Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Safeguards: From INFCIRC/153 to INFCIRC/540 and Beyond

Abstract

The concern that there would soon be a large number of atomic weapons powers is not new. More than 50 years ago atomic weapons were already regarded as the “absolute weapon”.¹ Against that background, the President of the USA, John F. Kennedy, feared in the early 1960s that by 1975 fifteen or twenty states would have atomic weapons at their disposal. Kennedy was mistaken here and many others with him. Contrary to many warnings, the overall balance of atomic non-proliferation policy does report considerable success: of the roughly 40 states which in view of their technical and industrial capabilities would in principle be in a position to start a weapons programme today and produce nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future, only four have joined the five established weapons powers in the past 25 years: Israel, which has never officially admitted to possess nuclear weapons but implied having a nuclear arsenal; India as a self-declared power after its weapons tests in May 1998; Pakistan, responding in kind during the same month; and South Africa, whose government disclosed in 1993 that the country had become a nuclear weapon state in the 1980s but acceded to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1991 as a non-nuclear weapon state after having the weapons programme discontinued and the nuclear weapons destroyed — the first case of complete atomic weapons disarmament. Furthermore, Iraq has attempted to construct nuclear weapons, possibly also North Korea, and they are therefore on a list of suspects together with Iran, Libya and (sometimes) Algeria, even if for these three states there is no more than an initial political suspicion since Algeria’s and Libya’s nuclear capabilities are negligible and Iran’s nuclear programme is relatively primitive today² but expanding, probably with Russian support.³