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Problems of Proliferation: U.S. Policy and the Third World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

R. F. Goheen
R. F. Goheen
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

The issue of nuclear proliferation is replete with problems to which there are no surefire solutions. In this essay, this troublesome terrain is examined in three different but complementary ways: first, through case studies of the nuclear dealings of the U.S. with India and Pakistan; second, in a broad review of incentives toward and dampers on the spread of nuclear weapons; and third, in terms of implications for national policy.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , January 1983 , pp. 194 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1983

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References

1 N. Ram, former Washington correspondent of The Hindu, using confidential sources in both governments, presents an extended and detailed account of the 1981 and early 1982 bilateral negotiations on the Tarapur issue in “India's Nuclear Policy: A Case Study in the Flaws and Futility of ‘Noproliferation’” (unpub. monograph prepared for the 34th Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Chicago, April 2–4, 1982, pp. 69–92). Evidence cited by Ram underscores the fact that political rather than technological concerns governed India's decision not to break away and proceed with reprocessing and recycling of the spent fuel accumulated at Tarapur. At several points, India's nuclear energy establishment was ready to sever ties with the U.S.; its external affairs establishment was not.

2 I was present at a 1979 meeting where President Carter emphasized to Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who was then India's Foreign Minister) that India had other suppliers to turn to, so that the U.S. intention was not to coerce but to seek to persuade India to accept America's position on safeguards. The Foreign Minister's reply was to stress the obligation into which the U.S. had entered in 1963 and thus, implicitly, to disclaim any interest in looking to other suppliers. Generally parallel responses were later evoked when I informally made similar suggestions to Indian officials in New Delhi.

3 As of mid-November, Indian, resistance to a French effort to extend the scope of existing safeguards provisions at Tarapur, so that safeguards on fuel supplied by France would be continued in perpetuity, has delayed the signing of the new supply agreement. At the same time, according to a New York Times report of October 18, 1982, from New Delhi, French officials have assured India of the necessary replenishment should India's stock of low enriched uranium fuel near exhaustion prior to final resolution of the safeguards question.

4 An excellent though rather sensationalized work of investigative journalism on Pakistan's nuclear activities is Weissman, Steve and Krosney, Herbert, The Islamic Bomb (New York: Times Books, 1981).Google Scholar

5 Although the Symington Amendment calls for similar penalties for exporters of these technologies, those provisions have never been applied.

6 Foreign Broadcasts Information Service publication MEA-81–121, Washington, D.C., June 24, 1981.

7 Seaborg, “Explosives Issues,” review of Dunn's, Lewis A.Controlling the Bomb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, in New York Times, May 26, 1982.

8 “Presidential Statement on United States Non-Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Co operation Policy,” The White House, July 16, 1981. See also Under Secretary of State Kennedy, Richard T., “Nuclear Common Sense,” Current Policy, No. 382 (Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of State, March 22, 1982).Google Scholar

9 Allison, and Halperin, , “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” in Tanter, Raymond and Ullman, Richard H., eds., Theory and Policy in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 72.Google Scholar