War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Joseph Nye, 1987

What do you think States. Well the general idea of the Atoms for Peace program was to explore peaceful nuclear technology in hopes of persuading other countries that they would use that technology only for peaceful purposes. In addition to that the United States hoped that through its exports it would have some leverage on those countries to keep them using those things that had been exported for peaceful purposes only. In addition to that where there was a period of competition with the Soviet Union it was regarded as good public relations. But that was a secondary dimension to. The name. Well the United States was worried about the Soviet campaign against nuclear technology generally it was felt that this was going to be something which was going to prevent the Americans for using nuclear weapons to defend Europe or nuclear deterrence to defend Europe. And so the idea of using the peaceful atom was a way of showing that nuclear had a benign side as well as a ma lined

side and thereby taking the edge off the Soviet anti-nuclear campaign. Just actually just how useful the treaty 63 way home ration treaty thing with a partial test ban treaty was the first arms control agreement of any significance. And in that sense it was important in paving the way it also was something that Kennedy and Khrushchev had both of them justified in part in relation to its effects on slowing liberation but it was only a step there was plenty of hard bargaining left to do on actually getting a nonpolitical treaty after that. That's just the beginning. Just because you know became the key election themes that.

Were President Carter felt strongly about the issue of nonproliferation indeed it was probably the the prime issue of which he used in his 76 campaign. It was also an issue which had worried the American public. 974 you've had the Indian explosion in 1975 and six the efforts to prevent the export of reprocessing plants to Pakistan and to Brazil. So there was a good deal public attention to the issue. The Democrats in the Congress had used the issue to criticize the administration the Republican administration at the time. And President Carter in addition that felt strongly about it himself and with his background in the nuclear branch of the Navy felt that he knew something about the issue. How did you get in the race. Well I had been involved in a project that had been sponsored by the Ford Foundation to look at the overall problems of nuclear energy including its overlap

with weapons proliferation. That project so called for my project produced a report in early 77 that President Carter received and actually tended to agree with. But the at the point of 76 during the period of the Carter transition I was asked by Secretary of State designate Vance if I would like to come into the administration and help to develop the policy on nonproliferation. Just get back to him. He didn't just give you something that's just gently about us. Do you do going ahead with that. Will the United States had indicated to the Indians in the early 1970s that they would regard the use of American supplied materials for a test or explosion as a violation of the agreement. The Indians replied they didn't see it as a violation of the agreement. The Americans therefore saw it as

essentially of violating the spirit of the agreement that the agreement had bitten been written so loosely that you could make a case that it didn't violate the letter of the agreement. So each side chose to interpret this rather ambiguously written agreement in the terms which it preferred. And essentially the two talk past each other. So our leverage was was not reinforced by having an absolutely clear cut agreement. We said what we thought it meant but the Indians said they didn't believe that. Did you see that there's a chain reaction. Let me make sure I understand the chain reaction of the Indian explosion to other states exploding or inside US politics. Absolutely top of the chart. Look at the Indian explosion it was something which was bound to affect Pakistan. Then Prime Minister Ali Bhutto vowed that Pakistan would eat the grass rather than allow the Hindus alone to have the bomb. So there was a great

deal of concern that an Indian explosion would be followed by efforts by the Pakistanis to keep up. Or to catch up. How did you contribute to the regime. The 1970s was a period of great buoyancy about the use of nuclear energy and the oil embargo just added to that buoyancy. The view was that there was going to be enormous demand for energy. And what's more when oil was cut off that there would have to be nuclear energy to fill the bill. So in that sense people looked at the numbers of reactors that were projected. This is before they knew how costly they were going to be and asked how much uranium was there likely to be. Said my goodness there won't be enough uranium therefore we should turn quickly to using plutonium which you can take out of the spent fuel and which has the distinction that it's a weapons usable material. Plutonium can be used either for producing energy or for producing bombs. So

when the projections were that there was going to be an enormous need for nuclear energy and not enough uranium to make to fuel all those reactors then essentially there was a view that everybody had to get quickly into plutonium which immediately meant they'd have their hands on weapons usable material. What was your reaction to that. In the Ford Motor study we looked at this and felt that the economics were grossly exaggerated that the costs of nuclear reactors was going to be much higher than expected and that the price of uranium which shot up very rapidly after the oil embargo because everybody thought there'd be this great storage of supply was probably not likely to stay up for very long because as the price goes up people are likely to mine more when they mine more price goes down again. So we felt that this period in the early to mid 70s was a period of artificial exaggeration of the demand for uranium and demand for nuclear energy and the demand for plutonium. And that what was important was to try to dampen down this exaggeration so that you didn't put

in place this system where everybody had their hands on weapons usable material in a form which basically you couldn't monitor and could inspect very well. What were the things that you did. Well when we first started out in the early days of the Carter administration we had a policy review memorandum where all the agencies of the government came together and tried to set what the policy was going to be. And that raised several issues. One was the question of were we going to go ahead with reprocessing that is taking the plutonium out of the spent fuel ourselves. And basically we decided the answer to that would be no. Even though there was a partially completed planted Barnwell South Carolina which there was strong industry pressure to turn on. We argued that in fact if we thought that using plutonium was a bad idea that it was a an economic and b dangerous we probably shouldn't do it ourselves if we're going to try to persuade others of that. So we took a stand saying

let's not go quickly into plutonium economy. Let's look at it much more carefully and study it before you have everybody rushing in this direction. So very early on in the administration President Carter announced this policy which would come out of this interagency review group but it created a good deal of consternation on the part of other countries which were planning to go ahead with the plutonium reprocessing. But it's the French times can you tell me something about it. So you thought you were the French had made an agreement with the both with Korea and with Pakistan to sell them reprocessing plants and the Germans had made an agreement with Brazil to sell them both reprocessing plants and enrichment plants that would raise the level of enrichment of uranium to potentially to weapons grade levels. The United States felt that this was a dangerous type of

trade to get into. Indeed the Nixon administration and Ford administration had already begun to worry about this. But without any success they they've had some success in persuading the Koreans not to go ahead with this. But not much success when the Pakistanis and the Brazilian case we continue to feel that both freeze deals were poor precedence and dangerous for example in the Brazilian deal he had made the Argentines feel that they had to keep up the Argentines press ahead to do a reprocessing plant of their own. And you had the prospect that of both countries having weapons grade materials in the beginnings of a nuclear arms race. Essentially in South America which made us very uncomfortable and in East Asia or rather South Asia you had a situation where the Pakistanis by getting a reprocessing plant would be essentially trying to build or make the components that they could build a bomb for keeping up with the Indians. So the prospect of a

nuclear arms race on the subcontinent was not very comforting either in East Asia it was a little bit better in the sense that the Koreans had been persuaded that if they wanted the security of American guarantees for their overall situation on the Korean Peninsula it meant that they couldn't go ahead and get a nuclear weapon. And another case that was somewhat worrisome was Taiwan. They were similar in which we said to the Taiwanese if you want us to continue to try to protect you we're not going to be so happy about that if you're trying to develop nuclear weapons. So don't try any of that. So the East Asian cases were were a little bit quieter and a little bit easier to handle. What do you want me to just leave things be.

Well the United States had already been talking to the French before the Carter administration came into office. When we came into office we made a number of representations to the French that we thought that this was a bad idea. The French at first said well no it's perfectly legitimate. It's for civilian purposes for peaceful purposes. And they said we cannot change this plan. We can't cancel it because it would be extremely damaging to our ability to be a reliable export or a nuclear technology and nuclear equipment. So they were very resistant to the idea. We then encountered some pretty good information that the Pakistanis indeed were trying to develop a nuclear weapon. But I was able to persuade the intelligence people to sanitize the information so that you wouldn't know how it had gotten into our hands and then had a meeting in Paris in July I guess it was of 1977. I presented that information to

key French officials and I remember his saying to me if this is true we'll have to change our position. So sometimes people say that it was American pressure to change the French view. I don't think that's right. It's basically a provision of information that made the French realize that what they've been saying was inconsistent with their long term interest. Yes you bet you do. You know the Japanese use them to stand them. The Japanese were very unhappy about the Carter administration position. They had a plant for reprocessing materials that was about to come on stream that took more up. And the Carter administration felt that if we had just gone through the pain at home of not going ahead with this Barnwell

reprocessing plant would be extremely difficult for us to turn around and tell the Japanese Yes go right ahead with this Tokai reprocessing plant one of the problems was it in the agreement for cooperation between the United States and Japan. There was a clause by which we had to give permission. In some ways it would have been easier for us if if like the French the Japanese had been able to do it on their own but because of this legal agreement we had to give permission. So we were stuck. Either we said we can't do it at home but yes we permit you to do it or we could say look let's both of us not do it. And it took quite some time to work that out. When President Carter said let's both not do it the Japanese were pretty unhappy and it became a major cause celeb or inside Japanese politics. This year. Well in the end trying to work this out we realize that the most important thing

in the long run firms force flowing overstepping liberation is to maintain alliances and security Japeth guarantees another. Japan was a close ally Japan was not a problem in the sense of going nuclear itself. So the question we had to do was to find some way in which you could smooth this over. And what we did was devise a scheme. By which we would study whether there are ways to develop and use this reprocessing plant in a safer way. And that would then be a way of buying time and getting over this period where the contradiction between the two policies was so sharp our options were either to say absolutely no to the Japanese and suffer a considerable rupture and U.S. Japanese relations which would have perhaps. Preventive made the politicization problem worse. I mean it might have not only created resentment in Japan but might have made the Japanese less willing to cooperate with us on other things such as their export policies. So

that was one possibility the other possibility was to just give in right away. That essentially would be very difficult for Carter and for the administration and the middle way that was chosen was to find a way to study this problem to ask are there ways in which reprocessing plants can be made safer by for example co processing the uranium and the plutonium at the same time. And we evolved or we developed a set of studies of this which were later reported to the international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation which was a large international study of the problems of the overlap between civil and military uses of nuclear energy even when they were used to be used for this. The Japanese said you know just give us permission. And we said the up if we give you permission how does it look to everybody else. And it's the difference between a country was trying to develop and maintain an international regime and a country that wants to say Give me a special exception from the rules. So there was a difference between the large country and the smaller

country perspective on this. What we did was sort of try to bridge that by having this special study that needed the MDC. Well the actual energy importance of the Tokai Mora plant was pretty trivial. It was not something which was going to produce a major input to Japanese reactors. They would use some of they might recycle some of the plutonium they might use some of it for their breeder reactor development program but these were pretty far off the major thing the Japanese needed for energy was to continue developing their existing generation of light water reactors. How about the domestic. He still believes. With the domestic nuclear interest. And. The domestic nuclear energy industry was very unhappy about Carter's policies in fact the industry began to run into problems about that time for reasons that had nothing to do with Carter. It had to do with costs

and and other issues. But when the Carter policy came along the industry regarded this is terrible. In fact there was an international conference at Persepolis in Iran which passed a resolution condemning the Carter administration's policies. I am told by pretty good sources that the first draft of that resolution was actually written by some people from the American nuclear industry and I know from direct experience in one of the early days if a person from one of the large nuclear companies telling me he was going to do his best to get me fired. Do you think you see. The idea of the international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation was to get other countries to realize the concern that we had which is that there was an important overlap between civilian uses of nuclear energy and military uses. Whether it's should be a top item on their agenda. So we didn't hope that if C was going to

get other countries to come out and say exactly what we said about plutonium or breeder reactors we did hope was that we could get them to focus on the issue because for a long time the nuclear energy area was left to two ministries of nuclear energy or atomic energy which were strongly influenced by their industries and which thought everything was fine. What we hope this is it by a large international diplomatic gathering. You could break it out of these ministries of energy ministries of atomic energy and get the Foreign Ministry people and get the president's offices into it and get a broader realization in these other governments that there really was a problem. So in that sense I think if she was a success the major part point of AMC then was to set the agenda of getting countries to pay attention to the issues that we were concerned about. In addition to that a secondary point which was important is that MC tended to smooth over some of the acrimony that had grown in the early period of the Carter administration the Carter administration

came out in and laid out some of these plans created turmoil in other countries mainly the reactions were from these narrowly based nuclear energy ministries. And there was a great deal tension by developing this broader international study of whether this was a real issue and what should be done about it. We were able to diffuse some of that acrimony while getting our issue on the broader agenda of these other governments. This is this was an idea that I had thought about to some extent before I joined government but I do try to use international institutions and studies was a something that I had worked on as a professor before I joined the administration. I didn't realize I would need this idea so quickly until we ran into the some of the backlash against the early pronouncements of the administration. Did they know Steve to understand lawyers to some extent the non-nuclear states realized what we were doing.

By and large one of the things you have to realize is when you look at some of these other countries some of their policies were determined very heavily by a small coterie of people in the nuclear area. Others had very little policy at all they were they were not didn't have strong views one way or another. So in that sense you know it's hard to generalize some states knew what we're doing and others we were trying to essentially bring them up to speed to get them interested to see this in a broader perspective. Tell me about this new code is that what it says. Again what. President Carter visited India trying to persuade the Indians that they should put their nuclear facilities under international safeguards we didn't ask them to sign the book going to started with. That's the game. President Carter visited India to try to smooth over the difficulties we were having with India but the

Congress was requiring that we have send exports of materials or radium to a country elicit all its nuclear facilities were under safeguards i.e. they had international inspection and we realized the Indians were not going to side the nonproliferation treaty. But we hope to persuade them that it would not be very difficult for them to add a few more facilities under the inspection list and be there essentially be able to meet the requirements of what's called full scope safeguards that is having everything under inspection. And the president suggested that we would be willing to help the Indian nuclear program if they were willing to put everything under safeguards. Indeed at one point even suggested that we would help them with a plant that produced heavy water. They just had a difficulty with one of their plants so that there was a positive character as well as the negative stick because of the threatened congressional cut off. Well alas it was not one that was that worked. The the there was some

misunderstanding about what the carrot was. And the issue of full scope safeguards have become associated in the Indian mind with signing the nonproliferation treaty which they associated with discriminatory treatment. And so in that sense they they. The reacted from a rather broad and ideological viewpoint rather than that saying you know this might be a good practical solution. Let's see about the UK ration. Did you view that. Well the nonproliferation act was on the books in the Congress not on the books that had been discussed in the Congress before the Carter administration came in there putting the numbers of efforts to produce legislation. The Carter administration when it first came into office drew up a draft law of its own. It was a somewhat more flexible than the law that the Congress wanted. And there's a typical pulling and hauling between the legislature and the executive in the United States the executive tends

to say give us leeway for diplomatic bargaining. The legislature says no nail everything down with absolute provisions so that the Executive can't slide off what we want and in that sense there was a good deal bargaining back and forth between the administration which wanted a more flexible act than eventually came out just as the music. You took the time not just to create this. This was in the ministry the Carter administration produced its own draft of what it thought would be good legislation at about the same time that it produced this presidential review memorandum that set the policy in March of 77 and the Senate and the House committees were pressing for for me and others to go up and testify right from the beginning of May from February of 77. We asked for a little bit of time to develop our own legislation. In the meantime the congressional committees had put in their own legislation and there was a gap. The administration bill was more flexible.

The Congressional bills both in the House and the Senate side were more rigid. And we spent a good deal of time over the next year trying to bargain out those differences. You give a little here you take a little there that took a lot of time. You. Know I thought the NPA was a good step overall but it was it was overly rigid. I mean it tied our hands in some areas where it would have been better to have had a bit more flexibility. So I think the fact that there was legislation was good. I still wish we'd want a few more of those bargaining sessions to put a little bit more flexibility in. Well the danger was that it looked like we were going to have Congress and legislating the outcomes before the results of this international studies so from the State Department in the administration's point of view we would have preferred to have had a little bit more flexibility on that point not

just on the nexus of the Marlies. With the Pakistan plot was a this is the one you're sorry and I am thankful to Kokoda sorry OK. No that I wasn't sure which plan you were. You're OK let's start that again then the way in. I believe it was around January of 78. But we found out about it sooner than that in early seventy eight we discovered that the Pakistanis were trying to build a centrifuge enrichment system. Something's just not ok. In the early part of one thousand seventy eight we discovered that the Pakistanis were trying to develop a centrifuge system for enriching uranium which could bring it up to weapons usable levels.

And we tried to discover where they were getting the equipment what they were doing. We began to discuss this with other members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. I remember flying to London and talking to the British about this and then going to other countries in Europe trying to put together piece together what was going on. And our feeling was that that Pakistan really had very little need for this enrich uranium for civil purposes after all they had a heavy water reactor which doesn't require enrich uranium. So the purposes of of this plant struck us as odd and much more likely be related to weapons than to civil purposes. They were also the Pakistanis were going to other countries and buying equipment and saying it was for things like textile plants and so forth. And so what we had to do was to persuade other governments that this was in fact not going to textile plants but was going to go toward a nuclear plant for enriching materials which didn't fit into Pakistan's civil program very well and was probably for weapons purposes.

And we were able to slow down the exports to this but it was not a leak proof system. Did you visit. I did I hadn't gone to Pakistan actually earlier than that in the middle of 77 and the effort was to go there quietly and to propose to them that we would be willing to help them on many dimensions of their energy program generally. If they would be willing to forego the parts of the program that looked like they were developing weapons or aimed at that purpose they treated me very cordially but I cannot say that I had any success. Most of the rest of us. How much did you shoot. I did not attach a lot of credibility to the idea of an Islamic bomb. It struck me that that was a label which probably misled more than it helped

in the sense that the Pakistanis were worried very much about India and they were not I think trying to spread this weapon to all other Islamic nations. But they were getting some aid from other countries that had oil money Libya Saudi Arabia so forth. One of the things we tried to persuade the Pakistanis was that we would feel very strongly against the idea of any spread of this weaponry. And in that sense I think there was a background concern that it not become an Islamic bomb but we saw it motivated primarily by the Indo-Pakistani rivalry. Well I believe the Libyans provided some funds I don't think they got much for their money. In others I don't think there was a reverse transfer of technology to Libya. You know.

I don't know that I know anything that's in the public domain about that that I can say. Do you still even let me try to remember there were two decisions one was in September or fall of 70. You know there was a that was earlier was one in early 79 and there was one and there was a brief next to the A ID people came in to talk to us about cutting off aid. But I don't think we did it in late 77. But I don't I think the I think the cut off was in 70 spring of 79. And I had already left the government that I was a consultant Tom Pickering was then in charge of the policy. So so they led us to something. Something you know I mean I was there I was going down one day a week as a consultant so I knew what was going on but I wasn't officially in charge of the policy any longer.

What led us to assume that he didn't make the cut off of aid to Pakistan was required by the legislation. Basically once you discovered and it was absolutely clear that the Pakistanis were trying to develop an enrichment plant as well as a small reprocessing plant. The legislation required you to cut off the aid. And essentially one of the problems at that point was that the size of the aid that we're providing to Pakistan was so small that the Pakistanis reacted to it in terms of well so what. So it it didn't have a very great effect. At the same time in the future it's just as well that the US is one nation. I don't think the Three Mile Island had a very large direct effect it may have

had an indirect effect in the sense of requiring additional safety measures as more people became worried about nuclear energy. When you require additional safety measures you make reactors more expensive and since we had argued that reactors were already pricing nuclear energy out of the competitive market it did have the effect of slowing down the boom in the nuclear industry. But it didn't have a direct effect. It was more of the same direct decisions we used to know that was after was to be run by the decisions we might be OK. I think the renewal of aid was justifiable if it had been tied more clearly to pull of ration policy. I think it had a heavy tie to the Afghan

policy. One of the things about using aid as a sanction is that it works best when you are threatening to cut it off but not after you cut it off. Or another way of putting it is that if you want to have a carrot to dangle there has to be a real carrot so it makes sense to have aid. But then you have to tie the aid to the fact that the Pakistanis not develop a bomb. So I don't begrudge the idea of renewing aid. What I begrudge is the fact that the ties to there are slowing down their nuclear program were clear. Distance which is a huge one. He discusses the grievance and the decision to waive the end. That case continues here as well at that point I had again was out of the government that was I believe 1980 that those waivers were were made

the. But the argument for making a waiver and giving fuel to terror pour rested to some extent on a legal technicality. The question is When did the clock start ticking before you had to cut off aid the administration argued there were two shipments involved the administration argued that the shipments essentially could fit within the grace period that the nuclear nonproliferation Act allowed. Senator Glenn and others argued know that the clock had already run out from a diplomatic point of view I think the administration wanted to try to stretch this out and look at the broader interpretation of the of this grace period as a way to buy more time to keep negotiating with the Indians. The same to India. Well pressure was applied to India in the sense that there was in the background the threat of the cutting off of the fuel supply for these reactors. The question though is always Once you cut things off there's not that much left to negotiate about. So the art of

diplomacy is trying to get agreements before the guillotine has fallen or before the carrot has been removed from the scene. Do you know much about Israel. Were there two problems regarding Israel. One is that the information about Israel was not as good as one might like the Israelis had had stopped the Americans from continuing their inspections in the I guess it was bit during late sixties and the second point was that it was widely believed that Israel had probably already developed a nuclear capability and that there wasn't much chance of walking that back. But it was a it was done that it'd been an event that had occurred probably in the late 60s or early 70s. So in that sense the Israeli position which was that they would not be the first to

introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East was to some extent a diplomatic fiction or a useful diplomatic fiction of saying that even though they might have the capability they were could have allowed it and they weren't going to centrally develop big nuclear arsenals and we tended to support that view. But we didn't feel that there was anything we could do to reverse something that happened 10 years earlier would be sure to save Israel. All right. Israel was a political concern in the sense that we were concerned about any country that had nuclear weapons but it was a case where essentially the horse was pulled out of the barn already and we were trying to concentrate on those where the horse hadn't yet got out that South Africa was very much a concern and in I believe it was the summer of 1977. We were tipped by the Russians that they had their satellites had found a a boresight that looked like

underground test site in the Kalahari Desert. And we looked for it with our satellite. We found it. And so we went to the South Africans with very strong representations that. We felt that they should not go ahead and develop nuclear weapons and or have a nuclear test. And the for some period we negotiated with them about that during the period that I was in the government during the Carter administration. I don't believe that the South Africans didn't develop nuclear weapons. It's a little harder to know what they've done since then. And you know there's a good deal of speculation that the Israelis may have helped the South Africans because the Israelis did indeed have conventional weapons transfers with South Africa in a number of Israeli scientists visited South Africa. So there's speculation on that but so far as I know it's all I know about is speculation.

So the stuff that was sinking very well south. We were we did focus a good deal of energy and effort on South Africa trying to find various packages and and carrots and sticks to persuade them not to develop nuclear weaponry. And working also with the other countries like the French and so forth. So we spent a good deal of effort on the South African case we didn't really need them. Well we did but that on the Israelis we didn't have any good information that the Israelis were actually helping the South Africans. We had speculation and rumors but not solid evidence. Just generally people criticize the Russian policy for being with us. Do you want to know if you get a health plan. Then you give it

to the companies that give them to you. Well the criticism of Carter's policy is being one of denial is only partly true. For one thing a good policy has to walk on two legs one of which is to focus on denying capabilities and the other is to reassure intentions. And there are many instances where we tried to reassure intentions some of the compromises we made with allies were to essentially reassure intentions. On the denial point. It's worth noticing that countries may have intentions to get nuclear weapons as Libya has had for a long time and not be able to do it because they're denied the capabilities. So this this argument that the policies of mild versus intentions is silly. You have to work on both sides and I think the Carter administration did work on both sides. If you look at our policy toward Taiwan for example or Korea the reassurance on security was to effect their intentions. It was a lot

harder on a case like South Africa to give any sorts of guarantees in that sense the denial part was perhaps higher than in other cases. But there was an effort to look at both intentions as well as capabilities in the policy. Do you think they just miss the moment that moment. Well by stopping the Chaz memory processing plant we prevented the Pakistanis from taking their first best option to get their hands on a lot of weapons usable material quickly. That then I think encourage them to speed up or try to take the next group which was that if you want the side door after we've closed the front door I think it helped to buy time. It also prevented a direct violation of international safeguards which might have been

very damaging to the safeguard system as a whole. The police do seem to give a hand in which. The Pakistanis were keen on going ahead with getting access to weapons usable materials by one route or another. And so when we stop the Chinese foot plant the century took away their first best option that indeed encouraged them I believe to speed up the work on the enrichment plant. They had already had these stolen plants plans from the year Ranko plant and were planning to go ahead in this direction anyway as a back up. But when they lost their first choice they then turned to their second choice. But yes I think it was inevitable because I believe it was inevitable because the Pakistanis have this very strong feeling that they had to keep up with the Indians. I think the pressures

toward a Pakistani bomb were extraordinarily great. Once the India explosion went off. The. Action was even just the Israelis attacked the Iraq reactor. Because they felt that it could be used for making nuclear weapons. I don't think at that stage that it could be used for making nuclear weapons. Our intelligence didn't suggest that it was being misused that way. But I think the Israelis were closer to the scene and more nervous. Indeed if you were in that situation you would probably be more nervous too. And I think that made them to evaluate certain information as suggesting that the Iraqis were going ahead sooner with the nuclear plan the weapons plan than we believe to be the case. And I think that's why the Israelis

attacked when they did so in that sense I think they jumped the gun and I think that they they didn't need to attack at that point. But I think from the Israeli point of view they believe that they were indeed in dire straits. Do you think you know. It did and it didn't. It may have done some damage by the fact that you had an attack on a safeguarded reactor but on the other hand it may have done some good by saying that when countries think that they can creep up toward a nuclear weapons capability other states may preempt may essentially decide to take unilateral action. What you might call an affirmative action nonproliferation policy. How much credibility do you attach to these press reports about the case that was the thinking nation that Israel has to deal with this.

Well I've read the Sunday Times report the Vanunu contributed to. I think there's some exaggeration perhaps in the amount of nuclear weapons that it implies that Israel has. But I think it does tend to continue to suggest that the Israelis have more than modest or more than a very minor capability. The new kid States today making claims about him. Why should they give up the view when the Summa is enough to just release this information that lets you. I think it's going to be hard to maintain support for the Nonproliferation Treaty in the long run. And remember it has to be renewed by a majority of states in 1995. If the superpowers have done nothing to reduce their reliance on nuclear weapons on the other hand it's also worth noticing that it number of states decide that it's in their interest to adhere to the Nonproliferation Treaty

because they want to have a system of keeping their neighbors non-nuclear and having inspectors there to see it. So there is a symbolic element to the worry about the superpower's arsenal. But there is a practical of about worrying about your neighbors Arsenal and I think what you need is some progress on the superpowers moving in the direction of arms control. But it's not the only step that's needed or that holds the nonproliferation treaty together and that means to do anything. Here it is. I believe that the nonproliferation problems today are dealing with states which are getting right up under the threshold of nuclear weaponry. That is what you have is five states in the NPT that are listed as nuclear weapons states. But you have four others which are either just below or just above the threshold. India Israel South Africa Pakistan and that raises interesting puzzles of how do you deal with states which are either not openly declared or haven't had an

explosion but have the reputation and I think one has to think of politicization as a stair case perhaps with a broader landing at the point where a first explosion occurs but in which you want to try to persuade States to stay many steps below that first landing and after they've crossed that landing to think of ways to prevent them from keeping going up the staircase. It's better to be like in India to have had one explosion but not develop an arsenal than to develop an arsenal of unreliable and unsafe nuclear weapons which may blow up not only them but their neighbors or smuggled into our harbors on a freighter as well. As to theirs. Will the Nuclear Suppliers Group was in response to the Indian explosion in a sense a belated response but the idea was to get the countries that supplied nuclear equipment and materials to agree on a common set of guidelines so

that the nuclear trade would not be a competition in risk taking. Who can sell the most dangerous thing to get the contracts. And it took some hard bargaining to work out the details. We met in the River Walk house along the Thames in London. I remember going as head of the delegation twice in 77 and we finally got an agreement in September 77 on a common set of guidelines which were then published to the International Atomic Energy Agency the following here. Just from the US is that he is different. Well the Americans and the Soviets actually worked quite good and certainly the United States and the Soviet Union cooperated quite well in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. There were some differences of view on details the Soviets I think might have wanted to hold out longer for full scope safeguards is a formal requirement. But we knew the French would never agree to that and we felt it was better to compromise on that and get agreement on the guidelines as a whole

rather than to take the purist position. So there were some differences but in fact the Soviets were happy to go along with a final compromise and get aid to agreement on a set of guidelines that all the 15 countries could hear to get used to. It was the French position changed considerably over time I think you could argue that they learned that they had an interest in security terms as well as an interest in nuclear energy terms. Well they they first agreed to participate when it was kept it on the ground to be kept very quiet. Gradually it became known and they decided not to withdraw.