ABSTRACT
As the Cold War dissipates, the international strategic studies community has again turned to nuclear proliferation as a high priority issue. Policy specialists who have not followed developments in the proliferation field in the last decade will find the landscape both familiar and foreign at the same time. Therefore, any evaluation of the relevance of proliferation to strategic nuclear weapons and US-Soviet arms control must be preceded by a brief review of the current "state of the art" in the field. Recent developments have reduced further the scope of the nuclear proliferation problem. Long-standing arms control dogma contends that several linkages exist between actions taken by the established nuclear weapons states (NWS) and actions taken by the non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). Superpower interest in regional disputes was an established feature of the Cold War. In East Asia, the United States is likely to retain considerable influence over both Taiwan and South Korea for at least the next decade.
