South Africa's Nuclear Blackmail: Did/could it work?

People:

SA did manufacture a total of six nuclear bombs. According to Venter (Author of "How SA built 6 atm bombs), the delivery systems could be:

1) Buccaneer
2) Inter-continental missile - RSA-2 and 3
3) Maybe the G5/6 system

He also claims that the real goal was to blackmail the US.

Sort of: Don't be hard on us, because we can hit Moscow if we want to".

In essence, it was about the Border Wars. SA did not want to gt pushed into a corner by Angola/Cuba/USSR; hence the blackmail.

SA also wanted to be seen as "NATO's southern flank"

Pushing it a bit, I believe.

It is actually hard to tell whether it worked or not. Did US tell USSR to back down?

PS: The bombs were rather primitive, but the whole project was contained and done by +/- 300 people in total.

They were Uranium based, not plutonium, so obviously a bit bulky. However SA has plenty of Uranium and actually delivered Uranium to US, France, UK, etc through the 50's, 60's and 70's.

Ivan
 
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