A follow up report for Henry Kissinger on the state of U.S. policy toward South Korea's purchase of a French reprocessing plant.

South Korea's nuclear plans have reached a point where the U.S. State Department believes that the Embassy in Seoul must "approach the Koreans directly."

American officials in Washington, D.C., conclude that South Korea is in the initial stages of developing a nuclear weapons program.

U.S. State Department memorandum weighing the arguments for and against renewing the agreement to sell uranium enrichment services to South Africa. The political fallout from engaging with the South African apartheid regime coupled with the fact that they had not signed the NPT were closely considered.

The day of the test, State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) rushed to update Kissinger. INR provided background on what had happened, how the United States and Canada had inadvertently helped India produce plutonium for the test device, earlier U.S. and Canadian demarches against “peaceful nuclear explosions,” and India’s capabilities to produce and deliver nuclear weapons. The report did not state whether India had made a decision to produce weapons, but it forecast that two large unsafeguarded reactors under construction could eventually “produce enough plutonium for 50-70 nuclear weapons.”

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.”

National security assistant Henry Kissinger asks President Nixon to approve a proposal for a national security study memorandum [NSSM] on the implications of an Indian nuclear test for U.S. interests.