ABSTRACT
India's 1974 underground nuclear explosion in the desert of Rajasthan brought to an end two decades of stability under the rules of nuclear ethics and international cooperation ushered in by President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace address. The progress made by the Soviet Union behind its tighter curtain of secrecy—in particular, the completion in 1954 of the first nuclear power plant—became known only later. The radioactive clouds from their nuclear tests could not be hidden, however; they demonstrated constant progress in their nuclear military achievements. With the lifting of the secrecy curtain, the transfer of information in the nuclear field was merely a return to normality. But the introduction of the required pledge of nonmilitary use, and of the right to verify that pledge by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, was a revolutionary innovation in the history of relations and trade between countries.
