#SOVIET VS US NUCLEAR STOCKPILE SERIES#

Millar, then with the State Department’s Office of European Regional Affairs, made an abortive attempt to visit stockpile sites to find out whether the arrangements were compatible with U.S. really had “exclusive custody” of all weapons deployed to NATO allies. In the waning months of the Eisenhower administration State Department officials and members of the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy wondered whether the U.S. Moreover, Washington and the NATO allies agreed to Guidelines at the May 1962 NATO meeting in Athens establishing parameters for consultations in a crisis. As part of their stockpile negotiating strategy, the Italians successfully insisted that the United States agree to language requiring it consult with the Italian government over the use of nuclear weapons deployed in Italy. The European allies also wanted safeguards.

#SOVIET VS US NUCLEAR STOCKPILE SERIES#

As National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy observed, the stockpile system was necessary to “hold NATO in a single nuclear position or risk seeing it disintegrate into a series of national nuclear capabilities.” Partly motivating the dispersals were White House concerns about nuclear proliferation, which had become more prominent under Kennedy. To minimize risks, in April 1961 Kennedy brought a halt to the dispersals to allies but resumed them in 1962 once security prospects had improved and plans to require PALs were underway.

Kennedy wondered “whether our weapons control actually conformed to law.” A report by the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy was so troubling to the newly inaugurated president, that, according to a meeting record prepared for top Navy officials, published today for the first time, John F. The Kennedy administration decided that PALs should become standard operating procedure in part because key members of Congress raised troubling questions about the initial deployments, including the danger of accidental detonation and vulnerability to seizure by coup plotters. To prevent unauthorized use of the weapons, since the 1960s they have been safeguarded with Permissive Action Links (PALs).

The deployments, begun in part as a deterrent against East-West conflict, involved the assignment of hundreds and then thousands of nuclear weapons, and currently some 150 weapons, to NATO allies. Washington, D.C., Septem– The NATO nuclear stockpile arrangements that have persisted since the Cold War were initially negotiated during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, facilitating the controversial nuclear sharing arrangements with the allies. FOIA Advisory Committee Oversight Reports.

Soviet vs us nuclear stockpile