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Superpower Imperialism and the "Peaceful Uses" of Atomic Energy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

Ashok Kapur
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Extract

The "peaceful uses only" clause is one of the most widely used and abused clauses in the postwar history of nuclear politics. Contrary to what we might expect, the terms "peaceful" and "military," as defined in various atomic energy agreements, are not antonymous. For two decades the terms have been used in different ways without any consensus about what they mean even between two parties to an agreement. The various meanings given the terms reflect certain value-premises, and the values are in turn based less on logic than on the policy needs of specific states. Definitions reflect and foster a distinction between nuclear weapons states and nonnuclear weapons states, between the nuclear superpowers and those states which have sophisticated civilian nuclear programs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Worldview , Volume 16 , Issue 9 , September 1973 , pp. 50 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1973

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References

Notes

1. H.J. Bhabha, “The Need for Atomic Energy in the Under-developed Countries,” Proceedings of the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Vol. I (Geneva, 1958), p. 404.

2. W.C. Clemens, The Arms Race and Sino-Soviet Relations (Palo Alto, Calif., 1968), p. 35.

3. For a discussion see J. G. Stoessinger, The United Nations and the Superpowers, 2nd ed. (New York, 1970) ch. 8.

4. “Safeguards and the Dissemination of Military Power,” Disarmament and Arms Control (Autumn, 1964), p. 436.

5. See India's proposal in P.C. Szasz, Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna, 1970), p. 352. See also Article II of IAEA's statute, which is focused against furtherance of “any military purpose.“

6. This is a standard clause in IAEA statutes and NPT (Article III).

7. The 1967 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America (the Tlatelolco Treaty), Article 5.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.