National policy issues

Supply policies are only one of several essential elements in a comprehensive strategy to restrain the further spread of nuclear weapons. For most nonnuclear weapon state, the starting point is the political perception that renouncing nuclear weapons (and not helping other nations acquire them) will effectively serve the national interest. If this perception is strong, the state will accord nonproliferation a high rank among foreign policy priorities. This perception is deficient in two groups of countries. The first includes many developing countries that see proliferation as an issue that concerns the ''North'' rather than themselves or that, in a handful of cases, are deliberately keeping the weapons option open. The second group consists of some industrial countries that fully abide by their own nonproliferation commitments but tend, on occasion, to give the export of nuclear plants or the ''goodwill'' of the importing country a higher priority than an effective nonproliferating exporting policy. An important barrier to the perception that renouncing nuclear weapons serves the national interest is that the nuclear weapon states themselves clearly do not share it. A comprehensive approach therefore also requires much greater responsiveness by the nuclear weapon states to their obligations under the NPT to make tangible progress in nuclear arms control and their reaffirmed ''determination'' to work for a ban on all nuclear tests ''for all time.''