LONDON- Nuclear proliferation could be a lot worse than it is. That is part of the pitch the American delegation will make at the forthcoming review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), opening on April 24th. No doubt somebody will quote John Kennedy who foresaw 20-30 nuclear powers by the end of the last century, and make the point that in fact the number is a mere 8. Countries which were about to enter this exclusive deadly club- South Africa, Brazil and Argentina stepped back at the last moment. AND, as President Bill Clinton boasted recently to the Indian parliament, the U.S. and Russia have cut their nuclear arsenals by 13,000 bombs.

Nevertheless, as almost every expert will admit, Western, and in particular American, non-proliferation policy is in disarray. This conference is meant to mark 30 years of what the U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright recently called “the landmark” Treaty- “the bedrock of a total effort to reduce the dangers of nuclear war.”

The Treaty is built on a simple bargain- 182 non-nuclear weapon states agreed to forgo any pursuit of nuclear weapons and in return the then nuclear weapon states agreed not to help others acquire nuclear weapons and themselves would negotiate to disarm.

Cuba, India, Pakistan and Israel never signed the Treaty and have gone their own way; the latter three into nuclear armaments of their own. Although none of them threaten America or Europe the last two years has seen a dramatic shift in opinion by the American military and political elite. The day when the U.S. seriously- and contentedly- felt it could rely on the Non-Proliferation Treaty to keep the non-Soviet and Chinese world from threatening the U.S. with nuclear weapons seems be drawing to a premature close. In its place there is a growing appetite for military options designed to counter proliferation once it has occurred.

The marker was October 13th 1999 when the U.S. Senate rejected by a vote of 51 to 48 the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which successive American presidents from Kennedy onwards had laboured mightily to complete. It was a thin margin, perhaps one that could have been swung to victory if Clinton had had the persuasiveness of Ronald Reagan or the single mindedness of George Bush. But it was no accident. The forces ranged against it were powerful, not just the usual percentage of right wingers who distrust the world outside, but such senators as Richard Lugar, a long time advocate of working in harmony with Nato allies.

America’s reaction to the immediate aftermath of the Cold War had been very different. The Republican- appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, said “I have trouble finding demons”. Yet bureaucracies and think-tanks abhor a vacuum and, as Gilles Andreani has written in a recent issue of Survival, the journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, “the movement of [new threats] to the top of the U.S. security agenda was a natural function of the demise of the Soviet Union. Without a single overwhelming threat to worry about, policy makers and defense planners largely had to fall back on generic contingencies and scenarios against which to devise their strategies and force structures.”

The threatening rogue state has become the new strategic fashion- a “hazy constellation of groups and states whose antagonism towards the U.S. is presumed to be unlimited, whose motives are opaque, whose behaviour is irrational and whose access to modern technology is rather good”.

It seems a scary picture but it does not stand up to scrutiny. And the price for the rest of the world of America becoming an intellectual simpleton and sabotaging all the agreements, treaties and goodwill built up over 30 years is a heavy one. If the U.S. is not interested in the Test Ban Treaty or is threatening unilateral abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty or is not contributing its promised part to the Non-Proliferation Treaty why should anyone else bother?

The trouble with the current American preoccupation with missile defense is that it is seriously bereft of political content. The debate has run away with itself to such an extent that its protagonists, sensing the upper hand ever since they defeated the Test Ban Treaty, feel they only have to mouth the words, North Korea, Iraq and Iran for the rest of the argument to be self-explanatory. But it is not.

The main danger, first and foremost, is the alienation of Russia with whom, pace Mr Clinton, the business of getting rid of the remaining 47,000 nuclear weapons is not just way behind schedule as perceived by presidents Reagan and Bush in their time, it is the central axis of the bargain of the NPT. If this is not addressed immediately, now the Russian election is over, Washington in effect is writing off the Treaty. The incredible victory the U.S. won five years ago to win an “extension of the treaty, without conditions, indefinitely” (these are Mrs Albright’s words) is now seen to have been secured on a lie, a gross misrepresentation of America’s future intentions. If a group of countries is now moved to re-write what they in turn promised- to abjure nuclear weapons- who can blame them?

The second danger is to ignore the lessons of America’s own success in dealing with rogues. When North Korea threatened to break its commitment to the NPT and perhaps build nuclear bombs there were many voices raised in the U.S. suggesting all matter of punishment including aerial bombardment. Mainly because of pressure from South Korea and Japan, the U.S. elected for a non confrontational path and one that brought results, at least thus far. Right now there is no threat of North Korea of becoming a nuclear ballistic missile capable power. (And if it were it would be surely deterred by America’s awesome capacity for retaliation.)

Iran is an easier nut to crack than North Korea. It is no longer a closed regime; it is at least two thirds a democracy . It can be wooed. It has outstanding issues with the U.S. but no outstanding quarrel.

That leaves Iraq. Even if Iraq could build weapons of mass destruction which is exceedingly doubtful with the sanctions now in place, it would never dare use them against the U.S.. It didn’t use its then stocks of chemical and biological weapons against the allies during the Gulf War because it feared revenge. Saddam Hussein knows that if he should dare to try anything it would be the end of him.

America’s best tools are as they have long been- diplomacy, deterrence and good sense. If the U.S. is going to unshackle itself from arms control agreements which at one time it fought so tenaciously to create and insists instead on being free to devise any options or course it deems appropriate, irrespective of what even its closest allies think, then it could produce the very result it is trying to avoid.