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The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which was extended indefinitely in 1995, provides a comprehensive legal structure of rights and obligations designed to protect mankind from nuclear aggression and accidental extinction. Yet its implementation takes place in a political environment of uncertainties and controversies. The still existing universality gap,1 an apparent implementation gap (Iran), and the absence of effective measures towards general and complete nuclear disarmament � which are to be seen against the background of the global challenge that non-state actors are getting access to weapons of mass destruction � call for urgent and effective measures to increase implementation of the NPT and ensure compliance with its rules. Any of these measures at first requires an interpretation of the Treaty.
Interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not provide an article-by-article commentary to the NPT, a task that Daniel Joyner undertook in the first chapter of his previous book, International Law and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and that has meanwhile been supplemented by the Final Document of the most recent NPT Review Conference.2 The present book is rather a monograph on important principles and rules of the Treaty including its three pillars: peaceful use of nuclear energy (Preamble, paragraphs 4�7, and Articles IV�V); nuclear disarmament (Preamble, paragraphs 8�12, and Article VI); and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (Preamble, paragraphs 1�3, and Articles I�III). The author convincingly claims the equal relevance of these pillars on the basis of the textual context and the negotiating history and he critically evaluates their perception by important states parties over time. His book is �thesis-driven�, in that it undertakes to reveal �distorted and unsustainable policy positions, particularly among Western, nuclear-weapon-possessing states�. It is the policy of these states to request non-nuclear-weapon states
