Canberra, 29 June 1961
Secret
Your people here have been advised of our views on the proposals they recently put to us for a two-stage procedure in the Geneva Nuclear Tests Conference for handling the issue of control posts in Australia. I write to you now on an even weightier though connected matter.
In considering the United Kingdom’s proposals we were primarily concerned with the possible effects of a treaty on Australia’s own security especially if Australia were included in Phase .1 In particular, we based our thinking on the proposition that we should if possible take no decision now which would prejudice the capacity of a future Australian Government to deal with a security situation which might for many reasons be very different, and probably even more disturbing, than the one with which we are now faced.
We concluded that despite our well-settled and publicly-stated stand against the spread of nuclear powers, we could not in all responsibility ignore the possibility that circumstances might arise in the future in which the Government of the day might judge it necessary for Australia’s security to have a nuclear capability. We concluded also that a nuclear tests treaty would not sensibly diminish this possibility even if—as we seriously doubt—other countries (all in Phase II) vital to Australia’s security were eventually to accede to the treaty without quibble; and that on the contrary and despite the apparent ‘right’ of withdrawal, the treaty could prove to be a serious limitation on the range of decisions open to a future Australian Government in that it could effectively preclude or at least impose a very substantial handicap on Australian acquisition of nuclear weapons.
It may be, of course, that when the time comes the Australian Government of the day would prefer, and find practicable, the acquisition of a nuclear capability by procurement rather than manufacture. But the imponderables are so many that we ought not to count on it. This leaves us with two possible courses: either to withhold Australia’s adherence to the treaty, or to mitigate the specific disability of a treaty.
To withhold Australia’s adherence would be quite impracticable. The overriding reason is that the past use of Australia as a nuclear testing site is a reasonable ground for regarding Australia as an essential adherent to the treaty. That is also the Soviet reason for insisting on the establishment of control posts in Australia in Phase I. Australia, in these circumstances, could not stand out from a treaty; nor could it in the final analysis refuse to be included in the first phase of the treaty.
For this reason I must ask you to accord full recognition of the potentially serious security situation in which Australia could find herself placed as a result of having accommodated United Kingdom testing in Australia. It therefore seems reasonable for us to put to you proposals to mitigate the consequences of this specific disability.
One possible arrangement would be for the United Kingdom to agree, before the conclusion of a treaty, to meet a request from any future Australian Government which was bound by treaty not to test, and which had decided that a nuclear capability was essential to Australian security, for full manufacturing data for the production of operational weapons. This would have the advantage of logic in directing itself to the redress of the specific disadvantage of a treaty to which Australia will be forced by past events to adhere and from which it may well be impossible to withdraw—viz. the grave if not fatal handicap imposed on original design and manufacture by the inability to conduct test explosions. In view of the time-lag between manufacture and production, a more practical agreement would be for the United Kingdom to agree, before the conclusion of a treaty, to meet an Australian request under the same circumstances for the supply of ready-made weapons.
These are large matters. They have certainly not been raised by us without anxious consideration. But the issue at stake here is Australia’s security. In essence, the question is whether Australia should be forced to accept a possibly crucial limitation on its own freedom of action in its own defence—a limitation essentially imposed by its having assisted the United Kingdom to achieve a nuclear capability—without being given assurance that it could acquire from the United Kingdom nuclear means of self-protection if Australia ever judged it necessary in the future.2
1 The phases to which Menzies refers in this letter relate to the procedures envisaged at the time in discussions at Geneva whereby countries, beginning with the three nuclear powers (the US, USSR and UK), would adhere to a comprehensive test ban treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons testing.
2 Upon receipt of a further communication from Australia at official level, Macmillan asked Lord Home, now Foreign Secretary, for a personal view as soon as possible. The Prime Minister minuted: ‘It is clear that the Australians are going to take this nuclear question seriously. I cannot help feeling that if we look like going into the Common Market the Australians will feel emotionally upset, and if at the same time we have to cut down our commitments in South East Asia the Australians will turn even more than before to the United States. The Americans will not be slow to encourage this tendency. If we could meet the Australian request for nuclear data or at least show real sympathetic interest (before the Americans do so) it might have a big psychological effect on Menzies and the Australian Government. I think, therefore, that we ought to try to give them as much as we can even at some risk of offending the Americans’ (UKNA: PREM 11/3202, minute, Macmillan to Home, 24 July 1961).
[UKNA: PREM 11/3202]