Nuclear Sharing - Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Considerations

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Considerations

Both the Non-Aligned Movement and critics inside NATO believe that NATO's nuclear sharing violates Articles I and II of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which prohibit the transfer and acceptance, respectively, of direct or indirect control over nuclear weapons.

The US insists that its forces control the weapons, and that no transfer of the nuclear bombs or control over them is intended "unless and until a decision were made to go to war, at which the NPT treaty would no longer be controlling", so there is no breach of the NPT. However, the pilots and other staff of the "non-nuclear" NATO countries practice handling and delivering the US nuclear bombs, and non-US warplanes have been adapted to deliver US nuclear bombs which involved the transfer of some technical nuclear weapons information. Even if the US argument is considered legally correct, some argue such peacetime operations appear to contravene both the objective and the spirit of the NPT. Essentially, all preparations for waging nuclear war have already been made by supposedly non-nuclear weapon states.

At the time the NPT was being negotiated, the NATO nuclear sharing agreements were secret. These agreements were disclosed to some of the states, including the Soviet Union, negotiating the treaty along with the NATO arguments for not treating them as proliferation. Most of the states that signed the NPT in 1968 would not have known about these agreements and interpretations at that time.