Sometimes a small incident can teach volumes. Nigeria, a failing state with a rising number of Muslim extremists, recently completed the construction of a nuclear plant fueled by weapons-grade uranium (WGU). It has been able to do so without violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). And it is hardly alone.

The reactor has been built by China as part of that country’s efforts to establish strong relationships with states that can provide the energy and resources it keenly seeks. Nigeria claims that its new reactor will be used only for “…scientific research which includes soil mapping to quantify different elements in the soil to boost agricultural production and to reduce the use of chemical fertilizer as well as for solid minerals identification in Nigeria.” The project’s peaceful purpose would be guaranteed by the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as the Nigerian government has frequently assured concerned observers.

Despite such assurances, the reactor leaves the world with another failing state too close to acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. The reactor’s fuel, nearly 1 kilogram of uranium, is enriched to contain 90 percent of the uranium 235 isotope—a weapons-grade concentration. In this, Nigeria is hardly alone. Other nations, such as Syria, Egypt and Brazil are considering building similar facilities. India, among others, plans to expand its already existing WGU facilities. Countries like Russia and Germany offer to help build such reactors.

At the same time, the US and its allies are working to convince—and pay—other nations to convert their WGU-using reactors into facilities that rely on lowly enriched uranium, or to other sources of energy that cannot be used for making bombs. This drive, known as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, has been initiated by the Bush Administration mainly to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on WGU, especially in failing states where the government’s control of fissile materials is particularly unreliable. Stopping the use of WGU also makes it less likely that a rogue state will make nuclear arms on its own.

In short, building new reactors that draw on WGU, as China has in Nigeria, as Russia has in Iran, and as the US is seeking to do in India—is like storing gasoline in houses next to a forest-fire.

The schizophrenia of making and marketing more of the same products that one is simultaneously seeking to recall is built into the prevailing international regime. Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is fully legal for nations to build dual-use assets; assets that can be used for research, energy and medical purposes, but which can also be used to make nuclear bombs. Although the NPT presumes that inspectors will ensure that such assets are used only for peaceful purposes, it is no secret that inspectors have often been fooled in the past. Furthermore, nations may quit the treaty (after brief notification), and take their newly acquired dual-use assets with them. Under this regime, as North Korea has proven.

Underlying the NPT’s approach is an assumption that nations will act in good faith and that they are led by responsible and effective governments. These assumptions are dated to the era in which the treaty was created, in the 1970s, long before the rise of the numerous failing states that today are equipped with nuclear capabilities.

Another major problem with the NPT is that it lacks any means of enforcement. If and when the IAEA finds a violation that the nation involved refuses to rectify, the IAEA must then look for other bodies to impose sanctions or otherwise make its tenets stick.

The Nigeria case (and it is hardly alone) illustrates that the international community must move to a different norm and towards new modes of enforcement. A new norm would ban the construction and use of dual-use assets and allow only those that cannot be used for military purposes.

The resistance to a different regime comes not only from those who benefit from proliferation (or hold that it is of little harm or that it can be contained by counter-proliferation), but also from people who want to promote and defend the NPT and the concepts around which it is built. They typically argue that the NPT has been successful in preventing many nations from going nuclear and that replacing it would undermine whatever limited anti-proliferation norms and arrangements are now in place. All this is true enough, but I am not suggesting that the NPT should be scrapped. Rather, I argue that a whole new regime should be constructed around it—like a new office building around an old-fashioned restaurant and its loyal customers.

Disregarding the question of whether the following building-stones should be added to the old structure or whether a new one is to be built, the Nigerian case highlights that any reliable regime must entail the following elements: (a) those nations able to build nuclear reactors should commit themselves to build reactors that can only be used for non-military purposes. (b) The reactors that have dual-use capacity should be converted so that they can be used only for civilian purposes. This measure should be first introduced in failing and rogue states, but should be expanded over time to include all others. (c) Even lowly enriched uranium should be supplied from an international bank, run by a supplier group, rather than be locally enriched. (d) Nations that have built nuclear arms should be encouraged to give them up, as were Libya, Belarus, and Ukraine. Thus, Nigeria’s new reactor, of limited importance in itself, has numerous implications for a new deproliferation regime.

****

Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at the George Washington University. For more in depth discussion of the topic, consult Security First: For A Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 2007). www.securityfirstbook.com