Civilian or Military? Addressing Dual-use Items as a Challenge to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime
Civilian or Military? Addressing Dual-use Items as a Challenge to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime

Summary/Abstract: Various efforts have been made to establish export controls and other mechanisms that would prevent illicit nuclear trade from occurring. These tools have been fairly successful in capturing illicit transactions of goods whose application is purely nuclear. The goods and technologies that can be used for both military and civilian purposes, the dual-use items, remain the key challenge. The legitimate market for such goods is enormous, but they also have applications in centrifuge, laser enrichment, reactor, and plutonium separation programmes. Iran and other proliferators have a long history of attempted procurements in this area, including items such as valves, frequency converters, carbon fibre, machine tools, and many others. The current non-proliferation regime has been slow to catch up with this reality. It is crucial to reverse this trend and adapt international standards, to provide a more holistic approach to countering nuclear proliferation.

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