The future of the international nonproliferation regime

The nuclear nonproliferation regime should be strengthened in order to meet the needs of an unstable international security environment, says Hiroyoshi Kurihara, Senior Executive Director of the Nuclear Material Control Center in Tokyo. He proposes that Japan can contribute more actively to strengthening nonproliferation efforts by considering the establishment of a regional confidence building mechanism to monitor peaceful nuclear activities in the Northeast Asian region. The establishment of such a mechanism is vital, he says, if the nations of the region are to develop confidence in each other such that war, and particularly nuclear war, between them will become impossible.