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Breaking the rules without quite stopping the bomb: European views

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Pierre Lellouche
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Extract

While nonproliferation is no longer in the focus of international attention in the aftermath of the Afghanistan crisis, the problem of checking the spread of nuclear weapons was the subject of an intense controversy between the United States and Europe throughout the 1970s.

Beginning with the Ford administration policy and continuing with the new Carter nonproliferation policy, a major nuclear controversy opposed the American and European nuclear suppliers.

The first area of controversy was the question of technological transfers to the Third World and the conditions for such transfers (embargoes on sensitive technology, IAEA safeguards). The controversy also spread into the area of the plutonium economy—i.e., breeders and reprocessing. On both of these questions, most of the problems raised in the 1970s are still open despite some rapprochement between European and American positions. Major points of disagreement remain in the aftermath of the INFCE: full scope safeguards, the question of breeder reactors, and plutonium economy. The major uncertainty for the future will be whether nuclear energy as a whole will remain in the present state of depression or whether nuclear programs throughout the world will grow again.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Winter 1981 , pp. 39 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1981

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References

1 See Goldschmidt, Bertrand, Le Complexe Atomique (Paris: Fayard, 1980).Google Scholar

2 Neff, Thomas and Jacoby, Henry D., “Nonproliferation Strategy in a Changing Nuclear Fuel Market,” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joskow, Paul L., “The International Nuclear Industry Today: The End of the American Monopoly,” Foreign Affairs (07 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Lellouche, Pierre, “International Nuclear Politics,” Foreign Affairs (Winter 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 A good summary of all these events is to be found in Goldschmidt, B., op. cit., pp. 411–80.Google Scholar

5 See Lellouche, Pierre, “France in the International Nuclear Energy Controversy: A New Policy under Giscard d'Estaing,” Orbis 22, 4 (Winter 1979).Google Scholar

6 France sold a single power Gas Graphite to Spain, in addition to the Dimona research reactor exported to Israel; the FRG had managed to export only one PHWR to Argentina.

7 Statement by Arthur Goldberg, American Ambassador to the United Nations in May 1968, quoted in Kaiser, Karl, “The Great Nuclear Debate—German-American Disagreements,” Foreign Policy 30 (Spring 1978).Google Scholar

8 See Wohistetter, Albert, “Spreading the Bomb Without Quite Breaking the Rules,” Foreign Policy 25 (Winter 1976–1977).Google Scholar

9 Parenthetically, it is important to note that this situation of mutual suspicion about the other side's commercial motivations runs throughout the entire controversy: as noted, such suspicion was evident in the mid 1970s with respect to nuclear exports to the Third World, but it also reappeared later in the plutonium controversy which we shall analyze in the following section.

10 Kaiser, , op. cit., p. 89.Google Scholar

11 In this connection, it is useful to recall that the United States did conclude an unusually liberal safeguards agreement with EURATOM (as compared with its overall policy at the time) in order to promote the “penetration” of the U.S. nuclear industry in Europe in the late 1950s. (See Donnelly, Warren H., “Commercial Nuclear Power in Europe: The Interaction of American Diplomacy with a New Technology,” U.S. House of Representatives, Science Technology and American Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1977).Google Scholar

12 See Mendershausen, Horst, “International Cooperation in Nuclear Fuel Services: European and American Approaches,” P -6308, (Los Angeles: The Rand Corporation, 12 1978).Google Scholar

13 While this reasoning is often perceived in the United States as a convenient justification for European nuclear exports in the Third World, it is important to note that (1) such reasoning is widely shared in Europe and (2) it has been proven correct by history (recall for example the failure of U.S. attempts to prevent the Europeans from acquiring an autonomous enrichment industry).

14 Lellouche, Pierre and Lester, Richard, “The Crisis of Nuclear Energy,” The Washington Quarterly (Summer 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 This economic element has played an important part in the decision announced in September 1978 to cancel the contract signed with Pakistan. Politically, this cancellation was also useful in terms of U.S.-French relations: by behaving in a “responsible” manner in the exports area, the French could demand in return more consideration on the part of the United States for France's plutonium program.

16 Interestingly enough, these proliferation risks are not limited to the HEU itself, but to the plutonium to be produced by Osirak. Here, the matter is further complicated by the interference of another European supplier, namely, Italy, which is currently building a large plutonium “hot cell” in Iraq and is training a large number of Iraqi technicians in Italian facilities in reprocessing technology. In so doing, Italy also hopes to sell a large commercial reactor to Iraq and to secure stable oil deliveries.

17 Iraqi oil represents 20 percent of total French oil imports, ranking second behind imports from Saudi Arabia.

18 See Nucleonics Week, 31 May and 27 September 1979.Google Scholar

19 Ibid.

20 For example André Giraud, then head of the French CEA, assessed the breeder's contribution to the uranium issue in 1978 in the following terms: “France owns estimated natural uranium reserves of 100,000 tons. While these reserves are not large, consumed in light water reactors, they nonetheless represent 800-Mtoe, or one-third of the North Sea oil reserves. Through the use of breeder reactors, this uranium can produce 50,000-Mtoe, the equivalent of all the Middle East oil reserves.” A speech before the Conference of the Japanese Atomic Industrial Forum, 8 May 1978, CEA, Notes d'Information 4 (April 1978).

21 Weinberg, Alvin M., “Nuclear Energy: A Prelude to H. O. Wells’ Dream,” Foreign Affairs (04 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 For an analysis of the SERENA agreement, see Lellouche, Pierre, Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Non-proliferation Strategy (New York: Praeger, forthcoming, spring 1981).Google Scholar

23 In this respect, the turning point was the Uranium Institute speech “Balancing Nonproliferation and Energy Security,” by Joseph Nye in July 1978 in London. (See Mr. Nye's article in this volume for a discussion of this evolution as perceived in the United States.)

24 Americans, of course, and especially those who were closely associated with the Carter policy, argue that the administration's original policy was never meant to threaten European interests and that, therefore, it did not have to change in this respect. (See Joseph Nye's article in this volume.) To Europeans, however, this explanation is highly debatable. U.S. policy as announced in April 1977 and the U.S. attitude as evidenced in the INFCE nearly three years later are considerably different. Indeed Mr. Nye implicitly recognizes this change when he refers to the “pragmatist” line and the “evolutionary” concept which characterized U.S. policy beginning in mid-1978.

The point is that this change was forced upon the United States by the resistance of European and other foreign countries and was not just the product of bureaucratic factors inside the Carter administration.