Talk:Netherlands and weapons of mass destruction

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[edit] Last Paragraph Deleted

I removed the last paragraph, which cited a blatantly POV website as authoratative. Anyone have other information? 128.59.171.63 17:25, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sharing of Nuclear Weapons and the NPT.

Ref sharing arrangements for weapons and the NPT. Although some people believe sincerely that this violates the NPT in spirit or in fact, the sharing arrangements with Nato allies pre-dates the NPT, and so the lawyers argue that legally the arrangements do not violate the Treaty. Similar considerations apply to the exchange of fissile material, exchange of design data etc by the U.K. and the U.S. But these issues are so overburdened with political posturing that everyone feels free to adopt any viewpoint ragardless of the facts. I try always to remember that Wiki is an encyclopaedia, not a site for political polemic. If I have an occassional lapse feel free to slap my hands.

As a sideline, what perhaps does violate the NPT is the assistance secretly given by the U.S. to France in the related areas of warhead hardening, penetrability, and possibly access to underground test data on French warhead survivability when exposed to detonations at the Nevada Test Site. France is different from the other European allies in that it is only a notional NATO ally and has never been assigned U.S. weapons, and assistance given circa 1973 certainly post-dates the NPT. Not surprisingly there is little published material, but a very reliable source states that assistance was given in these areas:

• Weapon safety systems
• Missile guidance systems
• Supply of specialist X-Ray machines for French weapons labs and essential for warhead hardening design studies.
• Licencing for French production and supply of samples of 3DPQ (3-Dimensional Phenolic Quartz) a fabric material essential for manufacture of hardened re-entry vehicles.
• The source is the U.K. Ministry of Defence archive declassified Jan 2006, filed at DEFE 19/180/16/7. Brian.Burnell 12:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Re the sideline: the NPT does not prevent a NWS (e.g U.S.) helping another NWS (e.g France/UK), which you could see as an example of the uneven-handidness of the NPT. Article 1 says "Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes ... not in any way to assist ... any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture ...". But a NWS can't help the Netherlands in this or other ways. Rwendland 01:19, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about that. There are declassified files in the UK archives that relate to the help that France sought from the UK and Australia to airlift fissionable supplies to their Pacific test sites. As I remember from these files, France had asked for landing rights at UK military airfilds in the Middle East and Indian Ocean, and Darwin, Australia. Their tests would be more difficult to stage without these landing rights. As I remember, Australia asked the Brits for their view of the legality of granting access. The Brits wanted to help the French but believed that if they did they would be in breach. That was the advice given to the UK govt and Ozzies by the UK's legal advisors. Brian.Burnell 17:03, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Article 1 distinguishes between the weapons themselves "not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons" (not to any state), and assistance "not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State" (not to non-NWS). I guess in the early days they may have worried about the weapons themselves in transit on a UK airfield being a "transfer". Not that it has worried the UK with respect to U.S. weapons later; U.S. weapons were stored in the U.K. and then moved onto other NATO counties like the Netherlands so UK acted as a transit store for U.S. nuclear weapons. Rwendland 20:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)