South Africa ’ s Nuclear Decisions

In his article “The Rise and Fall of the South African Bomb,” Peter Liberman uses organizational politics theory to explain South Africa’s latent development of a nuclear weapons program before 1977.1 He cites post-1976 security threats (from the Soviet Union and Cuba) as triggers for the militarization of the nuclear program and the building of six bombs. Although Liberman is less clear about the motivations for disarmament, he does suggest three contributing factors: the end of security threats, the change in South Africa to a more outward-looking leadership in 1989, and the unacceptable expense of the nuclear weapons program. Liberman produces new insights on both the South African case and contending theories that can be used to explain it. In seeking parsimony, however, he weighs the explanatory value of only three theories and overlooks other relevant factors2—most notably, political psychology.3 This omission leads to a portrait of South Africa as a seemingly ordinary state, rather than the minority-ruled, security-obsessed regime that darkened the international stage for four decades and that developed a secret, sophisticated chemical and biological warfare (CBW) program in the 1980s.4 Correspondence