The interesting article by Pierce Corden and David Hafemeister misses a crucial issue in the discussion of nuclear nonproliferation treaties and their implementation.

President Dwight Eisenhower, in his famous 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that followed and codified it, did not directly address what the world should do about countries that do not sign the NPT, have withdrawn from it, or violate its mandates. The situation has gotten complicated largely because the US and the Soviet Union and its descendant states—the Russian Federation in particular—have failed to squarely address the matter.

Starting in August 1945, I and others who realized that the world now knew how to destroy itself assumed that assistance on peaceful nuclear issues and even financial help for nonnuclear power sources would be withheld from nations that did not sign onto or violated the NPT.

Neither the Soviet Union nor the US took action against nonsignatories India, Israel, and Pakistan, nor against North Korea, which former president Jimmy Carter encouraged not to withdraw from the NPT but which has violated it. That failure continues in our approach to Hassan Rouhani, president of Iran.

As a signatory of the NPT, Iran has no right to make nuclear weapons, but it does have a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. If Iran withdraws from the NPT (after the required six months’ notice), it will have as much right as any country to make nuclear weapons (rights that we would prefer they did not exercise)—even more than the US or Russia, nations that would still be bound by the NPT with an agreement to disarm. Rouhani basically asked the US to agree to those rights, after which Iran would be sensible and enrich uranium only for peaceful applications. By refusing to recognize the logic described above, we encourage countries to stay in the NPT, even when they ignore its dictates, instead of persuading them to be sensible.

The authority of the NPT is further complicated by the refusal of US politicians, and hence the public, to realize that disarmament in exact synchronism with the adversary is not necessary. Actually, the “side” that disarms first saves money by not having to maintain its extensive stockpile.

Physicists have the training to understand those issues. In fact, for many years the world blamed physicists for bringing them the atomic bomb and trusted physicists to know what they had wrought. Physicists still have an obligation and a duty to understand and explain those matters and not be content with a mere statement of the treaties. Their involvement should include helping colleagues in other countries explain to their government and people the importance of these issues. The future of civilization may well depend on us. Let us not fail the world again.