ABSTRACT
The chief criticism of US nonproliferation policy has been that it managed to jeopardize the energy programs of the industrially advanced countries without offering viable alternatives. In order to test that accusation, and to inquire how the situation might be rectified, the authors examine some of the major events in nuclear energy in the first two years after the initial Carter nonproliferation proposals and juxtapose these events against a world lapsing into confusion. The series of nonproliferation proposals that the United States has presented since early 1977 looks like a general solution to an as yet undefined set of equations. It is natural, then, that the world would be baffled by them. Within the nonproliferation equations are many variables, not solely the consideration of whether a single nuclear weapon is acquired by somebody. And since nonproliferation is primarily a political affair, its description requires domestic as well as international equations.
