U.S. Policy to Curb West European Nuclear Exports, 1974–1978

U.S. Policy to Curb West European Nuclear Exports, 1974–1978 ✣ Jayita Sarkar We would like it to appear that our policy in this area is independent even thoughitiscoordinatedwithyou....Soifyouaregoingtomakeastatement, we would like to know beforehand so we could issue something beforehand. Louis de Guiringaud to Henry Kissinger and President Gerald Ford, 1 October 19761 While insisting on the immutability of the agreement with Brazil, [Assistant Sec- retary Hans] Lautenschlager said something had to be done to meet the concerns expressed by President-elect Carter. U.S. Ambassador Walter Stoessel to Henry Kissinger, 23 December 19762 Kissinger’s brief visit to South Asia does not have the appearance of having ac- complished anything of substance. Indian Embassy in Washington to Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, 15 August 19763 When news of India’s underground nuclear explosion reached Washington, DC, on 18 May 1974, the reaction from U.S. policymakers was remarkably 1. White House Memorandum of Conversation with President Ford, Louis de Guiringaud, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Jacques Koscuisko-Morizet, 1 October 1976, in National Security Adviser’s Memoranda of Conversation, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (GRFL), Ann Arbor, also available online at https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0314/1553548.pdf. 2. Confidential Telegram 21555 from the U.S. Embassy in Bonn to the Secretary of State, 23 Decem- ber 1976, in NODIS, National Security Adviser Presidential Country Files for Europe and Canada, Country File: Germany—State Department Telegrams (1), Box 7, Folder State Department Telegrams to SECSTATE-LIMIDIS (5), GRFL. 3. Secret Memorandum, “Kissinger’s Visit to Pakistan—An Assessment from Washington,” prepared by K. V. Rajan, First Sec (Pol) on 13 August 1976, sent by A. P. Venkateswaran, Minister (Political) in Washington, DC, to I. P. Singh, Joint Secretary (Pakistan-Af), MEA, New Delhi, 15 August 1976, in WII/104/48/76, MEA, Dr. Henry Kissinger’s Visit to Pakistan and France—Papers Re., 1976, National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi. Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 21, No. 2, Spring 2019, pp. 110–149, doi:10.1162/jcws_a_00877 © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 110 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00877 by guest on 27 September 2021 U.S. Policy to Curb West European Nuclear Exports subdued. Mired in the Watergate scandal, the Nixon administration played down the significance of the Indian nuclear test. Even so, the detonation in the Rajasthan Desert, which the Indian government called a “peaceful nuclear explosion,” was a serious blow to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that had entered into force only four years earlier, in 1970. Despite the low- key official U.S. reaction to New Delhi’s nuclear test, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger initiated a wide-ranging review of U.S. nonproliferation policy that culminated in a U.S.-led multilateral effort to form a Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) responsible for harmonizing the nuclear export policies of major supplier states.4 France and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), two of the seven original members of the NSG and two key supplier countries at the time, expressed frequent opposition to U.S. efforts to strengthen export controls.5 Nuclear exports were lucrative, and thus neither Paris nor Bonn was eager to restrict the trade. If consensus had to be reached, multilateral sum- mitry like the NSG meetings had to be complemented with private bilateral negotiations between the United States and the supplier governments.6 These bilateral discussions were often protracted and acrimonious. This article examines U.S. efforts to enhance export controls on nuclear transfers by two major West European allies in 1974–1978 and the impli- cations of these efforts for the nuclear nonproliferation regime.7 The term “whack-a-mole” conveys the difficulty U.S. policymakers faced in implement- ing their global nonproliferation efforts on the “supply side.”8 In the supplier countries the private firms that offered nuclear assistance were often in formal 4. Secret Memorandum, Prepared by J. S. Teja (Joint Secretary, Americans Division) at MEA, New Delhi, “India’s Peaceful Nuclear Experiment- American Reaction,” 22 May 1974, in WII/103(18)74, MEA, India’s Peaceful Nuclear Experiment—18.5.74—Official American Reaction, 1974, NAI. 5. In this article, “West Germany” and the “Federal Republic of Germany” (FRG) are used interchangeably. 6. For works that underline the importance of both multilateral and bilateral approaches, see William Burr, “A Scheme of ‘Control’: The United States and the Origins of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, 1974–1976,” The International History Review, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2014), pp. 252–276. See also Rodney W. Jones et al., eds., The Nuclear Suppliers and Nonproliferation: International Policy Choices (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1984). 7. Nuclear exports, nuclear assistance, and nuclear transfers are used interchangeably throughout this article. 8. The term “supply side” denotes the supply side of nuclear proliferation—why and how actors pro- vide nuclear transfers that potentially can facilitate proliferation. The term “demand side” refers to why and how actors want to acquire nuclear weapons. On the supply side literature in political sci- ence, see Matthew Kroenig, Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010); and Matthew Fuhrmann, Atomic Assistance: How “Atoms for Peace” Programs Cause Nuclear Insecurity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012). 111 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00877 by guest on 27 September 2021 Sarkar or informal coalitions with pro-export groupings in government bureaucracies and national nuclear energy commissions. Because of the multiplicity of actors and the diverse considerations involved in the supply of nuclear technologies, materials, and equipment, U.S. officials struggled to impose controls. Each time an opponent was defeated or “whacked,” it rapidly resurfaced. As the sub- sequent sections of this article reveal, government-industry relations in France and the FRG—centralized in the former, decentralized in the latter—posed a distinct set of problems for U.S. nonproliferation efforts. More important, the unique character of the city of Berlin in the East-West divide of the Cold War became a source of major concern for the three occupying powers of West Berlin, who were themselves NSG members. These countries worried about how the NSG guidelines could be implemented in the case of the private firms based in West Berlin in the era of superpower détente and Ostpolitik.9 At the core of this whack-a-mole game was the lack of a shared perspective: France and the FRG did not fully share U.S. concerns that nuclear proliferation threatened international security. They also did not agree on what kinds of nuclear exports could more readily lead to nuclear proliferation. Moreover, the two West European allies were concerned about the survival and well-being of their nuclear industries, which needed exports in the face of a near-saturated national market (France) and declining domestic demand and anti-nuclear activism (FRG). Renewed interest in nuclear energy in the wake of the 1973 oil price shock was a welcome development for these two supplier countries, and they perceived U.S. efforts to curb their nuclear ex- portsas“unfair.”10 The U.S. policy of cracking down on West European nuclear exports was not merely a response to India’s 1974 nuclear test. A strong economic logic was also at play. In the latter half of the 1970s, the U.S. position as the most important nuclear supplier was on the decline, whereas both France and the FRG had sharply increased their market shares of nuclear plant sales.11 In the latter half of the 1960s, France held a market share of 5.5 percent of nuclear plants exported to the non-Communist world; whereas a decade later the French share had risen to 18 percent. For West Germany, the market 9. In the 1950s, the question of offering a U.S. nuclear reactor to West Berlin brought the East- West political considerations to the fore. See Mara Drogan, “The Nuclear Nation and the German Question: An American Reactor in West Berlin,” Cold War History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2015), pp. 301– 319. 10. Michael J. Brenner, Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation: The Remaking of U.S. Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 93–97. 11. Jones et al., eds., The Nuclear Suppliers and Nonproliferation,p.67. 112 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00877 by guest on 27 September 2021 U.S. Policy to Curb West European Nuclear Exports share for nuclear plants sold to the non-Communist world increased from 7.5 percent in 1965–1969 to 20 percent in 1975–1979. Thus, the two industrially advanced West European countries were fast becoming the leading actors in the global nuclear marketplace. Apart from the lack of a shared perspective on nonproliferation and economic competition with the United States, a third factor also contributed to the game of whack-a-mole; namely, declining U.S. credibility as a reliable nuclear supplier. In July 1974, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC) unilaterally decided to suspend the signing of long-term enrichment contracts. This sudden act hit the West European and Japanese governments hard, inso- far as they depended on U.S.-supplied low-enriched uranium to operate their light-water reactors. This commercially motivated move by the USAEC to re- linquish less lucrative activities caused much consternation among U.S. allies and raised doubts about Washington’s reliability as a nuclear supplier. This gave countries such as France and the FRG additional impetus to develop their expertise in full fuel-cycle technologies and to sell them abroad.

Load more