear weapons programs for precisely this reason (re: S. Africa). You also can see this in the willing abandonment of nuclear weapons by former Soviet states like Belorus and Ukraine, who recognized the high cost and risk of such systems without seeing commensurate benifit given their position in the world.
The Bush Administration has a bad record of supporting NPT activities for those kinds of states, despite their rhetoric about the dangers of WMDs. But on the whole, nations like Belorus have gotten a lot of help from others under NPT to dismantle their nuclear facilities, and small nations have seen benefits. For example Clinton bought Moldavia's MiG-29s that had nuclear carrying capabilities to keep them off the global arms market.
So in general, with the exception of a few states with very unique situations, nuclear weapons are not necessarily a good option at all, NPT or no NPT. Thus at least using the NPT as a goal and framework for doing what they can to slow down proliferation and to encourage nuclear powers to not bulk up but instead wind down their arsenals is not a bad thing for most signatories to the treaty.
Josh
|