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

65. Minutes of Secretary of State Kissinger’s Analytical Staff Meeting¹

Washington, July 12, 1974, 4:05–4:50 p.m.

[Omitted here are an annotated table of contents and a list of attendees.]

PROCEEDINGS

Secretary Kissinger: I want to begin developing a position on nonproliferation, sparked by the Indian peaceful explosion.

Ambassador Moynihan: That is not what they call it in New Delhi. They call it—the bomb.

Secretary Kissinger: And there is a NSSM out on this, isn’t there?

Mr. Lord: Yes. It is circulating now for agency comments.

Secretary Kissinger: Okay. But I wanted to get my own thinking clear.

Who has done this paper—Winston?

Mr. Lord: Kahan and Van Doren have done the basic work on it.

Secretary Kissinger: Okay. If you want to sum up where we are.

Mr. Lord: The paper itself addresses first the desirability and feasibility of a nonproliferation strategy and lays out one, centering around four main elements: NPT, export, safeguards, PNEs, and reaction to the Indian blast. But rather than summarizing the paper, I thought it might be more useful to kick this off, Mr. Secretary, by posing four or five questions, which I think any policy maker has a right to have answered before he is supposed to embark on a nonproliferation strategy.

Secretary Kissinger: Like what we are going to do about it.

Mr. Lord: That is what the study, hopefully, sets forth.

But I think before you get into specific actions or specific hobbyhorses, I think we ought to ask the following kinds of questions, before we ask you or the President to embark on a major effort to intensify our efforts. Such questions as is the trend towards proliferation inevitable, in any event. Secondly, if we cannot—

Secretary Kissinger: And if it is not, then we have no right to conduct a policy?

Mr. Lord: If it is not inevitable.

Secretary Kissinger: Yes.

Mr. Lord: We would argue it is not inevitable, and there are things you can do. But many people do perceive in the world, because of the Indian blast, and the availability of nuclear materials, it is inevitable, and why waste a lot of capital trying to do something about it.

Secondly, if you can’t have a completely successful policy, why should you expend your capital, when you cannot completely shut off nonproliferation.

Thirdly, are there effective things you can do which don’t cost you too much in other areas, because there are always trade offs, in your objectives between nonproliferation and other objectives.

Fourthly, even if the U.S. could mount an intensive campaign, there are a lot of other players in the game and therefore you cannot act alone and stop all this by yourself, presumably.

And lastly, what good is a grand strategy in nonproliferation, because each country, or each possible nuclear country has to be looked at in terms of its own factors and its own conditions.

I would like briefly to try to answer each of those reasonable questions that a man has to ask.

First, is it inevitable. The answer is—not at all. Many potential nuclear weapons states are far from having a full array of materials and facilities that they need to produce explosives, such as Pakistan, Egypt, and many others. Many others with high technical potential, like Germany and Japan, are inhibited by legal, political and security considerations, and the dependence on us for supplies and the need to acquire delivery systems.

Secondly, the Indian test is not necessarily a precedent for everyone else in the world. There are particular factors at work in India. In any event—

Secretary Kissinger: Like what? The Gandhian tradition of non-violence?

Mr. Lord: The domestic situation and other factors—

Secretary Kissinger: I am assuming this has been a long-established policy. They didn’t just do it in the last two years.

Mr. Lord: I am not so sure the evidence is that conclusive, as long established policy goes. But in any event, it is not necessarily going to be persuasive for other countries, just because India did it, because each country has different factors at work. In any event, there were not safeguards in the Indian case. In addition, there are costs as well as gains in going nuclear, which countries have to weigh. They could become a target of preemptive attack—there are financial costs, political costs, retaliation perhaps by people like ourselves—if we want to cut off fuel for their commercial industry, and so on.

So the first question is we don’t think it is necessarily inevitable this trend is going to proliferate.

But having said that, there is no way to assure you on the second question that you can be completely successful in stopping proliferation. Nevertheless, even an imperfect attempt, with incomplete success, we think is better than not trying at all. It gains you time to create more stable conditions in various regions around the world, which might decrease incentives to go for a nuclear option. And also once a nation has crossed the threshold, it is very hard to turn it back, and it sets off more of a chain reaction. You have to distinguish countries who might go nuclear. Presumably Japan would be much more serious than Argentina, so you at least make an effort to try to delay or minimize the number of nations.

In any event, if we don’t do anything, certainly the situation is going to get much worse, and the pace will pick up, and the spread will be all but inevitable.

Thirdly, we face the question of can we do anything, and what are the trade offs in terms of costs. You can do some things which don’t cost you very much—such as strong expressions of support for the NPT, strengthening our safeguards, our exports, etc.

Then when you begin to look at trade offs, you have to figure how important is nonproliferation to you in your overall policy. And many would argue that the risks of nuclear conflict are going to greatly escalate if you spread nuclear weapons around the world; our diplomatic influence will decrease; arms control progress will be set back.

Secretary Kissinger: Would decrease?

Mr. Lord: Decrease to the extent that other nations get nuclear weapons.

Secretary Kissinger: That I would question.

Mr. Lord: In any event, you have the greater threat of blackmail. I just think a proliferated world is a more dangerous world. Therefore—

Secretary Kissinger: But supposing—I am willing to accept all of this. I am willing to postulate the opposite of what you have said—that it is probably inevitable. But we should nevertheless try to slow it down.

Mr. Lord: Right.

Secretary Kissinger: Now, what are we going to do about it?

Mr. Lord: Well, there are certain things we do which the paper outlines. And keep in mind that other nations have to do something, too, because we are not going to have complete control. And here the situation isn’t so bad, because in the near term the suppliers are basically serious about this. The Russians, the British are good on this. The Canadians are going to be very firm. They have made some mistakes in the past. The only problem is France in the near term. And France—the last couple of days, they are holding up at least temporarily a contract with India, because of the non-proliferation.

Now, what we can do is outline in the paper—and we can summarize that for now, if you wish—but I thought the first thing to do is try to pose these tough questions.

Does it even make sense to mount a major effort before you can get into the specific actions.

Dr. Iklé: It is essentially a question of getting a delay—ten to fifteen years. What is beyond is probably unpredictable. But without the delay, we may get a rather rapid reaction, which would have very adverse psychological impact and real impact a few years later.

Secretary Kissinger: South Africa announced today—

Dr. Iklé: That is one. Argentina and Brazil are competing with each other to some extent, and would be stimulated by each other—there is clear evidence.

Secretary Kissinger: What is Argentina going to use for nuclear materials—what we gave them?

Dr. Iklé: They have a German reactor there, where the safeguards are not adequate. And they are talking about a chemical processing plant later on. It would be a number of years down the road. But moving into it more aggressively, it would stimulate the Brazilians. The Brazilians have said so recently.

Mr. Pollack: The Argentinians are in the process of concluding an agreement with India in the nuclear area. They would have a very small capacity to supply them with materials, but nevertheless, it is a possibility.

Secretary Kissinger: Do you think, Pat, India would do it?

Ambassador Moynihan: It would do anything that they can do. And they cannot do a lot yet, but they will certainly be able to do more.

Secretary Kissinger: Would they be willing to help other countries get nuclear explosives?

Ambassador Moynihan: For money, they would do anything.

Mr. Kahan: They have suggested things along those lines. One of the issues is to discuss with them whether they intend to put proper safeguards on their exports. It is a longer term issue, but it is an important one.

Mr. Lord: To answer your question more specifically, what we can do, the paper tries to outline specifically the various steps you could take under these headings, and they cut across all countries. You have to take each country specifically and target it, and look at the facts at work in that particular country, the levers you have, and your tradeoffs with other issues and other priorities. But this paper does set out what the broad elements are.

I think we do need more study on two aspects. One—take countries that are the major target areas, what you can do and what it costs you. And secondly, we ought to be studying what it is going to be like to live in a proliferated world. I think you have to plan for that contingency.

Secretary Kissinger: Yes. That we need in any event.

Well, there are two problems, at least. One is to prevent a possible military application of nuclear explosives. The second is to prevent peaceful nuclear explosives from being used as a road into the military use.

Now, the reason I make this distinction is because if countries can be kept from having an avowedly military program, if one can then get an international regime for peaceful nuclear explosives, one might be able to put some restraint on using peaceful nuclear explosives as a road into the nuclear field.

It is one thing for a country to avow that it is going militarily nuclear. It is another for it to get in through the PNE.

Now, Fred, what you and I talked about this morning with the Soviet Union could then multilateralize. It could become a very effective restraint and might be a way of catching part of the Indian program even now.

Mr. Lord: I think in addition, it is important to try to close the PNE loophole in any further exports. We would get agreements they would not develop these nuclear explosives. It is very hard to distinguish—

Dr. Iklé: Ideally, you would want to dissuade Brazil, for instance, or Argentina from doing their own PNE development, by us or the Russians, or some combination, maybe through IEA, offering these devices for their purposes, peaceful purposes. You cannot do that any more in the case of India. You might have a hybrid situation where at least a country such as India would proceed in a way as to minimize the stimulation to Pakistan to go after Chinese help or French help, as they are now doing, to develop their own weapons—and minimize also the Indian willingness to try to acquire deliberately, as they are now discussing.

So I think the hybrid situation, where the country has semi-legitimate PNE, is perhaps only India, and hopefully no additional countries in that difficult category. But there may be additional ones.

Then the other countries which have national interest, either faked or real, in peaceful nuclear explosives, such as Brazil, one would hope to dissuade from moving ahead much further in their own development, by offering them the PNEs, in a sense calling their bluff on that.

Mr. Sonnenfeldt: What the Secretary was arguing is if the United States and the Soviet Union, as part of the threshold test ban, develop a regime by which you can establish with reasonable assurance that PNEs are not in fact used for military purposes, because you provide observers and instrumentation and all the other things, that then you will have established for the first time a distinction that we have always said cannot really be established, and you may therefore have a handle on people who in fact claim they are exploding peaceful devices.

Secretary Kissinger: Exactly. You might not be able to keep them from exploding the first one, but you may be able to keep them from refining them.

Dr. Iklé: There is a problem there, though. The only possible verification that we can envisage for the Russian PNEs, above the threshold, is one that may be satisfactory to us, because we know they have weapons of various magnitude in advanced stages. So we can check on the basis of the observations we might make that they do not develop more advanced weapons than they already have. But that kind of verification would not help us in case of another country for which the fundamental weapon would be quite sufficient.

Secretary Kissinger: But you at least can keep them from developing the rudimentary weapon further.

Dr. Iklé: Not with the safeguards or with the verification procedures that we now are exploring with regard to the Soviet Union under the threshold test ban. Those would only help us to verify that the Russians are not testing more advanced weapons.

Mr. Sonnenfeldt: We don’t know that yet, and we really have not gone through that exercise completely.

Mr. Kahan: Mr. Secretary, there is a danger already, and we see it in the traffic from India—that a perception that we will develop a fool-proof scheme to differentiate between peaceful and military—a position we have not taken heretofore—will legitimatize the Indian program, by saying there is a distinction, and furthermore a danger that Brazil and other nations interested in PNEs will therefore assume that we have such a basis of making distinctions, will be more likely to cross the threshold, taking a peaceful route, and end up with a de facto nuclear weapons capability.

So how we walk the line—

Secretary Kissinger: That is what I want to have examined. The Indians have crossed the threshold. So that is not a major worry.

Dr. Iklé: It seems overall the thing to work on is the delaying of these further steps, delaying rapid succession of Indian tests, which might come every six months or so otherwise; delaying the Pakistani acquisition of facilities to develop their weapons.

Secretary Kissinger: How close are they to developing facilities?

Dr. Iklé: They tried to acquire them from the French, or perhaps from China. But it will take them a number of years—five to eight years; which, incidentally, provides an argument for probably New Delhi in that they might recognize by going more slowly they maintain more of an advantage than by stimulating the Pakistanis.

Mr. Lord: The specific actions recommended, Mr. Secretary, start on page 5 of the study, in which the four main headings are what you can do with the NPT structure, what you have to do outside of that, given the fact that some people won’t ratify it, but what you could do in terms of export controls; what we have developed so far in the PNE problem remains to be studied further; and fourthly, how you limit the Indian event.

Secretary Kissinger: Yes, I have read this. I have read the paper. The problem is that in each of these areas, we suffer from a rather indiscriminating melange of things that could be done. For example, consulting promptly with the Soviet Union, on page 6—that is one thing. But handling of demands for security assurances, joint Soviet-U.S. security assurances, if that is what is in mind, that is a rather significant event. And that is something that perhaps could be considered in one or two cases. But we cannot let nonproliferation ride every aspect of our policy. If we hand out security assurances jointly with the Soviet Union, we are getting awfully close into a condominium situation. And we will have impacts in China and Europe of the most severe nature, which in themselves might produce a nuclear race. And I don’t know whether Japan would want to rely on the Soviet security assurance.

Mr. Lord: I agree. Some things you can do fairly quickly.

Secretary Kissinger: But if the countries feel the only way they can get protection is through a U.S.-Soviet guarantee, they might then decide they would rather have their own. If the alternative is your own nuclear capability or a U.S.-Soviet guarantee, that might spur your own nuclear capability, because there are some countries that don’t want a U.S.-Soviet guarantee. There are other countries that want a guarantee that believe the United States and the Soviet Union will never be able to agree on anything in time to help them.

So either on grounds of insufficiency or on grounds of condominium, that might run you into a situation where it actually spurs proliferation.

So what I think we ought to do with this paper is to disentangle—first of all, I would like the thing looked at from the point of view, with the qualification which you made, of whether it is possible to separate the military proliferation from the civilian proliferation problem. Secondly, if you can separate the military from the civilian proliferation, whether it is possible to get a handle on the civilian proliferation, either by supplying devices, assured supplying of devices, or whatever the methods are—or as a worst case, by inspecting their own explosions, although I grant you that at the very early stages of nuclear technology it is the fact of an explosion and not the use to which it is put which provides the significance.

So I would not be very hopeful that the PNE negotiations with the Soviet Union are going to help us in the early stages of nuclear diffusion.

The next thing we have to look at is the impact of nuclear—the inevitable spread, which I do consider inevitable—of civilian nuclear users, on the problem of nuclear proliferation. And that is usually done in terms of safeguards.

But what about the problem—I don’t know the answer to that. Supposing a country that has accepted adequate safeguards kicks us out. What is the situation then? And gets its own supply of uranium.

Mr. Lord: It depends on your leverage. For example, in Taiwan, if they were to go nuclear, we supply, as I understand it, the fuel for six reactors. If we cut that off, it would be a tremendous impact.

Secretary Kissinger: If they cannot get it elsewhere.

Mr. Pollack: That is what the Congress has been asking all week with respect to the Egyptian reactor.

Secretary Kissinger: What is your answer?

Mr. Pollack: We have been giving them this kind of answer—

Secretary Kissinger: What is the true answer? Tell me what you really think.

Dr. Iklé: It is also the type of reactor—

Mr. Pollack: We are supplying a reactor that requires a fuel that is not generally available. Now, if you move this thing down the road about fifteen years, then all of the assurances that we are now offering begin to get very, very soft and watery. But over and beyond the fuel, the equipment itself, it is not like an automobile where you can turn a mechanic loose and keep it in shape. This is very, very difficult technology to sustain and maintain, and they need a continuing relationship with the supplier. So you have it in your ability, the capability—

Secretary Kissinger: Not with “the” supplier; with “a” supplier.

Mr. Pollack: No. As matters now stand, with “the” supplier.

Secretary Kissinger: Really?

Mr. Pollack: Yes.

Secretary Kissinger: Indefinitely?

Mr. Pollack: No. There comes a point in time when all of these assurances are very watery.

Mr. Kahan: One strategy is to try to talk to the other potential suppliers of enriched uranium. We are undertaking such a program, to see if we can coordinate—

Secretary Kissinger: That is part of the program. I am trying to understand what the problem is.

Mr. Pollack: We eventually get back to this question, to saying that there are other sanctions available to a government that desires to exercise them—economic, political, etc. And what we are doing is saying there is no agreement that cannot be broken. And what do you do when one is broken that you don’t want broken. There is no technical answer to this problem that would provide you with a permanent assurance. You are good for about fifteen years, without any question.

Secretary Kissinger: Because there are no other countries that have the technology.

Mr. Pollack: Yes.

Secretary Kissinger: And after that, you would be good for longer, if you could line up the other countries.

Mr. Pollack: Yes, sir. Efforts in the past to line up the other countries, through something called the Zanger Committee, which is discussed in here, would not give you any reason for optimism, because this is a very commercial enterprise, and everybody has his hands or his eyes on where his ability to compete with the United States will be down the road.

Dr. Iklé: There are just a few countries where the decision is in the balance. Particularly the Canadians are agonizing—should they pursue their commercial interests and sell to the South Koreans, for instance, Argentinians, or try to pursue these safeguards in their exports. They want to talk to us urgently.

Secretary Kissinger: Before they decide to pursue their commercial interests.

Dr. Iklé: I think their decision will be affected by what we tell them.

Mr. Sonnenfeldt: I think it is going the other way.

Secretary Kissinger: In Canada?

Mr. Lord: The Canadians are very firm on this.

Dr. Iklé: I think after the election they may be more likely to continue to support the safeguards. The other potential exporter of course is the Soviets. But I think they, too, so far have been supportive of safeguards. And that is where our discussions with them might—

Secretary Kissinger: You have two separate problems in safeguards. You have the problem of safeguards now. You have the problem of safeguarding that they won’t step in to replace us fifteen years from now.

Isn’t that right?

Mr. Pollack: Yes.

Secretary Kissinger: So there are two different safeguards involved. One is to make sure that everybody capable of selling reactors now will insist on the same safeguards, and to avoid a situation where you get into a competitive bidding on the basis of who offers the least intrusive safeguards. That is Point One. That we have to negotiate now.

Secondly, we should negotiate now, or at any rate in the next few years, how to prevent evasions where one country steps into the place of another, when safeguards are being violated. Isn’t that right?

Mr. Pollack: Yes, sir.

Secretary Kissinger: And that is even more complicated.

When you talk about fifteen years, you are saying within a fifteen-year period no one can replace us in the operation of our reactors.

Mr. Pollack: Right. It is actually probably a little more than fifteen years.

Secretary Kissinger: All right—twenty. After that, others may be able to step in. But how about the host country? Can they just take it over?

Mr. Pollack: Not a country like Egypt. I don’t think they will be that far along in twenty years. But what you are going to be witnessing in the course of the next two decades is a tremendous growth in the technological capability of the world as a whole to deal in nuclear energy. So the kind of know-how that is required, that is not now available, will become much more plentiful.

Dr. Iklé: Also in twenty years, the new techniques will be available for enriching uranium. It is a fifteen year time horizon we should focus on.

Mr. Pollack: It may be a backyard technology by then. So now is the time to move one way or the other.

Mr. Lord: It seems to me there are some things you can do quickly that don’t cost too much or require great study—like security assurances have to be studied very carefully, obviously. But you can make public expressions of support, you can go to various countries and try to persuade them.

Secretary Kissinger: How can you go to various countries and persuade them of what?

Mr. Lord: Persuade them not to go nuclear.

Secretary Kissinger: How do you do that?

Mr. Lord: Well, you say you consider it a high principle in your policy, and it will cost them in your bilateral relations if they do.

Secretary Kissinger: Except that that is not all that persuasive. It depends on the importance of the country.

Mr. Lord: As I say, you have to talk to individual countries with the leverage you have.

Secretary Kissinger: As you look over the list of countries, you will find you are back in your original situation. A country that means a great deal to you, you will not let go down the drain just because it has gone nuclear, even if you don’t like it. And we haven’t gone all out against India to the dismay of several who think I owe them a tilt—(Laughter)—but partly because we didn’t see where it would get us.

Ambassador Moynihan: Can I say on that, the question of time horizons, on the point where this stuff becomes a technology that other people pick up in 15 years, maybe—but with respect to the first point, which is how to prevent this first PNE going into a military phase right away. You probably don’t have six months in some respects to move. If the Pakistanis get themselves a separation plant, which for them will mean they are going to a bomb themselves, the Indians will almost automatically then say, “Since this has happened, we must develop our peaceful capacity . . .” and the military one, they will start almost immediately, in a direct bomb technology, and they will probably also start immediately—they are already well down the road in rocketry. When that happens, then you have Iran. But in any event, you have started that Pakistan-Indian thing up already. I mean there it goes. And it is out of control at that point. What we do in the next six months is probably going to—

Secretary Kissinger: Like what?

Ambassador Moynihan: Well, can we—the thing we would have to do is to persuade the Indians not go to a bomb on the grounds that we can persuade the Pakistanis not to. And if—

Secretary Kissinger: What makes you think either of these is possible? First of all, I don’t know what it means for India not go to a bomb.

Ambassador Moynihan: You are always doing amazing things. It would be amazing.

Dr. Iklé: A slowdown in testing—

Mr. Pollack: Well, one thing—

Secretary Kissinger: That I can understand. But after all, you would have to assume that anything that explodes can be used as a bomb.

Ambassador Moynihan: You could ask them to enter a regime, such as we may be negotiating with the Soviets.

Secretary Kissinger: With what?

Ambassador Moynihan: You could ask the Indians to enter—let me just say I think the most important thing is for the Indians, they have got soon enough to realize that if their weapon, or their explosion means that the Paks go nuclear too, then suddenly a military situation that has been finally and once and for all settled in favor of India puffs up and you are back at parity again. I mean you have Pakistan saying they will target Bombay, and Indian rockets targeted on Karachi, and you are back in the 1950s all over again.

That is one thing I think we could seriously make the argument on—that it would be a disaster for them to let the Paks go nuclear, and Pakistan will go nuclear, unless they hold their PNE right there. I think you can make this argument.

Dr. Iklé: What you can deliver is to slow down the testing.

Ambassador Moynihan: Slow it down, stretch it out, let it be inspected.

Secretary Kissinger: How do the Pakistanis know they are not building a thousand bombs of the design they just exploded?

Ambassador Moynihan: They don’t. We would have to undertake to guarantee something of that kind.

Secretary Kissinger: What was it—20 kilotons?

Ambassador Moynihan: Fifteen.

Secretary Kissinger: Well, that seems to be the standard size of the first explosion.

Mr. Pollack: [3 lines not declassified] They have two reactors of the kind that Canada supplied. Within two years of being in production. They have everything else they need. They have got a facility with 10,000 people in it. They are not an underdeveloped country in the nuclear area. This is one area where they are developed.

Secretary Kissinger: [1 line not declassified]

Mr. Pollack: I think possibly more than that. Out of non-safeguarded reactors—they don’t have to violate anything. Or at least anything more than they have already violated in their understanding with Canada.

Mr. Van Doren: The source of this present bomb, the research reactors, they have other calls on that. They have a fast breeder reactor program which also needs—

Mr. Pollack: They would have to make a decision they are going to go for the weapon instead of the fast breeder.

Dr. Iklé: You ask how the Paks know. How they use the plutonium, whether they use it in peaceful reactors or divert it secretly is something the Paks could observe. So they would have some assurance.

Secretary Kissinger: I don’t see any sense in going at India until we have some strategy of what we are trying to do.

Dr. Iklé: The time involved—if you visit there at the time of your visit.

Secretary Kissinger: The last time I was in India, they had to send the Ambassador in the big car and me in a taxi, to divert attention.

Ambassador Moynihan: No—to let him get stoned.

Secretary Kissinger: To let him get stoned—that was the purpose, exactly. I didn’t think they were discriminating against me.

Mr. Pollack: What you do have that you could move on perhaps more quickly is the psychological moment, with Canada, the UK, possibly some of the other potential large suppliers.

Secretary Kissinger: I won’t be going to India until September, maybe even October— So that time frame suits me fine. That gives us two months to work out the strategy. I think we will be more effective in India if we can fit it into an overall strategy. And also if we can have preliminary discussions with the Soviet Union. There is absolutely no sense in taking on India, and driving them to the Soviet Union on that issue, unless we have an understanding with the Soviet Union of cooperative action. I would have very little stomach for taking on the Indians on this if I thought the only result would be that the Soviet Union would pick up some cheap support.

Ambassador Moynihan: I would like to urge that the only conditions you could hope to have any success with the Indians right now would be that this is a world policy in the United States, and we would like India to join it—rather than as a policy for India.

Secretary Kissinger: In that way, I think we can get some benefit for not having taken them on all out, because then it would not be discriminating against them—it would be something that we want to generally apply. But for that we need a more differentiated paper than we now have, which isolates only the categories but not the strategies. And that is not a criticism of the paper. That had to be done as a first cut at it.

So again, just to sum up. We first see whether we can distinguish the military from the civilian on proliferation, simply as a device for getting at it. Secondly, we will try to identify those parts of the civilian proliferation that we are worried about. I suppose reactor technology, fuels, and so forth. Third, we have to group the countries—third, we ought to identify those things the United States can do alone and those things for which it needs an international consensus—especially how we can avoid competitive bidding on safeguards with respect to nuclear technology. Then we can develop a strategy in which we determine which other nuclear countries we have to deal with, to prevent proliferation, because we have to deal with Japan on two levels; one as a nuclear supplier, and other as a potential nuclear weapons country.

Isn’t that true? Japan could export nuclear technology.

Now, could we do this, in these categories, as a joint ACDA-Policy Planning—your shop—could we give it a fairly short deadline, say having another paper in about two weeks?

Dr. Iklé: I think we should make it shorter.

Secretary Kissinger: Ten days?

Dr. Iklé: Some of these things are urgent, like talking to the Canadians, and the French, if we can.

Secretary Kissinger: I am very reluctant to talk to anybody until I know what we want. And the general hand-wringing position, in which we fail with nonproliferation but have no concrete view of what we want from them—I think when we meet them—when we talk to them, we ought to say “This is our view of how the civilian technology should be kept under control. This is our view of how those countries that already have a technology can be given inducements to go towards the PNE route, through the PNE route to military technology.” And third, how we can keep countries that have already committed themselves, like India, to PNE, from going military.

Those three levels ought to be—a week from Monday, then. Then I can address this problem again.

Dr. Iklé: On the second one, we do have fairly concrete points, in that IEA has been dealing with these export controls. There are long technical lists of what is to be done and not to be done. The problem there is more to get, for example, the French government to observe these rules, which they are fully aware of.

Secretary Kissinger: If we could list the things we need done, and then what we want from the suppliers, and what we want from the recipients—then we can formulate a strategy. Then we might consider holding a conference first of supplier countries, and then see what we can do towards recipients.

On this one I think we ought to talk to the Soviets first of all.

Mr. Pollack: The Soviets, incidentally, in Vienna—Mordikoff (?) has told our representative, in chiding terms, in effect we are not doing enough about India.

Ambassador Moynihan: And the British have come in to say “Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

Secretary Kissinger: We will be delighted to do something, once we have a general strategy. But now to take on India, before we know what anything [any?] supplier is going to say—we ought to be able by the middle of August to have a general policy, shouldn’t we? Then we can approach India. But then we can also approach a lot of other countries.

Mr. Atherton: I think we should have a general strategy. I think we should approach the Indians. I think we should do some other things before approaching the Indians, to have credibility when we approach the Indians.

Secretary Kissinger: I just don’t think this handwringing, do-good attitude, in which we tend to specialize so much—I don’t want lectures to the Indians on non-proliferation—

Ambassador Moynihan: They win on lectures.

Secretary Kissinger: They win on lectures—that’s right. If we can tell them something concrete, that we are going to ask of all others, with some implicit penalties, because we have already lined up some other countries, then I think we are talking a language they understand. If we talk the abstract disadvantages of nonproliferation to them, we are in an endless debate.

Mr. Lord: I think the elements are here. There are some concrete steps. This is not just atmosphere in this paper. It is a matter of what you say to all suppliers, how you talk in each country.

Secretary Kissinger: What we have here is a laundry list of everything we can possibly do. We have no priorities, no discrimination.

Mr. Lord: With all due respect, I don’t think that is entirely accurate. What I am saying is—

Secretary Kissinger: Is somebody going to put it in the shape that I can understand it?

Dr. Iklé: That is why it will take us only a week.

Secretary Kissinger: I am not saying it is not here.

Mr. Lord: We will have to repackage it.

Mr. Pollack: May I raise a question, without wringing my hands and making a fancy speech—might it not be helpful for us to come out with a statement fairly promptly, reaffirming in general terms where we stand on the NPT; because in the absence of that, our position on ratification by Japan, within Japan, finding it easier—

Secretary Kissinger: I think we have a better chance of getting the NPT ratified once we have a general nonproliferation strategy, into which the NPT fits. I think otherwise, the NPT will simply look like a discriminatory device. If we can have this thing done in three weeks, I don’t think the decision in Japan will be affected decisively in three weeks.

Mr. Sonnenfeldt: Actually we just said in the Soviet communiqué we want to make it more effective.

Mr. Lord: You can say you are concerned about nonproliferation, and studying what to do about it, if you want to say anything.

Secretary Kissinger: That I welcome. We can say we are having an urgent study made. As this thing progresses, we could have the British over here, for preliminary consultation, and that will get the word around. All of that I am in favor of—once we know what we want, even approximately. And then by the middle of August or so we can have our course set. What we have to do in this paper is to identify the countries, both on the supplier side and on—

Mr. Pollack: If I may make one other point. I don’t want to say anything more at this time. I think we need to keep a very close eye on the Congress, because the range of hearings and the interest they have shown in the Egyptian thing has taken, among other forms, on the NPT, for example, why do we not simply require Egypt and Israel to become adherents to the NPT before we supply them.

Secretary Kissinger: Because the Israelis don’t want that, if you want to be brutal about it.

Mr. Pollack: There are some resolutions and bills floating around on the floor, and something may end up we have to deal with.

Secretary Kissinger: I think we will be able to handle the Congress most easily, if we know what our genuine strategy is. If our strategy is that we will require each country to ratify the NPT, I am delighted to do it—and then to approach Israel on that basis.

Mr. Sonnenfeldt: I think we should be realistic, in that adherence to the NPT is not the only way to stop a country from becoming nuclear.

Mr. Pollack: We have given them that. Your problem here I think is the next two weeks—this is when there will be the heat of this congressional concern.

Secretary Kissinger: The adherence to the NPT doesn’t close the PNE route at all, which is the one—

Mr. Van Doren: Yes, it does, specifically. That is specifically what it does.

Mr. Sonnenfeldt: But the fact is that people won’t join it. If you say that the only way to stop them from going nuclear is by forcing them to join the NPT, you foreclose other options.

Mr. Lord: No one is saying that.

Mr. Van Doren: Actually among the major suppliers, all the major suppliers, except France, are signatories—all present major suppliers are either signatories or parties to this treaty. If they all become parties, you would have a real handle on your supply situation.

Mr. Sonnenfeldt: That is an “if”. There must be other ways to get at the problem.

Dr. Iklé: That is the French problem.

Mr. Ingersoll: India can become a supplier, too.

Secretary Kissinger: The trap you can get yourself into is if you say the way to do it is through the NPT, that then you either get countries signing the NPT and later revoking it, having established their nuclear capability—you may then forego the safeguard route, which gives you a better protection than simply signing a treaty which you can later break. Now, I admit breaking treaties has certain penalties.

Mr. Van Doren: The NPT requires—

Mr. Lord: The NPT is only one of many tools.

Secretary Kissinger: There is no objection to using the NPT as one of the tools.

Okay.

Well, why don’t we proceed on this basis and meet again within two weeks.

(Whereupon at 4:50 p.m. the meeting was adjourned.)

1. Summary: Kissinger and his staff discussed the urgency of finding a means to prevent future nuclear explosions in India and the immediate neighboring region.

   Source: National Archives, RG 59, Transcripts of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s Staff Meetings, 1973–1977, Lot 78D443, Box 4, 7/12/74. Secret. All brackets are in the original except those indicating text that remains classified or that was omitted by the editors and “[any?]”, added for clarity. Attached but not published is a 2–page summary of the meeting, dated July 15, which Samuel Gammon (S/S) signed for Springsteen. There is no indication as to the drafter of the minutes. A draft of the paper under discussion, prepared in response to NSSM 202, is Document 57.