ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the new century and millennium, it seems inconceivable that Australia should have harboured realistic ambitions to become an independent nuclear power, and especially at the risk of losing ANZUS. Australia was the only English-speaking country in the Western alliance which remained to be convinced of the urgent necessity of bringing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) into force. Using Australia's ratification of the 1968 NPT as a starting point, it is possible to trace the outlines of growing Australian activism in many arms control and disarmament fields, both within the United Nations institutional framework and beyond. Australia would have been required to provide for its own defence without the support of an American nuclear guarantee, much less the reduced conventional military guarantees which remained following President Richard Nixon's Guam Doctrine of 1969. The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's) purpose is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology through scientific and technical cooperation.
