Nuclear Proliferation: South Africa
Background:
South Africa is the only country in Africa to successfully develop nuclear weapons, and then to voluntarily dismantle them. To start Africa’s affiliation with nuclear weapons’, South Africa signed 50-year nuclear collaboration agreement with the U.S. in 1957. A nuclear weapons program was then started in1970 with scientists that were instructed to build various nuclear weapons. By 1990, the president of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk, ended the program with the aim of joining the NPT as a state without a nuclear weapons capability. In 1991 they then joined the NPT and came to a safeguards agreement with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). This was an organization that promoted peace, which they also performed, safeguard inspections. South Africa thus submitted its declaration on facilities and nuclear material inventories, and the IAEA then had to verify the completeness of our inventory.
At this time, South Africa was in control of 10% of the country’s electricity. Between 1979 and 1989, South Africa built and dismantled a lot of nuclear weapons. This made it very complicated for the IAEA to verify them for the first time. In 1993, President F.W. de Klerk announced that six nuclear weapons and a seventh one that was not finished had been dismantled. In 1995, the IAEA declared that is was satisfied with all the materials and weapons program that South Africa had. Although that weapons program had be stopped and dismantled, it still had to be accounted for. In 1996, South Africa signed the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty. It stated that in this zone there would be no nuclear activity happening. In 2002 South Africa signed the Additional Protocol in relat...
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All in all, nuclear weapons are capable of causing mass destruction amongst large nations. With this in mind, the Republic of South Africa believes in the establishment of nuclear free zones in Korea.
If any nations in the area of North Korea have nuclear weapons, the typical conflicts that are already happening could quickly escalate to nuclear conflicts that could cause in amazingly high casualties. And in order to keep this problem under control and safeguard life on earth we need to help keep some extent of peace in the area, and the establishment of the nuclear weapon free zones appears to be an excellent way to do so. Several nations have already pushed for the security of many other nations, even those located outside of the zone, would benefit from it as well.
We can also enforce the NPT so that many nations will see how important keeping nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons are a problem that the world is facing today as countries want to have their
International Panel on Fissile Materials. 2010. Reducing and Eliminating Nuclear Weapons: Country Perspectives on the Challenges to Nuclear Disarmament.
Eric Schollser argues in his paper “Today’s Nuclear Dilemma,” that the nuclear weapons in the world, and the issues that they are associated with, should be of major concern to today’s society. Nuclear Weapons were of world wide concern during the time of the Cold War. These weapons, and their ability to cause colossal devastation, brought nightmares into reality as the threat of nuclear war was a serious and imminent issue. The US and Russia both built up their inventories of these pieces of artillery, along with the rest of their arsenals, in an attempt to overpower the other. This past terror has become a renewed concern because many of the countries with these nuclear weapons in their control have started to update their collections. One
"The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty Has a Proud Record of Success « Nuclear-news." Nuclear-news. Web. 06 Apr. 2011. .
Out of all the dangerous powers and authority our government wields, possibly the most threatening powers are nuclear weapons. People tend to be frightened by things they do not understand, which make nuclear weapons a perfect catalyst for fear. These weapons have the most overwhelming and destructive power known to man; although, nuclear weapons are only safe in countries that try to maintain harmony and stability. Nuclear weapons are defined as “explosive devices whose destructive potential derives from the release of energy that accompanies the splitting or combining of atomic nuclei.” This power is both dangerous and unstable in the hands of small erratic countries.
After World War II the United States and several other nations, including the Soviet Union, continued the development and testing of nuclear weapons. In 1952 and 1953 the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively, detonated the first hydrogen bombs, which proved to be more powerful than the weapons used against Japan. At this time, concerns about the amount and effect of nuclear fallout produced by these weapons grew. In 1955, a group of five countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and the Soviet Union formed a committee as part of the U.N. Disarmament Commission to discuss the cessation of nuclear weapons testing. The committee made little progress over the next several years due to disagreements ove...
Nuclear weapons are the safest defense mechanism in the world. Although nuclear weapons can lead to mass destruction and the loss of thousands of lives when detonated, they are the optimal solution to the conflicts between countries in the future. The actual use of the nuclear weapon is not the deterrent, but rather just the mere fact that a country could use it against another country which avoids the large scale conflict. Thus, nuclear deterrence presents itself as a preferred security option. Firstly, based on deterrence theory, nuclear weapons will lead to Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). This means that if nuclear weapons are used in warfare, either side will not be able to succeed in winning, as the destruction caused by the weapons will be too much for either side to recuperate from. Since the detonation of “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, nuclear weapons have never been used in warfare again. The world saw the destruction which a nuclear bomb could have. Ever since, this has driven fear to never use nuclear weapons. Although many countries possess nuclear weapons today, they have yet to engage in a nuclear war. This has so far maintained “a tense but global peace” (Mutual Assured Destruction, 2014). As the use of nuclear weapons would lead to the ultimate destruction of humankind, nuclear deterrence is a viable security option as shown by the MAD principles, the application of the MAD doctrine throughout history and the current global stability.
To this end, the agency has established the U.S. obligation to the nonproliferation of nuclear material to the international community. Moreover, the dedication of the NRC to the IAEA is well enumerated on NRC’s official website; and according to the NRC Webpage (2012), the activities are to “strengthen the capability of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify a State's commitment regarding the peaceful use of nuclear materials and to prevent the spread of nuclear explosives capability” (“Radiation and National,”
This conflict began developing in 1994 when North Korea announced its intentions to withdraw from the NPT. This led to the US and North Korea signing the Agreed Framework. Under this agreement, North Korea agreed to stop its illicit plutonium production in exchange for increased aid from the United States. While this agreement broke down in 2002, the Six-Party Talks restarted the efforts to stop North Korea from gaining nuclear weapons, involving the aforementioned North Korean, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States. This le...
The question “what is, or should be, the function of nuclear weapons?” for me is an easy question to answer, there should be no function for them. I find no need for nuclear weapons in the post-cold war era; they are massive genocide machines that have no use in today’s time. During the cold war I can easily find reasons for them to be used but the cold war is now over. But in reality it’s known that this is a huge dream and most likely will never be accomplished to rid the world of nuclear weapons, so in a realist point of view and for the purpose of this paper I’ll say that the only logical (yet not truly logical) means of using a nuclear weapon is through deterrence. In this paper I will talk about how I believe it should be done and what opponents to my view believe. I will also talk about how there are many complexities to nuclear strategy and it’s not as easy as just removing weapons. But the main focus on this paper is what should the function of a nuclear weapon be and that’s deterrence.
From the creation of nuclear weapons at the start of the Cold War to today, the world has experienced struggles fueled by the want of nuclear power. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran’s nuclear weapon program are some of the most important conflicts over nuclear weapons. Thanks to the use of nuclear weapons in 1945 to end World War II, the world has come extremely close to a nuclear war, and more countries have began developing nuclear power. Unmistakably, many conflicts since the start of the Cold War have been caused by nuclear weapons, and there are many more to come.
Since its origin in 1948, North Korea has been isolated and heavily armed, with hostile relations with South Korea and Western countries. It has developed a capability to produce short- and medium-range missiles, chemical weapons, and possibly biological and nuclear weapons. In December 2002, Pyongyang lifted the freeze on its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program and expelled IAEA inspectors who had been monitoring the freeze under the Agreed Framework of October 1994. As the Bush administration was arguing its case at the United Nations for disarming Iraq, the world has been hit with alarming news of a more menacing threat: North Korea has an advanced nuclear weapons program that, U.S. officials believe, has already produced one or two nuclear bombs. As the most recent standoff with North Korea over nuclear missile-testing approaches the decompression point, the United States needs to own up to a central truth: The region of Northeast Asia will never be fully secure until the communist dictatorship of North Korea passes from the scene. After threatening to test a new, long-range missile, Pyongyang says it is willing to negotiate with "the hostile nations" opposing it. But whether the North will actually forgo its test launch is anyone's guess. North Korea first became embroiled with nuclear politics during the Korean War. Although nuclear weapons were never used in Korea, American political leaders and military commanders threatened to use nuclear weapons to end the Korean War on terms favorable to the United States. In 1958, the United States deployed nuclear weapons to South Korea for the first time, and the weapons remained there until President George Bush ordered their withdrawal in 1991. North Korean government stateme...
Through the years the countries continue to take steps forward toward peace by allowing families to unite from the North and South. Then North Korea will make a decision with their threat of nuclear weapons that will separate the countries from one another and they are pulled away from each other again. The only solution to the political differences and to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction not only to kill and injury the people of North and South Korea, but also of neighboring countries due to chemical and nuclear fallout that will have years of lasting negative health impact to the world. Not only on land, but our valuable resources in the ocean. If we reflect on our history with this type of nuclear destruction such as in Japan or in Russia we see how this impacts the immediate areas, people and for generations. The world needs to agree that the political leadership in North Korea should be moved. The options for removal are limited and pose significant risks for not only the Koreas’, but for the
Nuclear proliferation is seen as a growing problem in the United States. Some people think that it is fine to ignore the proliferation while others want the solution that comes with the nonproliferation agreement. There is some debate between whether nuclear proliferation is a negative thing or if nuclear weapons can be used for peace. While nuclear proliferation is a negative thing there is people on the other side of the argument who say nuclear weapons are needed in order to find peace (Good Will Blogging). Nuclear proliferation can be solved by the nonproliferation agreement but there are more than one way to solve a problem.
It is a well-known fact that the dropping of the two atomic bombs near the end of World War II in 1945 ushered in the dawn of the Atomic Age. For the first time in human history, the world was introduced to the awesome power of nuclear weapons. Since that time, there have been several different nuclear threats to the world, and one of those threats can be found along the Pacific Rim, in the country of North Korea. Like the dropping of the atomic bombs, it is also known that the North Korean government has admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, and in doing so, it stands as a silent, potential nuclear danger to the rest of the world.