GEOPOLITICAL TUESDAY

Center for French Culture and Francophone Studies at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw invite you to the “Geopolitical Tuesday” seminar entitled:

New approaches to nuclear assistance and proliferation: 

the case of the French-South African strategic cooperation

which will be held on Tuesday 27th of February 2024 at 3 pm (CET)

with the participation of dr Anna Konieczna, Military University of Technology in Warsaw

Zoom: https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/95295386049

The seminar will be held in English.

Abstract:

In March 1993, Frederick de Klerk, then president of South Africa, in a speech to South African parliament, declared that “at one stage South Africa did develop a limited nuclear deterrent capability” but it decided in early 1990s to dismantle and to destroy it in anticipation of acceding to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. South Africa became eventually to be known as the first case of the nuclear weapons rollback. As much as his predecessors, de Klerk qualified the programme as “indigenous” one while in fact the programme had benefited from external nuclear assistance since its beginnings for almost four decades. The presentation will focus on the case of the French-South African cooperation in the strategic field to discuss and reassess the approaches to nuclear assistance and proliferation. Such a case study has implications for the future writing of global history, which may inform nuclear choices or futures. Nuclear security studies need to move beyond the presentism tendency of assuming retrospectively that non-proliferation was the concern and the priority of nuclear weapons states during the Cold War and that nuclear assistance was and is a unidirectional relationship driven by the power politics.   

Bio:

Anna Konieczna (PhD, Sciences Po, 2013) is an Assistant Professor in history at the Military University of Technology in Warsaw. Her research interests include foreign policy analysis with a specific emphasis on the French foreign policy in Africa and the diplomacy of non-state actors. Her current research deals with the history of the French solidarity movement against apartheid.