Introduction: Global Order, Cooperation between the Superpowers, and Alliance Politics in the Making of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. ‘The President’s News Conference of March 21, 1963’ in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963 (Washington, D.C., 1964), 280.2. On the LTBT see the National Security Archive electronic briefing book ‘The Making of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1958–1963’, W. Burr and H.L. Montford (eds), 8 Aug. 2003, at http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB94 [Accessed 20 December 2013]. 3. On these early attempts see W. Walker, A Perpetual Menace: Nuclear Weapons and International Order (London, 2012), 44–8; F.J. Gavin, ‘Nuclear Proliferation and Non-Proliferation during the Cold War’ in M.P. Leffler and O.A. Westad (eds), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume II: Crises and Détente (New York, 2010), 397. 4. S. Maddock, ‘The Fourth Country Problem: Eisenhower’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, xxviii, no. 3 (1998), 554–6; J. Krige, ‘Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism, and Scientific Intelligence’, Osiris, xxi, no. 1 (2006), 161–81; J.F. Pilat (ed), Atoms for Peace: A Future after Fifty Years? (Washington, D.C., 2007). 5. On the role of nuclear assistance in the development of the nuclear order see M. Kroenig, Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, 2010); ‘permissive proliferation’ was the designation du jour in the mid-1960s for a deliberate policy of facilitating nuclear proliferation to selected allies or neutral powers. 6. The locus classicus for the complex of nuclear sharing is M. Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton, N.J., 1999), 146–200; see also J. Melissen, ‘Nuclearizing NATO, 1957–1959: The “Anglo-Saxons’, Nuclear Sharing and the Fourth Country Problem,” Review of International Studies, xx, no. iii (1994), 253–75; Maddock, ‘The Fourth Country Problem’; on the chequered history of intra-European nuclear co-operation and related US policies during this time see J. Krige, ‘The Peaceful Atom as Political Weapon: Euratom and American Foreign Policy in the Late 1950s’, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, xxxviii, no. 1 (2008), 5–44; G.-H. Soutou, ‘Les accords de 1957 et 1958: vers une communauté stratégique nucléaire entre la France, l’Allemagne et l’Italie?,’ Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, xxxi (1993), 1–12; R. Dietl, ‘“Une Déception Amoureuse”? Great Britain, the Continent and European Nuclear Cooperation, 1953–57’, Cold War History, iii, no. 1 (2002), 29–66; for Sino-Soviet co-operation see S. Guang Zhang, ‘The Sino-Soviet Alliance and the Cold War in Asia, 1954–1962' in M.P. Leffler and O.A. Westad (eds), The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume I: Origins (New York, 2010), 353–75. 7. See L.S. Wittner, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford, 2009); on cultural representations see P.S. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York, 1985); D. Seed, Under the Shadow: The Atomic Bomb and Cold War Narratives (Kent, OH, 2013); on the interplay between social forces and diplomatic developments see A. Wenger and J. Suri, ‘At the Crossroads of Diplomatic and Social History: The Nuclear Revolution, Dissent and Détente’, Cold War History, i, no. 3 (2001), 1–42; for an example of the influence of societal pressures on national-security decisions see James Cameron’s article on suburban protests against missile defense facilities in this IHR issue (From the Grass Roots to the Summit: The Impact of American Suburban Protest on US Missile Defence Policy, 1968–72, 342–362). 8. On the idea of a tacit cold-war settlement see Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 352–402; for misgivings on the thesis see V. Mastny, ‘The 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: A Missed Opportunity for Détente?,’ Journal of Cold War Studies, x, no. 1 (2008), 3–25; on the connection to non-proliferation see S.J. Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 181–215; for a critical assessment of the history of the nuclear age see F.J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca, N.Y., 2012). 9. Editorial note, F[oreign] R[elations of the] U[nited] S[tates], 1961–63, xxii. 341. 10. Khrushchev Message to Kennedy, n.d. [Apr. 1963], FRUS, 1961–63, vi. 275. 11. See Working Group No. 4 memo ‘Nuclear Containment and Non-Proliferation’, 13 June 1963 [College Park, MD], U[nited] S[tates] N[ational] A[rchives, Record Group 59], G/PM [Records of the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs, Lot 70 D 429, Records Relating to] D[isarmament and] A[rms] C[ontrol, 1961–1966], box 1, fol. ‘DEF – DEFENSE AFFAIRS (1) NSAM 239 WG 1 & 4, DEF 18-1 General Policy & Plans 1963’; on the idea of attacking Chinese nuclear facilities see W. Burr and J.T. Richelson, ‘Whether to “Strangle the Baby in the Cradle”: The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960–64’, International Security, xxv, no. 3 (2000), 70–2, 87–9; downplaying the China nuclear nexus Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 388–98; but see M. Trachtenberg, The Cold War and After: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Politics (Princeton, N.J., 2012), 255–6. 12. See Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Study, ‘Relationship of Nuclear Test Ban to Problem of Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’, 13 Feb. 1963, in National Security Archive, Limited Test Ban Treaty, doc. 45; on the negotiations see G. Theodore Seaborg, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban (Berkeley, 1981); K. Oliver, Kennedy, Macmillan, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1961–63 (New York, 1998); P.F. Ilsaas Pharo, ‘A Precondition for Peace: Transparency and the Test-Ban Negotiations, 1958–1963’, The International History Review, xxii, no. 3 (2000), 557–82; D. Tal, The American Nuclear Disarmament Dilemma: 1945–1963 (Syracuse, 2008), 199–334. 13. Treating the MLF as the ‘most important’ aspect of the NPT process is H. Brands, ‘Non-Proliferation and the Dynamics of the Middle Cold War: The Superpowers, the MLF, and the NPT’, Cold War History, vii, no. 3 (2007), 389–423, here 390. 14. Bundy Memo to Johnson, 25 Nov. 1965, FRUS 1964–68, xi. 266. 15. See D. Selvage, The Warsaw Pact and Nuclear Nonproliferation, 1963–1965, Cold War International History Project Working Paper 32 (Washington, D.C., 2001). 16. See Rostow memo to Rusk, ‘Arms Control and the Alliance; Or How to Persuade Allies to Make Peace’, 6 April 1964, USNA, G/PM, DAC, box 4, fol. ‘DEF – DEFENSE AFFAIRS (1) DEF 18-1 General Policy & Plans 1964’; see Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid, 217–50; G.T. Seaborg and B.S. Loeb, Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years (Lexington, MA, 1987); T.A. Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 39–46; Brands, ‘Non-Proliferation and the Dynamics of the Middle Cold War’, 391–401; H. Brands, ‘Progress Unseen: US Arms Control Policy and the Origins of Détente, 1963–1968’, Diplomatic History, xxx, no. 2 (2006), 262–70; A. Locher and C. Nuenlist, ‘What Role for Nato? Conflicting Western Perceptions of Détente, 1963–65’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, ii, no. 2 (2004), 185–208; D. Tal, ‘The Burden of Alliance: The NPT Negotiations and the NATO Factor, 1960–1968’ in C. Nuenlist and A. Locher (eds), Transatlantic Relations at Stake: Aspects of NATO, 1956–1972 (Zurich, 2006), 97–124; L. Nuti, ‘Negotiating with the Enemy and Having Problems with the Allies: The Impact of the Non-Proliferation Treaty on Transatlantic Relations’ in B. Germond, J.M. Hanhima¨ki, and G.-H. Soutou (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Transatlantic Security (Abingdon, 2010), 89–102. 17. See A. Wenger, ‘Crisis and Opportunity: NATO’s Transformation and the Multilateralization of Détente, 1966–1968’, Journal of Cold War Studies, vi, no. 1 (2004), 22–74; A. Priest, ‘The President, the “Theologians” and the Europeans: The Johnson Administration and NATO Nuclear Sharing’, The International History Review, xxxiii, no. 2 (2011), 257–75. 18. See McCloy Memo to Gilpatric, 8 Jan. 1965 [College Park, MD], U[nited] S[tates] N[ational] A[rchives, Record Group 59], F[iles of Under Secretary of State] G[eorge] W[.] B[all, 1961–66, Lot 74 D 272], box 29, fol. ‘Nuclear Proliferation’; on nuclear weapons diffusion see W.C. Potter, ‘The Diffusion of Nuclear Weapons’ in E.O. Goldman and L.C. Eliason (eds), The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas (Stanford, CA, 2003), 146–78. 19. The latter McCloy quote dates from 1966 and is cited in F.J. Gavin, ‘Blasts from the Past: Proliferation Lessons from the 1960s’, International Security, xxix, no. 3 (2004), 126–7. 20. On the role of the Gilpatric Committee see Gavin, ‘Blasts from the Past’; H. Brands, ‘Rethinking Nonproliferation: LBJ, the Gilpatric Committee, and U.S. National Security Policy’, Journal of Cold War Studies, viii, no. 2 (2006), 83–113; against this interpretation, see Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid, 237–50.21. For an example of an argument claiming that the abandonment of a non-proliferation agreement would in effect doom the chances of an MLF, ultimately resulting in West German proliferation, see Foster Memo to Committee of Principals, 16 July 1965, USNA, G/PM, DAC, box 3, fol. ‘DEF – DEFENSE AFFAIRS (1) July 65 to; DEF 18-1 General Policy & Plans’. 22. See Gavin, ‘Blasts from the Past’, 109–10; the Committee foresaw the emergence of ‘conceivable new regional groupings and balances, coupled with the responsibility which may come with nuclear accession’, an essentially nuclear-optimist perspective. The final Gilpatric Committee report stated: ‘As additional nations obtained nuclear weapons, our diplomatic and military influence would wane, and strong pressures would arise to retreat to isolation to avoid the risk of involvement in nuclear war.’ Report by the Committee on Nuclear Proliferation, 21 Jan. 1965, FRUS 1964–68, xi. 174. 23. Rostow Memo to Johnson, 8 Nov. 1965, attached to Valenti Memo to Johnson, 8 Nov. 1965 [Austin, TX], L[yndon] B[.] J[ohnson Presidential] L[ibrary], National Security File, Agency File, box 52, fol. ‘Dept. of State, Policy Planning, Vol. 6 [2 of 2]’. 24. Memcon Rusk-Gromyko, 1 Oct. 1965, FRUS, 1964–68, xi. 251; see also MemCon Kosygin-Harriman, 21 July 1965, ibid., 219–24; see also Brands, ‘Non-Proliferation and the Dynamics of the Middle Cold War’, 403–4, 407–9; W.C. Potter, ‘The Soviet Union and Nuclear Proliferation’, Slavic Review, xliv, no. 3 (1985), 468–88. 25. Ibid.; Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid, 235–56. 26. Coming to a similar interpretation is Gavin, ‘Nuclear Proliferation and Non-Proliferation during the Cold War’, 414–16. 27. On the many historical inaccuracies on which the contemporary dominant view on proliferation dynamics is based, see F.J. Gavin, ‘Same as It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War’, International Security, xxxiv, no. 3 (2010), 7–37; for a sceptical view on nuclear alarmism by a political scientist see J.E. Mueller, Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda (New York, 2010). 28. On the aims and methods of the New International Nuclear History see Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 12–29. 29. The most potent initiative is the multinational project called the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP), started in 2011 and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For the project’s website see http://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/nuclear-proliferation-international-history-project [Accessed 20 December 2013]; the project supported the declassification of important documents on the Indian nuclear programme. The documents can be accessed at http://www.idsa.in/npihp/document.html [Accessed 20 December 2013]; the interdisciplinary Nuclear Studies Research Initiative hosted by the Robert S. Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin emphasises the policy relevance of nuclear history. 30. Gavin, ‘Nuclear Proliferation and Non-Proliferation during the Cold War,’ 415. 31. On superpower non-proliferation co-operation in general see J.S. Nye Jr, ‘US-Soviet Cooperation in a Nonproliferation Regime’ in A.L. George, P.J. Farley, and A. Dallin (eds), US-Soviet Security Cooperation: Achievements, Failures and Lessons (New York, 1988), 336–52; T.V. Paul, ‘Systemic Conditions and Security Cooperation: Explaining the Persistence of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, xvi, no. 1 (2003), 135–54; the fact that we still lack a comprehensive historical account of the creation of the NPT, the negotiations leading to it, and the interests of governments in joining the treaty has also been realised by political scientists. See e.g. S.D. Sagan, ‘The Causes of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation’, Annual Review of Political Science, xiv (2011), 238–9; as a starting point for further research see the documents included in the excellent National Security Archive electronic briefing book ‘The Impulse towards a Safer World: 40th Anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’, 1 July 2008, at http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb253/index.htm [Accessed 20 December 2013]. 32. Owen memo to Rusk, 14 Nov. 1966, USNA, [Records of the] P[olicy] P[lanning] C[ouncil]: Subject Files, 1963–1973, box 54, fol. ‘Atomic Energy-Armaments 1967 (4 of 4)’. 33. Message to the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee on its Reconvening in Geneva, 16 July 1968, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968–69: Book Two (Washington, D.C., 1970), 815. 34. See memcon Rusk-Brandt, 8 Feb. 1967, FRUS 1964–68, xi. 435–39; Fisher Memo to Rusk, 25 Feb. 1967, ibid., 445–8; Fisher Memo to Rusk, 4 Mar. 1967, ibid., 454–8; Lyndon Johnson exaggerated the concessions when reacting to West German complaints with ‘surprise since he understood the Germans had practically written the Treaty as it stands now’; memcon [Johnson, Schroeder et al.], 25 July 1968, in National Security Archive, 40th Anniversary, doc. 30c.; Owen Memo to Katzenbach, 5 April 1967, USNA, PPC: Subject Files, 1963–1973, box 53, fol. ‘Atomic Energy-Armaments 1967 (2 of 4)’; other issues responsible for the delays in the final negotiations were the duration of the treaty, questions of safeguards and inspections, the status of EURATOM, and the effect of the NPT on the question of the finality of the European integration process. See Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid, 276–9; Tal, ‘The Burden of Alliance’, 115–23. 35. See D. Joyner, Interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (Oxford, 2011); Walker, A Perpetual Menace, 72–85; G. Bunn and R. Timerbaev, ‘Nuclear Disarmament: How Much Have the Five Nuclear Powers Promised in the Non-Proliferation Treaty?,’ in J.B. Rhinelander and A.M. Scheinman (eds), At the Nuclear Crossroads: Choices about Nuclear Weapons and Extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (Washington, D.C., 1995), 11–29. 36. See A. Myrdal, The Game of Disarmament: How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race (New York, 1976), 171–3. 37. See, for example, Policy Planning Council Study ‘After NPT, What?’ [authored by Richard N. Rosecrance], 28 May 1968, enclosed to Henry Owen Memo to Rusk, 10 June 1968, USNA, PPC: Subject Files, 1963–1973, box 53, fol. ‘Atomic Energy-Armaments’; the document is also included in National Security Archive, 40th Anniversary, doc. 27. 38. On the non-proliferation policies of the Nixon administration see Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 117–19. 39. See Walker, A Perpetual Menace, 86–97; M.J. Brenner, Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation: The Remaking of U.S. Policy (Cambridge, 1981); another factor generating renewed activism was the new phenomenon of international terrorism in combination with the nuclear threat. See J.S. Walker, ‘Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation: The Controversy over Nuclear Exports, 1974–1980’, Diplomatic History, xxv, no. 2 (2001), 215–49; ideas to implement non-proliferation by denial through multilateral co-operation of supplier countries were formulated much earlier. See e.g. Study ‘Nuclear Export Controls of Other Countries’, 11 Dec. 1964; Study ‘US Nuclear Export Controls: Policy and Procedures’, 10 Dec. 1964, USNA, PPC: Subject Files, 1963–1973, box 53, fol. ‘Atomic Energy-Armaments 1967 (2 of 4)’. 40. On the role of nuclear co-operation with France despite its absence from the NPT see M. Trachtenberg, ‘The French Factor in U.S. Foreign Policy during the Nixon-Pompidou Period, 1969–1974’, Journal of Cold War Studies, xiii, no. 1 (2011), 4–59; NPIHP Research Update #2, ‘U.S. Secret Assistance to the French Nuclear Program, 1969–1975: From “Fourth Country” to Strategic Partner’, William Burr (ed), at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/us-secret-assistance-to-the-french-nuclear-program-1969-1975-fourth-country-to-strategic [Accessed 20 December 2013]. 41. On the relationship between British nuclear diplomacy and its desired accession to the EEC see D.J. Gill, ‘Ministers, Markets and Missiles: The British Government, the European Economic Community and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1964–68’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, xxi, no. 3 (2010), 451–70; for similar British ambitions during the 1950s see Stuart Butler’s article in this IHR issue (The Struggle for Power: Britain and Euratom 1955–1963, 324–341). 42. Additional US leverage derived from the fact that Washington had the option to terminate the 1958 agreement on military nuclear co-operation during this time period. See Katzenbach memo to Johnson, 22 Nov. 1968, LBJL, National Security File, Country File, box 212, fol. ‘United Kingdom, Vol. XIV, Cables & Memos 8/68-1/69’. 43. On the Brazil deal and the transatlantic crisis resulting from it see also W.G. Gray, ‘Commercial Liberties and Nuclear Anxieties: The US-German Feud over Brazil, 1975–7’, The International History Review, xxxiv, no. 3 (2012), 449–74. 44. On the production of an uncritical acceptance of non-proliferation as a global good and the consequences of these attitudes see the important article by C. Craig and J. Ruzicka, ‘The Nonproliferation Complex’, Ethics & International Affairs, xxvii, no. 3 (2013), 329–48. 45. For a start of a debate between the disciplines see F.J. Gavin, ‘Politics, History and the Ivory Tower-Policy Gap in the Nuclear Proliferation Debate’, Journal of Strategic Studies, xxxv, no. 4 (2012), 573–600; S.D. Sagan and K.N. Waltz, ‘Political Scientists and Historians in Search of the Bomb’, Journal of Strategic Studies, xxxvi, no. 1 (2013), 143–51.