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Appendix: Policy Lessons from the South African Case South Africa’s past experiences with weapons of mass destruction and contemporary efforts by the South African government to monitor and control the proliferation of such weapons suggest some policy lessons that may be applicable to other countries. These are presented as a basis for further consideration rather than as definitive lessons from the past. Proliferation threats throughout the world are changing rapidly. Continuing acts of violence by right-wing white supremacists in South Africa and elsewhere , the alleged overtures by agents for al-Qaeda to former weapons scientists in South Africa to induce them to sell their expertise abroad, and increased support for radical Islamic fundamentalism should all serve as cautionary tales about the many difficulties involved in controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles. Generalizations about such a dynamic environment are difficult because the technology needed to produce both crude and very sophisticated nuclear, chemical , and biological weapons has spread around the world. There is also a lively black market in weapons of mass destruction and missiles that makes it relatively easy for interested parties—whether they represent nation-states or terrorist groups—to purchase a wide range of weapons. Given this dynamic environment, we believe that it is important to consider a number of new approaches to the problem of proliferating weapons of mass destruction and missiles. Some of the policy lessons may contain ideas that are useful for understanding enduring and emerging weapons of mass destruction and missile threats in this dynamic environment . Policy Lesson 1: Programs designed to promote the peaceful use of nuclear, chemical, and biological technologies carry with them longer-term unintended proliferation risks by spreading the expertise and materials needed to build weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. Swords into Plowshares program and other programs that promoted the peaceful use of nuclear energy during the 1950s facilitated South Africa’s ability to produce indigenous highly enriched uranium and develop the critical mass of scientists and engineers needed to produce indigenous highly enriched uranium and build modern weapons systems. South Africa’s ability to exploit the resources and expertise acquired through peaceful energy programs has been replicated in many other countries around the world. The proliferation threats that accompanied early peaceful nuclear-energy-sharing programs are now widely recognized as having had profound and unexpected consequences in enabling some states to become covert nuclear powers. Scientists and engineers throughout the world have recently realized that there are potential parallel problems embedded in international collaborative research in chemical and biological basic science and industrial research projects. Proliferation concerns about scientific research that uses genetic modification are one reason why a recent recommendation of the U.S. National Academy of Science called for individuals who are more familiar with proliferation issues, especially biowarfare concerns, to serve on peer-review panels that approve biological research involving genetic modifications. How to manage potential proliferation problems without impeding the free flow of scientific knowledge or infringing on individual civil liberties promises to be one of the most challenging national-security issues of the twenty-first century. Policy Lesson 2: A country requires a minimal level of industrial infrastructure and a core group of creative scientists and engineers to develop adequate supplies of highly enriched uranium and develop the unique processes and procedures that are required to develop nuclear weapons, new forms of chemical weapons (i.e., nerve gas), and novel forms of biological warfare. South Africa’s early participation in the Atoms for Peace and other peaceful nuclear-energy programs allowed the government to train a core group of scientists and engineers in the new field of nuclear weapons. This group formed the nucleus for early nuclear research. The fact that the nuclear , missile, and biochemical programs enjoyed widespread support among white South Africans meant that all the programs were able to attract some of the brightest scientists and engineers of subsequent generations . The South African experience with developing secret nuclear weapons underscores how important human capital is to the development of sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. Libya recently declared that it had a nascent covert nuclear program, but it failed to develop the indigenous capacity to produce highly enriched uranium, underscoring the necessity of having both a minimal level of industrial infrastructure and the human capital necessary to develop sophisticated weapons of mass destruction . However, most terrorist attacks to date that have involved biological or chemical agents have used readily available poisons or chemical and...

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