Comparing Regional Proliferation Risks and Safeguards Systems

The paper develop a comparison between Europe and East Asia as regional areas with analogies and differences on the international relations frame and international security paradigms. The analysis takes into account the strategic rims of conflict, the nuclear proliferation dynamics and the bilateral/multilateral answers to the elements of instability, mainly on the existing safeguards systems. It will compare the political interplay of the actors involved in the past and in the current times, with a forecast for the future. In the Post War we have in the areas: a) a defeated power (Germany/Japan) with a special tie with the United States; b) a nuclear-armed power ideologically antagonistic in the political, strategical struggle (USSR/PRC) with the other states of the area allied with the US; a group of states allied with the internal, nuclear power (the States of the Warsaw Pact/North Korea and South-East Asian communist states); an inner core of the US-allied states concerned both of the former defeated power and of the new nuclear power (France-Belgium/South Korea-Taiwan). By comparing the regional dynamics in Europe and East Asia, the theoretical approach proposed aims to identify with a qualitative method the game changers in the making of present times in the areas. We will demonstrate how Euratom prevented a nuclear cascade in Europe, as a regional safeguards system and inseparably an integrated frame of peaceful cooperation. Conversely to the NPT, EURATOM did not forbid military nuclear applications to its members, but it exerts a dissuasion through emphasising peaceful, safeguarded cooperation among the members. It limited the dual use of nuclear development because of its safeguards system, trusted by all its members' thanks to their direct participation, let say the right of self-inspection. To the contrary in East Asia, lacking such a regional cooperative framework as EURATOM, the NPT singly could not prevent North Korea’s nuclearization. The paper will prove the significance of regional cooperation for successful safeguards.