Australia's role in nuclear disarmament

‘Fatal Choice’ forces readers to challenge these views through compelling facts and reasoned argument, all in a slim-looking 178-pages.

Richard Butler has a reputation for straight talking and displays it from page one to the very end. Given the deadly subject to which he has devoted more than 30 years of work, it is not surprising to understand why. I doubt Australia has ever seen a tougher diplomat.

The world, 33-years ago, reached agreement and signed a treaty compelling each country to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obliged non-nuclear states like Australia to never develop the capacity for nuclear weaponry. Significantly the NPT also obliged the nuclear powers, primarily the US, Russia, China, France and UK, to reduce and eliminate their stock of weapons.

Very few countries remain outside the ‘non-proliferation family’. But the NPT now, is perhaps under more threat than at any other time in its history.

So-called ‘rogue’ states – Iran, Iraq and North Korea – cheat from within their treaty obligations. They develop weapons programs and seek to perfect delivery systems that threaten the security of the Middle East, Asia and in the end the world.

People and countries could easily dismiss the activities of these states. After all, with leaders like Saddam Hussein, what better can be expected?

Butler concludes, however, that:

The challenge to safeguard the non-proliferation regime comes also from the crass hypocrisy of the major nuclear powers.

They have consistently failed to undertake obligations to reduce their stock of nuclear weapons postponing, perhaps forever, the time when they will be eliminated from the world.

Instead, the US, Russia, France, China and UK turn a convenient blind eye to the activities of ‘rogue’ states, using their activities only when convenient to highlight a threat to their own national security.