Gwynne Dyer: Nice speech on nuclear weapons, Mr Obama, if a little mixed up

President Barack Obama. Photo / AP

Speaking in Moscow this month, President Barack Obama was the very soul of reasonableness. The United States and Russia must co-operate to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, he said.

"America is committed to stopping nuclear proliferation, and ultimately seeking a world without nuclear weapons," he said. Unfortunately, that is the wrong way around.

The deal that underpinned the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed way back in 1968, was that the five great powers who already had nuclear weapons would gradually get rid of them.

In return, the rest of the world's countries would not make them. But more than 40 years later, none of those five countries (the US, Russia, Britain, France and China) has kept its side of the deal.

In the circumstances, it's remarkable that only four more countries have developed nuclear weapons. Three of them (Israel, India and Pakistan) never signed the treaty at all, and the fourth (North Korea) signed it in 1985, quit it in 2003, and then tested its first bomb in 2006. But the queue of those who are thinking about doing it stretches down the block.

"Any (treaty) ... has to have a sense of fairness and equity, and it is not there," said Mohamed El-Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, two months ago. "We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power, you are buying insurance against attack. That is not lost on those who do not have nuclear weapons, particularly in (conflict) regions."

It was probably the US invasion of Iraq that made the North Koreans go nuclear, for finding yourself on President Bush's short list for invasion is bound to be a bit unnerving. That may also explain why the Iranians put their nuclear programme into high gear - although there is an ideological difficulty here.

Just last month, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared once again that "Nuclear weapons are religiously forbidden in Islam."

So how does Khamenei reconcile this principle with the obvious fact that Iran is relentlessly developing all the technologies needed to build nuclear weapons? "Virtual nuclear weapons," of course. You continue to the point where you could build your first nuclear bomb in only a few months - and then you stop.

So far, all legal and morally correct. But if a hostile nuclear-armed country starts making threats, you quickly cover the remaining distance and presto! You have your own nuclear deterrent.

"This is the phenomenon we see now and what people worry about in Iran," said El-Baradei in May. "And this phenomenon goes much beyond Iran. Pretty soon ... you will have nine weapons states and probably another ten or twenty virtual weapons states."

It's legal because another part of the deal that underpinned the non-proliferation treaty gave all the signatories the right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

The only thing that can stop the rapid spread of nuclear weapons now, argues El-Baradei, is a genuine move by the existing nuclear powers to get rid of their weapons.

It has to start with the US and Russia, who still own 95 per cent of the world's nuclear weapons. The agreement the US and Russia signed on July 6doesn't begin to meet that requirement, proposing only that the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will reduce their long-range nuclear weapons by up to a third within seven years. That's not enough.

But maybe they're just trying to lower expectations. Maybe, by the time they actually finish negotiating the treaty in December, it will decree 90 per cent cuts within three or four years. That might be enough to stop the proliferation.

El-Baradei got it right. If that is done before the old treaty comes up for review next April, "you would have a completely different environment. All these so-called virtual weapons states ... will think twice ... because then the major powers will have the moral authority to go after them and say: 'We are doing our part of the bargain. Now it is up to you'."

But the existing nuclear powers have to move first.