Year
1989
Abstract
It is a pleasure for me to make some opening remarks at the annual meeting of an organization which plays a vital role in assuring that nuclear technology and the unique materials associated with it are managed in a way which advances, rather than retards, human progress. I have been asked to reflect a bit on the past, present and future of U.S. efforts to restrain the spread of nuclear weapons, a subject we have come to know as non-proliferation. And here, let me make a point—at the outset—about terminology.For the people in this room, I expect the term \"non-proliferation\" means one thing: the effort to restrain the spread of nuclear explosives capabilities to additional nations. That common understanding has served us well for some decades. However, changes in political and technological developments are forcing us to look beyond the strictly nuclear field in our use of this term.On the international scene there are states which, for their own purposes, urge that concern with so-called \"horizontal\" proliferation be accompanied by equal concern with what they call \"vertical\" proliferation — an increase in numbers of nuclear weapons held by the five nuclear weapon states, especially the super-powers.