An interesting read from Time on how a legal loophole allows the United States to maintain nuclear weapons in Europe which in a nightmare scenario could allow Dutch, Belgian, Italian and German pilots to engage in nuclear war.  These bombs are not militarily necessary and are politically unpopular in the host countries.  However, they are justified on political grounds to bind the NATO allies together and even more ludicrously (particularly since one of the problems with NATO is the defense spending cuts by the Europeans after the Cold War) to prevent a nuclear arms race on the continent.  It is also the type of legal parsing that hurts American credibility when it tries to prevent other countries from acquiring the bomb.

Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons was a difficult task to begin with before additional complications were added into the picture.  The NPT’s arbitrary time line dividing nuclear and non-nuclear powers does not help (and was a big reason why India refused to sign the treaty in the first place).  Then you have the tacit understanding that Israel has nuclear weapons but will never be criticized for it because they are deemed essential for its survival.  Countries like Japan are widely believed to have the knowledge necessary to produce nuclear weapons on a moments notice (which is what some observers believe Iran is really after).  And then the Bush administration muddled the picture further with talk of developing tactical nuclear devices.

It is not hard to see why conspiracy theorists come to the conclusion that non-proliferation is really designed to divide the world into permanent nuclear haves and have-nots with special rules applied to countries in American favor.

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