NPT needs an Equal Rights Amendment

Arming to the teeth only encourages one's neighbors to do the same. If the UN had put real teeth in the disarmament provision of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) so the nuclear weapons states would face tough sanctions for not dismantling their nuclear arsenals, it would have been far easier to persuade the non-nuclear states to stay non-nuclear. Perhaps taking that step wasn't possible in the climate of fear pervading the Cold War years, so we're stuck with a treaty that was designed to maintain the nuclear weapons status quo.

But where's the fairness in a treaty that institutionalizes the nations of the world into "have" and "have not" camps? People respond positively to fairness, negatively to unfairness. Even the idiots who wrote the NPT knew that. The resulting covert race for nuclear weapons by non-nuclear states was entirely predictable based on this simple understanding of human nature. That's why so much of the treaty was crafted to deal with the kind of cheating that its inherent unfairness was predicted to trigger.

A treaty that confers equal nuclear weapons rights on all nations is much more likely to succeed in the long run. Which shall it be, nukes for everybody or nukes for nobody?