The Near Miss Case of Taiwans Historical Nuclear Proliferation
Abstract
Taiwan’s covert push toward developing nuclear weapons is an important and relatively unknown, near-miss case of historical nuclear weapons proliferation that was thwarted by strong diplomacy, intelligence gathering, and international verification. During the 1970s and 1980s, the United States and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) uncovered and the United States stopped multiple attempts by Taiwan to covertly acquire from European suppliers the facilities and materials that would allow it to create a plutonium based nuclear weapon. The United States possessed special oversight rights to Taiwan’s nuclear facilities and maintained a defense treaty with the island. It used this relationship to ensure that Taiwan never developed nuclear weapons and inflamed tensions or nuclear war with the PRC, which stated it would overtake the island by force if Taiwan developed nuclear weapons. By the time the program was officially halted in the late 1980s after Taiwan renewed its push, U.S. intelligence estimates had put Taiwan within one to three years of being able to detonate a nuclear explosive device. It was a win for stopping an imminent case of nuclear proliferation. ISIS proposes a one-year project to detail, review, and draw out lessons from the historical case of Taiwan’s close-call at producing nuclear weapons. The results of the study would be gathering together of information from some of the remaining, rare U.S. and IAEA officials who participated importantly in this case and a 50-page paper with annexes detailing findings and lessons for today’s proliferation cases. ISIS would widely disseminate and brief the results of the report to U.S. government policymakers, focusing in particular on how the findings apply to current and future important nuclear non-proliferation cases. This effort would serve the public purpose of informing policymaking on key proliferation cases and contribute to efforts to build international initiatives and agreements which safeguard U.S. and international security. It would also make public a large body of important, never before published historical information.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 19, 2016
- Source ID
- N002441610029
Entities
People
- David Albright
Organizations
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency
- Institute for Science and International Security