Unfulfilled Promises
The Limited Test Ban Treaty and Nonproliferation
Even as President John Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev carried out their diplomatic maneuvering in an effort to avoid nuclear conflict in Cuba, both the United States and the Soviet Union continued to test their respective nuclear arsenals, using designs possessing ever-increasing yields detonated into the earth’s atmosphere. Both the American and Soviet nuclear weapons designers pursued programs dedicated to missile defense purposes. In fact, the final U.S. atmospheric nuclear test, conducted on November 4, 1962, made use of a Nike Hercules surface-to-air missile to test an antiballistic missile warhead over Johnston Island.1
After the final U.S. blast, the Soviets continued their testing program through November 1962. Apart from a single underground nuclear test conducted in February 1962, the Soviets had refrained from conducting nuclear tests until August 1, 1962. From that date until December 25 of that year, they conducted a total of seventy-four nuclear tests. These included three “weapons injurious tests” on October 22 and 28 and November 1, 1962, which consisted of a massive 300-kiloton device exploded nearly 300 kilometers up in a manner designed to knock out incoming missiles. These last three tests were of no small concern to the United States, which recognized the potential lethality of any Soviet weapon of that nature so employed against existing U.S. warheads.2
The nuclear arms race between the two nations continued unabated. Both sides were testing smaller, more efficient warheads that enabled missiles to carry their deadly cargos farther and with greater accuracy. The United States was testing warheads for a follow-up to the Minuteman I missile (which had achieved operational capability in December 1962), as well as a smaller warhead for the new Polaris A2 missile, enabling that missile to be the first armed with multiple warheads (the Polaris A2 would carry three). The Soviets themselves were working on smaller warheads designed to possess greater accuracy so that the Minuteman missile system might be more effectively targeted. More worrisome to the United States, the Soviets were making advances in an orbital weapons delivery system (known as the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, or FOBS). This system would place a nuclear weapon in space as one would a satellite, enabling the weapon to be de-orbited at anytime, increasing the strike capability of the weapon while making conventional missile detection and intercept ineffective.
The combined experiences of the Berlin crisis and the Cuban crisis had left both the United States and the Soviet Union disconcerted about how easily a crisis could spin out of control toward general nuclear war, and how undesirable such an outcome was for all parties concerned. The Cuban crisis demonstrated the absolute importance of having a direct communications link between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev, and how unreliable and inefficient existing “backchannel” communications were. On December 12, 1962, the United States submitted a proposal to the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee that made certain recommendations designed to reduce the risk of war. Included in this proposal was the idea to establish a communications link between major world capitals to ensure quick and reliable communications during times of crisis. On June 30, 1963, the U.S. and Soviet representatives at the ENDC in Geneva signed the “Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Link.” According to this memorandum, each nation would make arrangements within its own territory to ensure the continuous functioning of the communications link as well as the prompt delivery to the respective head of government of all communications so delivered.3
The establishment of a hotline between Washington, DC and Moscow was especially important, given the hair-trigger nature of each nation’s developing nuclear arsenal. The quick-response capabilities of the Minuteman missile were being relied on to their utmost by the U.S. Air Force. Although Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s Counterforce strategy supposedly drove the targeting philosophy, the Air Force had almost exclusively tasked its Minuteman force with taking out some 600 “time-urgent” targets inside the Soviet Union, primarily bomber bases and missile sites. The goal was to destroy these targets before they could threaten U.S. or allied territories. Beyond being a Counterforce capability, the Minuteman had taken on a quick response (“launch on warning”) character, which approximated genuine first-strike capability.4
The Soviets were also developing their own rapid-response launch capability. Using a similar philosophy of “launch on warning,” the Soviets could obtain the authority for the release of nuclear weapons within ten minutes from the premier, defense minister, or chief of the general staff. Given a flight time of some fifteen to twenty minutes for U.S. missiles to hit Soviet targets, there was not much buffer if an error were to occur that triggered any “launch on warning” response by either side. The new hotline was designed to help head off any such mistake. But there needed to be something more than simply establishing better communications between the United States and the Soviet Union if the threat of nuclear war was to be avoided. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev recognized this. Their final messages to each other at the end of the Cuban crisis reflected this knowledge as well as the desire on the part of both men to push forward on the issue of arms control. “We should like to continue the exchange of views on the prohibition of atomic and thermonuclear weapons,” Khrushchev wrote, to which Kennedy responded, “Perhaps now, as we step back from danger, we can together make real progress in this vital field.”5
Secretary of State Dean Rusk tried to make some advances in the area of nuclear nonproliferation, in particular the matter of the nontransfer of nuclear weapons. In December 1962, Rusk approached France, Great Britain, and Germany during a NATO meeting. Although the British were agreeable to the concept, both France and Germany expressed reservations.
But even in this effort the United States was sending mixed signals. The intimacy enjoyed between it and Great Britain in the area of nuclear weapons was underscored on December 18, 1962, with the signing of the Nassau Agreement between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. In this agreement, the United States was to provide Great Britain with nuclear-armed Polaris missiles in exchange for an American lease at the Holy Loch submarine base. Although technically this deal represented the very sort of transfer the United States was supposed to be trying to prevent, legally the British Polaris missiles were to be considered a NATO resource and could only be used independently by the British in the case of “supreme national interest.”6 This legal cover was thin, however, and the United States would be called to task for its seemingly contradictory approach toward nuclear nonproliferation.
The French, and in particular its volatile president, Charles de Gaulle, viewed the Nassau Agreement as a clear sign that the British were more interested in aligning themselves with the United States than with Europe. France under de Gaulle viewed the NATO organization as being too heavily influenced by the United States, and as such was interested in having its own independent nuclear capability. Since 1960, when France detonated its first atomic bomb in the Sahara Desert in Algeria, France had developed air-deliverable nuclear weapons and was developing warheads for use in ballistic missiles. Even though not yet capable of detonating a hydrogen bomb, France was well on its way to achieving that capability as well, an ambition only furthered by the Nassau Agreement.7
France was not the only nation concerned about the Nassau Agreement. The Soviets had received Dean Rusk’s plan for limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons with a degree of skepticism. Of the four nations possessing nuclear weapons in 1962, three (the U.S., UK and France) were NATO nations. This reality prompted the Soviets to reject Rusk’s initiative, noting that a nuclear-armed NATO was itself a contradiction of the stated goals and objectives of nuclear nonproliferation. Talks would continue on the non-diffusion (i.e., sharing) of nuclear weapons, but these talks would not bear fruit for years to come.
The primary area in which both the United States and the Soviet Union seemed to believe progress could be made was in nuclear testing, and in particular in a treaty banning nuclear tests. This policy path was not without controversy. President Kennedy viewed the issue of a test ban treaty not only in terms of reducing tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States but also as a vehicle to further the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. In his opinion, a comprehensive test ban treaty would place tremendous international pressure on any nation that sought to acquire nuclear weapons. Even though President Kennedy believed there to be a link between a test ban treaty and the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, this conclusion was not shared by many in his administration. The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in particular believed that though a test ban treaty was of direct benefit to the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—and indirectly therefore to the NATO and Warsaw Pact nations whose military and national security interests were so linked—independent nuclear programs such as were ongoing in France and under development in China would create pressure for other, smaller nations to develop their own nuclear weapons capabilities. Whereas a nation such as Sweden might be compelled to forego nuclear weapons if the rest of Europe followed the same course, India could not be expected to remain still in the face of a Chinese nuclear weapon, nor Pakistan if confronted by an Indian nuclear capability. Likewise, should Israel decide to pursue nuclear weapons, the entire Arab world would be under pressure to do the same as a counter.8
The nation President Kennedy was most concerned about when it came to nuclear proliferation was China. China had been pursuing a nuclear weapons capability since January 1955, when the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Tse-tung, approved a proposal put forward by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to build the infrastructure necessary for China to manufacture a nuclear weapon. The Chinese desire for a nuclear weapons capability was fueled by its Korean War experience, when the United States had repeatedly threatened China with nuclear weapons, as well as by the clashes with Chiang Kai-shek over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu in 1954, during which the threat of U.S. nuclear weapons was again raised.
In January 1955, the Chinese had signed an agreement, the first of six, with the Soviet Union for the provision of assistance in peaceful atomic work. The pretense was shed in October 1957, when the Soviets and Chinese signed the New Defense Technical Accord, in which the Soviets promised to provide the Chinese with not only technical assistance in the development of a nuclear weapon but also fissile material and a sample atomic bomb. Within two years, however, the Soviet-Chinese relationship was falling apart, victim of an aggressive Chinese foreign policy posture vis-à-vis the West that the Soviets rejected as too confrontational. In the end, the Chinese were left with half-finished factories void of blueprints and equipment, no nuclear material, and no sample atomic bomb. If China were to have a bomb, it would be one developed completely on its own.9
When President Kennedy came into office in 1961, the U.S. intelligence community had assessed that China was a decade or more away from having a nuclear capability, unless there was major external assistance provided. With the Soviet Union out of the picture, the threat of a Chinese nuclear bomb being detonated anytime soon seemed remote. However, within months the analysis changed: imagery obtained from U-2 flights over China showed several massive construction projects that appeared to be nuclear-related. Suddenly the United States was confronted with having to deal with a nuclear-armed China. Although most policy makers were dismissive of any real military threat derived from a Chinese nuclear capability, the political consequences in terms of increased Chinese prestige and influence in the Far East were considerable. The State Department briefly considered pushing India to acquire a nuclear-weapons capability to offset that of China, but in the end this proposal was rejected as being inconsistent with the overall U.S. policy objective of nonproliferation.10
President Kennedy was so concerned about the prospect of a nuclear-armed China that he considered approaching the Soviets with the possibility of a joint military action against the Chinese nuclear infrastructure. Khrushchev did not share Kennedy’s alarm, however. The Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared an Air Force study on taking out the Chinese targets, but it became clear that the wide dispersal of the Chinese factories meant that the number of bomber sorties would be prohibitively large. As soon as the Air Force brought up the question of a preemptive nuclear attack, the matter was laid to rest. The Chinese nuclear program would have to be dealt with diplomatically.11
From the perspective of the Kennedy administration, this meant the passage of a nuclear test ban treaty. If the Soviet Union and the United States were able to conclude a nuclear test ban treaty, and China were still to go forward with a nuclear test, then the Kennedy administration would consider reapproaching the Soviets about the idea of a joint military operation against China’s nuclear manufacturing capability. But the Soviet concerns over nuclear proliferation were geared more toward NATO and the proposed multilateral force (MLF). Fearful of any German acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability, the Soviets were hopeful that a nuclear test ban would stop the MLF before it started. In any event, though the United States and the Soviet Union had different concerns over the specific nations involved in the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons capability, they did share the basic desire to see the proliferation of these destructive weapons halted. Both sides wanted, and needed, a nuclear test ban treaty.
By the end of 1962, there looked to be a window of opportunity for movement on the issue of that treaty. In December, Arthur Dean, the chief U.S. negotiator in Geneva, engaged the Soviet deputy foreign minister, Valeryan Zorin, in discussions about on-site inspections. Zorin came away from the Dean meetings with the impression that the United States would accept a figure of two to four inspections a year. Interested in a breakthrough on the issue of nuclear tests, Khrushchev wrote to President Kennedy on December 19, 1962, saying that the Soviets were willing to accept Dean’s offer. However, Kennedy told Khrushchev that the U.S. position had not changed and that the United States was still insisting on eight to ten inspections, not two to four. The two sides were back to square one.12
Khrushchev was angered by what he felt was American duplicity, telling the Presidium that because of the reversal of the Dean offer, “once again I was made to look foolish. But I can tell you this: it won’t happen again.”13 Secretary of State Rusk was likewise growing increasingly frustrated with the endless haggling over inspections. The Soviets had been intrigued by the possibility of using automatic seismic stations as a monitoring means, something brought up during discussions between U.S. and Soviet scientists at the Pugwash Conference in September 1962. The United States, however, would not allow the “black boxes” to serve as a substitute for on-site inspection. A comprehensive nuclear test ban seemed to be out of reach for the time being. Khrushchev was adamantly opposed to the presence of international inspectors on Soviet territory, fearing that “they would have discovered that we were in a relatively weak position.”14
The U.S. insistence on inspections was driven not so much by science but rather by an irrational fear within the ranks of the U.S. military and nuclear weapons community over the possibility of Soviet cheating. Although both President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara believed that the United States was better off with a test ban treaty than without one, even given the potential of Soviet cheating, support in the U.S. Senate was shaky at best. In addition, strong testimony against a test ban treaty from either the Joint Chiefs of Staff or noted nuclear scientists such as Dr. Edward Teller would doom any agreement from ever being ratified. This reality was driven home on February 25, 1963, when senators Stuart Symington, Richard Russell, and Henry Jackson wrote a joint letter to Kennedy setting out their concerns about a test ban treaty that lacked adequate inspection mechanisms. The senators noted that they wanted to retain Democratic unity on national security but that they had no choice but to oppose the treaty as it currently existed. Frustratingly, U.S. efforts to seek a limited test ban treaty, one which encompassed atmospheric and underwater testing, were rejected outright by Nikita Khrushchev, who insisted on a total test ban, without on-site inspections.15
Kennedy tried to break the impasse and dispatched a series of letters to Khrushchev in April 1963, an effort which initially appeared to backfire; Khrushchev continued to publicly complain about the American reneging on inspection numbers. In the final correspondence to Khrushchev, on April 24, 1963, Kennedy, together with British Prime Minister Macmillan, suggested that the test ban negotiations be resumed, either in Geneva or in Moscow, with Khrushchev’s direct participation. Khrushchev chose Moscow. Kennedy now needed to create the conditions for a successful meeting.16
President Kennedy had been scheduled for some time to deliver the commencement address at American University, to be held on June 10, 1963. Kennedy had decided that he would deliver a groundbreaking speech that looked forward, not backward. The importance of this stance was underscored when, two days before he was scheduled to deliver his talk, a letter was received from Nikita Khrushchev that set the date of the Moscow test ban talks as July 15, 1963. Kennedy now had a window of opportunity with which to directly influence the talks, and he took full advantage of it.
As soon as he started to speak, it was clear that this commencement speech was going to be different. Gone was the standard meat-and-potatoes fare normally associated with major policy speeches concerning the Soviet Union—threats of nuclear destruction, Soviet duplicity and treachery, and American superiority of arms. “Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the Allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”
Having set the stage, Kennedy then moved to close the deal. “The one major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security—it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.”
Kennedy’s speech was a tremendous success in Moscow. The Soviets allowed the speech to be rebroadcast in its entirety and had it translated and published throughout the Soviet Union. Khrushchev himself referred to the American University address as “the best speech by any president since Roosevelt.”17
On June 14, 1963, the president convened a meeting of the Principles Committee (a senior consultative body consisting of the members of the Cabinet and select high officials, usually at the Secretary level), in which the goals and objectives of the Moscow summit were discussed. Secretary of State Rusk felt that the U.S. delegation should be prepared to move forward using the April 1 draft treaty. The Joint Chiefs had been heavily influenced by the concerns of Dr. Teller and other Atomic Energy Commission scientists who viewed a test ban treaty as being detrimental to the national security interests of the United States and who were citing as major point of contention against any treaty the issue of potential cheating on the part of the Soviets. The Joint Chiefs were scheduled to testify before the U.S. Senate, and they did not want to be in a position of testifying against government policy, thereby raising the ugly spectacle of the government debating itself in front of Congress.18
Congress, which through the House of Representatives controlled national spending, and through the Senate oversaw national policy via the process of oversight and advice, was in a bind. There was little support in Congress for a comprehensive test ban treaty, both from an ideological point of view (few were willing to trust the Soviets) and an economic one (the U.S. nuclear weapons program was too big to be done away with without economic, and thus political, ramifications). However, since the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy had accrued considerable political capital, and few were willing to decisively confront him on a major foreign policy issue while his political stock was so high. In May 1963, Senator Joseph Clark, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who was sympathetic toward the president’s policies pursuing a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, conducted a private poll of his colleagues. The results showed the president to be ten votes shy of what was needed for ratification of a treaty. Based upon Clark’s survey, Senators Hubert Humphrey and Thomas Dodd, a staunch anticommunist Democrat from Connecticut, came together to push forward a nonbinding resolution. Cosponsored by thirty-two other Senators, the resolution advocated a limited test ban treaty, one which prohibited nuclear testing in the atmosphere and water. As recently as April 1963, Dodd had been against any treaty limiting nuclear testing, but after a series of exchanges with ACDA director William Chapman Foster (and considerable arm twisting by Senator Humphrey), Dodd reversed course and advocated support for a limited test ban.19
On July 2, 1963, Nikita Khrushchev closed the door on any hope of reaching an agreement for a comprehensive test ban when, during a speech in East Berlin, he accused the West of trying to facilitate espionage against the Soviet Union by insisting on on-site inspections. Khrushchev was frustrated by President Kennedy’s recent visit to Berlin, where on June 26, 1963, he delivered his memorable “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech. But although one door was closed, another was opened. In the same speech, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union was prepared to conclude a limited test ban agreement, one which banned testing in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space. Khrushchev linked such an agreement with the signing of a nonaggression pact between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Though such a pact was a nonstarter as far as the Kennedy administration was concerned, it was believed that Khrushchev’s condition could be worked around. What was clear was that the Moscow meeting was poised to deliver a major arms control agreement, one that had been years in the making. Though not as meaningful as a comprehensive test ban, a limited test ban was a major step forward and could be used as a steppingstone for later, more meaningful disarmament measures.20
Khrushchev had hoped that President Kennedy himself would lead the delegation to Moscow, giving the two leaders a chance to repair the damage created during their disastrous initial summit in Vienna in 1961. Kennedy did not believe the time was right for such a summit. He was, however, very serious about bringing to closure a test ban treaty, and so he selected the veteran American politician and diplomat, Averill Harriman, to head the U.S. delegation. Harriman was a former ambassador to Moscow and Great Britain as well as secretary of commerce during the Truman administration. He had made two unsuccessful attempts at the presidency himself, in 1952 and in 1956, and from 1954 until 1958 he served as the governor of New York. An experienced diplomat with a keen political acumen, Harriman brought a sense of gravitas to the test ban negotiations, which more than offset President Kennedy’s absence.
Harriman, together with his British counterpart, Lord Hailsham (the former Quinton Hogg, before being made a Lord), arrived in Moscow on July 14, 1963, in an atmosphere of great expectations. After nearly ten days of sometimes contentious negotiations, Harriman and his Soviet counterparts (Khrushchev and Andrei Gromyko) were able to come to agreement on a final treaty text. On July 25, 1963, Harriman, Lord Hailsham, and Gromyko conducted a formal ceremony, where three leather-bound copies of the treaty document were initialed, signifying final agreement on the treaty text. The next day, President Kennedy delivered a nationally televised address in which he announced the agreement on a treaty he believed represented “an important first step—a step toward peace, a step toward reason, a step away from war.”21
Khrushchev, in his own statement, praised the treaty but encouraged the American president to move quickly to resolve other issues that would bring about an end to the Cold War. The French were circumspect, allowing that the treaty was useful only if it served as a launching point for more comprehensive disarmament. Charles de Gaulle pledged that France would continue to conduct nuclear weapons tests. The Chinese were outraged by the Soviet action in concluding this agreement with the West. Calling the treaty a “dirty fake” and a “fraud,” the Chinese condemned any effort by the Soviets, or any party, to limit Chinese freedom of action when it came to developing a nuclear weapon.22
Kennedy still had to win over a skeptical Congress. He knew the key to doing this would be to have the support of his military chiefs. Even prior to the treaty being signed, the president met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a body, pressing on them to weigh both the military and political aspects of the treaty before passing final judgment. In the course of these discussions, the president assured the Joint Chiefs that he would strongly support additional safeguard measures that they felt critical for their support of even a limited test ban treaty. These included the continuation of a robust underground nuclear testing program designed to ensure the United States retained its edge in terms of nuclear weapons design and function.23
This support would guarantee that the United States would retain a robust nuclear testing capability that would also maintain the viability of the AEC nuclear laboratories and manufacturing plants, keep the current nuclear scientific community fully employed, and allow for the rapid resumption of nuclear testing in the atmosphere if the Soviets abrogated their treaty responsibilities. The Joint Chiefs also insisted that the United States further its intelligence collection capabilities targeting the Soviet Union not only for the purposes of treaty verification but also to make sure that America remained abreast of what the Soviet Union was up to in the field of nuclear weapons. During heated testimony and debate in the U.S. Senate throughout the month of September 1963, the tipping point for many senators on whether to support ratification hinged on these four safeguards. The Senate voted to ratify the limited test ban treaty, 80–19, on September 24, 1963. On October 5, President Kennedy signed the treaty into law, and five days later, the treaty went into effect, the articles of ratification being exchanged in ceremonies taking place in Washington, London, and Moscow.24
With the limited test ban treaty finally nailed down, President Kennedy and his advisers began to turn their attention to other pressing issues. The growing conflict in Vietnam was attracting focus, as was the ever-increasing level of American military involvement there. The linkage of the escalating U.S. military involvement in Vietnam to an overall policy of confronting and containing so-called communist aggression worldwide made any dramatic moves to de-escalate Soviet-American tension difficult. For all the work done to bring about a limited test ban treaty, the arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States was very much a reality. From the initialing of the limited test ban treaty in July until the end of October 1963, eleven underground nuclear weapons tests were conducted by the United States at the Nevada Test Site. Another six would be conducted before year’s end. In sharp contrast, the Soviet Union conducted no nuclear tests in all of 1963.
Another issue was that of ballistic missile deployments, in particular the Minuteman missile. The U.S. Air Force initially had been pushing for 10,000 missiles, but this was rejected out of hand by McNamara. The Air Force chief of staff in turn reduced the request to 3,000 missiles, but McNamara had drawn the line at 1,000. The logic that drove McNamara’s calculations was built around his second-strike principle. Given that it would take seven years to design, manufacture, and completely field the Minuteman missile, McNamara and his analysts projected where the Soviet Union was expected to be in terms of its strategic capability. They then calculated how many Minuteman missiles would be required to maintain a credible second-strike capability, which McNamara maintained was the foundation of deterrence. McNamara never intended the Minuteman as a first-strike weapon, a possibility that fielding a force of 3,000 to 10,000 missiles would have created.25
In asking for 10,000 Minuteman missiles, the Air Force wasn’t trying to directly circumvent the McNamara Counterforce strategy. Rather, it was trying to achieve the ability to launch a credible preemptive or launch-on-warning attack as well as to maintain a viable second-strike capability. In doing so, the Air Force kept increasing the number of Soviet targets, and in turn asked for an increasing number of missiles and bombers to strike these targets.
McNamara himself began asking his staff, “How much is enough?” Not satisfied with the ever-changing calculus of destruction his question elicited, McNamara brought in Alain Enthoven and broke the U.S. nuclear strike capability down into three “legs,” representing land-based ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and nuclear-capable bombers. The two strategists determined that each leg should be capable of delivering the equivalent of 400 megatons of nuclear explosive power. By establishing this cap, the question of the numbers of delivery systems to procure became manageable.
Thus was born the concept of the nuclear triad, which became the foundation of America’s nuclear posture. Driven not by what threat it was supposed to deter or defeat but rather by the need to cap internal defense spending, the triad in turn drove the Single Integrated Operational Plan to the extent that megatons were shifted around a targeting map like chips on a gaming table, allocating so many here, and so many there, until the megaton cap was reached.26
The key to preventing a Soviet surprise attack lay not with possessing the ability to strike first, which would logically necessitate the Soviets in turn to be thinking about preempting the preemption, but rather with building a survivable nuclear force that, after absorbing everything the Soviets could deliver, would be able to assure the destruction of the Soviet Union. McNamara described the ideal deterrent strategy, based upon the principle of “assured destruction,” as being “the ability to destroy, after a well-planned and executed Soviet surprise attack on our Strategic Nuclear Forces, the Soviet government and military controls, plus a large percentage of their population and economy.” However, McNamara noted that “this calculation of the effectiveness of U.S. forces is not a reflection of our actual targeting doctrine in the event deterrence fails.” In a move that addressed long-standing Air Force concerns, McNamara continued to invest in Counterforce, or “damage limiting,” nuclear strike capability. However, the secretary of defense never considered developing a genuine first-strike capability.27
McGeorge Bundy shared McNamara’s concern about the illogical nature of U.S. nuclear strategy. Whereas in 1961 there might have been a chance to pull off a genuine nuclear decapitation by delivering a devastating nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, with the development by the Soviet Union of a new generation of silo-based missiles, and the Soviets’ own fleet of ocean-going ballistic missile submarines, it was no longer viable to speak of a fully effective preemption. Some Soviet missiles would get through.
Pentagon planners would calculate that the United States could launch a “force limiting” preemptive nuclear strike against Soviet nuclear targets, killing some 100 million people and limiting the Soviet response to a reduced number of attacks that would “only” kill 30 million Americans. Besides the practical down sides of such an attack, there were the moral and political realities of embracing a doctrine that made the attack on Pearl Harbor pale in comparison and that would subject the American people to a level of devastation unknown in their history. In reviewing the nuclear war plans in September 1963, President Kennedy was very concerned that the United States was engaged in a dangerous game of “overkill,” one that ended up promoting a preemptive nuclear attack, either by creating the ability to do so, or by inviting a Soviet counter-buildup that could become so strong as to invite preemption. When confronted with the horrific reality of the massive U.S. losses that would result from an American preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, President Kennedy told his advisers that such a strike option was “not possible for us.”28
The combined effects of the Berlin crisis and the Cuban missile crisis seemed to have matured Kennedy as president. The success of the limited test ban treaty created the potential for Kennedy to act more forcefully on the concepts he had spelled out in his address at American University in June 1963. In conversations with Ambassador Dobrynin, Kennedy spoke of the need to move forward with agreements that would help prevent surprise attacks and to ban weapons from outer space. On November 15, 1963, Robert Kennedy was brainstorming with Dobrynin about the need for a new summit between Kennedy and Khrushchev, where the two leaders could redefine U.S.-Soviet relations. There was an atmosphere of great promise. But on November 22, 1963, that hope died when an assassin’s bullets took the life of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.29
Nikita Khrushchev received the news of Kennedy’s death while at his home in Moscow. The death of Kennedy was devastating to Khrushchev. After a tumultuous relationship that had brought the two leaders to the brink of nuclear war, Khrushchev had grown to trust Kennedy and was looking forward to building a lasting and fruitful peace with the United States. The KGB briefed Khrushchev on the character and politics of Lyndon Johnson, the American vice president and successor to Kennedy. Johnson was described as “conservative” and “reactionary.” Khrushchev was prepared to take risks with President Kennedy in order to promote peace. With Johnson, he was not.30
Secretary of Defense McNamara and Secretary of State Rusk were given the opportunity to fill in the newly sworn-in President Johnson on the status of U.S.-Soviet relations at a National Security Council meeting convened on December 5, 1963. Johnson opened the meeting by reading from a prepared statement. “The greatest single requirement,” Johnson said, “is that we find a way to ensure the survival of civilization in the nuclear age. A nuclear war would be the death of all our hopes and it is our task to see that it does not happen.”31
McNamara briefed Johnson on the enormous strategic advantage the United States enjoyed in nuclear strike capability, especially for a first strike. However, McNamara echoed Johnson in saying that there would be no winner in any nuclear exchange between the two powers. Rusk was insistent that the United States remain vigilant in containing Soviet expansion, noting that under Khrushchev the Soviets had made marked efforts in improving both its economy and its strategic military capabilities. Johnson was anxious to continue to build on the success of the Kennedy-Khrushchev relationship, and in January 1964, he instructed that the Soviets be approached concerning a freeze on the deployment of ballistic missiles and a reduction in the manufacture of plutonium.32
However, the time was not right for the Soviets to embrace a major arms-control initiative that would only cement their inferiority. As proposed by the United States, the Strategic Nuclear Delivery Vehicle, or SNDV, freeze would have required extensive on-site verification inspections that went well beyond that which had already been rejected by Khrushchev in regard to a comprehensive test ban treaty. A proposal by the United States for the elimination of medium bombers was likewise rejected by the Soviets, who were not impressed with an American proposal that had the United States scrapping bombers (the B-47) it had already unilaterally decided to do away with while asking the Soviets to eliminate bombers (the TU-16) that served as the mainstay of its strategic aviation force.
The first two forays into disarmament by the Johnson administration were failures. For the Soviets, it was becoming clear that the United States was more interested in cementing its strategic superiority than it was in meaningful arms reductions. The one area where there was some agreement was in the reduction of military spending. The United States had announced military spending reductions in late 1963 and had asked the Soviets to do the same. Khrushchev made an announcement on December 16, 1963, declaring the Soviet intention of reducing its defense budget. But this was a risky policy. Although it was in the best interests of the new Johnson administration to seek to curtail the runaway military spending that had created the current strategic superiority, the Soviets were just beginning to respond with a new generation of nuclear missiles in development that would bring the Soviets on level with the United States. Khrushchev’s announcement put him at odds with many in the Soviet military and deepened a split within the Soviet political hierarchy, which would prove to be politically fatal to the Soviet premier.33
A critical aspect of the U.S.-Soviet relationship centered on the issue of Germany. Tensions were still high over Berlin, and the refusal of President Kennedy to entertain a nonaggression pact between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was a sore subject with Khrushchev. But President Johnson was not inclined to seek rapid change in regard to Germany. With 300,000 American troops and thousands of nuclear weapons stationed in Europe, the United States had a significant investment in West Germany and NATO that the Johnson administration was expecting to pay dividends. As a major economic partner in both civilian and military terms, West Germany’s status as a creditor and buyer of American goods helped offset America’s ongoing problems with its balance of payment deficits. West Germany was key to maintaining NATO, and NATO was the anchor of America’s relationship with Europe. As the leader of NATO, the United States was able to dictate policy in a direction that was most beneficial to the United States, militarily, politically, and economically.
Nonproliferation was another major issue confronting the new Johnson administration. Not only did the new president have to deal with the emerging reality of a Chinese nuclear weapon but also with the fact that the nuclear weapons secret was about to expand beyond the borders of the major powers and into what was euphemistically referred to as the “N-th” countries—small nations possessing the intellectual and industrial capability to produce nuclear weapons. Central among these “N-th” countries was Israel. Israel had been pursuing a nuclear program ever since the Suez crisis in 1956, when, together with Britain and France, it attacked Egypt for the purpose of regaining control of the Suez Canal after Egypt had nationalized it.
With secret assistance from France, Israel began construction of a nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert in 1957. However, it wasn’t until 1960, in the waning moments of the Eisenhower administration, that the Israeli nuclear reactor, located in Dimona, was identified by U.S. intelligence. One of the major problems confronting the United States when it came to containing Israel’s nuclear ambitions was the absence of any international framework for the control of nuclear proliferation. The only leverage the United States had was in the form of bilateral agreements. Yet these were notoriously flawed, as was shown by the initial intervention on the part of President Kennedy in May 1961, when two American scientists visited Dimona, under heavy Israeli escort, to inspect the facility following a meeting between Kennedy and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. The inspectors found nothing that indicated the reactor was being used for purposes other than its declared peaceful purpose, a finding Kennedy was compelled to accept given that it was derived from his intervention with Ben-Gurion. Later, in 1963, U.S. inspectors again visited and likewise concluded that there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Although inspections were recommended on an annual basis, under Johnson these inspections were not continued. The Israeli nuclear program threatened to derail the Kennedy administration’s efforts on nonproliferation.34
In April 1963, the United States presented the Soviet Union with a draft of what was called the “Non-Transfer Declaration,” in which signatory nations pledged “not [to] transfer any nuclear weapons directly or indirectly through a military alliance, into the national control of individual states currently not possessing such weapons, and that they will not assist such states in the manufacturing of such weapons.” The only problem was that the United States sought to exclude the MLF from such an arrangement, something the Soviet Union would not accept. NATO, the Soviets noted, was a military alliance, and in any event, the MLF would provide nuclear weapons to West Germany, something the Soviets were adamantly opposed to. By July 1963, on the eve of the test ban negotiations in Moscow, President Kennedy was still trying to bring together an understanding of how the United States would approach allied nations such as Israel and West Germany who were seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, in hopes that such a model would be employed by the Soviets toward its allies, such as China.35
The Kennedy administration had been following China’s march toward acquisition of a nuclear bomb with great interest and concern. In January 1964, the Johnson administration received alarming intelligence that indicated China was preparing to detonate its first nuclear device in October of that year. By April 1964, U.S. satellite imagery showed that a tower had been constructed at the Chinese nuclear test facility in Lop Nor, an action that clearly indicated preparations for an impending test.36
The Chinese actions were viewed in Washington as extremely destabilizing, not only from the standpoint of American influence in Asia but also for what such Chinese acquisition of a nuclear bomb would do to the overall issue of nuclear nonproliferation. If China developed a nuclear weapon, then its neighbor and rival, India, would feel compelled to do so as well. Already in India the Cambridge-educated physicist, Homi Bhabha—who since 1948 had served as the chair of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission—was spearheading India’s acquisition of the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. In 1954, India had created the Department of Atomic Energy, with Bhabha serving as its secretary, and it soon was involved in an ambitious program of nuclear reactor construction, including a Canadian-built heavy water reactor that produced significant amounts of plutonium. In 1961, the Indians had built a plutonium extraction plant that operated free of any safeguards inspections.37
Although Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru continuously advocated for the peaceful use of atomic energy and stated that as being the sole reason for India’s ambitious nuclear program, Bhabha always held that India should be prepared to acquire a nuclear weapons capability, especially in light of China’s march toward the bomb. In early 1964, Bhabha openly argued that nuclear weapons would provide India with a means of deterring a larger nation such as China. India was still reeling under the ignominy of its military defeat during the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962. Even though Nehru continued to advocate for peaceful nuclear uses, the pressure China was placing on India when it came to developing a nuclear answer to the Chinese nuclear problem was real. And the pressure wasn’t being felt only by India.
Around the world, nations were examining the global situation vis-à-vis nuclear weapons and deciding that their best interests may in fact lie in acquiring an independent nuclear deterrent of their own. In Europe, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy were researching military nuclear programs. Israel was well on the way to acquiring nuclear weapons capability. Taiwan (the Republic of China) was alarmed by the events on the Chinese mainland and was making moves of its own to acquire a nuclear weapon. And as each of these nations progressed toward their own nuclear weapons capability, the pressure was felt by others to do the same. Neither the United States nor the rest of the world had a plan on how to prevent this proliferation of nuclear weapons from occurring.
The assassination of President Kennedy created a vacuum in policy progression on disarmament and nonproliferation, which could not have come at a worse time. American domestic politics made 1964 a “lost year” when it came to pursuing meaningful arms control and disarmament. The signing of the limited test ban treaty in August 1963 had created a wave of momentum not only for the control of nuclear weapons among the major powers but also for nonproliferation in general. President Kennedy’s death brought this momentum to a sudden halt. President Johnson retained the entirety of Kennedy’s cabinet, out of respect for the fact that though he had inherited the mantle of leadership, he did not yet possess a mandate for change. But even though the staff was the same, the executive was not; Johnson did not share Kennedy’s passion and experience concerning the control of nuclear weapons. The reality was that 1964 was an election year, and Johnson needed to turn his attention to getting elected. As a result, the critical window of opportunity that had been created in the last months of the Kennedy administration to achieve lasting and meaningful results in the fields of arms control and nonproliferation closed.
Nothing signified this loss of imagination and opportunity more than how the Johnson administration responded to a major policy initiative from the Soviets in late summer 1964. During a visit to London in August 1964, Nikita Khrushchev announced that he was ready for meaningful disarmament agreements with the West. “A new initiative would be welcome,” Khrushchev said. For the first time, Khrushchev stated that if an agreement could be reached, then he would reverse his longstanding opposition to on-site inspections. “If we make a disarmament agreement and a start is actually made on disarmament, then we will allow free inspections as part of the specific program—and close inspections, too, so no one cheats.”38 Khrushchev indicated that he was willing to personally attend a disarmament conference in early 1965 to make good on his offer. In Washington, Khrushchev’s comments fell on deaf ears. With a presidential election looming in November, Johnson was reluctant to make any commitments about attending a future international conference.
Fear of doing anything controversial in a political year also drove Johnson’s approach toward China. Throughout the summer of 1964, the U.S. intelligence community watched as China prepared for its first nuclear test. Johnson was engaged in a fierce political fight with the Republican Party nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater, an archconservative from Arizona. An ardent anticommunist, Goldwater had opposed the limited test ban treaty as well as any form of disarmament (having stated quite clearly in 1961, “I have no faith in disarmament. There is always one S.O.B. in the world who won’t go along with it” ).39 The issue of nuclear weapons and nuclear war was on display front and center in an increasingly contentious and ideologically driven political season.
Another issue was the conflict in Vietnam, which was escalating dramatically, with two American aircraft carriers being dispatched off the coast of North Vietnam in the spring of 1964 in response to North Vietnamese incursions into Laos. In August 1964, the situation in Vietnam spiraled out of control, when U.S.-backed commando operations in North Vietnam led to a confusing situation when the commander of a U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox, claimed (and later recanted) that he had been attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. President Johnson ordered a naval air strike in retaliation, and two U.S. jets were shot down. Three days later, under pressure from Johnson, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, authorizing the president to take whatever means necessary to defend Southeast Asia.
As the Republican candidate, Goldwater had put America and the world on notice when, during his acceptance speech delivered at the Republican Convention in 1964, he declared, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”40 The Johnson campaign had capitalized on Goldwater’s often less-than-politic comments, and a number of controversial, yet extremely effective, television advertisements were run by the Johnson campaign (including the famous “Daisy Girl” spot, which featured a little girl picking flowers before being blotted out by a nuclear explosion) that depicted Goldwater as a man whose finger would too quickly push the nuclear button.41
The Johnson campaign did not want to participate in any activity that would provide political ammunition to the Goldwater campaign. It was in this light that Khrushchev’s initiative on disarmament was left to hang unanswered. And in the case of China, with a potentially politically explosive nuclear test looming on the horizon, the Johnson administration was compelled to assume a posture of inaction. The best the Johnson team could come up with was a statement issued by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, on September 29, 1964, that made clear the United States was fully aware of an impending Chinese nuclear test and was not alarmed by it.42
Early in the morning of October 14, 1964, in the desert test facility of Lop Nur, a team of technicians working under the supervision of a Yale-educated Chinese physicist named Chen Nengkuan assembled a nuclear device made from enriched uranium 235. After hoisting the device to the top of the test tower that had been photographed by the United States the previous spring, the Chinese detonated, at precisely 3:00 pm, a 20-kiloton nuclear device. The Chinese were quick to announce their achievement, but the United States, through its worldwide network of seismic stations, was also able to detect, isolate, and characterize the Chinese event.43 President Johnson decried the Chinese test as a “tragedy for the Chinese people,” but privately noted that China was a long way from having a deliverable weapon and that the specter of a nuclear-armed China was a problem that would be faced by a future president. Somewhat surprisingly, Johnson’s Republican challenger professed similar sentiments, telling a political rally that China was not a nuclear threat and that the nuclear device had no military value unless it could be delivered “from here to there.”44
A reaction from the Kremlin was not immediately forthcoming. While Khrushchev vacationed at his dacha in Pitsunda, in Moscow his political rivals gathered. Frustrated by Khrushchev’s disastrous economic policies and embarrassed by what they believed to be his ill-advised reconciliation with the United States, presidium members Nikolai Podgorny and Leonid Brezhnev, backed by former KGB chief Aleksandr Shelepin, plotted to remove the seventy-year old Soviet premier from power. When Khrushchev returned to Moscow on October 14, he was taken immediately to the Kremlin, where he was confronted by an openly hostile presidium. What transpired over the next two days was nothing short of a complete repudiation of the policies of Nikita Khrushchev by his fellow communists.45
Khrushchev’s gamble in Cuba in 1962 was in particular harshly criticized. More telling were the criticisms of Khrushchev’s outreach to the United States in the form of disarmament. The assassination of President Kennedy made it clear to Khrushchev’s critics the fragile nature of national agreements made on the strength of individual charisma. By October 15, 1964, the deed was done. Khrushchev was forced to resign from all his positions of authority. Brezhnev was appointed party first secretary, with Aleksei Kosygin named prime minister and Anastas Mikoyan named president. In removing Khrushchev, the new Soviet leaders had made it clear that though not seeking confrontation with the United States and the West, they were definitely breaking with the policies of détente that had been so aggressively pursued by the former Soviet leader.46
On November 3, 1964, the American people voted for their thirty-sixth president. Any concerns over the Chinese going nuclear, or uncertainty coming out of Moscow due to the removal of Khrushchev from power, were offset by fears, justified or not, of nuclear war. Barry Goldwater, who during the campaign joked that the United States should “lob one (a nuclear bomb) into the men’s room of the Kremlin,” was defeated by Lyndon Johnson in one of the largest landslides in American presidential election history, larger than Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 victory.47 Johnson had been concerned that he lacked a mandate to govern in his own right. He no longer needed to be concerned about that. Lyndon Johnson chose Hubert Humphrey, the champion of arms control and disarmament, as his vice president. President Johnson was congratulated by Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin and President Mikoyan. Moscow Radio, expressing a relief that was felt not only in the Soviet Union but also in Europe and the world as a whole, broadcast that the American people had chosen the “more moderate and sober policy” toward East-West relations. On the cusp of a time of historical change, President Johnson’s implementation of this “moderate and sober” mandate would dictate the course of the Cold War for decades to come.
1 Timothy Naftali, Philip Zelikow, and Ernest May, John F. Kennedy: The Great Crises (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 93.
2 Pavel Povdig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 451.
3 Nish Jamgotch, Sectors of Mutual Benefit in U.S.-Soviet Relations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), 183.
4 William Baugh, The Politics of Nuclear Balance: Ambiguity and Continuity in Strategic Policies (Reading, MA: Longman, 1984), 126.
5 Allan Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 179.
6 Douglas Brinkley and Richard Griffiths, eds., John F. Kennedy and Europe (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 78.
7 Alan Milward, The Rise and Fall of a National Strategy, 1945–1963 (London: Routledge, 2002), 462–465.
8 Glenn Seaborg and Benjamin Loeb, Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1987), 194.
9 John Lewis and Litai Xue, China Builds the Bomb (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 62.
10 Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Post-Colonial State (London: Zed Books, 1998), 152.
11 Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 272.
12 Seaborg and Loeb, 181.
13 Ibid.
14 A. A. Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 156.
15 James C. Olson, Stuart Symington: A Life, Missouri Biography Series (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 372.
16 Seaborg and Loeb, 211.
17 Fursenko and Naftali, 337.
18 Albert Carnesale and Richard Haas, Superpower Arms Control: Setting the Record Straight (Pensacola, FL: Ballinger Publishing, 1987), 239.
19 Seaborg and Loeb, 227.
20 James Goodby, At the Borderline of Armageddon: How Presidents Managed the Atom Bomb (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 67.
21 Seaborg and Loeb, 257.
22 William Taubman, Khruschev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), 605.
23 April Carter, Success and Failure in Arms Control Negotiations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 73.
24 Ronald Terchek, The Making of the Test Ban Treaty (Leiden: Brill Archive, 1973), 163.
25 Stephen Schwartz, Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1998), 26.
26 John Clearwater, Johnson, McNamara and the Birth of SALT and the ABM Treaty, 1963–1969 (Boca Raton, FL: Universal Publishers, 1996), 13.
27 Eric Mlyn, The State, Society and Limited Nuclear War (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 70.
28 James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died, and Why It Matters (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 241.
29 Anatoliy Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War President’s (1962–1986) (New York: Random House, 1995), 106–107.
30 Taubman, 604.
31 John Drumbell, President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Communism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 60.
32 Clearwater, 71.
33 Deborah Larson, Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations During the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 152.
34 Peter Pry, Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal (Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 1984), 39.
35 Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 117.
36 William Burr and Jeffrey Richelson, “A Chinese Puzzle,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July 1997, 42.
37 Stephen Cohen, India: Emerging Power (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001), 157.
38 ACDA, Documents on Disarmament 126 (1964): 352.
39 “The U.S. Tries Again”, Time Magazine (October 6, 1961)
40 William Saffire, Saffire’s Political Dictionary (Oxford University Press: 2008), p. 229
41 Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Nation Books, 2009), 391.
42 Harold Hinton, Communist China in World Politics (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 472.
43 Burr and Richelson, 42.
44 Harold Faber, The Road to the White House: The Story of the 1964 Election (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), 247.
45 William Hyland and Richard Shyrock, The Fall of Khrushchev (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), 134.
46 Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, Brezhnev Reconsidered (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 90.
47 Robert Spero, The Duping of the American Voter: Dishonesty and Deception in Presidential Television Advertising (New York: Lippincott & Crowell, 1980), 80.