> weapon of absolute last resort At least when Israel was developing its nuclear bomb, its neighbours were not particularly minded to compromise. Contrast, for

> weapon of absolute last resort At least when Israel was developing its nuclear bomb, its neighbours were not particularly minded to compromise. Contrast, for example, the Freedom Charter (a fifties document!), which was so studiously nonracial that the PAC had to split off: > South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white…that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief At this point the possible threat was clearly domestic blacks, not nearby colonies, and compromise with them was clearly quite possible. CODESA didn't happen earlier because the Broederbond took so long to change its mind—had it, it could have happened decades earlier. The SA army was also in conventional terms quite sufficient to prevent any foreign invasion. Even Rhodesia with P.K. van der Byl and the other ludicrous types who congregated in Salisbury hotels could manage for over a decade. Armscor on the other hand was world-leading, and none of SA’s neighbours had anything like that. > soviet supplied cuban troops on our border They were on the Namibian border, which was from 1966 was no longer really South Africa’s. In any case SA militarily held its own—it inflicted far more casualties than it suffered and maintained control of Namibia. It seems to make much more sense to interpret withdrawal as a political decision to cease the indefensible occupation of Namibia, instead of evidence that a nuclear bomb was strategically necessary.