The Policies of Supplier Nations

The policies of supplier nations cover a wide range of interests and concerns: political, economic, commercial, resource management, financial, technological and nuclear non-proliferation among others. This chapter concentrates on the nuclear non-proliferation element of those policies. It focuses on the specific policies that nuclear suppliers have implemented and should implement from a non-proliferation perspective as regards their nuclear exports. The tension, creative in some cases and destructive in others, between alarm over nuclear proliferation and the desire to secure political and economic benefits from nuclear co-operation has characterised not only the evolution of supplier policies, but also efforts to establish an international framework for nuclear co-operation. The evolution of supplier policies can be broken down into the three general periods: from the early 1950s to 1968; from 1968 to 1978; and from 1978 to the present.