While the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] adjures its signatory states to pursue nuclear disarmament, there is no NPT provision for specific progress toward that goal. The view is now spreading that the time has come for a new treaty, to replace the NPT and to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Frederick Mattis summarily responds to the following objections to such a treaty [convention] in this month's Daisy Alliance Blog.

1. If a few states, or even just one, refused to join a nuclear ban treaty, it would be weak and inadequate.
2. Even if states' nuclear arsenals are abolished under a unanimously joined treaty, that would not prevent states from stockpiling chemical or biological weapons.
3. A state could simply withdraw from an enacted nuclear ban and thereby destroy the nuclear weapons-free world.
4. A state could undermine the treaty, or gain advantage on other states, by enacting national (domestic) treaty implementing legislation that is inadequate or contradictory to treaty terms, or by submitting false or misleading nuclear declarations (for baseline verification purposes) to the treaty regime.
5. Even with the nuclear ban fully and successfully enacted, a state nonetheless at some future time could break out of the worldwide treaty and thereby end the nuclear-free world and its security benefits.

By Frederick N. Mattis, author of Banning Weapons of Mass Destruction, published by ABC-Clio/Praeger Security International; ISBN: 978-0-313-36538-6.