by CKR
The Gilpatric Report is mentioned several times in Israel and the Bomb, but it’s not a part of Cohen’s main argument, so he doesn’t say a lot about it. Roswell L. Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense chaired the committee; the members were Arthur H. Dean, an arms control negotiatior; Allen W. Dulles, retired from his post as the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Alfred M. Gruenther, retired General of the Army and Supreme Commander in Europe; George B. Kistiakowsky, a Harvard professor who had overseen the development of explosive lenses for the Manhattan Project; John J. McCloy, who had opposed the nuclear bombing of Japan; James A. Perkins, Arthur K. Watson, William Webster, and Herbert F. York, the first director of the Livermore nuclear weapons design laboratory.
President Lyndon Johnson appointed the Gilpatric Committee to look into nuclear nonproliferation in the light of China’s first nuclear test in 1964. The report, issued in 1965, is worth reading for what has endured and what hasn’t, opportunities seized or lost. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty had not been drafted in 1965. The nuclear arms race was near its peak; the production of nuclear weapons was close to its maximum, by both the United States and the Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev having been removed the year before.
This version is a facsimile of the original, classification markings and all. This version (scroll down to document 64) is easier to read. (Document 60 is minutes from one of the committee’s meetings, also fascinating.) Document 63, an editorial note, tells us that the report may not have been what Johnson wanted to hear.
The tone and approach are as important as the specifics. The committee urged a diplomatic path: conclusion of a multilateral nonproliferation agreement and a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, along with establishment of nuclear-free zones. The countries of most immediate concern for proliferation were India, Japan, and Israel (grouped with the United Arab Republic). Although an attempt to share nuclear weapons with NATO members through a Multilateral or Atlantic Nuclear force was under discussion, the committee members insisted on balancing this with the dangers of proliferation and the value of providing a nonproliferating example to the rest of the world. Part of the purpose of the MLF/ANF was to keep British and French nuclear weapons within an arena the United States could control and to eliminate motivation for Germany to acquire nuclear weapons. Cooperation with the Soviet Union, which was expected to share the United States’s concern about proliferation, was encouraged on several fronts. A re-examination of policies toward China was urged; the committee stopped short of saying that the United States should work to bring China into “the society of nations,” but the members believed that such a status would contribute to a responsible nuclear posture on China’s part. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s role in safeguards was to be strengthened.
The committee also urged that the United States consider its war-fighting strategies to devalue the role of nuclear weapons, which would in turn “minimize the incentives for others to acquire nuclear weapons.”
An even-handed approach was important.
Measures to prevent particular countries from acquiring nuclear weapons are unlikely to succeed unless they are taken in support of a broad international prohibition applicable to many countries.The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the committee’s first recommendation, came into force in 1970. Two of the nations of the committee’s concern refused to join it because they were well into their nuclear weapons programs in 1965: India and Israel. Additionally, Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons, and North Korea claims to have. Japan, although it has the industrial base from which to build nuclear weapons, signed the NPT and has remained a non-nuclear weapon state.
The committee’s second recommendation has not been as successful as the first:
We should renew our efforts to negotiate a verified comprehensive test ban with the Soviet Union.A comprehensive test ban treaty has been ratified by 135 nations, and a preparatory commission is ready to help put it into effect. The United States has signed it, but the Senate voted against ratification in October 1999. George Bush has moved away from the treaty. Ironically, many of his supporters in the election of 2004 believed that he supported the treaty.
A voluntary test-ban moratorium has been in effect since 1992. India has participated in this moratorium. One of the requirements, however, of the proposed agreement between India and the United States is “continuing India’s unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing.” However, a number of voices in India, including Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, “don't want to convert that into a bilateral legality.”
For India, Japan and Israel, the Gilpatric Report recommended security assurances to dissuade them from going nuclear, as is being suggested for Iran. Had the Johnson administration offered India the full package recommended by the committee, it is interesting to speculate whether India would have been more willing to suspend its nuclear program. That package included “a larger role in the United Nations,” still a part of India’s agenda; the committee would have conditioned such a role on India’s remaining a non-nuclear weapons power.
Arms control was seen as a means to reducing the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, including a fissile materials cutoff treaty and freezes on construction of delivery vehicles. The fissile materials cutoff treaty does not yet exist, and a year ago the Bush administration declared that such a treaty would be impossible to verify. India refuses to cap its production of fissile materials, even though four of the five NPT nuclear weapons states have stopped their manufacture.
Even-handed treatment of countries in multilateral treaties, devaluing nuclear weapons in the United States’s military strategies, security assurances to potential proliferators, negotiation with enemies; all remain relevant antiproliferation strategies. The Gilpatric Report is short and easy to read. Perhaps we should send copies to the Bush administration.