Weapons: U.S. Allies Get a Nuclear Surprise

The Reagan Administration, already discomforted by New Zealand’s ban on visits by nuclear-armed vessels, has now bombed out with other allies. William Arkin, a nuclear-policy researcher at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, leaked a Defense Department contingency plan to station nuclear weapons in seven foreign countries and Puerto Rico if a war seemed imminent. The proposed deployment caused a stir in Canada, Iceland and Bermuda, and would violate a U.S. guarantee not to send nuclear weapons to Puerto Rico. It was not clear if the U.S. had notified any of the countries involved.

The leaked document says that nuclear weapons would also be shipped to Spain, the Philippines, Portugal’s Azores and the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. According to Arkin, the weapons are ten-kiloton nuclear depth charges that would be dropped from P-3C Orion planes. The State Department last week asked its embassies to emphasize that no nuclear weapons would be shipped to any country without its permission.