Unfulfilled Promises of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Challenges ahead: An Attempt to Survive or Gradual Collapse?

Since the emergence of the Non-proliferation Treaty, the nuclear powers by ignoring two pillars of “disarmament” and “transfer of peaceful nuclear technology” have simultaneously preserved their nuclear arsenals and posed serious challenges to the NPT by focusing only on its non-proliferation dimension and putting pressure on non-nuclear states. These discriminative behaviors have resulted in disagreement between the member states and seriously jeopardized the integrity of the regime. Therefore some scholars by expressing concern about its legitimacy are looking for a way to survive it. Therefore, the present article by using a descriptive- analytical approach aims to analyze the nature, objectives and pillars of this treaty as well as present the pros, cons and challenges of the NPT. It would also try to evaluate whether imbalances in equal attention to the three pillars of the treaty will ultimately lead to its decline or there is still hope for improvement and expansion of this regime? The results of this paper reveals that despite the failure of complete nuclear disarmament due to the heavy consequences of its termination, it seems unlikely that by ignoring some of its achievements, efforts to reform this regime be abandoned and eventually lead to the downfall of the treaty.