But "the NPT is not really followed in the US," Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear on Wednesday.
It's also "not really followed by the other nuclear weapon states," Mellow said, noting, "they think the NPT is just for non-nuclear weapon states."
The whole idea behind the NPT was for existing nuclear powers to gradually reduce the number of warheads in their nuclear stockpiles down to zero while mitigating non-nuclear states from gaining nuclear capability, according to Mello.
Last October, during the same meeting in which US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson allegedly called President Donald Trump a "moron," the 45th president said he wanted a tenfold increase in the amount of America's nuclear weapons stocks, which sit at around 4,000 warheads. Trump later denied stating he wanted such an increase.
Following an unlikely election victory, Trump tweeted three days before Christmas 2016 that "the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes."
The draft version of the nuclear posture review also calls for expanding the range of scenarios in which retaliating with a nuclear strike is allowable to include devastating cyberattacks.
"The nuclear posture review has not been completed and will ultimately be reviewed and approved by the president and the secretary of defence," the Pentagon said in a statement last week, when the draft was published by the Huffington Post. "As a general practice, we do not discuss pre-decisional, draft copies of strategies and reviews," the Pentagon noted.
