Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present

9. A Treaty to Castrate the Impotent: Codifying Nuclear Apartheid, 1965–1970

9 A​Treaty​to​Castrate​the​Impotent codifyinG nucleAr ApArTheid, 1965–1970 “If I had a dollar for every time I consulted with the Germans, I’d be a millionaire ,” snorted President Lyndon Johnson in March 1967. Johnson’s anger flared after the Bonn government complained of the superpowers’ “atomic complicity” in negotiating a nonproliferation treaty.The president had legitimate reasons to be irritated. During his first years in office, he had been extremely sensitive to Germany’s and other allies’ security interests, allowing nonproliferation negotiations to be shaped more by alliance politics than by superpower rivalry. Bonn “had written half the treaty,” according to Dean Rusk. Moscow and Washington had concluded that nonproliferation enhanced both U.S. and Soviet national security, especially with respect to West Germany and non-Western nations. They envisioned a two-tier system in which their respective alliance partners would have tightly controlled access to nuclear weapons while the rest of the world pledged nuclear abstinence . Newly decolonized nations, however, objected to this system of “nuclear weapons apartheid,” demanding that Moscow and Washington cut their nucleararsenals to offset the sacrifice of non-nuclear nations.The superpowers instead promulgated a nonproliferation agreement that the most significant near-nuclear nations rejected. Conclusion of the npT became even less meaningful in 1969 when lBJ’s successor, Richard Nixon, abandoned all but the most symbolic efforts at enforcement. The npT that finally took 252 A TreATy To cAsTrATe The impoTenT effect in 1970 marked, in the words of one jaded proponent, a “worthless triumph.”1 Wrestling​with​Frankenstein’s​Monster In summer 1965, Johnson had rejected the Gilpatric Committee’s findings. His pique over Robert Kennedy’s use of the committee’s report to criticize administrationnonproliferationpolicyandhisangerthatsomeonehadleaked parts of the document to the press played into his decision. Still, William Foster and his subordinates kept revising the U.S. position to make it more acceptable to Moscow.The AcdA director lobbied for popular support of his agency’s position with an article in Foreign Affairs. His prediction that a weakened alliancewould be a necessarycost of an agreement and his hints that the mlf should be abandoned prompted worry both inside and outside of the administration. Yet Foster failed to win a renewed presidential commitment to seek a treaty. Little support ultimately existed for softening the language that allowed nuclear sharing, especially after West Germany insisted that reunification and the mlf’s creation needed to precede a treaty. Despite U.S. rejection of Bonn’s preconditions, Foster received orders to craft language that “finessed” the mlf issue.2 A nonproliferation policy review in summer 1965 buried the Gilpatric report for good. Bundy promised lBJ that the review would “bring the issues up clear and clean where you can see them and hear the arguments of the different parties of interest.” Bundy chided the Gilpatric Committee for its overly sanguine assessment that “immediate progress is possible” on nonproliferation , but he sought the review so as to “reaffirm our basic support for the principle of non-dissemination and the principle of a comprehensive test ban treaty.” The nsc staff warned against sweeping Gilpatric’s “report under the rug,” but in April 1965 the State and Defense Departments vigorously objected when Bundy proposed an extremely watered-down version of the task force’s recommendations. In the end, a nonproliferation agreement emerged as the only committee recommendation that survived to the end of the Johnson administration, and that goal predated the committee by four years. The policy review left the muddled, ineffective policy that had been in place since 1963 undisturbed.3 A dustup with London prior to the endc meetings underscored the Gilpatric report’s limited effect on U.S. policy. The British government had pressed for a draft nonproliferation treaty since early 1965. Frustrated with Washington’s tepid support, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his advisers A TreATy To cAsTrATe The impoTenT 253 produced their own text. lBJ opposed the British draft because it explicitly forbade the transfer of the mlf to a united Europe.The Johnson administration had dangled the prospect of such a transfer in front of German nationalists to mute their support for de Gaulle’s policy of a Europe for Europeans. The Labour government believed that domestic exigencies required keeping nuclear weapons out of German hands.The United States countered with its own draft treaty that left many issues surrounding the mlf unresolved. The British accepted this...