Nuclear Technology, Weapons, and the Third World

The decade ahead is likely to witness a diminished capacity by the protagonist powers to control the universalization of that nuclear technology most suited to eventual military purposes. The fast-breeder reactor and centrifuge-enrichment, two nuclear developments on the threshold of commercial feasibility, are the most foreboding. They would provide, as by-products of the generation of electricity, two fissionable materials used in making nuclear weapons: plutonium and enriched uranium. This technology will be developed by industrial countries, like Germany and Japan, but it could be exported to countries in the Third World, where it is fervently believed to be the key to economic development. The prospects that the Soviet Union and the United States will effectively curb the spread of this technology seem poor because mutually reinforcing economic, status, and security incentives will undermine the diplomatic leverage of the superpowers and lead to relaxed safeguards. Thus, even a Nonproliferation Treaty ratified by most threshold and Third World countries would not prevent the eventual formation of a base for nuclear technology amounting to a real military option in many developing countries.