France, the Nuclear Weapons Test Moratorium and the NPT and CTBT Processes

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The end of the Cold War has signalled a shift in French attitudes towards multinational fora for the control of nuclear arms. Throughout the Cold War France stayed outside the principal treaty processes — such as the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) and the 1967 Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — citing US-Soviet domination of the negotiations and an unwillingness to compromise French independence as amongst the key reasons for non-participation.1 In the changed context of the post-Cold War era France has become acutely sensitive to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, particularly amongst Third World states which have the potential to menace France herself and French interests in Africa and around the world. This threat has motivated France to abandon thirty years of policy continuity and to decide that it is from within treaty fora that French interests can best be pursued and French influence best exercised. Thus France signed the NPT in 1992, in time to play a pivotal role in the renegotiation of the treaty in April/May 1995, and came into the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) framework in order to participate in the negotations which began in January 1994 to end all nuclear weapons testing.