Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Proliferation and National Security: Views from the South

Abstract

A study of nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation in the 1980s requires an assessment of efforts in the post-1945 world to develop international regimes to control proliferation and the nuclear trade.¹ So far efforts at regime-making have been based essentially on northern initiatives and northern interests. The approaches adopted — through the mechanisms of the NPT and IAEA safeguards — have contributed to the southern view that the United States and its northern partners (including the USSR) were, and remain, unwilling to permit change in global power relations. In that sense the issues of nuclear trade and nuclear proliferation go beyond the safe management of fissile materials. Since the mid-1940s international nuclear negotiations and the process of gradual nuclearisation of the southern international environment reveal a linkage between nuclear power development, nuclear trade and power politics.