Revisiting South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Program: Its History, Dismantlement, and Lessons for Toda

In 1989, South Africa made the momentous decision to abandon its nuclear weapons, making it the first and still the only country that has produced nuclear weapons and given them up. Over thirty years, the apartheid regime had created a remarkably sophisticated capability to build nuclear weapons—both the nuclear warhead and advanced military systems to deliver them. The program was born in secret and remained so until its end. The government initially sought to dismantle it in secret. It hoped to avoid any negative international consequences of possessing nuclear weapons. The apartheid government’s strategy did not work, because too many intelligence agencies knew about South Africa’s nuclear weapons. Faced with intense pressure, South Africa’s President F.W. de Klerk reversed course and adopted a policy of transparency in 1993. However, he decided to hide many of its aspects. Nonetheless, most of the remaining secrets emerged over the ensuing 25 years. Revisiting South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Program draws on previously secret information to provide the first comprehensive, technically-oriented look at South Africa’s nuclear weapons program; how it grew, evolved, and ended. It also finds lessons for today’s nuclear proliferation cases.

• Taiwan's Former Nuclear Weapons Program: Nuclear Weapons On-Demand
• A TECHNICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA'S NUCLEAR ARMS: VOLUME I - INTRODUCTION AND WEAPON SYSTEMS THROUGH 1960
• A TECHNICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS: VOLUME II - WEAPON SYSTEMS FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT
• The Bomb: South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Programme
• Burning the Sky: Operation Argus and the Untold Story of the Cold War Nuclear Tests in Outer Space
• Active Defense: China's Military Strategy since 1949 (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics)
• The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (Third Edition)
• Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network
• Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power
• The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner