This leadership-driven process produced a series of ‘confidence and security
building measures’ (CSBMs) such as military-to-military contacts, mutual exchange
of information, scientific and technical exchanges, and active cooperation between
the two foreign ministries. In 1985 this process of increased transparency was
formalised with the creation of joint working groups involving members of both
countries’ nuclear establishments.^53 The joint groups provided a forum within which
Argentine and Brazilian nuclear officials could inform each other of developments
that might give rise to suspicion and mistrust. A good example of this was the prior
notice given to the Alfonsín government of Sarney’s speech in September 1987,
announcing that Brazil had mastered the technology of uranium enrichment.^54
Closer relations were both symbolised and deepened by Alfonsín inviting Sarney
and his nuclear officials in 1987 to visit Argentina’s uranium-enrichment plant at
Pilcaniyeu. The growing mutual trust was further strengthened a year later when
the Brazilian leadership reciprocated by inviting Alfonsín and his nuclear advisers
to inspect its previously undisclosed enrichment facility at Aramar.^55 By opening
up each side’s sensitive nuclear facilities to the scrutiny of the other, these visits
were highly significant in promoting confidence in each other’s peaceful nuclear
intentions.^56
Accepting uncertainty and vulnerability
The high levels of nuclear transparency achieved between Brazil and Argentina in
the second half of the 1980s certainly did not eliminate all uncertainties about each
other’s nuclear motives. As noted above, trust and uncertainty are mutually
implicated, and to trust to any degree is always to risk betrayal. The corollary of this
is that actors seeking to build trust must be willing to accept their vulnerability to
betrayal if their positive expectations about the motives and intentions of others
prove misplaced.^57 In the case of Argentina and Brazil, Presidents Alfonsín and
Sarney would have been unusually trusting state leaders had they not borne this
consideration in mind when they met in 1985 in Foz de Iguaçu to pledge once more
that their nuclear programmes were solely for peaceful purposes. Despite suspicions
on the part of some elements in both governments that the other might be secretly
developing weapons,^58 they pressed on in the absence of solid guarantees that
the other party was not feigning trustworthiness as a cover to pursue a weapons
programme. As Carasales later reflected, the nuclear rapprochement took place
because both sides placed their ‘trust in the other’s good faith and in the possibility
of checking up on suspicious activities by visits, exchanges, etc., none of which were
enforceable.’^59
The development of common interest and shared values
The transition to democratic rule in both Argentina (1983) and Brazil (1985) led to
the deepening of trust between the two countries, not least because it brought to
power leaders who were aware of the growing political and economic costs and risks
258 Beyond Waltz’s nuclear world