Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–14, Part 2, Documents on Arms Control and Nonproliferation, 1973–1976

207. Memorandum From Secretary of State Kissinger to President Ford¹

Washington, September 6, 1976.

SUBJECT

• Nuclear Policy Review and Non-Proliferation Initiatives

I wish to take this opportunity not only to transmit my Department’s response to the nuclear policy report, but also to offer my personal recommendations on the international aspects of your policy choices, their public presentation, and their diplomatic implementation. The State Department has participated actively in the formulation of the foreign policy elements of this study. I strongly concur in the review group’s emphasis on the international basis for your nuclear policy, and I believe it of central importance both that we maintain consistency between their expression and execution and that we ensure broad multilateral support for the positions you take.

Attached are the specific State Department positions, which I fully endorse, on the proposals and options prepared by your interagency group. I concur in the report’s recommendations for effective diplomatic consultations and action, in which we played an active role in developing and which we are prepared to undertake as soon as you give your approval. I need hardly emphasize that the more advance notice of proposed policies and statements we give our nuclear partners and allies, the more likely they will be to provide the support so necessary for the success of our non-proliferation policies. Therefore, this memorandum specifically seeks your early authorization for proposed diplomatic approaches, on the basis of which you could refine the international policy elements of your eventual public statement.

Non-Proliferation Objectives

In reviewing and developing further our nuclear policies, it is essential for the U.S. to:

1. Ensure that our non-proliferation policies are cast in the framework of our overall foreign policy interests and close relationships with nuclear partners and allies.

2. Retain multilateral support for our non-proliferation policies, without which our political relationships will be set back and our non-proliferation efforts will be rendered ineffective.

3. Develop a policy which marries the restraints which we require with the incentives we can offer.

4. Prevent our non-proliferation efforts from being distorted by international commercial competition.

5. Make domestic decisions which will effectively support, rather than undercut, the primary objective of deterring nuclear proliferation.

Meeting Policy Objectives

This Administration can justly claim credit for the concerted and productive U.S. efforts to develop strengthened and uniform nuclear safeguards and controls, through bilateral discussions with such key suppliers and consumers as France and Iran and multilateral consultations in the London meetings of major nuclear suppliers. The U.S. has achieved significant non-proliferation results through high-level, confidential diplomacy, consistent with our broad foreign policy interests and relationships. At the same time, we have openly advocated strengthened nuclear safeguards and controls, in public statements and testimony to the Congress. But domestic pressures have substantially increased for fuller public expressions of what we have pursued privately and for visible improvement and strengthening of our policies.

It therefore continues to be necessary to make choices as to what balance is to be struck between diplomatic imperatives and public perceptions of a vigorous, coherent nuclear policy. We should make no apologies for past performance, but we should also not hesitate to stake out new territory.

The fundamental need to meet the non-proliferation objectives set out above leads, in my view, to the following policy choices and presentational requirements which are consistent with but often carry further the group’s recommendations:

1. New conditions of nuclear supply, however desirable, should not be imposed by the U.S. unilaterally, but rather pursued and adopted multilaterally. I must stress that a unilateral approach will damage us politically, with our allies and partners, and will lead the U.S. to lose both commercially and in non-proliferation terms, as other less committed nations preempt the nuclear market. It should be recognized that if the suppliers, many of whom are also our allies, do not wish to follow a U.S. initiative voluntarily, then we will either have to coerce them or jeopardize our non-proliferation policy. Clearly, we should not select a strategy which could so easily trap us in such a dilemma. At the same time, we should continue to make best diplomatic efforts to make non-proliferation gains, as I believe we have in our proposed nuclear agreements with Egypt and Israel and in our current negotiations with Iran. I believe that a strong public statement could be built around the crucial importance of multilateral consensus in nuclear safeguards and controls, the need for this country not to isolate itself and lose its non-proliferation influence, and your determination to pursue a responsible nuclear export policy while obtaining strong international support for our non-proliferation efforts.

2. It is essential to offer non-proliferation inducements in the areas of fuel buy-back and exchange, working in concert with other suppliers. Nuclear consumers, particularly those of proliferation concern who already enjoy less constrained agreements, will not voluntarily accept new restraints unless it is demonstrably in their interest to do so. I therefore strongly endorse the review group’s recommendations for assured and equitable front-end fuel services in exchange for spent fuel, which is at the heart of our current negotiating approach with Iran.

3. Nuclear consumers will become less disposed to relying on the U.S. if we arbitrarily impose more stringent conditions on nuclear agreements after their terms have been mutually agreed. We must therefore ensure that the NRC licensing procedures are responsive to national policy as executed by the President, within legislative requirements. Nuclear export licenses should not be used as a lever for obtaining new constraints from countries which live up to their obligations to us. NRC procedures should be perceived instead as a means of predictably implementing our policies of providing inducements, such as guaranteed reactor fuel supply, for countries accepting effective non-proliferation constraints.

4. We should move to engage other major nuclear suppliers in intensified and multilateral efforts to ensure that uranium enrichment and reprocessing facilities are located in supplier nations. To achieve this, it is necessary to prevent commercial competition from leading to proliferation of such sensitive nuclear facilities. While I support the review group’s important recommendations for joint supplier fuel-service support for reactor sales, I recommend that you set a long-term framework for effective supplier coordination of fuel assurances, by calling for an examination by interested nations of an “international nuclear fuel bank” concept, as described in the second section of my Department’s position paper, which would combine fuel storage and supply arrangements under international guarantees. With your approval, I will ask my deputies to work with Bob Fri in integrating this new element into your nuclear policy statement.

5. In this essential multilateral context, I conclude that a limited domestic reprocessing decision would serve our non-proliferation and foreign policy objectives. In so doing, however, it would be desirable to provide for appropriate foreign participation and essential to identify the proposed program as an “experiment,” without prejudging its outcome. I can support the demonstration project associated with the “assist reprocessing option” presented by the review group, subject to what I believe are necessary presentational and policy precautions elaborated in the attached position paper, designed to reinforce our overriding non-proliferation interests.

6. I agree that you should seize the opportunity to press for rapid Congressional approval of the Nuclear Fuel Assurances Act, as a crucial means for expanding U.S. enriched uranium capacity needed to provide credible non-proliferation inducements. In addition to providing greater U.S. enriched uranium capacity to meet foreign needs in the near-term, we should redouble our efforts to develop more efficient and controllable forms of enrichment technology which could very substantially reduce the cost of enriched uranium and expand available supplies. This would permit us to shape an international system which could offer a combination of the “carrot and stick” required to bring about a regime which might dramatically slow the spread of national reprocessing in non-supplier states.

7. Nuclear policy message and management. Your review group has suggested the UNGA as a possible forum for your nuclear policy statement. I believe that the UNGA would be an inappropriate forum for you to discuss our new non-proliferation policies which will inevitably convey a tougher approach toward constraints. Even if tempered by offers of inducements, such a message would likely be viewed by the majority of your audience as restrictive, discriminatory, and targetted against the countries they represent. Nevertheless, if you choose to address the General Assembly on this subject, I would urge that you focus on the cooperative elements of these policies, such as the recommended international spent fuel and plutonium regime and our interest in exploring an international nuclear fuel bank concept. I believe that, in any event, you should reserve for a receptive U.S. audience (or in a message to the Congress) the stronger aspects of our policies, as well as any decision to proceed with domestic reprocessing. As a subsidiary consideration, I am not convinced that a new bureaucratic layer—the proposed Nuclear Policy Council—will enhance management effectiveness. You might consider using instead existing interagency committees, such as the specially constituted Under Secretaries Committee described in the attachment, to coordinate U.S. nuclear policies.

Proposed Diplomatic Approaches

Your review group has identified the important need for diplomatic consultations prior to, and actions following, your nuclear policy statements. I believe that your statement will afford a significant opportunity to catalyze multilateral support for the safeguards, physical security, restraints, incentives and sanctions components of our nuclear policies. Pursuant to the review group’s recommendations for next steps, I propose that you authorize:

1. Rapid, advance consultations with the IAEA and my counterparts in Canada, France, the FRG, Japan, UK and USSR on the broad nuclear policy initiatives you desire to announce; and incorporation into your nuclear policy message of the results of these advance consultations by the NSC and the Department, working with the Domestic Council.

2. Exploration of your new nuclear policy proposals (including, if you approve, our recommendations for fuel pooling and an international nuclear fuel bank concept) with other supplier and consumer states, prior to my development of the comprehensive negotiating plan suggested by your review group.

3. Active pursuit of our standing proposals for an export moratorium on reprocessing facilities and technology, use of supplier-based reprocessing services, and international plutonium management, in the framework of the London nuclear suppliers’ meetings, consistent with your nuclear policy decisions.

4. Accelerated interagency review of technological, economic and commercial alternatives for maximizing use of enriched uranium incentives, under effective controls, to support policies of greater non-proliferation restraint.

Recommendations:

1. That you authorize the diplomatic approaches and follow-on actions proposed above.

2. That you direct incorporation in the Presidential message of the international nuclear policy elements I have described above, consistent with your decisions on the recommendations of the nuclear policy review group.

1. Summary: Kissinger presented the Department of State’s positions on nuclear policy and nonproliferation initiatives as well as his own policy recommendations to Ford.

   Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, NSC Middle East and South Asian Affairs Staff Files, Convenience Files, Box 37, Nuclear Policy Review and Non-Proliferation Initiatives. Confidential; Exdis. The attached Department of State response to the nuclear policy report is Document 206.