Читать книгу Disarmament and Decommissioning in the Nuclear Domain - Jean-Claude Amiard - Страница 41

Switzerland committed itself very early on, as early as 1945, to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. This process of nuclearization was halted in 1968, when it signed the NPT, and was then definitively abandoned in 1988.

Swedish research on nuclear weapons began in 1945, conducted by the Swedish National Defence Research Institute (FOA, Forsvarets Forskningsanstalt). In 1955, Sweden was well advanced in its research on atomic weapons. In 1958, the Swedish Parliament had to choose between two programs, L (Loading Program) and S (Protection Program), depending on whether or not it was producing nuclear weapons. In 1968, Sweden was preparing to test an atomic bomb but, for various economic and diplomatic reasons, the government decided to dismantle its military nuclear program to join the negotiation process that would lead to the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty [JON 01, JON 10].

Two South American countries, Brazil and Argentina, had secretly developed military nuclear programs [GOL 06]. Changes in political regimes, with the fall of the military and the takeover by civilians in both countries, led to a renunciation of the bomb in the 1980s. This led to the creation of a regional bi-national safeguards agency in 1991, known as the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) [GOL 18].

In 1991, at the time of the dissolution of the USSR, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine possessed nuclear weapons on their territory. These three countries became independent and returned them to Russia. Thus, an agreement was signed in 1991 (Budapest Memorandum) between Russia and Ukraine. Under this agreement, Ukraine received sovereignty and territorial safeguards and, in return, it returned its nuclear arsenal to Russia. The annexation of Crimea and continued Russian aggression on Ukraine’s eastern border directly defied this agreement [MEY 19].