tion of this chapter that there were special regional circumstances that caution
against thinking that it provides a ready-made template for all other situations where
states have developed nuclear weapons, such as South Asia or the Korean peninsula.
That said, there are nonetheless important lessons that can be learned from this
case for regions where there is the potential for a nuclear arms race, such as the
Middle East.
The first lesson is the great danger of potential nuclear rivals crossing over the
nuclear threshold by testing and developing nuclear weapons. Neither Brazil nor
Argentina tested or weaponised nuclear devices, and this made cooperation far
easier than would have been the case had each side developed operational nuclear
weapons. The latter circumstance would have increased fear and suspicion on both
sides, and developing policies that promoted mutual confidence in such a context
would have been much harder to achieve. A comparison with the South Asian
nuclear situation is instructive here.^65 India and Pakistan have crossed the nuclear
threshold, and though both store warheads separately from delivery vehicles (to
reduce the risks of accidental or inadvertent war), fear and suspicion of each other’s
nuclear intentions has been magnified in a situation where missile flight-times are
as short as 5–10 minutes, and both sides know that the other has the capability to
rapidly assemble and deploy nuclear forces.
The variation in levels of nuclear weapon development between India and
Pakistan on the one hand, and Argentina and Brazil on the other, reflects the fact
that the two South American rivals never experienced the levels of enmity and
violence between them that have so embittered relations between the South Asian
nuclear powers. In his own reflections on the lessons that might be learned from the
Argentine–Brazilian case for nuclear trust-building elsewhere, Carasales had
recognised how important the favourable geopolitical setting had been to success.
The rapprochement had succeeded because ‘Argentina and Brazil were not enemies,
just competitors. But the situation in other parts of the world... is completely and
absolutely different.’ Nevertheless, he suggested that ‘Perhaps we followed a
particular way that could be of some use.’^66
The second lesson is the importance of democratisation. Speaking at the same
conference as Carasales in 1996, Gideon Frank, then Director General of the Israeli
Atomic Energy Commission, claimed that the most important lesson that other
regions should learn from the cooperation that was achieved between Argentina and
Brazil (he was clearly thinking of his own region) was the value of ‘democratisation
[because]... Only in a democratic regime can you have confidence in the intentions
of a country.’^67 It is evident that the major transformation in Argentine–Brazilian
nuclear relations took place only after both countries had become democratic
states,^68 and it is a fascinating counterfactual whether the trust they established could
have been achieved without the process of democratisation. As discussed above, the
personal commitment of Alfonsín and Sarney to developing better relations was very
important, and it is a moot question whether leaders with such a strong belief in the
potential of Argentine–Brazilian cooperation would have emerged without the
process of democratisation in both countries.
Beyond Waltz’s nuclear world 261