NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY LOSING ITS EDGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605110010-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: July 26, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/07/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605110010-1
~V ARTICL3 PYaRP~
8N PAGE~_
wASriINvT0i1 POST
26 July 1985
Nuclear Di lomac Losin
Its Ed e
p y g g
Superpowers Discovered. Limitation After Mideast Confrontation
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
In late October 1973 almost 11
years to the da after the Cuban.
mtss~ a crisis en rote i-
gence reported Shat a Soviet trans-
port s ~p passe through the Bos-
phorus from the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean, headed toward
Egypt, which then was at war with
Israel.
The ship carried a radioactive
cast' o_. _
;.,; :Eentral lritelli~e~se Agency an-
cou " w ea ~ s or.. oviet s ort-
ran a mtssi es t at were then being
were to gypt.
The report, according to one of-
ficial involved at the time, sent a
"tingle" through the U.S. national
security establishment at a moment
when the United States was work-
ing to prevent a threatened unila-
THE BOMB
THE 1973 YOM KIPPUR WAR
feral Soviet military intervention in
the then-raging Yom Kippur war.
James 12, Schlesinger, secretary
. of defense at the time, said in a re-.
cent interview.that since the Cuban
missile crisis, the Soviet Union had
"been very careful about moving
any nuclear weapons outside" its
territory.
So the 1973 movement itself was
"a considerable change in the pat-
tern of Soviet behavior," Schlesing-
er said. "and therefore tended to
tell us that the Soviets were indeed
politically serious ...."'
But, he went on, "as to the pos-
sibility of the use of those weapons,
we placed a very low probability on
that."
Their purpose, "to the extent
t,'x~t one thought .that the .Soviets
hail a real purpose in making those
moves, ...was to bolster Israel's
opponents;" Schlesinger said.
_ Schlesin er who reviously
headed the A, su este an a -
lttona ~mens;ion to t e ov~et
"
move:
It was wide!
elieved to the
~~orld that Israel itself had`~>ouclear weapons
t ttese ~ovtet weapons were being: moved into the re-
' gion, it was speculated,, m::order .to seassure either the
~c~ttans or the Syt'uuis , , , that if the Israelis were to
uae wea ns thal: there would be a response "
--it so was: a .: Schlesin er recalled; "to deter
? as suc Israeh ~ m e srae s rt a
9 ~^
' :. us a stage . w~; set for ~fiSe= t major nuclear
cottfrontatioaC'Ijetweetii Washington and=~lldoseow.
k illustrated a new danger: that the: sup~wers,
.who had learned from the Cuban missile crisis to avoid,..
:direct clashes between their. own forces, could still be
dragged into'conflict while assisting allies:
This morecomplex form of Soviet: nuclear diploma-
~cy-sending signals not only to the united States but
also to Israel `and its own Egyptian and`Syrian allies-
turned out like earlier-episodes. It quickly provoked an
American response in'the form of a worldwide strategic
. ,
nuclear alert. ,. ,., .....,.,,:-, .v. :..., _. ,.
_ That alert rva$ t[teant to be kept asecret---except
' .from the. Sovaets. $ut word of ~ it quickly leaked and
=.reached the.entiire'world:.'Anothet' IJ:S. signal at ttte-.
`time has never'been publicly me~ttioned: a private mes-
'sage to the Soviets that said, accot~~g to a Pentagon
official at the time, that the United States "might not be
able to restrain someone else [in other words, Israel)
from 'taking out' Soviet nuclear warheads." ~
Nuclear `Wild Card' Alters; Equation
That 1973 incident illustrates why nuclear weapons
-have begun to lose their value for the superpowers as a
stool of diplomacy. And the introduction of a nuclear
?wild card"-Israel-may explain why there have been
?no more nuclear alerts since.
x On October 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrian forces
~Iaunched a surprise attack against Israel, trying to re-
-gain lost Arab lands. As the tide of battle went back and
forth, Moscow and Washington each tried to arrange a
Fcease-fire to give its own client state the best result.
Early in October, shortly after the Egyptians had in-
vaded the Sinai, the Soviets alerted several airborne di-
yvisions. Eater, when U.S. aid was flown to Israel, the
Soviets began flying ammunition and other heavy mil-
aitary materiel into Cairo.
~+Al1bA~gd
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! By mid-October, Israel gained the advantage, and by
"Oct. 21, the Egyptian Third Army Corps, some 25,00(?
:men and the cream of Egyptian President Anwar
'Sadat's army, was facing annihilation.
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, seeing the possibility
.that Israel was about to score a major victory that could.
.unseat Sadat, suggested that U.S. and Soviet forces
.`move jointly into the area to enforce an earlier, agreed-
rupon cease-fire. Sadat gave his support to Brezhnev's
proposal.
At the time, Brezhnev was maneuvering to restore
Soviet influence in the Arab world, which had dimin-
..ished badly less than a year earlier when Sadat had ex-.
gelled thousands of Soviet advisers from Egypt.
" The Brezhnev note came at a time of domestic tur-
moil in Washington, where the Watergate crisis was in-
teasifying with new calls for the impeachment of Pres-
ident Richard M. Nixon. Days before, Nixon had fired.
Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox and failed.
f to prevent Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson from.
i quitting during what was called the "Saturday Night.
" Massacre."
Richardson said recently that Nixon told him several
tunes during their last meeting that his departure from.
;the White House could hann national security.
"We felt that the Soviets had been watching what had.
,' been going on," Schlesinger recalled. "'The Soviets, in.
? view of their concern about the Middle Eastern prob-~
lem, might conclude that the United States was inca-
-gable of reacting because of the domestic crisis. And
=that if they acted boldly, in view of our presumed pre-
occupations, that they might be able to score a major
~gdopolitical coup."
` The report that the Soviets were moving nuclear
inaten s to t e war zone arnve In as on a e
same tune . mte Igence ost trac o a rum er o '
Soviet air transports. The planes had been flying equip-
ment into gypt. ch esinger sal t eir su en Isap-
,pearance was Interpreted as a sign that the Soviets had
successfully put in place the necessary equipment for a
vtet intervention Into t.
mot o ficials of the Nixon administration had re-
ceived these disquieting intelligence reports by Oct. 24,
when, late that evening, the Brezhnev message arrived
ec acing oscow's intention to act unilaterally if nec-
essary.
senior officials gathered for an emergency meeting
late that night in the White House Situation Room. Sec-
retary of State Henry A. Kissinger chaired the session.
`Nixon did not participate. He said recently he had given
.Kissinger "authority to do what was necessary diplo-
matically to prevent Brezhnev from intervenir:e mili-
tarily." [At the time, questions were raised about
whether Nixon had ordered the alert as part of his
scheming to save himself from Watergate, but the in-
tervi ,ws for this article suggest that the alert was a
response to what was perceived as a real threat, one
carefully considered by senior offficials.J
"It was clear we had.to react vigorously and .there
was no real debate abode that," Schlesinger saJd:. Kiss-
inger suggested afull-style, worldwide, nuclear alert
"so as to make the greatest impression on the Soviets."
"It was our belief," Scltlesirtger said, "that Mr. Brezh-
nev would beprepared-. to back down because the was
looking for an easy opparhmity to move ieto the Middle
"The United States," he added, "and indeed' all of
mankind have been in the.fartunate position that Soviet
leaders over the course of some 30 or 40 years have
been prudent and cautious~~ti .. , .Leninist doctrine
tells them not to indulge ~in ailventurist scheares-to
wait, because time is on their side."
~'""lhe added, "That does not meatt.that tlie.Soviets
are so ptud`ent than they refrain frdm..pashing , ... , We
must be assured that our forces will: survive and have
the capability to take the appropriate aefions ~'
At that delicate moment in 1973, the. United States
responded to Soviet moves by going ~ on , alert" acrd pri-
=vately- warning the Soviets that the Israelis, too were
'
.ore al~
rt Washington also "brought great pp=e3sure on
the Israelis to to. '
~P~,,~ letter- of the
-.~
~~eease-fire," Scl[ii~-~.. f .:~ .:
'''"`.`The next'. day,: B~t~uiev~gr~,ta a. IJnited'`Aiations
force without superpower representation to.. sure t e
forces.. The .transport with nuclear cargo, whic a
been trackgd on a course toward the. E elan rt of
exa Ia,: turn ~ c 'arI -went . a former
lea hevchenko, the highest=.ranking Soviet dip-
lomat to defect to the West, said that to Soviet leaders,
faced with the choice of risking nuclear war or saving
Egypt, "the choice definitely was forget ...Egypt and
avoid the risk of a nuclear war."
The U.S. alert had "actually a sobering effect on the
Soviets and the next day they were already'not talking
abort any kind of joint operation or even the possibility
of use of Soviet conventional forces," Shevchenko said.
Reflecting on this episode, former president Nixon
said in a recent interview that "in order to avoid it es-
calating to the nuclear level, we felt that it was impor-
tant to make it very clear to Brezhnev then that if he
moved in, we would react." But, he added, "we did not
at that time threaten to use nuclear weapons. That was
in the background."
Speaking more broadly about the superpower stand-
off since Hiroshima, Nixon held up nuclear weapons and
nuclear diplomacy as "the major factor[s] today, as we
look back over 40 years, that have prevented World
War III."
Former defense secretary Harotd Brown said recent-
ly that he "would not ignore the effect of nuclear terror
as a deterrent to conventional war. I think it has been
real .... I think it has contributed to the caution which
both the U.S. and the Soviet Union have shown when
it's come down to the possibility of engaging each oth-
er's military forces."
"I don't think there is any magic solution to this,"'
Brown said, "nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented.
...and that means we have to go ahead trying to man-?
age deterrence by the threat of retaliation ...and man-?
age the political relationships so as to ty to minimize the'
chances of a confrontation ...."
Con6nr,~
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Arms Production Continues Unabated
While the military and even diplomatic value of nu~
clear weapons appears to have declined since Hiroshi-?
ma, the production of weapons by each nation has con-?
timed unabated.
The atmospheric test ban of 1963, negotiated andl
signed in the post-Cuban missile crisis era, may have'
promoted rather than inhibited the arms race. With
weapons tests driven underground, the public no longer'
was told the size of the blasts, no longer had brilliant:
pictures to contemplate and was not regularly shaken.
by reports of rising radiation levels in the atmosphere.
Since the early 1960s, nuclear bomb and missile war-?
head stockpiles on both sides have soared-from about.
6,000 U.S. and 500 Soviet strategic weapons (including:
bombs) then, to roughly 10,800 U.S. and 9,600 Soviet.
warheads now.
Though the history of the nuclear era has demon-?
strated repeatedly that these weapons were' rtot con-
sidered usable in crises, the numbers have taken on an
importance of their own, often influencing not only dip-
lomatic discussion but also domestic politics in both
Moscow and Washington as symbols of the relative as-
cendancy of one superpower or the other.
U.S. and Soviet leaders have been "notably prudent
and careful" dealing with the risk of conventional and
nuclear war while in office, former national security
affairs adviser McGeorge Bundy said. But "I don't think
we can be as comfortable about the kinds of choices
that they have made, or at least approved, in the pro-
curement and deployment of weapon systems which
create reciprocal fears and continuing competition,"
Bundy added.
Robert S. IVicNamara, secretary of defense in the
Kennedy and. Johnson administrations, recently criti-
"Superiority in iiuClear weapons foi?s, Bundy doufits that U.S. noel superi-
ority at the ?time of the Cuban mies+te sis ~ ~ signif- '
icant to the outcome of Ghat episode. U;S. c~iventional ;
military. superiority in the Caribbean plus ~ p~cnrkable
diplomatic option ended the Cuban crisis Fy be-
lieves. ' ~~~ ~
Nixon said he believes that today's great~s~ danger is
"what happens when these nuclear weapo~ss come into
the hands of smaller powers." That view is widely held
among former U.S. officials.
Schlesinger said, "I fear that if we do ~rwe' a nu-
clear weapon ,used. in? anger,, it is Jilaely fo in the
Third World:" ~ - ?
'? ~ ` ~.
Nixon said');6at deterring .the spFead ~f>'rvveap-
ons is a common Soviet and American interest.
"Both the United States and the Soviet Union," he
said recently, "don't want these nuclear weapons to be
proliferated al! over the world because some nut like
[Libyan leader )Viuammar] Qaddafi, you know, may set
off the whole world ...."
Walter Pincus works part time as a reporter ford~ ~,'he?
Washington Post and part time as a producer-uYrtler for
CBS News. Much of the reporting for this series was;...
done in preparing a CBS documentary on the history, of
nuclear weapons, `Hiroshima Plus 40 Years anct Still
Counting," to be broadcast nationally on July 31i ,
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/07/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605110010-1