With a nuclear nonproliferation treaty under consideration in Washington, INR considered which countries were likely to sign on and why or why not. INR analysts, mistakenly as it turned out, believed it unlikely that the Soviet Union would be a co-sponsor of a treaty in part because of the “international climate” and also because Moscow and Washington differed on whether a treaty would recognize a “group capability.”

This lengthy report was State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research's contribution to the first National Intelligence Estimate on the nuclear proliferation, NIE 100-6-57. Written at a time when the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom were the only nuclear weapons states, the “Fourth Country” problem referred to the probability that some unspecified country, whether France or China, was likely to be the next nuclear weapons state. Enclosed with letter from Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Division of Research for USSR and Western Europe, to Roger Mateson, 4 June 1957, Secret

The interagency group prepared a response to NSSM 156 on 1 September 1972 and it was sent to Kissinger. The summary of the study reproduced here includes the conclusion that an Indian test would be “a set-back to nonproliferation efforts” and that Washington should “do what [it] can to avert or delay” one. Thus, recommendations included a number of unilateral and multilateral actions that the United States government could take, noting that “given the poor state” of Indo-American relations, an “overly visible” U.S. effort would more likely speed up an Indian decision to test a device, Even non-US efforts were likely not to “be per se effective.”