Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VII, Arms Control and Disarmament

111. Memorandum of Conversation⁰

Bermuda, December 21, 1961, 5–6:30 p.m.

MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION PERTAINING TO NUCLEAR MATTERS

PRESENT

• United States:
  • The President
  • The Secretary of State
  • Dr. Seaborg
  • Dr. Brown (from 5:40 PM)
  • Mr. Bundy
• United Kingdom:
  • The Prime Minister
  • Lord Home
  • Sir William Penny
  • Mr. de Zulueta

The Prime Minister asked Sir William Penny to explain the technical aspects of the problem. Sir William said that the first question was whether it was possible for the USSR to combine an effective defense against missiles and an effective capacity to devastate the United States. The balance of missile/anti-missile capabilities was the crucial one.

He believed that even after the recent Soviet tests the United States today has a slight advantage. [3-1/2 lines of source text not declassified] One particular Russian operation caused some apprehension: the execution of a very sophisticated test series in a location closely associated with anti-missile defense.

Sir William believed that if we can stand where we are today we will be all right. But how can either side avoid the effort to set up an anti-missile defense? No one can say that this cannot be done, if enough time and money is put into it. It seemed fantastically hard, but he thought both sides would have to try. If the United States should hold its hand, and the USSR should go full steam ahead, then in two or three years the United States would be behind. Could the United States allow the Soviets that two or three year period start on anti-missile defense?

As Sir William saw it, the President could give his technical people three different orders. The first would be to go ahead, in which case they would have lots of energy and enthusiasm and would make rapid progress. The second would be to prepare for testing, without a direct go-ahead order. In this case they would do well, but not as well as in the first case. The third order would be to stop. In this case we would lose more than just the time in which such a stop-order held. If the order to resume were given after two or three years, we should be less ready to make progress than we are today, because of the decay of the research laboratories in the meantime.

Sir William made one further point: a hundred megaton weapon like that tested by the Soviet Union can do enormous damage from a distance of twenty-five miles by heat. This may make a very great difference in the effectiveness of anti-missile defenses, since interception at such a range is very much more difficult than interception at five or six miles (where the atmosphere is thicker). The President asked if we should attempt to make such a weapon ourselves, and Sir William answered obliquely that we could probably make it without tests. Mr. Seaborg indicated that without tests it would be substantially heavier than the indicated Russian weapon, but he urged that the problem was worth careful study.

The Prime Minister discussed at some length the terrifying prospects of an indefinitely conducted and enormously expensive arms race in this field. If all of these talented people go on about their business, more and more and bigger and bigger bombs would be piled up and if even one of these new bombs should go off, it would burn up all of France. On and on, the two great powers would go. The Prime Minister said of Great Britain, “We shall probably drop out.” We have of course an absolute justification for going on with it, because of what the other man is doing. But as we are now, we are even. Neither side has a defense nor will have one for many years.

This pattern worried him. Should mankind in the next generation be dedicated to this kind of effort? If the weapons are not fired off, of course, it is only a waste. But if they are fired off, it will be the end. Of course, the Soviet Union must not get ahead of us to the point where they could bully us, but could they really do so? This was the picture for the next twenty-five years, and while the only ones engaged in the highly sophisticated race would be the US and the USSR, everyone else would have the simpler forms of bomb in a few years. What would have happened if the Portuguese had had only two or three little Hiroshima bombs in the Goa affair? Would they have dropped them on Indian cities? The Prime Minister found Berlin very small beer compared to the destruction of mankind. He believed we have to make another effort. Mankind could not go on this way.

Should we do it by bringing great weight on the disarmament discussions now scheduled for April?¹ They now look as if they would make very small progress. Yet we cannot sit in an ordinary little room three days before Christmas and talk about these terrible things without doing anything. The Prime Minister turned back to look at the lesson of the test ban discussions. To these discussions both the United States and Great Britain had given great effort. David Ormsby Gore had spent three years in Geneva, the dullest city in the world. The Prime Minister thought we had been close to agreement and then somebody—he asked Dr. Seaborg to forgive the allusion—unveiled the “big hole” underground and agreement on underground controls had proved impossible. Now it appeared that underground testing was not a very serious business, and he thought the failure of the test ban effort was a great pity. We might have got it then. He thought the Russians might have agreed.

So is it worth contemplating a new test series in which the British would give Christmas Island to the Americans, or the Americans would use Johnston Island? Or should we call it off if we can really get down to a new effort which will give a real impetus to serious disarmament? Perhaps he and the President and Khrushchev might really get together and give a great new push. And such a new “push” might put other things, like Berlin, in perspective. We might fail but if so we would have lost only a few months. The Prime Minister’s feeling about these people, after reading their novels and all that he could about them, was that they might come around. In short, he would suggest a great new effort to break the cycle of the arms race. (At this point Dr. Harold Brown joined the meeting.)

The President remarked that what the Russians had done in the last nine months suggested that they do not really want an agreement, and asked if it were not true that they must have been preparing tests since February.

The Prime Minister then briefly reviewed the kinds of tests which are proposed, in the following four categories:

1. High altitude effects which would not require Christmas Island.

2. Existing warheads of Polaris and Minuteman.

3. Tests of advanced designs to reduce the weight-to-yield ratio, and

[1 paragraph (1-1/2 lines of source text) not declassified]

Such tests would take two or three months to prepare, and the Prime Minister wondered if we could not use the time for one further try. He compared the arms race to a rogue elephant against which we must all act. We had very nearly succeeded before. With no disrespect to his great friend General Eisenhower, he thought that the U-2 incident and the pressures on Khrushchev had broken up the last effort. He thought the Russians were not very happy about it and he pointed out that after all a continuation of the arms race will cost them ferociously. They had got into this business when we had a monopoly and they had to catch up. If the Prime Minister had had to face this decision, he would probably have done the same thing. But if you just bid up and up, it is a grim prospect.

The Prime Minister asked Sir William why the Russians did test in this case. Sir William replied that he was inclined to think there had been a change in the thinking of their military men, who suddenly “went nuclear.” The President thought our technological lead had not been so large as to give them any great concern. Sir William was inclined to agree and pointed out that he was interested in the fact that the Soviet Union had not gone for light-weight, high-yield weapons of the sort which would be most useful in anti-missile defense.

Dr. Brown said he thought that the Soviets had initially believed that they could hide their large missiles. The effectiveness of the U-2 had been a great shock to them. They now felt that they needed more smaller, lighter ones, which they would be able to make as a result of their tests. He thought also they were on to some new principles of design in the 5-10 megaton range, and also at the level of very large yield. He pointed out, as Sir William had already done, that there were two or three high-altitude tests associated with their anti-missile efforts and that we had a particular need to know more in this field, partly for our own anti-missile program and still more for the purpose of penetrating theirs. The Soviets apparently were not interested in 600-pound or 300-pound warheads, but in every area where they had displayed real interest, they were now equal to or ahead of the United States.

The President asked Sir William whether it is possible to get a good anti-missile defense. Sir William replied that in any ordinary way he would say it was impossible. But at these stakes and with these resources committed, “I contract out.”

The Prime Minister asked what a 100-megaton bomb would do. Sir William replied that it would cause great destruction and the Prime Minister asked what it would do to people. Sir William replied that it would burn up all the people in even the largest city. It was repeated that the United States could build such a weapon if it were needed.

Dr. Brown remarked that penetration was easier than defense as long as other things were equal. One purpose of the proposed new tests was to make sure that other things were indeed equal. The Prime Minister asked how many large bombs would be needed to destroy England, and Sir William remarked that eight of the existing multimegaton weapons would make a terrible mess of England.

The Prime Minister remarked that a very large part of the early wave of the Western strategic forces was based in England, and he said, “Every time you lift the phone, Mr. President, I think you are about to say that you are going to go, and I always wonder what I would answer.”

The Prime Minister could see the reason for every one of the proposed tests. They were all proper enough in their own terms but he could not see any end to it.

Secretary Rusk agreed with the Prime Minister that this was an enormous problem and agreed also that the point was to get ahold of the easy end of it—not the machines, but the men who make decisions about them. Was there not some way in which we could change the minds of these men? In particular, was it not possible that the real trouble is what the Soviets and the Chinese Communists are trying to do, in their persistent effort to take the world over. If they would only shift from this policy, how much they could transform the face of the world and improve its hopes.

The President said that in a year or two this nuclear arms race would come to a stand-off. Nobody would be able to use these things. We could not use them; the Soviets could not use them, since each side would be destroyed if it did. Secretary Rusk remarked that this stand-off would work only if it really were a stand-off, and others commented that it would have to be a stand-off in which both sides believed. Dr. Brown said it must be psychologically as well as technologically stable.

The Prime Minister remarked that the stronger the great powers became, the less they could control the weaker powers. Returning to Secretary Rusk’s comment he said that perhaps the position of the Russians is changing. They are half-way between Asia and Europe. They see with foreboding the rise of China and the possible spread of nuclear weapons. We think of them as enormously different from us, but their economic structure, seen from afar, is not very different. Their railroads and mines are nationalized; so are the railroads and mines of Western Europe. Children of their ruling class are put in Public Schools like ours (the British Public School, he meant), and in general there is a spread of unequal privileges throughout their society. Could we not, gradually, without giving in, allow the forces of humanity to operate? And in that context we might work for an end of the arms race. If not, every little country would want what the French call a force de frappe and then make a nuisance of itself. The Prime Minister thought we were at a turning point. Could we not pull it out of the ruck and get it back on the road?

Lord Home asked how all this would fit into the new U.S. disarmament plan.² This new plan was not very different from that of the Soviets. We look for general disarmament in six years against the Soviet five. Their early phases call for more nuclear disarmament than ours but basically the plans are similar except in the very important area of inspection. Here Dr. Seaborg remarked that the test ban negotiations would have to be moved toward the forum of general disarmament. A test ban treaty in itself would be harder and harder for the West to accept, because of the problem of secret Soviet preparations.

Lord Home continued on disarmament, pointing out that the eighteen chaps will have to meet. Their plans are not too far apart. Moreover, the Pugwash boys go on meeting, with some quite high-level Russians in the party. So there is at least some hope. Could we not make the opening of the eighteen-nation conference a moment of major effort? We might get the President and the Prime Minister and Khrushchev to meet and really start it off.

The President replied that the experiences of earlier months were discouraging. What assurances could we have? It seemed to him we should test unless we make major progress on either Germany or disarmament. He quite agreed that the Soviet edge, if any, was not decisive now, but he also agreed with Sir William Penney that the problem was what would happen in 1964 if we did not continue and the Soviets did. We could not get taken twice. Therefore, we ought to go ahead and prepare to test, and test, if there was no great progress in other fields. The President said this was his view even though he was a “great anti-tester.”

The Prime Minister asked what would happen if all the bombs in the world went off, and the replies all indicated that the disaster would be enormous. The Prime Minister said that he had talked to Khrushchev on the same subject, and Khrushchev had answered that there would be nobody left but the Chinese and the Africans. Lord Home repeated that we ought to make some great exercise. Mr. Macmillan asked if by doing so we might not help the Berlin situation. The President continued to reply that we ought to prepare to test, and test, unless we get something serious that helps our security in the world. He added that there was one and only one serious issue, the balance of missile/anti-missile capabilities.

There followed a brief discussion of bluffing in which Prime Minister Macmillan remarked that the real question was what the other man thought. Mr. Brown remarked that bluffing was easier for a man who had looked at his cards while his opponent had not. The Prime Minister replied more seriously that to a man with the responsibilities of great-power leadership it would always seem hard—if not impossible—to give the order on a mere suspicion of bluff.

The Foreign Secretary said that if there were to be a resumption of testing, there must also be a major effort to get on with disarmament. The arms race really must stop. The President replied that the timing of such a great effort of disarmament was difficult. We could not start such a great effort and then begin atmospheric testing just when there were new hopes for disarmament.

Lord Home suggested one last try in which the three great leaders would open it up and then all the heads of the eighteen nations might come to Geneva. The President asked whether the Russians would agree to anything serious and it appeared that Lord Home thought we would be testing in the meantime. (But the recorder is not sure of what Lord Home said here.)

The President summed up the discussion by saying that there seemed to be three issues:

1. Should we prepare to test and test?

2. Should we make a parallel effort in disarmament?

3. Would the British wish to join in the testing program by making Christmas Island available, or should the United States plan its program alone?

At this point Prime Minister Macmillan ended the discussion, remarking that he felt better and that he thought the discussion had been most helpful.

0. Source: Department of State, Presidential Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 66 D 149, UK. Top Secret. There is no drafting information on the source text, which is on White House stationery. According to the President’s Appointment Book, the meeting was held at Government House. (Kennedy Library)
1. The first plenary meeting of the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee was held on March 14.
2. Apparent reference to the U.S. plan presented to the United Nations on September 25; see footnote 3, Document 73.