Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XI, Arms Control and Disarmament

244. Letter From the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Nitze) to the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Foster)¹

Washington, June 7, 1968.

Dear Bill:

Your proposed draft memorandum from the Secretary of State to the President, circulated on 4 June 1968, has been reviewed within the Department of Defense.²

I believe it would be unwise to take a definite position on an arms control proposal banning weapons of mass destruction until we have a clearer determination of what kind of proposal, if any, is in the best interests of the United States.

Based on the discussions between Mr. Meeker and Rear Admiral Hearn, I believe that a more acceptable formulation of ACDA’s specific proposal would be:

“Each State Party to this Treaty undertakes not to emplace implant or fix nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction on, within, or beneath or to the seabed beyond 12 nautical miles from its coast and up to the coast of any other State. A narrow band along the coasts of each State will be exempt from the provisions of this Treaty; the width of this band to be determined by negotiation.”

This statement cures the most immediate problem the Department of Defense has with respect to the legal aspects and affords better protection to various operating options we may wish to exercise in our mobile seabased strategic systems.

The most important issue to be decided by the President is whether or not the support of arms control measures for the seabeds is in the best over-all interests of the United States. I recommend that your proposed memorandum be altered to emphasize this basic issue and that you append to it the attached memorandum from the Secretary of Defense. This SecDef memorandum outlines some of the considerations which the President should have in mind before deciding this issue.

Sincerely,

Paul

Enclosure³

Washington, undated.

Memorandum From Secretary of Defense Clifford to President Johnson

SUBJECT

• Issues Raised by the Committee of Principals on ACDA’s Seabed Arms Control Proposal

At the recent meetings of the Committee of Principals on ACDA’s proposal for arms control on the seabed⁴ there were four areas in which the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not reach agreement with the other members of the Committee. These issues are set forth below for your information, together with the extent of agreement and disagreement:

Issue 1. What is permitted and what is prohibited.

Agreed:

1. Intent of proposal is to ban emplacement or establishment of permanently fixed weapons of mass destruction from seabeds.

2. The banning of fixed sea-based systems is the least harmful possibility from a national security point of view.

Not Agreed:

1. That we can really know what is being prohibited because of difficulty in determining exactly what is the precise meaning of “deployed,” “implanted” or “emplaced.”

2. That the language of the proposed treaty article insures against inadvertent banning of systems or operational modes intended to be permitted.

3. That such a treaty will not serve as a device for “legal” military and industrial espionage.

4. That weapon systems to be banned may not be useful at some future time for the safety and security of the U.S.

Issue 2. Legal considerations involving relationship between Law of the Sea⁵ and ACDA’s proposal.⁶

Agreed:

1. That the most apparent and immediate legal defects of the draft ACDA proposal could be cured by redrafting. (This has been done.)

Not Agreed:

1. That the legal aspects of any seabed arms control agreement reached at this time will not be the genesis of new and disturbing legal theories and precedents affecting the ongoing development of other seabed legal and jurisdictional regimes.

2. That it is possible at this time to determine the amount of sea room which may be required for the deployment of sea-based strategic weapon systems.

3. That we can reach an accommodation with the USSR with respect to a baseline from which the limits of prohibition are to be measured.

Issue 3. The relative military value of future weapon systems options.

Agreed:

1. That most fixed sea-based systems would be more costly from a fiscal, industrial and manpower resource standpoint than either mobile sea-based or fixed land-based systems.

2. That existing geographic and demographic asymmetries make the possible use of seabed strategic weapon systems more attractive to the US than to the USSR.

3. That ACDA’s proposal does not afford the US any military advantage.

4. There are no weapon systems in current or projected DOD plans which would be prohibited by this proposal.

Not Agreed:

1. That economic savings purported to arise from ACDA’s proposal can be identified.

2. That the issue of economic savings is germane to discussions of ACDA’s proposal.

3. That the long term political advantages to be gained from adoption of ACDA’s proposal have been sufficiently identified.

4. That the possible economic savings and political advantages outweigh the possible strategic and military disadvantages which may accrue.

Issue 4. Verification problems associated with proposal.

Agreed:

1. There is a high probability that we could detect the development of a prohibited system before it became operational.

2. We could almost certainly detect large scale construction activity on the seabed but to determine exactly what was being constructed is a difficult problem.

3. It is unlikely that we could detect small scale deployments of some types of prohibited systems but could probably detect large scale deployments of these systems.

Not Agreed:

1. That it is unlikely that the USSR would deploy large numbers of unprotected strategic systems.

2. That the extent of our agreed verification capability is adequate to protect our national security interests.

3. That the existing verification capability is capable of timely detection of a treaty violation.

Concerns about the verification of a seabed arms control agreement lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff to believe that the adoption of a specific arms control proposal at this time would not be in the national interest and has a potential for grave harm.

1. Source: Johnson Library, Clifford Papers, Arms Control on the Seabed (2), Box 20. Secret; Noforn.
2. See footnote 1, Document 243.
3. Secret.
4. See Documents 238 and 242.
5. See footnote 6, Document 238.
6. See Document 233.