One of the first things Richard Nixon did after he became President in 1969 was to promote the Non-Proliferation Treaty with the Soviet Union. Ultimately it was signed by 92 nations and went into effect in March 1970. It was wrapped in the illusion that this piece of paper would bar the admission of new countries from membership in the most exclusive club in the world — those that own nuclear weapons. The club membership was then restricted to the United States, Russia, England, France, and Red China.
A new report just published by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency provides evidence that the Non-Proliferation Treaty was just another one of the many U.S.-Soviet treaties promoted by Nixon and Kissinger which were given unwarranted acceptance by press and politicians, and were inherently incapable of achieving their goals.
This report states that there are now some 20 countries with both the technical competence and the material to design and build nuclear explosives, and by 1985 nearly 40 countries will have enough plutonium from reactors to make nuclear bombs quickly if they wish to do so.
In sending the report to Congress, President Ford said: ‘A world of many nuclear-weapons states could become extremely unstable and dangerous.’ It is common knowledge that the 20 countries now on the threshold of nuclear capability include Canada, West Germany, East Germany, Israel, Iran, South Africa, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, and Pakistan.
In the worldwide euphoria spawned by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, no one seems to have suspected that nations might do anything so double-dealing as to acquire nuclear technology and materials for peaceful purposes and then build a bomb.
That is exactly what India did in 1974 after the United States generously supplied it with reactors and atomic fuel. How India dallied a fast one was explained by one U.S. official on the ground that “we do not properly understand the ease with which technology for legitimate peaceful uses could be transferred to weapons use.”
Now that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, how should the United States cope with the unhappy prospect that many small countries will soon have nuclear weapons capability?
First, we should stop growing away nuclear weapons material and technology.
Second, we should anticipate the limitations that treaties can substitute for a sound national strategy or for an adequate defense with military weapons.
Third, we should remove the SALT I treaty of 1972 which prohibits us from building anti-missile defense. Article 15 of that treaty guarantees us “the right to withdraw from this treaty” on six months’ notice if our supreme interests are jeopardized.
Our supreme interests will eventually be jeopardized when dozens of countries have nuclear weapons available for deliberate or accidental or incompetent launch, and we have no way to shoot them down if they come our way.
Fourth, we should proceed without delay to build the twenty ABM sites so wisely ordered by President Lyndon Johnson, and which would defend all our ICBMs and most of our major population areas.
Fifth, if we are going to give anything more alert to other countries, we should give an ABM defense to our friends in Western Europe.
NATO is now under the gun of 600 to 900 medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which the same MCBA report says the Soviets are starting to MIV. There is no prohibition against this installation of multiple warheads, and President Ford admits that this poses a new strategic threat to our allies.
