Historical Elements to Understand the Geopolitics of Nuclear Technology in Argentina in the 1980s

This paper aims at analyzing the geopolitics of nuclear technology research, development and production in the 1980s, in a semi-peripheral context. From a historical perspective, it studies, on the one hand, the formal and informal pressures of US diplomacy, and, on the other hand, foreign policies and their role in the development of nuclear technology during the Argentine administration of Raul Alfonsin (1983-1989). In conclusion, it is affirmed that the country acquired capacities and learned institutional and technical lessons amidst the competition among superpowers and market deregulation and liberalization processes. In the field of international relations, it was found that there is a correlation between central countries’ commercial interests and the regulatory frameworks associated with the proliferation of sensitive technologies.