In January this year, the US National Declassification Center and the CIA hosted a symposium on Berlin in the Cold War, which was accompanied by the release of 11,000 pages of newly declassified records. Among the documents released was this document: Draft Four Power Position Paper, 29 November 1961, “Proposal to Prohibit Further Diffusion of Nuclear Weapons”, which clearly details how the United States would deploy its nuclear weapons at bases in NATO Member States in Europe and how the servicemen of those Member States would deliver them, if authorised to do so. This policy remained in place after each of the NATO ‘nuclear sharing’ countries signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968, and it does so to this day.
This briefing assesses the significance of this disclosure and its relevance to NATO's current 'nuclear sharing' policy. Read more in the attached pdf file.