This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batch with Henry Sikolsky, the executive director of

the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center, and we go to the Non-Proliferation Treaty

of 1968, became an effect in 1970. It's a Cold War document, and it applies in all directions

to nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states. And I read from Article 1, each

non-nuclear weapon state party to the treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from

any transfer or whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of

control over such weapons or explosive devices directly or indirectly.

Non-nuclear weapons state party. That would be Belarus, for example. Henry, thank you

for helping me with this treaty because it reaches back to a period that's difficult to

frame here in the 21st century. The world was constantly within moments of a nuclear

armageddon. Vietnam was a catastrophe for the US. Soviet Union was a slave state. That

was then, however, this treaty is still with us today. Right now, the plain language

reading from Article 1 says that Russia just violated Article 1 and that Belarus just

violated Article 1. Is there another way to read this?

Yes, they did. And I'm not saying picking sides, but there are two ways to interpret it.

And oddly enough, the folks that would say they haven't violated would include probably

most of the NATO states starting with the United States of America. Well, why is that?

At the time of the negotiations over this treaty, particularly in the mid-60s, the United

States was considering not just having positive control over weapons that might place on

the front line in Europe against the Soviet Union, positive control means no one can use

these till we give the word. They were thinking about having joined custody in some fashion

of a force of submarine, circus ships, bombers, and they kept negotiating for several

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