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F O U R Warheads, Missiles, and Nuclear-Deterrence Strategy Although the open use of nuclear weapons against the RSA [Republic of South Africa] by those powers which possess such weapons and the potential to deliver them can be discarded for the foreseeable future, we must accept that there is a danger that an enemy assuming an African identity such as terrorist organization or a OAU “liberation army” could acquire and launch against us a tactical nuclear weapon. China appears to be the most likely nuclear power to associate herself with such an adventure. —South African memo (1975)1 This quotation from a top-secret memo written by the director of South Africa’s Arms Control Agency in 1975 highlights the fact that President F. W. de Klerk failed to disclose several details about the covert nuclearweapons program in his March 1993 speech to Parliament. Instead, the memo indicates that South Africa strategists and political leaders as early as the mid-1970s were concerned about potential threats posed by tactical nuclear weapons. This time frame corresponds to the period when South Africa’s political leaders approved construction of the nuclear-weapons program.The memo also highlights the fact that South African politicians, strategists, and military leaders, much like their Western counterparts, were focused on the possible use of battlefield nuclear weapons and strategies and on tactics to counter them during the 1970s. The memo confirms the growing concern among South African leaders that nuclear weapons would become available to subnational groups such as terrorist organizations “within the next ten years” and that “a confrontation between the Free World and the Socialist Block has been replaced by consultation, thus lessening the danger of nuclear escalation.”The author echoed the conventional wisdom among senior politicians and military strategists in South Africa and around the world when he noted that “[t]he bi-polar confor- mation in world conflict has broken up into a multi-polar order. Western solidarity has been shattered by recent events and divergent interests and political systems. The proliferation of nuclear weapons and the potential capability for their manufacture by smaller nations has rendered a superpower strategy irrelevant in new aspects of localised conflict.”2 RESPONSE TO “TOTAL ONSLAUGHT” THREATS By the mid-1970s, South African defense planners had concluded that the most rational approach to coping with an increasingly hostile environment was to acquire modern tactical nuclear warheads by buying or building them. In this chapter, we focus on the principal factors which led South Africa to develop sophisticated warheads and other types of launch vehicles, including “stand-off television-guided bombs or surface-to-surface missiles, to augment aircraft as vehicle delivery systems for nuclear warheads.”3 The chapter also details the evolution of South Africa’s nuclear strategy . After approving the development of nuclear weapons in the mid1970s , South African political leaders turned their attention to the issue of how nuclear weapons could be used to enhance the credibility of their nuclear -deterrence strategy and as a potential tool to defend the homeland. The targeting maps that accompanied the recently declassified memo pinpointed rebel—that is, ANC—bases in neighboring countries as potential targets of tactical nuclear weapons.4 The recently declassified memo illustrates well how international, regional , and domestic threats had blurred in the thinking of white South African politicians and strategic planners. Blended perceptions of threats became both the impetus and rationale for undertaking expensive and highly sophisticated military research and development programs during the 1980s. In the wake of the collapse of the Portuguese empire in 1974 and arrival of Soviet-backed Cuban troops in Angola in 1975, the Soweto uprisings in 1976, the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 418 calling for a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa in 1977, and the domestic scandal that came to be called Muldergate in 1977–1978, Prime Minister Vorster stepped down suddenly in September 1978 and was replaced by Defence Minister P. W. Botha. Shortly after assuming office, Botha initiated his vision of a “total strategy” to ensure the survival of the regime. P. W. Botha differed from his predecessor in the degree that he was oriented toward the military, particularly the special forces, during his many years of service as defense minister. After becoming prime minister, P. W., as associates commonly called him, instituted a complex strategy that included a range of modest political reforms to provide the impression that apartheid was being softened, Warheads, Missiles, and Nuclear-Deterrence Strategy 59 [18.118...

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