Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

During the Cold War, U.S. allies such as Japan <strong>and</strong>
South Korea were effectively excluded from any significant
role in U.S. nuclear policy <strong>and</strong> deployment
decisions that directly affected them. Indeed, Japanese
<strong>and</strong> Korean governments were often unaware even of
the disposition of U.S. nuclear weapons within or near
their territory. In one particularly notorious example,
the Ronald Reagan administration authorized U.S.
negotiators on the disposition of U.S. <strong>and</strong> Soviet intermediate
nuclear forces in Europe to propose that the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) simply shift
all their threatening SS-20 intermediate range ballistic
missiles (IRBMs) beyond the Urals—right into range
of U.S. allies in Northeast Asia. Only after angry protestations
at high levels by the Japanese government in
particular did Washington revise its negotiating position.
30 In effect, as long as U.S. nuclear forces were not
openly visible to Asian populations—an objective that
most Asian allies <strong>and</strong> the United States came to share
during the Cold War—there were few constraints on
U.S. policy on nuclear weapons in Asia.
This set of relationships differed markedly from
U.S. relations on nuclear weapons policy with its allies
in Europe, where the United States dealt with its highly
advanced <strong>and</strong> developed allies through <strong>NATO</strong>, a multilateral
alliance operating—often cumbersomely—on
the basis of consensus. Though the United States was
the primary power in Western Europe, it operated in
a highly constrained context, one in which U.S. nuclear
weapons policies received significant scrutiny
from its allies. Moreover, European allies were progressively
integrated into <strong>NATO</strong> nuclear planning,
<strong>and</strong> serious consideration was even given during the
middle of the Cold War to the creation of a Multilateral
Force <strong>and</strong> to deliberate proliferation to <strong>NATO</strong> al-
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