The Nuclear Bargain That Betrayed the World - July 1, 1968

On July 1, 1968, the United States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the most widely joined arms control agreement in history, and a promise to eventually eliminate nuclear weapons altogether. More than fifty years later, the nuclear powers still have their weapons, three unsigned states have built their own bombs, and the treaty's foundational bargain has never been honored. This episode examines what the NPT got right, what it got catastrophically wrong, and why the gap between those two things is one of the most consequential unresolved problems in the world today.