Lost protocols leave nuclear sharing debate in historical uncertainty

Some protocols documenting how the Soviet Union and the United States conducted discussions on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1960s have been lost, according to Tariq Rauf, a Vienna-based independent expert and former IAEA security policy supervisor and SIPRI program director. He highlighted this in an article for RBC.

The talks focused on harmonising the practice of Nuclear Sharing—the arrangement under which NATO countries may share nuclear weapons. This mechanism has been in place since 1954, when U.S. nuclear weapons were first deployed in Europe. From NATO’s perspective, Nuclear Sharing does not violate the NPT.

“When NPT discussions began in the 1960s, NATO agreements on the joint use of nuclear weapons already existed and were known to the Soviet Union. During bilateral discussions on the draft NPT, the U.S. and the USSR carefully negotiated the text to ensure that there were no provisions prohibiting NATO nuclear sharing agreements,” the alliance stated.

Nevertheless, the exact details of how these negotiations were conducted and concluded remain uncertain. Rauf notes that different versions exist. “While at the UN office in Geneva, I tried to familiarise myself with the minutes of those negotiations, but due to the many reconstructions of the Palais des Nations, they were lost,” he writes.

Rauf adds that the context has significantly changed since the 1960s. “My position and that of some other experts and scholars, and many Non-Aligned Movement countries, is that even if we recognise that the idea of Nuclear Sharing was established in 1967–1968, the situation has now changed. At that time, the number of parties to the NPT was much smaller than it is today, simply because many countries were not yet independent then. And many non-nuclear-weapon states now criticise this concept, saying that it contradicts the spirit of the NPT,” he concluded.

Currently, there are five official nuclear powers in the world, all permanent members of the UN Security Council: Great Britain, China, Russia, the United States, and France. Their right to nuclear weapons is recognised under the 1968 NPT, a cornerstone multilateral treaty in international security that forms the basis for subsequent arms control agreements. The treaty defines a nuclear-weapon state as one that “produced and detonated a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device before January 1, 1967.”

After that date, India, Pakistan, and North Korea conducted nuclear tests, while Israel is also believed to possess nuclear weapons, though the dates of its tests remain unknown. These countries, along with South Sudan, are not parties to the NPT. South Africa developed a nuclear arsenal in 1982 but joined the NPT in 1991, renouncing its nuclear weapons.

By Tamilla Hasanova