Water, Blood, and the Nuclear Club

Abstract

Abstract China’s Bomb set into a motion a series of events that resulted in the late 1960s in the signing of a non-proliferation treaty—an agreement that, by century’s end, would bind together nearly 200 participating governments. In their zeal to attract other countries into agreements about non-proliferation and safeguards, nuclear states—led by the United States—recommitted to the multiple promises of the peaceful atom. Two of the most politically volatile regions on earth, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, would see bloody conflict in the 1960s and beyond, at the same time that politicians promoted nuclear programs there under the banner of the peaceful atom. If non-nuclear nations agreed to forgo weapons development in exchange for access to the atom’s civilian applications, those applications needed to be perceived as valuable, even if based on a mirage.