Geneva

THE United States went into the disarmament talks at Geneva with a clear-cut plan. In a message sent on January 27 to the eighteen nations involved, President Johnson outlined a sevenpoint program for arms limitation and disarmament. He called for a nonproliferation treaty, an extension of the limited-test-ban treaty of 1963, to include underground nuclear tests, a freeze on “carriers” of nuclear weapons, the reduction of stockpiles of nuclear weapons, the closer control of nuclear material used for peaceful purposes, an overall diversion of effort from the production of arms to the elimination of hunger and poverty, and the strengthening of the United Nations. The program was far-reaching and imposing, and it put nonproliferation first because there was agreement at least on its priority.

The United States draft treaty had British backing and was broadly acceptable to a majority of the eighteen nations represented at Geneva. It sought to secure nonproliferation of nuclear weapons in two principal ways. Nuclear powers should undertake not to transfer nuclear weapons to any non-nuclear state. Non-nuclear powers should undertake not to manufacture nuclear weapons themselves or accept them from members of the “nuclear club.”

The Russians have maintained that the Western powers intended to break both the spirit and future practice of a nonproliferation treaty, probably before it had even been signed, by introducing the principle of nuclear-sharing into NATO. This would give West Germany, in the Soviet Union’s opinion, a measure of control over nuclear weapons. It would give the same measure of control to other non-nuclear NATO states, but the Russians did not express any concern about this point. They concentrated their fire on the German Federal Republic.

The Soviet Union has also expressed fear over an American-German military entente, which could unite America’s nuclear potential and overall strength with the unique military genius of the nation which marched to the gates of Moscow in 1941. Britain’s more reserved attitude toward the Germans has been an advantage at the Geneva conference table. An Anglo-German military entente was neither possible nor a real danger to the Soviet Union.

The British position

In 1964, the British Foreign Secretary in the Conservative government, R. A. Butler, went to Geneva with high hopes and formulated the priorities for the talks which were then taking place. But he quickly became disillusioned. When he went to Moscow in the summer of 1964, he was tired, despondent, and inactive. His talks there were a total failure, and all the steam went out of the British effort to press for disarmament. Even his proposal to set up joint East-West working committees at Geneva lapsed. At the end of 1964, the Conservative government fell.

Roy Jenkins, the new Minister for Home Affairs, stated that the Labor government would accept equality in the nuclear field with other nations of roughly the same power as the United Kingdom. This plainly referred to West Germany as well as France. It implied either that Britain would surrender its own nuclear weapons or that West Germany should be given the same nuclear strength as Britain.

While Jenkins was causing anxiety in Moscow, Prime Minister Harold Wilson appeared to be prepared to discard Britain’s nuclear deterrent and scrap the arrangements made by the Macmillan government with the United States. Both he and Jenkins stated that Labor would infuse “new life and urgency” into the Geneva disarmament talks. The Labor government would appoint a minister charged solely with disarmament responsibilities. Lord Chalfont, who was appointed when Wilson formed his Cabinet, acted with integrity and purposefulness, and as a result the United States has continued to place confidence in Britain as co-spokesman for the West at Geneva.

In the American view, the reorganization of NATO had to be pushed ahead, irrespective of whether or not progress over disarmament was achieved in Geneva. The American plan for an MLF — a mixed-manned nuclear sea force of surface vessels — had already been tabled in order to give West Germany a suitable slake in a Western nuclear strike force. The West Germans had specifically asked for this, and it was a major plank in the platform of the ruling Christian Democratic Party in the German Federal elections in the fall of 1965.

Wilson shifts gears

The American-sponsored MLF plan was opposed by the British Labor Party, partly because of pressure from its left-wingers and partly because Wilson wanted to give himself a free hand in the question of nuclear strategy when his party came into power. But after he came to power, Wilson dropped all talk of discarding the British nuclear deterrent and of reducing Britain to nuclear equality with West Germany. His opposition to the MLF plan had been so outspoken that he could not reverse himself completely, but he proposed an Atlantic Nuclear Force, based on submarines instead of surface vessels.

In Geneva, Chalfont has put the American-British case with unfailing persistence and with much humor and liveliness as well. Time after time in 1965 and in the session at Geneva during the first quarter of 1966, he has trotted out the conventional Western arguments — that West Germany would not become a nuclear power in its own right, that it would be given a finger on the nuclear safety catch and not on the nuclear trigger, that the American draft treaty, therefore, did not leave a loophole for the entry of West Germany into the nuclear club. Time after time Chalfont has urged Tsarapkin to explain why he really thought that West Germany was a “revanchist” and “militaristic” state. The Russian was not interested in arguing the point with him; he knew that the Communist satellite states in Europe agreed with him.

This belief of the Communist satellites has become a factor in British thinking. In the summer of 1965, the Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, paid visits to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. In all three countries he was impressed by the conviction with which their foreign ministers argued that giving West Germany any kind of “nuclear share” is unnecessary and dangerous.

The Poles once again urged examination of their own plans for a nuclear truce in Central Europe — the Rapacki Plan for a nuclear-free zone which would comprise both German states, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and the Gomulka Plan for a nuclear “freeze” in the same area, which would mean that existing stocks of nuclear weapons would not be replenished but would be progressively diminished. Stewart could not help being impressed by the Polish arguments.

Long and sober reflection over the obviously interwoven issues of nuclear-sharing in the Western alliance and the negotiation of a nuclear nonproliferation treaty left Chalfont and his government with a number of conclusions.

First, West Germany deserved at least a consultative role on nuclear policies within the Western alliance. This could be granted under the McNamara Plan produced by the U.S. Secretary of Defense for a Western steering committee on nuclear policies.

Second, West Germany admittedly still wanted a share in an integrated Western nuclear force. This was reasserted by West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard on February 24. By then the British government had decided that granting an active share to West Germany in such a force would seriously set back the prospects of nuclear disarmament. It would also be an obstacle to any further efforts to relax political tension in Europe.

The third British conclusion — which had an impact on American thinking, too — was that the Geneva talks would make no progress until there was a clear-cut decision on Western nuclear-sharing. The Russians were certain to drag their feet in Geneva in order to try to ensure that West Germany was given no nuclear role whatever, active or consultative. The British government, therefore, urged an early decision to form something on the lines of the McNamara committee.

Finally, the British came to the conclusion that the West German demand, that parallel progress should be made toward a solution of the “German question” before anything could be agreed on in the held of arms limitation, was untenable. This German theory has had an inhibiting effect on the political as well as the defense planning of the Western alliance. The British were coming to the view that the relaxation of tension in Europe provided the only feasible route, however slow, to a solution of the German question.

West Germany hopes

There are all sorts of reasons why the West Germans are so keen to participate in an integrated Western nuclear force. For West Germany to have greater nominal equality with the United States and Britain in the nuclear arms held would give West Germany added prestige and status. A nuclear role might bind the United States more closely into the network of European defense, and at the same time offset Charles de Gaulle’s determination to disparage and dislocate NATO. An integrated Western nuclear force with German participation might even be a contribution to the strength of the Western alliance.

In London the feeling was growing in the early months of this year that West Germany was fortified in what appeared an obstinate and negative viewpoint by the American government. It was significant that the State Department put it on record in February that the McNamara steering committee would not be a substitute for an integrated nuclear force in which West Germany would participate.

This was precisely what the British government had hoped that it could be. But concern over the West German attitude was heightened by the basic German argument that any progress in the field of nuclear disarmament might have an adverse effect on the overall military balance between East and West. Members of the West German Ministry of Defense argued that the Soviet bloc would always have superiority in conventional armed forces, which should be offset by Western superiority in nuclear weapons. Parallel reductions of Western and Eastern nuclear arms and forces would, according to this theory, be wrong.

While Nero fiddles

Failure to agree on a nonproliferation treaty has meant that other countries could at any time join the nuclear club. India has the potential for making nuclear weapons. So has Israel, with its Dimona reactor. Egypt has only a small nuclear reactor at Inchass, but it is conceivable that it might be supplied with fissile material by India, with whom it has close relations in military matters. If the Great Powers fail to achieve a nonproliferation treaty, the bloc of nonaligned states might feel tempted to make nuclear weapons for their own defense.

The East-West controversy in Geneva has made it clear that no progress could be made quickly toward creating nuclear-free zones elsewhere than in Central Europe. Both the African and South American countries would like to belong to such zones, and the arms race in the Middle East has made a nuclearfree zone eminently desirable.

The East-West controversy, finally, has made it quite impossible for the Great Powers to formulate a common viewpoint toward nuclear developments in France and China. General de Gaulle refused to send a delegation to Geneva and continued to go ahead with plans for his own nuclear Force de Frappe. Red China was not invited to Geneva, and its government has been totally enigmatic about its nuclear plans.

After two years of indecision and argument over nuclear-sharing, the non-nuclear countries are becoming increasingly impatient and distrustful of the principal members of the “nuclear club.” And France and China are continuing their efforts to build themselves into major nuclear powers in isolation. The threat of nuclear warfare has become hopelessly entangled with political issues, which are keeping East and West as far apart as ever.