Sunset over Atomic Apartheid: United States–South African nuclear relations, 1981–93

Abstract

This article, based on multi-archival research in the United States of America and South Africa, analyzes the nuclear relationship between South Africa and the US during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton Administrations, by tracing South Africa's journey to non-proliferation during the last decade of the Cold War. During the Reagan years, anti-communism and the Cold War formed a major component of US foreign policy and dictated a closer nuclear relationship between the US and South Africa, coupled with US non-proliferation efforts vis-à-vis South Africa. At the end of the 1980s, the US efforts coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of Soviet support and indeed a nuclear war potential from Southern Africa. In late 1989, South Africa at last gave up its nuclear weapons development and destroyed all its nuclear weapons, followed by signature of the NPT in July 1991.