Date

Jul 11, 1966

Description

With the NPT negotiations stalemated in Geneva during the summer of 1966, top U.S. officials began to drop the support for MLF-type arrangements which had blocked an understanding with Moscow.[17] Robert McNamara supported changing the U.S. position and Dean Rusk offered a proposal that McNamara endorsed, but from which others, including ACDA deputy director Adrian Fisher, dissented. Rusk’s proposed Articles I and II hinged on use of the language barring “physical access” to nuclear weapons by non-nuclear states, but Fisher argued that non-nuclear members of NATO already had routine “physical access” to nuclear weapons as part of the U.S. deployment system. According to Fisher, “under our existing arrangements, troops of our NATO allies actually transport U.S. nuclear weapons and even perform the physical work of attaching them to their own planes and missiles,” a procedure that was “safeguarded by PALs [permissive action links].” Given the realities, “it would be difficult to argue that the other nations do not have ‘physical access’ to the weapons, as that term is normally used.”

Fisher saw the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, with its prohibition of the “transfer of atomic weapons to any other country,” as providing model language for an NPT because it was compatible with the bilateral agreements with NATO members whose militaries were being trained to use U.S. nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The justification for those “custodial arrangements” was that there had been “no transfer of the weapons and that a transfer could take place only in connection with a Presidential decision to use the weapons in the face of actual or imminent hostilities.”

A negotiable NPT could include a non-transfer concept, but the Soviets would have to be brought along because their proposals emphasized “use,” “control,” or “ownership,” which were just as problematic as “physical access.” Fisher implied that non-transfer language would increase the treaty’s acceptability to Moscow because Washington would agree not to “transfer control of nuclear weapons to any non-nuclear state or to any group of states.” An agreement based on the transfer concept, however, would sanction “a federated [European] entity capable of succeeding to the nuclear assets of its constituent members,” what was called the “European option.”

Fisher proposed the following language for Article I, which would be modified through negotiations with Moscow:

Each of the nuclear weapons States party to this treaty undertakes not to transfer nuclear weapons to any non-nuclear-weapons State or to any group of States, or to take any action, by granting physical access or otherwise, that will contribute to the capability of any non-nuclear-weapons State to design develop or fabricate nuclear weapons.

Source

RG 383, Director's Office NPT Files, box 8, Non-Proliferation, William C. Foster

Document published in following posting(s):

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the German Nuclear Question Part II, 1965-1969

Mar 21, 2018

[Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs] U. Alexis Johnson to the Secretary of State, “Comments on the Proposed Revision of the Draft Non-Proliferation Treaty,” 11 July 1966, with enclosures