Anne van Aaken

Carole Helbling

On-going controversy about Iran's nuclear program, North Korea's repeated threat to deploy its nuclear capabilities, the United States' and the Russian Federation's decades-old reluctance to nuclear disarmament - the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) seems to be helpless in preventing the dissemination and maintenance of the most devastating weapon. Nevertheless, it succeeded in putting paid to the nuclear proliferation ambitions of the early 1960s and in completely altering the public perception of nuclear weapons, from being a state's prestigious asset to a despicable means to aggression. The main purpose of this thesis is to assess the NPT's overall effectiveness, understood as the Treaty's ability to induce change in a state's behaviour. On the basis of the theories Rational Choice and Constructivism, the states' underlying motivations, the influence of domestic constituencies and other crucial factors for their decision whether or not to comply with their treaty obligations are being analysed. The NPT's inherent double standard, its lack of legitimacy and dwindling credibility are regarded as decreasing the Treaty's effectiveness from within. Moreover, the nuclear-weapon states' lack of disarmament efforts, the absence of India, Israel and Pakistan, as well as the withdrawal of North Korea are further conducive to this impairment. Due to the limited competencies of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as the monitoring body, and the institutional deadlock of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as the enforcing institution, the effective implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is severely restricted and is in urgent need of modification.

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