Cold War adversaries Soviet Union and US collaborated to halt South Africa’s secret nuclear programme, reveals declassified documents

Recently released documents from the Washington-based National Security Archive reveal that South Africa had a secret nuclear weapons program in the 1970s. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev alerted then US President Jimmy Carter about the existence of a nuclear weapons test site in South Africa, prompting the US to coordinate a diplomatic response with its European allies. The declassified records highlight the shared interest between the US and Soviet Union in preventing the proliferation of atomic weapons.