Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula, 1969–1972; Jordan, September 1970

61. Minutes of a Senior Review Group Meeting¹

Washington, October 6, 1971, 3:10–4:02 p.m.

SUBJECT

• Indian Ocean

PARTICIPANTS

• Chairman—Henry A. Kissinger
• State—U. Alexis Johnson
• Christopher Van Hollen
• Ronald Spiers
• Thomas Thornton
• Defense—Armistead Selden
• R/Adm. H.H. Anderson
• JCS—Adm. Thomas H. Moorer
• R/Adm. James H. Doyle
• CIA—Lt. Gen. Robert E. Cushman
• Bruce Clarke

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS

It was agreed:

• —to issue a NSSM calling for a study of the general question of naval arms control;²
• —that we are not prepared to accept any deployment limitations on SSBNs in the Indian Ocean;
• —to prepare a more specific paper on the question of naval deployment limitations for presenation to the President, and that nothing would be discussed with any government prior to a Presidential decision;
• —State will prepare talking points for the President’s meeting with Prime Minister Bandaranaike and obtain agency views on them;³
• —our instructions to our UN Delegation on the Ceylonese proposal will be based on the President’s conversation with Mrs. Bandaranaike.

Dr. Kissinger: We have two issues today: 1) the composition of the naval presence in the Indian Ocean and plans for upgrading, if any; 2) the various schemes for arms control in the Ocean, triggered by the Ceylonese initiative and Dobrynin’s presentation to Secretary Rogers in March.⁴ Is that a fair statement of the issues?

All agreed

Dr. Kissinger: Let’s start with the naval side.

Adm. Moorer: We have been maintaining three ships in MIDEASTFOR: the Valcour, a communications and flag ship, and two WWII destroyers rotating around the Cape into the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. We have depended on the British at Bahrein for our ground support for these ships. The British are pulling out now, but we have negotiated for access to some of thier installations there to support MIDEASTFOR. We have no problem in this regard.

Dr. Kissinger: Are the British turning over their facilities to Bahrein? Are we dealing with Bahrein for these facilities?

Adm. Moorer: We’re getting part of them from Bahrein. In any event, our logistic support will continue. We also have in mind upgrading the force. We plan to have a LPH, an amphibious ship with helicopter capability and good aircraft communications capability.

Dr. Kissinger: Would you have troops abroad?

Adm. Moorer: No, but there is room for troops which would give us greater evacuation capacity if we should need it. We plan to put that in next summer.

Dr. Kissinger: Would this replace the Valcour?

Adm. Moorer: Yes. It’s bigger, better looking and more modern. We would scrap the Valcour. We also plan to begin intermittent deployment of two new missile-carrying destroyers similar to the Berkeley class. We would hope for continuous deployment soon.

Dr. Kissinger: Are you still planning two Task Unit operations?

Adm. Moorer: Before Vietnam we used to send Task Forces from the Seventh Fleet into the Indian Ocean from the Persian Gulf. We had the Shah of Iran and other VIPs from the littoral states aboard at one time or another. When Vietnam drops off, we will resume the practice. That would involve a carrier, a tanker and four or five destroyers. We also run a maritime patrol from Udapai in Thailand. There is good Australian base on the west coast with VLF communications facilities. We will visit there at Singapore from time to time. In other words, we would have intermittent cruises into the Indian Ocean in addition to a permanent presence.

In connection with Diego Garcia, I wrote the first report in 1962 recommending that we go ahead with it, and it’s taken ten years to get it. The Seabees are there now and we plan some austere communication facilities, an airfield, some fuel storage and an anchorage. We are doing it in three increments: the first was in FY 1971, the second is included in this year’s military construction bill, and the third will come next year. We have had difficult fueling, since we have a port problems in both India and Ceylon. Also, we will be conducting a CENTO exercise, MIDLAKE 14, with the British, Iranians, Turks and Pakistanis. This will involve one submarine and two destroyers in the Persian Gulf.

Dr. Kissinger: Does anyone have any comment on the program Tom (Moorer) has outlined?

Mr. Johnson: I think it’s first class.

Dr. Kissinger: (to Moorer) How about the defense program for FY 73? Do you think it adequately responds to the differences you had noted earlier between us and the Soviets with regard to port calls, etc.

Adm. Moorer: Yes, but we’re not trying to match ship-day for ship-day.

Mr. Selden: You will make selective port calls, though?

Adm. Moorer: Yes, for all forces.

Dr. Kissinger: Okay. Can we talk about arms control now. This was, of course, triggered by Dobrynin’s discussion with the Secretary (Rogers), by the comments by various littoral states about a “sea of peace, and by the September 22 aide-mémoire from Ceylon with its seven points. Mrs. Bandaranaike will be here on October 19. We have two issues: the question of arms control at sea in the Indian Ocean and that of naval arms control all together. There are obvious significant differences between naval and land arms control—restraints on deployment have different significance, the ability to reinforce is different. We have never formally addressed the question of arms control at sea, except as a part of some other issue such as SALT.

Mr. Farley: Only in combination with other forms of control.

Dr. Kissinger: If Phil (Farley) agrees, I think we should put out a NSSM to look at the question of naval arms control in a general way.

Adm. Moorer: Before we get into this I’d like to make two points. First, we’re a maritime nation and any action that is taken to inhibit the freedom of the seas can only be detrimental to our interests. The Soviets have a geo-political problem which makes it more difficult for them to operate naval forces. We mustn’t do anything to degrade our advantage here. Second is the problem of enforcing any arms control at sea or of isolating an area. No matter what you take out, they can always move back in in a few days. A sanitized area doesn’t mean anything.

Dr. Kissinger: Those are exactly the sorts of questions we should address in a general consideration of arms control at sea. We must take into account Tom’s (Moorer) point of the geo-political differences. Naval arms control would have a different impact on a maritime nation than on a land nation. Let’s defer that issue to the general study. We understand that Tom (Moorer) is opposed to any limitation on naval arms in the Indian Ocean and probably anywhere. In the general study we can address the issue of naval constraints and the types of arms to be considered.

Have the Soviets re-raised the issue of limitations in the Indian Ocean?

Mr. Johnson: No, the ball is in their court.

Dr. Kissinger: It didn’t come up in the Beam–Gromyko conversation.⁵

Mr. Spiers: Gromyko said he’d look into it but we haven’t heard back from him.

Dr. Kissinger: So this isn’t an immediate issue unless we want to force it. I assume we are talking about limitations on outside forces, not on the littoral countries. Then we would have to consider the question of limitations on us in other places where we were not a littoral.

We have an ACDA–DOD paper with seven options⁶ and, to my surprise, the middle option seems to be the more realistic. The options are (reading from the paper): I—an informal, generalized understanding to avoid conflict and limit naval presence; II—a bilateral agreement limiting surface combatants and existing bases, but not SSBNs; III—a bilateral agreement limiting surface combatants bases, and SSBNs; IV—a bilateral agreement limiting surface combatants less strictly, and limiting bases, but not SSBNs; V—a bilateral agreement limiting surface combatants but not bases or SSBNs; VI—a bilateral agreement to freeze existing deployment levels and establish no new bases for one year while netotiations continue on detailed arms limitations; VII—a multilateral arrangement whereby all outside powers would exclude all their forces from the Indian Ocean except for direct and immediate transit.

Before we get into the options, what are we trying to accomplish by arms limitation in the Indian Ocean?

Mr. Farley: A primary consideration was that we needed our ships elsewhere more. We have a situation of increasing Soviet activity, and we would find it painful to step up our activity to match. Therefore, we might find a means to hold the Soviets at their present level. Also, there is the question of our general posture toward the “sea of peace.” There are lots of holes in this, but we might try to do something with the Soviets to avoid a build-up of competition in our naval postures. It would be better public relations.

Dr. Kissinger: Toward whom?

Mr. Farley: Toward the countries in the area, and also in the situation that might develop here if we appear uninterested.

Dr. Kissinger: Am I correct that the Soviets don’t have a base on the Red Sea?

Adm. Moorer: They’re all over the area. They’re at Socotra, they refuel at Mauritius…

Dr. Kissinger: If there were a significant Soviet base in, say, Alexandria, any restrictions on their activities would be marginal. How long would it take to get from Alexandria assuming the Canal were open?

Adm. Moorer: One or two days.

Dr. Kissinger: What is our closest base?

Adm. Moorer: Camranh Bay, the Philippines, Western Australia. When the Canal is open the situation can be shifted overnight. That’s why i don’t think we should let the Ceylonese tail wag the dog.

Mr. Johnson: There’s another side, though. If we’re not going to do any more in the area and the Soviets are planning to do more, is there any value in seeing if the Soviets will agree to limit their activities to our level.

Dr. Kissinger: Is there any Soviet base in the Indian Ocean?

Adm. Moorer: No, but they are always there.

Dr. Kissinger: If they have nothing based in the Ocean, what are we trying to get them to do? To agree not to have more than three ships there at a time?

Gen. Cushman: They keep two to four ships there all the time. Once they had eight.

Dr. Kissinger: Would we say they couldn’t have more than four ships under the status quo option? What if they say ‘okay, you can have the same’? What would that mean?

Adm. Moorer: It would knock out any Task Force operations.

Mr. Farley: It would depend on the formulation.

Dr. Kissinger: Let’s say transits were permitted. Could they be staged so that there were always more ships there de facto?

Adm. Moorer: Yes. And, of course, they could change course at any time.

Dr. Kissinger: It would be interesting to know what each side could actually do. They have in fact been conducting maneuvers since they have no base there.

Mr. Farley: They have had a continuous presence at the two-to-four level.

Adm. Moorer: Plus support.

Dr. Kissinger: Does anyone see any sense in banning SSBNs from the Indian Ocean?

Adm. Moorer: No.

Gen. Cushman: It would be impossible to verify.

Adm. Moorer: It would greatly simplify their warning system and ASW system. We want them to have to look 360 degrees.

Gen. Cushman: Their Y-class submarines might be a threat some day, but they aren’t now. And we couldn’t verify an agreement to ban them anyhow.

Adm. Moorer: We can use the Indian Ocean against them better than they can use it against us.

Dr. Kissinger: So we are all agreed that we’re not prepared to discuss deployment limitations on SSBNs. That knocks out all the SSBN options.

Let’s go back to deployment limitations. The question of whether we would ever agree to deployment limitations on our naval activities would have to go to the President. We need a more specific paper on this—how to distinguish transit from permanent presence; maneuvers from transit and permanent presence. There is a surface attractiveness to the proposition that we won’t build up our naval forces and we might get the Soviets not to. That’s okay if that’s all that would happen. But we have to consider the possible precedent.

Mr. Johnson: The question of precedent is most important.

Dr. Kissinger: We would have to go to the President.

Adm. Moorer: This would fly in the face of the Nixon Doctrine. If there were a crisis in the Indian Ocean, in which the Soviets were not involved, and the President wanted to send a force in, he couldn’t do it.

Mr. Johnson: That depends on the type of agreement you have. You understand I’m not advocating an agreement. I’m very skeptical that we could devise anything that we would find acceptable.

Dr. Kissinger: Do we all understand that nothing is to be floated to any government prior to a Presidential decision?

All agreed

Dr. Kissinger: On bases, we’re only talking about one at Diego Garcia, aren’t we?

Mr. Spiers: We don’t call it a base.

Adm. Moorer: Communications facility, then. The Soviet agreement with the Indians includes utilization of their ports—I call those bases.

Mr. Farley: Will we have people stationed at Bahrein?

Adm. Moorer: We’ll have some mailmen and dependents—no combat forces.

Dr. Kissinger: American naval personnel?

Adm. Moorer: Yes.

Dr. Kissinger: Isn’t that a good definition of a base? We have two bases then—Bahrein and Diego Garcia.

Adm. Moorer: They’re facilities.

Dr. Kissinger: Could each side be permitted unlimited facilities but no bases?

Mr. Selden: Diego Garcia is a joint facility. The British have personnel there.

Mr. Spiers: The British and French also have facilities at Djibouti and Diego Suarez.

Dr. Kissinger: Are we sufficiently concerned that the Soviets might establish a base in the Indian Ocean to make it significant to disucss?

Adm. Moorer: We’ve seen no sign of construction, but they can anchor and stay for days at Socotra.

Dr. Kissinger: When we talk about arms control, there are a number of ways to do it: limitations on the types of ships, the number of ships, the types of activities, bases …

Mr. Johnson: If you are asking me if I think there is a danger of the Soviets establishing a Soviet base in the Indian Ocean, the answer is no. That’s not the way they operate. Alexandria is not a Soviet base. It’s not likely under the present circumstances, but I don’t exclude it.

Adm. Moorer: But they have one in India.

Mr. Johnson: It doesn’t fly the Soviet flag. We have the problem of defining a base. We fly our flag on Diego Garcia.

Dr. Kissinger: I assume we’re not prepared to discuss the Ceylonese proposal affirmatively with Mrs. Bandaranaike. Should we say anything else other than we are studying it?

Mr. Johnson: We could use various stalls—ask her what her neighbors think. No one is proposing a positive response.

Mr. Spiers: She will have considerable support in New York.

Mr. Selden: The best way to stop it is to say we’re not interested—that we’re opposed.

Mr. Farley: The Ceylonese have already introduced it in the UN, and Mrs. Bandaranaike will make her speech on October 12.

Mr. Spiers: We need to get some guidance to our UN Delegation on it.

Adm. Moorer: Why not just turn her off?

Dr. Kissinger: We know there are a number of items we won’t accept no matter how much we study it—restrictions on submarines, restrictions on maneuvers …

Mr. Spiers: We have a list of suggested talking points for the President’s meeting with Mrs. Bandaranaike. (handed them to Dr. Kissinger)

Mr. Johnson: Why don’t we look at these and see if there is any consensus.

Dr. Kissinger: The talking points, in effect, say that we don’t want Big Power competition in the Indian Ocean. That Mrs. Bandaranaike should consult the other littoral states and, if they agree, we would have to take a position which would most likely be in opposition. Could we tell her now that most of the items are not likely to be acceptable? We could say we are studying the proposal and would come back to her if our reaction were more favorable.

Mr. Spiers: We hope she would get bogged down in differences with others and that the proposal will go away. If we try to get into specifics, she will offer to make changes to accommodate us.

Dr. Kissinger: I think the issue is clear. We can either bog her down with general good will, or turn her off.

Mr. Johnson: Under the heading of general good will, we could say we don’t want Big Power competition.

Dr. Kissinger: When the Soviets are moving into India, it’s silly to talk about Big Power competition as sea power.

Mr. Johnson: But we’re talking about sea power. We can say her proposal gives us difficulties and we don’t see how it would work out.

Dr. Kissinger: We need two things: what the President should say to Mrs. Bandaranaike and what position we take at the UN. When does it come up in the UN? After the President sees her? Can we be guided by what the President says?

Mr. Johnson: Yes.

Dr. Kissinger: It will be hard to raise this with the President this week. We’ll try to get to him next week.

Mr. Johnson: We can see what the President says and take our instructions for our UN Delegation from that.

Dr. Kissinger: Would October 20 be soon enough?

Mr. Spiers: Fine.

Dr. Kissinger: I’ll get this discussion to the President. We won’t ask Mrs. Bandaranaike.⁷ Based on that conversation, we can draw up something for the UN.

Mr. Johnson: We’ll refine these talking points for the President and get a reaction from you all.

Dr. Kissinger: Yes, we need to see the talking points. The President can express his desire to avoid Big Power competition, then he can either follow the line we have been discussing here, or say that the fault lies more with the Soviets than with us. Let’s redefine these present talking points.

Mr. Spiers: There is also the question of how deeply we want to go in defining our objections.

Mr. Selden: Will delay on our part run the risk of building up support in New York?

Mr. Spiers: She’s already getting a lot of support. There will be some resolutions but nothing will happen unless the Big Powers are interested. There is no evidence of any Russian interest. If we follow Option 1, it may provide a good framework for dealing with proposals like the one from Ceylon. But if Ceylon is encouraged to talk to others, there will be lots of problems.

Dr. Kissinger: If we know we don’t want anything, we might be better to put her out of her misery. It’s better to turn down one country than seven.

Mr. Spiers: We do have some diplomatic means to influence some of these people.

Dr. Kissinger: We have a choice of formalizing an arrangement, or of saying we are restraining our activities and will be watching the Soviets to see if they do.

Adm. Moorer: Instead of saying we will study her proposal, why not say we have studied it?

Dr. Kissinger: (to Johnson) You will get us a refinement of your proposed talking points. I won’t try to get the President’s reaction until the end of next week.

1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Material, NSC Files, NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), Box H-112, Senior Review Group, SRG Minutes (Originals) 1971. Secret. The meeting was held in the White House Situation Room. The Assistant Secretary of Defence— office prepared a memorandum for the record on the SRG meeting; the memorandum and the Talking Paper prepared for Packard and Moorer are ibid., RG 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Records of Admiral Thomas Moorer, Box 125, Misc. File, SRG, VP Minutes.
2. The NSSM was drafted only. See Document 63.
3. Briefing material, including the Talking Points, are in the National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 592, Country Files, Middle East, Ceylon, Vol. I.
4. See Documents 60 and 55.
5. See footnote 7, Document 59.
6. See Document 59.
7. See Document 62.