“We Are Not a Nonproliferation Agency”

Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to
Accommodate Nuclear Brazil, 1974–1977

✣ Carlo Patti and Matias Spektor

Long before the Indian nuclear explosion of 1974 awakened the international
community to the risks of proliferation in developing countries, Brazil found
in the United States its major partner for the nuclear age. In the late 1930s
and 1940s, a string of secret agreements had enabled the U.S. government to
obtain supplies of Brazilian rare earths, thorium, and uranium for ts wartime
operations. In the 1950s, Brazil was a major recipient of funds and technical
assistance from U.S. laboratories under the Atoms for Peace program, and a
generation of Brazilian nuclear scientists trained at U.S. universities. As the
1960s and 1970s progressed, ofﬁcials in Brasília turned to the United States
for support in setting up an indigenous nuclear industrial complex that they
hoped would include uranium enrichment and reprocessing facilities. Brazil’s
ﬁrst nuclear-power reactor (Angra I) was built and fueled under a Westing-
house contract endorsed by U.S. authorities.1

Nevertheless, the Indian test in 1974 quickly shifted the dynamics
in Washington and across the West, with signiﬁcant repercussions for the
prospects of proliferation in the developing world. To the surprise of Brazilian
ofﬁcials, key decision-makers in the State Department, the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency (ACDA), and representatives in the U.S. Congress put
forward new arguments for the application of tighter regulations to the trans-
fer of sensitive nuclear technologies, and a core group of Western countries set

1. For some recent work, see Carlo Patti, “The Origins of the Brazilian Nuclear Programme (1951–
1955),” Cold War History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2015), pp. 353–373; Carlo Patti, O programa nuclear
brasileiro: Uma história oral (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getulio Vargas [FGV], 2015), p. 270; Matias
Spektor, “The Evolution of Brazil’s Nuclear Intention,” The Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23, No. 5–6
(2016), pp. 635–652; and the website of the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the
Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. The authors of this article are currently exploring
the history of the Brazilian nuclear program and will publish new work on this and on Brazil’s attitude
toward the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

Journal of Cold War Studies
Vol. 22, No. 2, Spring 2020, pp. 58–93, https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00940
© 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

out to establish common rules and controls for nuclear-technology suppliers
in what would later become the Nuclear Suppliers Group. If successful, the
arguments for additional regulations in the ﬁeld of global nuclear know-how
transfers would amount to a normative framework far more intrusive in the
domestic affairs of developing countries than had been the case before. At
a time when the political-diplomatic clash between the industrialized North
and the developing South was acute in domains as varied as trade, aid, and the
Law of the Sea, disputes over nuclear proliferation threatened to sever the ties
that for a long time had bound the United States to some of its closest Third
World allies in the global Cold War.2

This article illustrates how Henry Kissinger managed the emerging ten-
sion between traditional alliance politics and nonproliferation policy in the
developing world. As national security adviser from 1969 to 1975 (and sec-
retary of state from 1973 to 1977), Kissinger had become the chief archi-
tect and operator of the policy of engagement with the military dictatorship
ruling Brazil. He had convinced Richard Nixon to talk about Brazil’s rulers
as “key to the future” when the dangers of social upheaval and revolution
spread across South American countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,
Peru, and Uruguay.3 But India’s nuclear explosion in 1974 rekindled worries
among senior U.S. and West European ofﬁcials that the spread of nuclear
technologies—which had reached South America at the hand of the United
States—could end up in covert nuclear installations run by military personnel
and scientists keen on acquiring or building their own capabilities to produce
ﬁssile material. To be sure, some level of concern had always been present.
From the 1950s on, U.S. ofﬁcials had worked to prevent Brazil from acquir-
ing centrifuge technology and to delay the pace of indigenous know-how de-
velopment.4 But only the shock of 1974 induced the U.S. govenrment act
on the fear that the spread of dual technology to the developing world could

2. On the growing challenge to the West, see Kai Alderson and Andrew Hurrell, eds., Hedley Bull
on International Society (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). For a broader discussion of the tension
between alliance politics and postcolonial politics, see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War (Cam-
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005). For a recent assessment of North-South tensions,
see Giuliano Garavini, After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization and the Challenge from the
Global South, 1957–1986 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

3. Matias Spektor, Kissinger e o Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2009); and Tanya Harmer, “Brazil’s Cold
War in the Southern Cone, 1970–1975,” Cold War History, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2012), pp. 659–681.

4. For a recent summary of existing literatures on the issue of the gas centrifuge, see Patti, “The Origins
of the Brazilian Nuclear Programme”; and William Burr, “The ‘Labors of Atlas, Sisyphus, or Hercules’?
U.S. Gas-Centrifuge Policy and Diplomacy, 1954–60,” International History Review, Vol 37, No. 3
(2015), pp. 431–457.

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Patti and Spektor

have destabilizing effects for U.S. policy, even if the countries in question
were reliable Cold War allies. Key U.S. ofﬁcials set out to tighten controls
and devise targeted nonproliferation measures, but their quest for a new set of
policies designed to prevent the spread of nuclear technology found a power-
ful challenger in Kissinger, who responded by putting forward a proposal to
accommodate Brazilian nuclear ambitions instead.

This article also seeks to contribute to the body of work that has in recent
years shed new light on U.S. nonproliferation policies in the 1970s, with a
focus on the Nixon and Ford administrations’ skepticism about the prospects
of the Nuclear Non-Poliferation Treaty (NPT), the role of nuclear technolo-
gies in sustaining the alliance architecture of the Cold War, and the difﬁcult
choices Washington had to make in its attempts to forge a sturdy nonprolif-
eration regime.5 Although Kissinger worried about the possibility that Third
World allies might acquire nuclear capabilities of their own, he made it a
point to argue for “political solutions” to the problems that inhered in the
spread of nuclear know-how. He was not conﬁdent that additional controls
and targeted nonproliferation policies would effectively prevent technology
from diffusing, and he feared that U.S. attempts to halt the dissemination
of nuclear science might alienate allies and be counterproductive. Moreover,
to the extent that other Western countries looked after the economic inter-
ests of their own national nuclear industries, the United States might ﬁnd
itself increasingly isolated in a global market that it once controlled. In this
article we also unearth new primary sources pertaining to the growing ten-
sions between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)
over dual-technology transfers to Brazil, complementing and expanding exist-
ing bodies of knowledge. The West German government’s initial willingness
to provide nuclear technical assistance to the Brazilians through the largest

5. For a general evaluation of the Nixon-Kissinger attitude toward the NPT, see Michael J. Brenner,
Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation: The Re-Making of the U.S. Policy (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1981), p. 324; Francis J. Gavin, “Nuclear Nixon: Ironies, Puzzles, and the Triumph of
Realpolitik,” in Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston, eds., Nixon in the World: American Foreign Re-
lations, 1969–1977 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 126–145; Shane J. Maddock,
Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p. 416; James Cameron and Or Rabinowitz, “Eight
Lost Years? Nixon, Ford, Kissinger and the Non-Proliferation Regime, 1969–1977,” Journal of Strate-
gic Studies, Vol. 40, No. 6 (2016), pp. 1–28; William Burr, “A Scheme of ‘Control’: The United States
and the Origins of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, 1974–1976,” International History Review, Vol. 36,
No. 2 (2014), pp. 252–276; and William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Nuclear Specter: The Secret
Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas,
2015), p. 448.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

bilateral technological cooperation agreement ever became a serious source of
diplomatic friction in U.S.–FRG and U.S.-Brazilian relations.6

The story of Kissinger’s policy of accommodation toward a nuclear Brazil
is part of a broader attitude of pragmatism in the face of spreading inde-
pendent nuclear capabilities among U.S. allies so long as these allies re-
mained crucial to U.S. foreign policy. Kissinger’s reluctance to push back
too strongly against Brazil’s policy of dual-use technology acquisition and
development thus illustrates themes that marked U.S. policy vis-à-vis other
developing countries that were committing resources to their own nuclear ca-
pabilities, such as Argentina, Iran, Pakistan, and South Africa.7 Our account
of Kissinger’s policy of accommodation toward Brazil is based on U.S. and
Brazilian records and on in-depth oral history interviews with key players. We
hope this article will encourage others to search for more materials pertaining
to key countries across the developing world and thereby pave the foundations
for a broader, more global history of nonproliferation diplomacy in the era of
East-West détente.

The article begins by discussing how the Nixon and Ford administrations
set out to turn Brazil into an ally in the global Cold War and what parameters
they established for securing engagement in Brasília. We note how the 1973
oil shock and the surge of global demand for nuclear energy curtailed the U.S.
government’s ability to honor existing commitments to provide nuclear fuel to
future Brazilian nuclear power plants and prompted ofﬁcials in Brazil to seek
out other, more reliable partners in the industrialized world. We then turn to
the emerging nuclear-technology cooperation between Brazil and the FRG,
the one country that initially agreed to sell uranium enrichment technolo-
gies to the Brazilians in exchange for lucrative contracts in the nuclear-energy
sector. The article then looks at Kissinger’s decision to resist pressure from
his own administration and Congress to craft a dedicated nonproliferation
policy for Brazil and instead seek to accommodate the nuclear ambitions of
the Brazilian generals. The article turns next to Jimmy Carter’s presidential
campaign, when Brazil was singled out as a target state for both nuclear pro-
liferation and human rights policy, in what amounted to a sharp critique of
Kissinger’s policy of engagement with the Brazilian military junta. We end

6. William Gray, “Commercial Liberties and Nuclear Anxieties: The U.S.-German Feud over Brazil,
1975–1977,” International History Review, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2012), pp. 449–474.

7. For an assessment of U.S. policy toward Argentina, see Jacques Hymans, “Of Gauchos and Gringos:
Why Argentina Never Wanted the Bomb, and Why the United States Thought It Did,” Security
Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2001), pp. 153–185. For recent work on U.S. policy toward the Iranian
nuclear program at the time, see Farzan Sabet, “The Iranian Nuclear Program, U.S Policy, and the
Non-Proliferation Regime, 1969–1979,” Ph.D. Diss., Graduate Institute, Geneva, 2017.

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Patti and Spektor

by showing how the presidential transition of January 1977 made U.S. ac-
commodation of Brazil unravel, opening the door to a more confrontational
approach.

Kissinger Engages Brazil

Not long after Kissinger became national security adviser in 1969, he set out
to reexamine policy toward Brazil. By far the largest country in South Amer-
ica, Brazil was governed by a staunchly anti-Communist military regime bent
on ﬁghting its own regional Cold War. Within months, Kissinger had com-
missioned a set of policy papers to turn Brazil into a target for “devolution”:
the attempt by the Nixon administration to delegate power and responsibility
to emerging regional powers such as Iran, South Africa, Indonesia, and Brazil.
By 1971, dictatorial Brazil was a major beneﬁciary of the Nixon Doctrine,
according to which major countries in the developing world enjoyed privi-
leged access to and concessions from the White House in exchange for policy
coordination in regional matters and in global multilateral institutions.8 As
President Nixon argued to British Prime Minister Edward Heath in a discus-
sion about the future of the Cold War in Latin America, Brazil “is the key to
the future.”9

The Nixon administration’s “devolution” coincided with Brazil’s attempt
to build a major nuclear industrial complex. Brazilian plans to acquire nuclear
technology for civilian purposes traced back to the mid-1940s, but not un-
til the late 1960s did nuclear energy take center stage in Brazilian industrial
policy.10 The regime set out to purchase a handful of nuclear power plants
from foreign sellers and to provide subsidized credit for the development of
a nascent indigenous nuclear industrial complex to support those plants. The
expectation in Brasília was that nuclear-plant construction would spill over
to promote associate nuclear industrial services in the country and that there
would be a serious move toward indigenous research and development on the
back of foreign technology transfers. The goal was to pave the way for the
development of indigenous industrial capabilities in the nuclear fuel cycle,

8. Spektor, Kissinger e o Brasil, p. 48.

9. Secret Memorandum from Henry Kissinger on a meeting between the U.S. President and British
Prime Minister Edward Heath, 20 December 1971, in National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA), Nixon National Security Council Materials, VIP Visit Boxes 910–954, https://nsarchive2
.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB71/doc15.pdf.

10. Emanuel Adler, The Power of Ideology: The Quest for Technological Autonomy in Argentina and Brazil
(Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1987).

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

including uranium extraction, enrichment, and reprocessing. These priorities
reinforced the belief in Brasília that signing on to the NPT would run counter
to national interests, especially if adherence to the treaty ended up closing off
future options in the ﬁeld of nuclear explosions and weaponization.11 Brazil’s
leaders refused to sign on to the NPT, arguing that it permanently mortgaged
the technological futures of non-nuclear weapons states.

None of this affected the willingness of the United States to cooperate
with the Brazilian nuclear program. In 1971, after a bidding process, Brazil
granted its ﬁrst nuclear power-plant contract to Westinghouse Electric Com-
pany. The U.S. company provided a turnkey nuclear power plant with a pres-
surized water reactor, the fuel of which was to be purchased by Brazil from
the United States Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC) on multiyear con-
tracts. Besides nuclear plants for electricity generation, Brazil expected to buy
uranium-prospecting technologies from the United States for the exploration
of its own large uranium reserves, which it had been nationalized in 1970.
At the time, Brazil also sought U.S. technical cooperation to build a uranium
enrichment facility and explore spent-fuel reprocessing. The United States
excluded enrichment and reprocessing technologies from the deal, but the re-
actor sale moved forward even as the tide in policy circles in Washington was
beginning to turn against would-be proliferators like Brazil. By the time Wa-
tergate engulfed the Nixon administration, India’s May 1974 nuclear test had
transformed U.S. attitudes toward Brazil for good, and an export ban on sen-
sitive technologies had become operational. As Nixon resigned and the world
came to grips with the implications of the Indian bomb, inﬂuence in Washing-
ton over nuclear sales to developing countries progressively shifted from the
White House to other agencies within the executive branch and, increasingly,
to Congress, making it more difﬁcult to justify nuclear technical cooperation
to countries such as Brazil on grounds of foreign policy and grand strategy.12

11. For a discussion of Brazilian plans for nuclear explosions, see Matias Spektor, “Why Brazil Never
Built the Bomb?” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of American
Foreign Relations, Arlington, VA, 23 June 2017). For an assessment of Brazilian attitudes toward the
NPT, see Carlo Patti, “Brazil in the Global Nuclear Order,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Florence, 2012,
ch. 2.

12. “Proposal for a Study on the Initiation and Development of a National Fuel Cycle and
Nuclear Reactor Component Industry in Brazil,” 28 February 1974, in Paulo Nogueira Batista
Archive (PNB) at the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação sobre a História Contemporânea do
Brasil da Fundação Getulio Vargas (CPDOC/FGV), pn a 1975.01.09. President Geisel regu-
larly pointed out the importance of nuclear energy for Brazilian growth, starting with his in-
auguration speech on 15 March 1974. American Embassy (AmEmbassy) Brasília to Secretary
in Department
of State (SecState), Conﬁdential, Cable 1974BRASIL01966, 23 March 1974,

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Dominant attitudes in Brazil, however, were rapidly moving toward an
ever more nationalist stance on nuclear matters. Authorities were less prone
to commit to nonproliferation norms and had fully adopted the anti-NPT
rhetoric that lasted for three decades. Their stance undoubtedly had to do
with the Brazilian regime’s growing nuclear ambitions, but the full meaning
of this transition can be grasped only if the story is embedded in the context
of Brazilian domestic politics. Soon after the Cuban missile crisis in October
1962, Brazil’s democratically elected, left-leaning government made a series
of commitments to nonproliferation. Alongside Mexico, Brazil took the ini-
tiative for turning Latin America into a nuclear-weapons-free zone. At the
time, Brazil was an active member of the United Nations’ (UN) Eighteen-
Nation Disarmament Committee, which set out to consider disarmament,
conﬁdence-building measures, and nuclear-test restrictions as a way of pro-
viding the basis for stable global nuclear governance. The Brazilian military,
which opposed President João Goulart, came to see further steps toward non-
proliferation as a threat to Brazilian policy autonomy, technological indepen-
dence, and national grandeza (greatness).

By the time the military ousted Goulart from power in late March 1964,
Brazilian policy on nuclear matters had reversed. Even though the new rulers
eschewed any plans to abandon the negotiations for a Latin American nuclear-
weapons-free zone, they did introduce provisions into the treaty to ensure
Brazil could formally remain a member of the denuclearized area without
ever adopting its safeguards regime or its ban on “peaceful nuclear explosions”
(PNEs) along the lines of the U.S. Plowshares program. By 1967, the Brazilian
military junta explicitly committed to keeping the door open to the possibility
of building a nuclear explosive in the future. In 1969, it also refused to sign
on to the NPT, accusing it of permanently mortgaging non-nuclear-weapons
states’ technological futures. Brazilians did not worry that their stance might
trigger a security dilemma in neighboring Argentina, where government

in Conselho de Segurança Nacional, Secreto,

of State, Central Foreign Policy Files (DOS/CFP). NARA; Exposição de Motivos No. 245/74,
Ministério de Minas e Energia (MME), 23 April 1974, cited in Exposição de Motivos
No. 055/74, 13 August 1974,
in Antônio
Francisco Azeredo da Silveira Archive (AAS) at CPDOC/FGV, mre pn 1974.08.15, mre/pn
(1/661); and Ueki
in Ernesto Geisel Archive (EG),
CPDOC/FGV, pr 1974.03.26/2 On the evolution of negotiations with France and West Germany,
see Nogueira Batista to Saraiva Guerreiro, Memorandum, DEC/75, Secret, 20 May 1974, in PNB,
pn a 1952.07.01. On Kissinger’s view of sales to Brazil, see Nogueira Batista to Saraiva Guerreiro,
Memorandum, DEC/75, Secret, 20 May 1974, in PNB, pn a 1952.07.01. Kissinger is discussed in
Garrett Corporation to the Nuclebrás Superintendent Carlos Syllus Pinto, 24 June 1975, in PNB, pn
c 1969.12.01.

to Geisel, Despacho, 16 April 1974,

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

ofﬁcials also saw the evolution of the global nonproliferation regime as detri-
mental to their own national interests.13

As the policy of nuclear technology assistance to Brazil began to lose sup-
port in Washington, Brazilian authorities turned to European countries as po-
tential suppliers, even though authorities in Brazil thought U.S. technology
superior and more suitable for Brazil’s own interests. The quest for alterna-
tive partners in place of the United States as Brazil’s main technology provider
was not new: Brazil had undergone a similar search twenty years earlier, in the
1950s, when it ﬁrst set out to acquire centrifuges for research purposes and en-
countered resistance from the United States.14 Now, in the early 1970s, Paris
and Bonn represented the alterative. The French and West German govern-
ments showed no sign of sacriﬁcing a good nuclear-technology sale to Brazil
on the altar of emerging, ever stricter nonproliferation rules and controls.

Brazilians felt pressed to arrange a package of nuclear purchases for an-
other reason too: the global energy crisis of November 1973, which threat-
ened the booming Brazilian economy—and the domestic political stability on
which the ruling regime depended. At the time, Brazil imported almost all of
its oil, and with the price of crude climbing, the economic growth that had
buoyed Brazil’s authoritarian regime since 1964 came under serious threat. In
a bid to devise solutions to this problem, Brazilian ofﬁcials hoped that do-
mestic nuclear energy production might provide a way out in the mid to long
term. By early 1974, they were convinced that, when it came to foreign nu-
clear technologies, “rapid action would be highly compensating,” and they
moved ahead to launch Plano 1990, a program created by the Brazilian na-
tional electric company Eletrobras to expand domestic electrical capacity over

13. For an assessment of Brazil’s evolving position at the time, see Patti, “Brazil in the Global Nuclear
Order,” pp. 58–70; Paulo Wrobel, Brazil, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Latin America as Nuclear
Weapon-Free Zone (Brasília: FUNAG, 2017); and Ryan Musto, “‘Keep the Nuclear Beast in a Cage’:
Brazil, the United States, and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions under the Treaty of Tlatelolco, 1964–
1967” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Re-
lations, Arlington, VA, 23 June 2017). On the explicit commitment by the Brazilian military to leave
a nuclear-explosion option open, see “Minutes of the Fortieth Session of the Brazilian National Secu-
rity Council,” 4 October 1967, in Archive of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry in Brasília, available in
English at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116914. On the absence of a regional se-
curity dilemma at that juncture, see Rodrigo Mallea, Matias Spektor, and Nicholas Wheeler, eds., The
Origins of Nuclear Cooperation: A Critical Oral History between Argentina and Brazil (Rio de Janeiro:
FGV, 2015).

14. On choosing the United States over other countries—such as the United Kingdom, West Ger-
many, and Sweden—see Patti, O programa nuclear brasileiro, p. 216; and Guilherme Camargo, O fogo
dos deuses: Uma história da energia nuclear: Pandora 600 a.C.–1970 (Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto,
2006), p. 272. On Brazil’s nuclear choices in the 1950s and on the cooperation with West Germany,
see Patti, “The Origins of the Brazilian Nuclear Programme, 1950–1951”; and Burr, “The ‘Labors of
Atlas, Sisyphus, or Hercules’?,” pp. 431–457.

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the following 25 years through the construction of eight nuclear plants and
the acquisition of fuel-cycle technologies.15

Brazil’s quest for international partners other than the United States in
the production of nuclear fuel grew stronger when USAEC unilaterally an-
nounced in August 1974 that, in the wake of the energy crisis and the re-
sulting spike in global demand for enriched uranium, it would be unable
to honor its commitment to provide fuel for Brazil’s future nuclear power
plants. The possibility of such disruption in future fuel provision had always
been a possibility. Clauses to that effect had been included in the contracts
signed between the United States and Brazil just two months earlier.16 But the
Brazilian government took great offense at the measure and denounced U.S.
unreliability, paving the way for European countries to step in as future sup-
pliers for the Brazilian nuclear program. Nationalists in Brazil rallied behind
the military rulers’ decision to move away from the United States, portraying
Washington’s suspension of future fuel guarantees as an evil plot to prevent
the Brazilian economy from modernizing. The argument grew stronger in
policy circles that Brazil would ﬁnd a suitable place in a nuclear world only
if it developed indigenous nuclear capabilities (even if the long road to self-
sufﬁciency required a few stops in Paris or Bonn). Nationalism, authoritarian
rule, and profound suspicion of U.S. intentions were now the foundation on
which Brazilian nuclear ambitions took root.17

Critical to this period was the Indian explosion of May 1974. From that
moment onward, global concerns over nuclear proliferation surged, eventu-
ally turning dictatorial Brazil into a target state. The process, however, was
slow, and the West German government had powerful incentives to consider
replacing the United States as Brasília’s main source of reactors and nuclear-
technology supply.

The Nuclear Agreement between West Germany
and Brazil

In February 1974, the Brazilian government looked for new partners to com-
plement U.S. cooperation. Brazil’s strategy, as in the past, was to have as many

15. Ueki to Geisel, Despacho, 23 April 1974, in EG, pr 1974.03.26/2. The nuclear industrial plan
was drafted in early 1974. Maurício Grinberg, interview, Rio de Janeiro, 7 February 2012.

16. “Fuel Contract entre a Westinghouse e a FURNAS para ANGRA 1,” Conﬁdential, n.d., in PNB,
pn a 1955.08.03 (48-748).

17. Ueki to Geisel, Despacho, 14 May 1974, in EG, pr 1974.03.26/2.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

partners as possible, with a view to reducing dependence on any single third
party. Brazilians mostly turned to France and the FRG, countries with the
most advanced nuclear industries after the United States. Japan, Great Britain,
and Italy had also been considered, but not for Brazil’s more ambitious plans,
which included not only the 1973 decision to acquire a second nuclear-power
reactor but also the goal of equipping themselves for the full nuclear fuel cycle,
including sensitive technologies such as ultracentrifuge uranium enrichment
and spent-fuel reprocessing. Talks with French and West German ofﬁcials
were kept quiet. Whether the French government was aware that it was in
“competition” with the FRG is unclear, but after several months of negotia-
tions the emissaries from the Commission à l’Énergie Atomique (the French
Nuclear Energy Commission) told the Brazilians that France would not pro-
vide sensitive gaseous diffusion enrichment technologies. Instead, the French
offered to sell Framatome power reactors to be fueled by the European consor-
tium Eurodif, and the Brazilians ended up in 1975 limiting cooperation with
France to research on fast reactors.18 Negotiations with the FRG proved to be
more fruitful. In mid-February 1974, West German and Brazilian ofﬁcials be-
gan to negotiate a major agreement, including public-private joint ventures to
mine and enrich uranium, train hundreds of Brazilian nuclear-sector person-
nel and scientists, and transfer heavy materials, turbo-generators, and reactor
technology from the West German nuclear industry to Brazil. In turn, Brazil-
ian authorities agreed to commission up to eight West German nuclear-power
reactors by 1990.

Cooperation between the two countries in the ﬁeld had a long pedigree,
with Brazil purchasing its ﬁrst centrifuge from the FRG in the 1950s and
sending a generation of nuclear scientists and engineers to complete their
graduate education in West Germany. Brazilian scientists trained at the nu-
clear research center at Jülich, which was also the seat of the FRG’s gas
centrifuge research. Moreover, in the late 1960s, West German Minister of
Finance Franz Josef Strauss and Secretary of the Ministry of Scientiﬁc Re-
search Hans-Hilger Haunschild offered the Brazilians an ambitious plan of
cooperation that included assistance in uranium prospection and the secret
installation in Brazil of an ultracentrifuge uranium enrichment facility (to be

18. For a summary of other types of foreign assistance, see “II Plano Nacional de Desenvolvimento:
Programa nuclear,” 1974, in CBTN, personal archive. (The authors thank the late Maurício Grinberg,
former supervisor of CBTN, for sharing this document.) Brazilian nuclear scientists also collaborated
with the Italian Comitato Nazionale per l’Energia Nucleare until 1987. See Carlo Patti, “An Unusual
Partnership: Brazilian-Italian Forms of Cooperation in the Nuclear Field (1951–1986),” in Elisabetta
Bini and Igor Londero, eds., Nuclear Italy: An International History of Italian Nuclear Policies During
the Cold War (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2017).

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installed at an airstrip controlled by the West German company Dornier in
the state of Minas Gerais). Although the proposed assistance was exactly the
kind the Brazilians were hoping to secure, they turned down the offer un-
der U.S. pressure. According to the chief Brazilian nuclear negotiator, Paulo
Nogueira Batista, the United States threatened to block a World Bank loan for
ﬁnancing hydroelectric facilities if Brazil pursued such a deal.19 As the Brazil-
ian and West German delegations met to discuss the terms of a potential
nuclear-assistance agreement in 1974, negotiators from Brazil were acting on
the assumption that, although the United States remained their main source
of cooperation in the nuclear ﬁeld, the FRG remained both willing and able
to assist in the ﬁeld of ultracentrifuge uranium enrichment.20

At the time, the global market for nuclear technology was in a state of
ﬂux. The major player in the ﬁeld, the United States, was considering the
privatization of large chunks of its nuclear sector, while granting private com-
panies the ability to export nuclear fuel and sensitive technologies, as well as
the right to constitute multinational facilities for enriching uranium or repro-
cessing spent fuel material abroad. Only a few days before the Brazilians ﬁrst
approached French and West German authorities on potential cooperation
agreements, Kissinger told the Washington Energy Conference that, “within
a framework of broad cooperation in energy, the United States is prepared
to examine the sharing of enrichment technology, diffusion and centrifuge.”21
Uncertainty about the regulatory framework governing nuclear technology ex-
ports was so widespread that, until 1975, U.S. private companies approached
Brazilian ofﬁcials to offer them sales of technologies and facilities the U.S.

19. On the Strauss and Haunschild proposal, see Camargo, O fogo dos deuses, pp. 274–275; Paulo
Nogueira Batista, “O acordo nuclear Brasil-Alemanha,” in José Guilhom de Albuqurque, ed., Sessenta
anos de política externa, Vol. 2 (São Paulo: Lumen-Juris, 2013), p. 496; “Cooperação Brasil-RFA:
Aeronáutica, Astronáutica e energia nuclear: Entendimentos com a casa Dornier,” Paulo Nogueira
Batista (Subsecretary for Political Affairs) to the Secretary-General of Itamaraty, AP/28, Top Secret,
19 June 1968, in PNB, pn a 1968.06.15; and Nogueira Batista to Magalhães Pinto, Viagem do Min-
istro Paulo Nogueira Batista à RFA, em setembro de 1968, “Relatório ao Senhor Ministro de Es-
tado,” Secret, 11 October 1968, in PNB, aq 1967.02.23. The Brazilian National Nuclear Energy
Commission explicitly mentioned an interest in cooperating in the ﬁeld of uranium enrichment in
November 1968. See Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) Embassy, cable from Rio de Janeiro to
Bonn, Deutsch-Brasilianische Wissenschaftlich-Technische Zusammenarbeit, 28 November 1968, in
Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PA/AA), 1346.

20. Maurício Grinberg, interview, Rio de Janeiro, 25 January 2012. Grinberg, who took part in nego-
tiations with West Germany in 1975, was director of the CBTN/Nuclebrás from 1975 onward.

21. On Kissinger’s declaration at the Washington Energy Conference, see Parker M. Bartlett (Vice
President, Market Development—Garrett Corporation) to Carlos Syllus Martins Pinto (Superinten-
dent and Director of the Technology Development Division of the CBTN/Nuclebrás), Garrett inter-
nal document, 24 June 1975, in PNB, pn c 1969.12.01 (2). See also “Excerpts from the Opening
Address by Secretary Kissinger at the Oil Meeting in Washington,” The New York Times, 12 February
1974, p. 20.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

companies would not have been able to export. When the Brazilians turned
away from the United States, the U.S. companies lost the promise of multi-
billion dollar contracts, feeding the notion in Washington that the FRG was
fast becoming an avid competitor in the ﬁeld.22 West German ofﬁcials, for
their part, saw the Brazilian opening as a major opportunity to revive the
Kraftwerk Union, a consortium of the FRG’s Siemens and AEG-Telefunken,
which was facing a severe cash crisis and growing pressure from unions to ﬁnd
new markets abroad.23

As early as May 1974, however, the FRG had to grapple with the in-
herent difﬁculties of providing nuclear assistance to a third party on such a
scale. After months of intense negotiations, ofﬁcials in Bonn decided not to
export ultracentrifuge enrichment technology to Brazil. Instead, they began
to develop an alternative proposal giving the Brazilians: the then-unproved
jet nozzle method, a technique that at the time posed no major risk of pro-
ducing weapons-grade ﬁssile material.24 However, West German ofﬁcials did
not communicate this to their Brazilian counterparts immediately. Part of the
reason was probably commercial: Letting the Brazilians know that the FRG
would not deliver the core technological component that had motivated the
agreement in the ﬁrst place might derail negotiations as a whole. But part of
the reason may well have been the URENCO agreement among West Ger-
many, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom calling for secret classiﬁ-
cation of gas centrifuge technology. With the Brazilians in the dark about
Bonn’s decision not to sell enrichment technology, negotiations moved for-
ward quickly from June to October 1974.25

When U.S. policymakers learned about the negotiations in late August
1974, they moved quickly to reassure Brazil they would ﬁnd a solution to the

22. Elio Gaspari, A ditadura encurralada (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004), pp. 130–131.

23. Ibid.

24. Attitudes toward the jet nozzle changed a few years later, when South African scientists successfully
managed to adapt the technology to the production of weapons-grade uranium. See J. D. L. Moore,
South Africa and Nuclear Proliferation (London: Palgrave Macmilllan, 1987), p. 87. For a summary of
the Brazilian–South African nuclear connection, see Carlo Patti, “Brazil–South Africa Nuclear Rela-
tions,” electronic dossier, July 2013, http://ri.fgv.br/en/node/2039. Also see Carlo Patti, “The Forbid-
den Cooperation: South Africa–Brazil Nuclear Relations at the Turn of the 1970s,” Revista Brasileira
de Política Internacional, 61(2), e006. Epub 3 December 2018; and Waldo Stumpf and Carlo Patti,
interview, Pretoria, 6 December 2012.

25. At this stage, the Brazilian nuclear architecture began to change. CBTN, a subsidiary of the
Brazilian National Nuclear Energy Commission, was transformed into Nuclebrás (Empresas Nucle-
ares Brasileiras, or Brazilian Nuclear Enterprises). The new company, which was modeled after the
state-owned oil company Petrobras, acted as the core institutional anchor for Brazil’s nuclear industry
and was autonomous from the national nuclear energy commission. Its ﬁrst chairman was Ambassador
Paulo Nogueira Batista (1975–1982), who was the chief architect of the Brazil–West Germany nuclear
deal.

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thorny issue of U.S.-originated fuel supplies for the future Brazilian nuclear-
power reactors. They even told the Brazilians the United States would ﬁnd the
fuel somehow—either from USAEC, private sources, or through the expan-
sion of enrichment capacity in the United States.26 Even if U.S. ofﬁcials ex-
pected legislation governing nuclear exports to become ever more restrictive in
the aftermath of India’s nuclear explosion, concern endured about the ﬁnan-
cial and political implications if Brazil turned “elsewhere for its enrichment
needs.”27 When Brazilian ofﬁcials saw Washington’s reaction, they realized
that the mere fact they were in negotiation with the FRG served as leverage
in Brazilian nuclear-transfer talks with the United States. The Brazilian gov-
vernment pressed U.S. policymakers to make enrichment technology available
and thus become a major stakeholder in Brazil’s future industrial complex.28
In particular, John Crimmins, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, strove to keep
Washington engaged.29 Despite Brazil’s hope that the United States would at
least offer a commitment to provide fuel for its future nuclear-power reactors,
it soon became evident that none of the U.S. stakeholders were in a position
to reassure their Brazilian clients.30

In early 1975, however, the major U.S. company Bechtel proposed an ex-
port package to Brazil that included nuclear power plants and an enrichment
facility.31 It was a formidable alternative to the deal with the FRG, but the

26. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1974BRASIL06115, 14 August 1974, in DOS/CFP.
On the issue of secrecy behind the Brazil–West Germany conversations, see Exposição de Motivos
No. 055/74, 13 August 1974, in Conselho de Segurança Nacional, Secreto, in AAS, 1974.08.15
mre/pn (1/661). On U.S.–West German conversations, see AmEmbassy Bonn to SecState, Conﬁ-
dential, 12 September 1974, in DOS/CFP. See also Brenner, Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation, p.
72.

27. For U.S. ofﬁcials’ expectations, see AmEmbassy Rio to SecState, Cable 1974BRASIL05295, 28
August 1974, in DOS/CFP; and SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1974STATE219652, 4
October 1974, in DOS/CFP. For U.S. ofﬁcials ongoing concerns, see Carvalho, in a meeting with
USAEC general manager Erlewine, in Rio de Janeiro on 27 August 1974; and SecState to AmEm-
bassy Brasília, Cable 1974STATE200011, 11 September 1974, in DOS/CFP.

28. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1974BRASIL08604, Conﬁdential, 14 November 1974, in
DOS/CFP.

29. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL01138, Conﬁdential, 14 February 1975, in
DOS/CFP.

30. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1974BRASIL06115, 14 August 1974, in DOS/CFP. See
also Ueki to Geisel, 29 August 1974, in EG, pr 1974.03.26/2. In late April, Ambassador Crimmins
tried to prevent U.S.-Brazilian relations from declining further by telling Brazilian ofﬁcials that a ﬁnal
decision on the provision of nuclear fuel had yet to be made in Washington. Ueki to Geisel, Despacho,
7 May 1975, in EG, pr 1974.03.26/2.

31. In January 1975, Westinghouse offered a similar package to Brazil. On the Westinghouse and
Bechtel offers, see Patti, “Brazil in Global Nuclear Order,” 2012, p. 124; and Norman Gall, “Atoms
for Brazil, Dangers for All,” Foreign Policy, No. 23 (Summer 1976), pp. 191–192.

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U.S. State Department immediately intervened to clarify that no technology
transfers would be permitted under the new U.S. legislation, in particular be-
cause Brazil was not a signatory of the NPT. By then it was clear that Brazil’s
refusal to become a member of the treaty would hurt U.S. commercial inter-
ests in the long run. Getting Brazil to switch gears and join the treaty would
unlock the commercial potential in the bilateral relationship. Brazilian ofﬁ-
cials worried about losing the United States, too. Relying exclusively on the
FRG was highly problematic for Brazil. Structuring a major nuclear program
around West German provisions of technology and fuel was every bit as risky
as making Brazilian nuclear policy dependent on the United States.32 Brazilian
ofﬁcials were aware that the FRG, too, would soon have to face the expansion
of a nonproliferation regime that was becoming more demanding, intrusive,
and concerned with controlling transfers of sensitive technology to developing
countries that might go the way of India.

In August 1974, a U.S. interagency estimate warned that Brazil’s nuclear
ambitions deserved close attention, alongside those of Israel, Argentina, South
Africa, and Japan.33 Three months later, Kissinger dispatched a policy plan-
ning team to Brazil to express concern about the country’s nuclear intentions.
The Brazilian response was deﬁant, insisting that Brazil could not possibly re-
linquish its quest to acquire nuclear fuel-cycle technologies when the United
States thought it legitimate to suspend future nuclear fuel supplies. The Brazil-
ians also expressed their irritation that the United States had not suspended
similar contracts with Israel and Egypt, key allies in the Middle East. The
U.S. delegation retorted that the ability of the United States to honor nuclear
fuel contracts in the future would depend to some degree on the attitudes of
recipient countries toward the use of fuel, an explanation the Brazilians found
disingenuous.34

Knowing that progress with the Brazilians would be hard to come by,
U.S. ofﬁcials focused instead on engaging the FRG, where the Brazil deal was
prompting new concerns within government ranks over how best to regulate
the export of sensitive technologies. A contract then being drafted set out to

32. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1974BRASIL08161, Conﬁdential, 26 October 1974, in
DOS/CFP; and Ueki to Geisel, 18 October 1974, in EG, pr 1974.03.26/2.

33. “Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Top Secret, Special National Intelligence
Estimate, 24 August 1974, in NSArchive, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB240/snie
.pdf.

34. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1974BRASIL08979, Conﬁdential, 29 November 1974,
in DOS/CFP; and “Relatório da Reunião entre Representantes da Assessoria de Planejamento do
Departamento de Estado Americano e os Assessores do Ministro de Estado das Relações Exteriores,”
Conﬁdential, n.d., in AAS, mre be 1974.04.16.

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impose strict export safeguards that, in practice, would be more comprehen-
sive than those in the NPT.35 Or at least this is what West German ofﬁcials
told their counterparts in Washington as they prepared for the ﬁrst round of
talks to coordinate nuclear export controls with other members of the Lon-
don Club (soon to become the Nuclear Suppliers Group). The FRG reassured
other members of the group, including France, Japan, the United Kingdom,
Canada, the Soviet Union, and the United States, that it would impose tight
controls on Brazil because of that country’s refusal to sign on to the NPT.36

The U.S. and West German governments cooperated closely in crafting
regulations for technology transfers to Brazil, but the relationship was not
free from tension. U.S. ofﬁcials insisted that their West German counterparts
consult with them before signing any agreements with Brazil. Also, the United
States argued for “special constraint in supply of technology and equipment
which directly result in weapon-usable material,” stating that “the US feels
that the export of reprocessing and enrichment technology is of particular
concern and should be discussed among suppliers to reach common policies
before any pending negotiations in this area are ﬁnalized.”37 U.S. pressure on
the FRG worked.38 Whereas Bonn had initially proposed to offer centrifuge
technology for enriching uranium, it now retracted that offer. It also discarded
the possibility of technology transfers resulting from West German scientiﬁc
cooperation with its URENCO partners. But the West Germans left on the
table a face-saving element for Brazil: the sale of the jet nozzle.39 Ofﬁcials

35. FRG Embassy in Brasília to Itamaraty, Conﬁdential, 16 December 1974, in PNB, 1975.01.09.

36. SecState to AmEmbassy Bonn, Cable 1975STATE001068, Conﬁdential, 3 January 1975, in
DOS/CFP; AmEmbassy Bonn to SecState, Cable 1975BONN00309, Conﬁdential, 8 January 1975,
in DOS/CFP; AmEmbassy Bonn to SecState, Cable 1975BONN00332, Conﬁdential, 8 January
1975, in DOS/CFP. During a meeting with a U.S. counterpart, a West German ofﬁcer stated that ne-
gotiations with Brazil were slated to resume in late January or early February 1975. SecState to AmEm-
bassy Bonn, Cable 1975BONN00524, Conﬁdential, 13 January 1975, in DOS/CFP; and SecState to
AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1975STATE021069, Conﬁdential, 29 January 1975, in DOS/CFP. The
latter cable was effectively sent on 10 February 1975. On the origins of the Nuclear Suppliers Group,
see William Burr, “A Scheme of ‘Control’: The United States and the Origins of the Nuclear Suppli-
ers’ Group, 1974–1976,” International History Review, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2014), pp. 252–276. As noted
by Bertrand Goldschmidt, a similar group of countries—the so-called Cashmere Group—gathered
informally in the 1960s to discuss common rules on sensitive nuclear material and technologies.
Bertrand Goldschmidt, Le Complexe atomique: Histoire politique de l’énergie nucléaire (Paris: Fayard,
1980), p. 308.

37. SecState to AmEmbassy Bonn, Cable 1975STATE048844, Secret, 5 March 1975, in DOS/CFP.

38. For a comprehensive study of U.S. pressure on West German nuclear policies more generally, see
Gene Gerzhoy, “Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwarted West
Germany’s Nuclear Ambitions,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), pp. 91–129.

39. Gray, “Commercial Liberties and Nuclear Anxieties”; and Fabian Hilfrich, “Roots of Animosity:
Bonn’s Reaction to U.S. Pressures in Nuclear Proliferation,” International History Review, Vol. 36,
No. 2 (2014), pp. 277–301.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

in Bonn believed the jet nozzle technology would make it nearly impossible
for Brazil to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.40 The
Brazilian government agreed to purchase the jet nozzle project as part of a
broader bilateral nuclear agreement with the FRG.

The West Germans had to worry about other members of the London
Club, too, with France and the Soviet Union advocating alongside the United
States for stronger nuclear-trade control and more safeguards for the Brazil
deal than those that were eventually applied. Brazilian ofﬁcials felt that the
new set of regulations hatched in London constituted, in practice, an emerg-
ing nuclear-exports cartel. In the end, the FRG imposed safeguards on Brazil
that were stricter than NPT provisions, covering safeguards on sensitive and
non-sensitive nuclear material, equipment, installations, and the transfer of
relevant technologies, plus exports and re-exports that might derive from the
deal. On this understanding, Brazil would apply safeguards to all of its ac-
tivities derived from West German cooperation, while remaining outside the
NPT.41 In agreeing to the new set of rules, Brazil was creating a precedent: a
major developing country that was not a party to the NPT formally agreed
to some measure of self-restraint in exchange for foreign nuclear assistance.
This allowed Brazilian and West German ofﬁcials to argue that their agree-
ment was in and of itself a major contribution to the global nonprolifera-
tion regime. Although the FRG and Brazil diverged on the issue of PNEs,
they managed to make progress toward completion.42 According to the NPT,
nuclear-weapons states recognized as such by the treaty had the legal right to
sell nuclear-explosion services internationally for big public or infrastructure
works. The United States and other countries that promoted the NPT con-
sidered the autonomous development of PNEs by non-nuclear weapons states
as an unquestionable instance of proliferation. Ofﬁcials in Washington made
it a point to state that there was no difference between peaceful and military
nuclear explosives. The U.S.-Brazilian disagreement over PNEs began during
negotiations on the Treaty of Tlatelolco, when Brazil advanced an interpreta-
tion that the treaty should legally permit the use of PNEs. This disagreement

40. Gray, “Commercial Liberties and Nuclear Anxieties,” p. 453.

41. Batista to FRG Embassy in Brasília, Conﬁdential, 9 January 1975, cited in “Draft Agenda for
Discussion on Government Level—Preparation of an Agreement on Collaboration between the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany and Brazil on the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy,” Secret, n.d., in PNB,
1975.01.09. For the Brazilian version of the draft treaty, see “Anteprojeto de um acordo entre o gov-
erno da República Federal de Alemanha e o governo da República Federativa do Brasil sobre coop-
eração no setor dos usos pacíﬁcos da energia nuclear,” Secret, n.d., in PNB, 1975.01.09. See also
Brasília to Bonn, Secreto Exclusivo, in 6 February 1975, PNB, 1975.01.09; and AmEmbassy Bonn to
SecState, Cable 1975BONN02897, Conﬁdential, 20 February 1975, in DOS/CFP.

42. AmEmbassy Bonn to SecState, Cable 1975BONN02897.

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Patti and Spektor

was carried over to the NPT negotiations. However, the U.S. and Soviet posi-
tion prevailed, and the text of the NPT never authorized non-nuclear weapons
states to develop PNEs. Brazilians saw this as yet another ploy on the part of
the industrial North to limit developing-country access to a lucrative market.43
The military regime running Brazil at the time avoided mentioning PNEs
and any possible non-civilian use of nuclear energy. Brazilian authorities ex-
cluded military ofﬁcers from the talks with Bonn while marketing the agree-
ment with FRG as a major success for the peaceful use of the atom.44 They
deﬁned their quest for nuclearização (nuclearization) as the development of in-
digenous fuel-cycle capability, not weaponization, and they framed the agree-
ment as an exercise in global nuclear justice, arguing that assistance from West
Germany would grant Brazil “the effective exercise of the right of nucleariza-
tion [nuclearização]—the objective of our policy.”45 Furthermore, ofﬁcials in
Brasília never described nuclear-technology acquisition as a merely techno-
logical development but as an instrument of its rising status in world politics.
Acquiring enrichment technology, in this view, would propel Brazil upward
in global hierarchies and thwart attempts by the industrialized West to pre-
vent large developing states from breaking the technological glass ceiling above
them.

The West German government, for its part, presented the deal at home as
an innovation in a ﬁeld where the governing rules were in a state of ﬂux, with
little consensus emerging from major suppliers. As Peter Hermes, secretary
of state in the FRG Foreign Ministry, told his U.S. counterparts, “Since an
understanding among the most important supplier-nations has not yet been
achieved . . . it will not be possible to obtain further concessions from the
Brazilians.”46 The ones they had already secured would have to sufﬁce.

The U.S. government remained concerned about the reprocessing and
storing of spent fuel in Brazil. From the U.S. perspective, even if the agree-
ment with the FRG was under safeguards, Brazil could eventually use spent

43. Ibid. For a discussion of PNEs, see Glenn T. Seaborg, Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the
Johnson Years (Lexington, KY: Lexington Books, 1987), pp. 258–259; and Patti, “Brazil in Global
Nuclear Order,” p. 72.

44. Gaspari, A ditadura encurralada, p. 131.

45. Bonn to Brasília, Secreto Exclusivo Muito Urgente, 12 February 1975, in PNB, 1975.01.09. For
a full, detailed account of Nogueira Batista’s mission to West Germany, see “Relatório da Missão
à Alemanha (RFA) (1 a 15 de Fevereiro 1975),” Secreto, Nuclebrás, in PNB, 1975.01.09. See also
Ueki and Silveira to Geisel, Secreto Exclusivo, Informação para o Senhor Presidente da República, 19
February 1975, in PNB, 1975.01.09.

46. Peter Hermes discussed the West German–Brazilian nuclear agreement with U.S Ambassador
Martin J. Hillenbrand in Bonn on 20 February 1975. AmEmbassy Bonn to SecState, Cable
1975BONN02897.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

fuel to produce plutonium suitable for military use, a precedent that could
potentially derail ongoing negotiations between the United States and South
Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. U.S. policy was to avoid the spread of reprocessing
facilities worldwide, and now Brazil was bent on building its own reprocess-
ing plant. U.S. ofﬁcials could see no economic rationale for such a facility: the
United States had more than 50 nuclear reactors in operation but no repro-
cessing plant. Why did Brazil need one?47 The response was straightforward:
Brazil wanted to master the entire nuclear fuel cycle.48

Starting in April 1975, the United States sought to build consensus
among nuclear suppliers to place the Brazil deal under International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, as France was doing with its own nuclear-
assistance deal with South Korea.49 There were other precedents as well. The
United States had inserted a clause in its agreements with Egypt and Israel re-
quring that safeguards be applied to all nuclear facilities in the recipient state
and that suppliers consent before a recipient state could enrich, reprocess,
build, or store materials that could be used in nuclear weapons.50 U.S. ofﬁ-
cials also wanted the FRG to place additional controls on sensitive materials in
its nuclear technology agreement with Iran.51 The West German government
resisted the idea of additional controls and negotiated a draft treaty with Brazil
in secret. Even if U.S. nuclear negotiators were aware that negotiations were
evolving and were worried about the overall direction of the deal, Kissinger
kept the issue off the agenda in his conversations with Chancellor Helmut
Schmidt.52 Kissinger also kept silent about the issue in his conversations with
Brazilian ofﬁcials, and it fell on Brazilian Foreign Minister Antônio Azeredo
da Silveira to bring up the subject in the press conference he gave after meet-
ing Kissinger in May 1975. Nuclear cooperation with the FRG, he said, had
peaceful purposes only, and Brazil would abide by its bilateral safeguards com-
mitments.53 In policy circles in Washington, suspicion about the real purposes

47. SecState to AmEmbassy Bonn, Cable 1975STATE066020, Secret, 24 March 1975, in DOS/CFP.

48. On Geisel’s position see Ueki
in EG, pr
1974.03.26/2; and AmEmbassy to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL02224, Secret, 25 March 1975, in
DOS/CFP.

to Geisel, Despacho, 17 March 1975,

49. From 28 March to 1 April 1975, there was an intense exchange of telegrams between Washington
and Bonn. On 28 March, high-ranking ofﬁcials of various U.S. agencies met with West German
representatives. On the possible trilateral “safeguarding technology agreement,” see U.S. Mission IAEA
Vienna to SecState, Cable 1975IAEAV02748, Conﬁdential, 2 April 1975, in DOS/CFP.

50. U.S. Mission IAEA Vienna to SecState, Cable 1975IAEAV04445, 22 May 1975, in DOS/CFP;
and SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1975STATE106059, 6 May 1975, in Secret, in DOS/CFP.

51. SecState to AmEmbassy Bonn, Cable 1975STATE133585, Secret, 7 June 1975, in DOS/CFP.

52. Gray, “Commercial Liberties and Nuclear Anxieties,” pp. 460–461.

53. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL03786, 14 May 1975, in DOS/CFP.

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of the treaty was widespread. After all, Brazil was a staunch critic of the NPT
and had refused to become a signatory. Brazilian diplomats argued for the le-
gality of PNEs. West Germany, in turn, ratiﬁed the NPT on 2 May 1975, but
only after much hesitation and against the continuing reluctance of conserva-
tive parties.

Kissinger’s Policy of Accommodation

A weekly report published by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in
June 1975 stated: “Brazil’s intention to become a nuclear power poses a funda-
mental challenge to traditionally amicable U.S.-Brazil relations.”54 According
to the agency, Brazil might seek to use its cooperation with West Germany
to divert technologies for non-peaceful uses. Kissinger disagreed. From his
perspective, Brazil and the FRG had acted in good faith, establishing that
all assistance activities conducted through the agreement would operate un-
der bilateral safeguards and under a special safeguards arrangement between
Brazil, West Germany, and the IAEA that was signed in February 1976.55 For
all practical purposes, this meant that even if Brazil was not a signatory of
the NPT, its activities with the FRG would be governed by the safeguards
framework that normally applied to treaty members.

The biggest challenge to Kissinger’s thesis came from the U.S. Congress.
Senator John Pastore, the chairman of the Special Committee on Atomic En-
ergy, wanted the administration to push for the postponement of the West
German–Brazilian agreement “until an adequate system of controls concern-
ing the fabrication of nuclear weapons is established.”56 He urged President
Gerald Ford and Secretary Kissinger to block any supply of nuclear reactors
and enrichment facilities to Brazil that “could contribute to the fabrication

54. “Brazil-U.S.: Nuclear Plans Pose Problems,” Secret, CIA Weekly Report, 20 June 1975, in Declas-
siﬁed Documents Reference System (DDRS).

55. On the safeguards to be applied to the Brazil–West Germany deal, see Brazilian Minis-
ter of Mines and Energy to FRG Embassy in Brasília, Secret, 4 June 1975, in AAS, mre pn
1974.08.15; and AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL04803, Conﬁdential, 16 June
1975, in DOS/CFP. On the Argentine reaction, see AmEmbassy Buenos Aires to SecState, Cable
1975BUENOS03762, Conﬁdential, 3 June 1975, in DOS/CFP. See also AmEmbassy Brasília to Sec-
State, Cable 1975BRASIL04372, Conﬁdential, 3 June 1975, in DOS/CFP. For Kissinger’s instruc-
tions to the U.S. embassy in Bonn, see SecState to AmEmbassy Bonn, Cable 1975STATE128064,
3 June 1975, in DOS/CFP. The safeguards agreement was based on IAEA Information Circu-
lar (INFCIRC) 66/Rev 2, 16 September 1968, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/ﬁles/publications
/documents/infcircs/1965/infcirc66r2.pdf.

56. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL04414, 4 June 1975, in DOS/CFP.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

of an atomic bomb if [Brazil] so desires.”57 Pastore’s objections were made
against a background of greater congressional inﬂuence and authority over
nuclear trade regulations.58 Pastore was getting in the way of Kissinger’s policy
of accommodation by drawing attention to the issue of Brazilian nuclear am-
bitions and by expanding the role of the legislative branch.59 The press echoed
the view that the new nuclear agreement was dangerous. The Washington Post
insisted that the nuclear accord “can and must be modiﬁed.” According to
a report, ACDA ofﬁcials were concerned that Brazil might seek to acquire
bomb-making capabilities.60 The New York Times published an editorial titled
“Nuclear Madness,” decrying the deal as “a reckless move that could set off
a nuclear arms race in Latin America, trigger the nuclear arming of half a
dozen nations elsewhere and endanger the security of the United States and
the world as a whole.”61 Kissinger was livid:

We are not a nonproliferation agency. Before we go around trying to stop sales
to major countries, and then leaking it to the newspapers, they are entitled to be
told from us. The logical way to start would have been with the Brazilians and
see whether they are willing to accept some safeguards.62

He instructed his advisers to convey to Brazil that it was “the missionary
branch of the Department that started this,” and later on he apologized to
his Brazilian counterparts in person.63 The U.S. ambassador in Brasília fol-
lowed suit, telling Foreign Minister Silveira that press reports did not reﬂect
the ofﬁcial government position.64 Kissinger discussed the issue with President
Ford: “This is a real mess. We have leaked all over, we have a problem with
[West] Germany, and we have a problem with Brazil. And the Congress is
upset. But we have absolutely no control over it.”65

57. Ibid.

58. Brenner, Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation, p. 89.

59. SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1975STATE138496, 13 June 1975, in DOS/CFP.

60. “A Message for President Scheel,” The Washington Post, 16 June 1975, p. A22; and L. H. Diuguid,
“Brazil Nuclear Deal Raises U.S. Concern,” The Washington Post, 1 June 1975, p. A1.

61. “Nuclear Madness,” The New York Times, 13 June 1975, p. 36.

62. Proceedings, Secret, 13 June 1975, in NARA, RG 59, General Records of the Department of State,
Ofﬁce of the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s Staff Meetings, 1973–1977, Box 7.

63. SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1975STATE146237, Conﬁdential, 20 June 1975, in
DOS/CFP.

64. On the conversation between Crimmins and Silveira, see Spektor, Kissinger e o Brazil, p. 112.

65. Conversation Ford-Kissinger, Secret/Nodis, 13 June 1975, in Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
(GRFPL), NSA, Memcoms, Box 12.

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What the Ford administration could control was the message it conveyed
to the FRG and Brazil. In a conversation with West German President Wal-
ter Scheel and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher on 16 June 1975,
President Ford made his attitude clear, avoiding the nuclear issue altogether
while the secretary of state “essentially agreed to disagree, neither endorsing
the Brazil treaty nor continuing to make an issue of it.”66 U.S. Senator Wal-
ter Mondale criticized Kissinger, calling for an “immediate moratorium on
the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology and installations.”67
But on 27 June 1975, Brazil and the FRG ﬁnally signed the agreement. Back
in Brasília, an internal memorandum reported that “Brazil’s accession to the
nuclear era—conducted under the terms of greatness . . . will contribute to
fulﬁlling our access to the category of [developed countries.] . . . Peaceful
nuclearization . . . will transform Brazil’s international status.”68

The agreement was an impressive achievement. Here was a deal between
an NPT member and a non-NPT member that explicitly closed the loop-
holes that had previously been in place in the case of India. (The FRG’s agree-
ment with Brazil banned the unsafeguarded transfer of reactors, technologies,
and materials.)69 Observers were also stunned by the sheer size of the deal.
Brazil would purchase up to eight nuclear reactors, ﬁnance the creation of
binational joint-venture companies to promote an indigenous nuclear indus-
try on Brazilian territory, and receive assistance in uranium enrichment and
spent-fuel reprocessing technologies. The largest technology sale ever from an
industrialized country to an industrializing state in the developing world, the
deal promised to rescue the West German nuclear industry from the ﬁnancial
troubles it was facing.70

Soviet press agency TASS called the agreement a “dangerous precedent,”
and Moscow argued for safeguarding all the equipment Brazil might eventu-
ally develop through West German assistance.71 In a meeting with Kissinger,
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko expressed concern “that Brazil is on

66. On the U.S.-West German meetings, see Gray, “Commercial Liberties and Nuclear Anxieties,” p.
458. For the text of Kissinger’s letter, see SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1975STATE146237.

67. On Mondale’s declaration, see Jaime Dantas, “URSS vê perigo no acordo Brasil-RFA,” Jornal
do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), 20 June 1975, p. 6. On the distance between the State Department and
Mondale’s words, see AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL05062, 21 June 1975, in
DOS/CFP.

68. Nogueira Batista to Geisel, Secreto, 20 August 1975, in PNB, pn a 1975.01.09.

69. AmEmbassy Bonn to SecState, Cable 1975BONN10770, 2 July 1975, in DOS/CFP.

70. Gray, “Commercial Liberties and Nuclear Anxieties,” p. 450.

71. On the position of Soviet delegate Igor Morokhov during a meeting with U.S. representatives, see
SecState to AmEmbassy Tripoli, Cable 1975STATE157800, Secret, 3 July 1975, in DOS/CFP.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

the path to the production of nuclear weapons and wants to use the help pro-
vided by West Germany. . . . Incidentally, [West] Germany is party to the
NPT but Brazil is not.” Kissinger retorted that he did

not believe Brazil has decided to build nuclear weapons, but this deal creates the
possibility and we are concerned for the future. When a complete fuel cycle is
provided, it provides the possibility to obtain fuel. But we are concerned and
have expressed our concern publicly.72

The international community, Kissinger added, would have a say in accepting
the safeguard arrangement. If no multilateral solution emerged, he said, then
Washington and Moscow should “exchange views bilaterally.”73

In Brazil as well, plenty of criticism surfaced. Both the Brazilian Society of
Physics and the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science—two inﬂuential
bodies that had the ability to shape public debate—took issue with the choice
of enriched-uranium as a fuel for future reactors, given the unpredictabil-
ity and unreliability of future fuel imports from abroad. They argued that
a more suitable choice would be reactors fueled by natural uranium, which
Brazil possessed in vast quantities. Many scientists also questioned the utility
of launching an ambitious nuclear program for energy production, given the
hydroelectric potential of the country. In addition, prominent voices in the
scientiﬁc community, such as the University of São Paulo’s nuclear physicist
José Goldemberg, warned authorities of the risks inherent in accepting West
Germany’s offer of assistance with the jet nozzle.74

Even though Bonn and Brasília had signed the deal, many loose ends re-
mained that required additional negotiation. The two parties had yet to deﬁne
the terms of ownership and operation of the reprocessing plant they planned
to build (the Brazilian proposal was to place the pilot reprocessing plant under
the authority of Nuclebrás, with West Germany retaining 25 percent of the
investment), and they had yet to nail down the nature and scope of safeguards
with the IAEA.75 Brazilian Minister of Mines and Energy Shigeaki Ueki told
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Charles Robinson that the nuclear agree-
ment with West Germany was “not so great” and that Brazil was keen to ex-
plore research and development with the United States on a high-temperature

72. Meeting between Kissinger and Gromyko, Memorandum, Secret, 11 July 1975, National Security
Council, Digital National Security Archive (DNSA).

73. Ibid.

74. Patti, O programa nuclear brasileiro, pp. 239–240; and Gaspari, A ditadura encurralada, p. 134.

75. Ueki to Geisel, Despacho, 3 July 1975, in EG, pr 1974.03.26/2.

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gas-cooled reactor.76 Brazil also wanted to purchase a fast breeder reactor from
the United States. Ueki also told Robinson that if the United States failed to
supply enrichment services, Brazil would have no choice but to seek out con-
tracts with URENCO, Eurodif, or even the Soviet Union. The U.S. embassy
in Brasília estimated that the minister’s utterances about the Soviet Union
were a bluff, given Cold War sensitivities in the regime. Indeed, when Nu-
clebrás’s Carlos Syllus Pinto contacted Soviet counterparts to discuss a po-
tential contract for the acquisition of low-enriched uranium, both Minister
Ueki and President Geisel rebuffed him, banning further negotiations with
Moscow. But Brazil remained interested in expanding its network of nuclear
agreements, and the difﬁculties inherent in rolling out the deal with West
Germany provided additional reason to pursue new suppliers at a fast pace.77
Robinson was aware of how sensitive the issue of Brazilian nuclear policy
had become in Washington. He replied to the Brazilian overtures by reassur-
ing his counterparts that the United States would not push Brazil and the
FRG to establish stricter controls out of its own national commercial inter-
ests. Rather, Robinson insisted, the United States was motivated by “reasons
of the highest policy,” adding that any nuclear matters should be discussed
through ofﬁcial diplomatic channels only.78 Given how far countries such as
Japan, South Korea, and Brazil seemed willing to go in their quest for nuclear
fuel, the State Department in September 1975 publicized a proposal whereby
multinational centers for spent-fuel reprocessing would provide fuel to select
countries around the globe, hoping that such an endeavor would reduce the
threat of proliferation (thereby averting another India).79 The IAEA prepared
a study for a Brazil-based “regional center” in South America, but the initiative
never gained traction.80

From November 1975 through March 1976, the IAEA in Vienna saw
frantic negotiations over the terms of a draft trilateral agreement with Brazil
and the FRG. U.S. ofﬁcials were pressuring the West Germans to agree to

76. Brazilian National Security Council (CSN) to Geisel, Secreto, 15 October 1975, in AAS, mre pn
1974.08.15.

77. For a U.S. assessment of Brazil’s reluctance to contract Soviet enrichment services, see AmEmbassy
Brasília to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL05792, Conﬁdential, 14 July 1975, in DOS/CFP. On Brazil-
ian authorities banning negotiations over purchases of enriched uranium from Moscow, see Patti, O
programa nuclear brasileiro, p. 57.

78. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL05792.

79. For Kissinger’s speech, see U.S. Mission New York to SecState, Cable 1975USUNN04426, 23
September 1975, in DOS/CFP.

80. U.S. Mission Vienna to SecState, Cable 1975IAEAV08465, 3 October 1975, in DOS/CFP. The
possibility to create multinational regional enrichment facilities was discussed for several years, but the
idea was abandoned in the early 1980s when the global nuclear market was in crisis.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

report to the IAEA on any transfers of materials to Brazil.81 The Brazilians
were arguing for a model whereby the IAEA would safeguard and inspect
all technologies transferred from West Germany to Brazil but not apply any
safeguards to national facilities or nationally developed technologies.82 Under
mounting pressure from Bonn and Washington, the Brazilian government
moved to try to get a seat in the London Club (an invitation to join never
arrived).83

When West Germany and Brazil sent the draft trilateral agreement to
Vienna for approval in January 1976, it proved to be a remarkable text: it was
the ﬁrst agreement ever to apply uranium enrichment safeguards to a country
that was not part of the NPT, as well as the ﬁrst-ever accord to bind the
IAEA together with a non-weapon NPT signatory and a non-NPT state.84
The Brazilians got what they wanted. Indigenous facilities—that is, facilities
built outside the purview of the deal—would not be safeguarded or inspected
by the IAEA.85 The vote in Vienna to approve the safeguards agreement was
scheduled for 24 February 1976, and Brazil and West Germany knew they
needed U.S. support to get it passed.86 Securing support for Brazil from other
developing countries would be relatively easy, but there was a real risk that
the Soviet Union, alongside the United States, might request the parties to
make the text conform to the new guidelines for nuclear exports established
at the London Club a month earlier, or to get the IAEA Board of Governors
to postpone the vote.87

In the run-up to the crucial date, two conﬂicting views emerged within
the Ford administration. The State Department and ACDA were against

81. SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1975STATE277689, Conﬁdential, 24 November 1975, in
DOS/CFP.

82. CSN to Geisel, Secreto, 6 December 1975, in AAS, mre pn 1974.08.15.

83. Brazil wanted the London Club to expand from a small group of nuclear suppliers to include
large providers of nuclear minerals such as uranium and thorium. The Carter administration in 1977
discussed enlargement plans that included both Brazil and South Africa, but to no avail. On the 1975
proposal, see AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1975BRASIL10250, Conﬁdential, 26 November
1975, in DOS/CFP. On 1977, see Patti, O programa nuclear brasileiro, p. 171.

84. “Opening Statement at Brazil/FRG/IAEA Negotiation,” 12 January 1976, in PNB 1975.01.09.

85. Brazilian Embassy (BrazEmbassy) Vienna to Brasília, Secreto Urgente, 13 January 1976, in PNB,
1975.01.09; and BrazEmbassy Vienna to Brasília, Secreto Urgente, 17 January 1976, in PNB,
1975.01.09.

in PNB, pn a
86. BrazEmbassy Vienna to Brasília, Secreto Urgentíssimo, 16 February 1976,
1975.01.09; and FRG Embassy in Brasília to the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Aide-Mémoire,
17 February 1976, in PA/AA, Bd. 13209.

87. U.S. Mission Vienna to SecState, Cable 1976IAEAV01168, Conﬁdential, 13 February 1976, in
DOS/CFP.

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approval, whereas the U.S. envoy to the IAEA was for it.88 National Secu-
rity Adviser Brent Scowcroft wanted to postpone any consideration of the
agreement, suggesting instead that low-key exploratory talks with Brazil begin
to examine tighter safeguards.89 Scowcroft worried that unless strong prolifer-
ation restraints were imposed, the Ford administration would face problems
in Congress.90 However, on the eve of Kissinger’s talks with the Brazilians, an
interagency report recommended that he support the trilateral agreement as
it reached the ﬂoor in Vienna. Even if the Soviet Union wanted to delay the
vote, the United States should not risk undermining its own relations with
the Brazilians and West Germans. The report emphasized that the British del-
egates to Vienna adopt the same line.91 President Ford also suggested that the
United States should resume negotiations for a potential bilateral nuclear deal
with Brazil.92

To eliminate any doubts about the U.S. position, Kissinger traveled to
Brazil in February 1976. In the ﬁrst set of conversations he had with his hosts,
he assured them of U.S. support for the Brazil–West Germany–IAEA agree-
ment “without reservations.”93 With U.S. support, the IAEA board passed the
deal on 26 February 1976 (France, which was negotiating its own safeguard
agreement with Pakistan, voted against it).94 Kissinger told the U.S. repre-
sentative to Vienna that approving the deal was necessary for reestablishing
a climate of mutual trust between the United States and Brazil.95 Approval
“did not necessarily imply U.S. approval of transfers to which the agreement
related,” U.S. diplomats clariﬁed. But the overall political relationship with
Brazil was at stake.

88. For the statements of U.S. representatives, see BrazEmbassy Vienna to Brasília, Secret/Urgent, 6
February 1976, in PNB, 1975.01.09.

89. Spektor, Kissinger e o Brasil, pp. 138–139; and Scowcroft to Ford, Secret, 14 February 1976,
GRFPL, White House, National Security Adviser, Presidential Country Files for Latin America, Box 2.

90. Spektor, Kissinger e o Brasil, pp. 135–156.

91. SecState to U.S. Mission IAEA Vienna, Cable 1976STATE038742, Conﬁdential, 18 February
1976, in DOS/CFP.

92. SecState to U.S. Mission IAEA Vienna, Cable 1976STATE039078, Secret, 18 February 1976, in
DOS/CFP.

93. “Resumo das conversações com o Secretário de Estado Henry Kissinger,” Secret, Informação ao
Senhor Presidente da República No. 79, 27 February 1976, in AAS, mre d 1974.03.26. Ingersoll
also informed the West Germans about Kissinger’s instructions. Washington to Bonn, “Trilaterales
Kontrolluebereinkommen IAEO-BRD-Brasilien,” 20 February 1976, in PA/AA, Bd. 13209.

94. AmEmbassy Paris to SecState, Cable 1976PARIS06923, Secret, 8 March 1976, in DOS/CFP.

95. Brazilian Mission Vienna to Brasília, Urgentíssimo, 25 February 1976, in PNB, pn a 1975.01.09;
and U.S. Mission IAEA Vienna to SecState, Cable 1976IAEAV01878, Conﬁdential, 10 March 1976,
in DOS/CFP.

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Jimmy Carter’s Campaign

The White House and Congress had been ﬁghting over nuclear-related legis-
lation since 1974. Congress emphasized the need to exercise tighter controls
over nuclear exports, particularly after the India explosion.96 Senator Abraham
Ribicoff (D-CT), an active nonproliferation advocate, suggested in March
1976 that if countries such as France and West Germany “did not agree to
stricter export policies the United States should apply pressure by withhold-
ing reactor fuel from them.”97 Four months later, the Symington amendment
to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976
restricted U.S. economic and military assistance to any country supplying or
receiving nuclear enrichment or reprocessing equipment, materials, or tech-
nology unless the supplier and recipient agreed to accept IAEA safeguards on
everything transferred and on all nuclear fuels and facilities in the recipient
country.98 Thus, the administration’s room for maneuver to engage Brazil was
narrowing. To complicate things further, the administration faced increasing
criticism in Congress, where Democrats sharply criticized human rights abuses
perpetrated by the ruling military in Brazil. By mid-1976, Carter had turned
the Brazil deal into a campaign issue. In his ﬁrst campaign speech on Latin
America, he referred to Kissinger’s policy of engagement with Brazil as reck-
less, and in a lengthy Playboy interview he summarized the policy as a “slap on
the face of the American people.”99

During a UN General Assembly conference on 13 May 1976, Carter ex-
pounded on his views on global nuclear governance.100 He attacked the Ford
administration for what he described as a laissez-faire approach to the sale of
facilities suitable for producing weapons-grade material and nuclear fuel, and
he argued that it was essential to arrest the transfer of reprocessing and enrich-
ment technologies. Carter also urged supplier countries to join in a “voluntary
moratorium” on the transfer of such facilities.101 Brazilian ofﬁcials realized that

96. J. Samuel Walker, “Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation: The Controversy over Nuclear Exports,
1974–1980,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring 2001), p. 222.

97. Abraham Ribicoff, “Trading in Doom,” The New York Times, 26 March 1976, p. 30.

98. Michael A. Bauser, “United States Nuclear Export Policy: Developing the Peaceful Atom as a
Commodity in International Trade,” Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Spring 1977),
pp. 244–248.

99. Robert Scheer and Jimmy Carter, “The Playboy Interview,” Playboy, November 1976.

100. Carter, Why Not the Best? The First Fifty Years (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996).
“Roteiro dos pronunciamentos políticos de autoridades governamentais norte-americanas sobre assun-
tos nucleares, especialmente o acordo Brasil-RFA,” 18 February 1977, in AAS, mre pn 1974.08.15.

101. Brenner, Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation, pp. 117–118.

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their nuclear program was becoming an object in the U.S. domestic debate
about proliferation.

Under pressure from both Congress and the Carter campaign, the White
House and the State Department revised the administration’s nonprolifera-
tion strategy in adopting a presidential statement on nuclear exports and
safeguards. By all indications, the U.S. elections played a central role in
the domestic debate, spurring the Ford administration to compare “Carter’s
promises” with the “President’s performance.”102 Ford’s advisers recognized
that he had achieved far-reaching results on the nuclear front, including the
initiative to convene the London group of nuclear suppliers; the accession of
sixteen countries to the NPT; and the successful pressure on South Korea to
refrain from acquiring a reprocessing plant from France. However, they main-
tained that Ford should take stronger action on nuclear exports, safeguards,
and plutonium reprocessing in response to increasing public concern. The
White House, the State Department, the Energy Research and Development
Administration (ERDA)—one of the successor agencies to the USAEC—
worked all summer to carry out a detailed and extensive interagency review
that became known as the “Robert Fri Report,” named after the then-deputy
administrator of the ERDA.103 The study pointed out the ﬂaws in the ad-
ministration’s nuclear policy and proposed a series of responses. Resolution
of U.S.-Brazilian friction was a priority, as was the smoothing over of con-
cerns that U.S. ofﬁcials had with regard to the Franco-Pakistani deal. Carter,
for his part, condemned both agreements and, during the last stretch of the
presidential campaign, reiterated his proposal for a moratorium on the sale or
purchase of nuclear fuel enrichment or reprocessing plants. He also argued in
early October 1976 that such a moratorium “should apply retroactively” to
existing agreements, declaring that “the contracts have been signed, but the
deliveries need not to be made.” He then proposed that the United States
stop West Germany’s and France’s sales of reprocessing plants to Brazil and
Pakistan respectively:

If we continue under Mr. Ford’s policy by 1985 or 90 we’ll have 20 nations that
have the capability of exploding atomic weapons. This has got to be stopped.

102. Comparison of “Carter Promises” and “President’s Performance,” n.d., in GRFPL, Ford Pa-
pers, Domestic Council—Glenn R. Schleede Files, Box 27 (Nuclear Policy, 1976: Background Mate-
rial)GRFPL, quoted in Walker, “Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation,” p. 235.

103. The USAEC split in 1975 into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and ERDA. The latter was
subsequently merged with the Federal Energy Administration to form the Department of Energy. See
Brenner, Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation, pp. 101–108.

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That is one of the major challenges and major undertakings that I will assume
as the next president.104

The Brazilian reaction was not optimistic. Foreign Minister Silveira warned
President Geisel that a Carter victory would bring its own risks to Brazil’s
nuclear program. Kissinger and West German Foreign Minister Genscher dis-
cussed how a Carter administration might derail West German–Brazilian co-
operation and reverse the nuclear suppliers’ policies instituted by the United
States during the Ford administration.105 One of the U.S. delegates told the
West Germans: “Under the Carter proposal, you will automatically be subject
to sanctions because of the Brazilian agreement.”106

On 28 October, just a few days before the 1976 presidential elections,
Ford issued a new nonproliferation strategy. The president set forth a long,
detailed plan, using Fri’s report recommendations:

There is no doubt that nuclear energy represents one [of] the best hopes for
satisfying the rising world demand for energy with minimum environmental
impact. . . . Unfortunately—underlined the President—the same plutonium
produced in nuclear power plants can, when chemically separated, also be used
to make nuclear explosives.107

To that end, Ford proposed “an international cooperative effort involving
many nations, including both nuclear suppliers and customers,” along the
lines of the London Club.108 The rationale was similar to that coming out of
Paris in 1975, when oil consumers sought to ﬁnd solutions to the energy cri-
sis. Ford also announced that if any country violated safeguards agreements,
“especially the diversion of nuclear material for use in making explosives,” the
United States would respond “at a minimum” by immediately cutting off its
shipments of nuclear fuel.109 He declared that the United States would apply

104. Charles Mohr, “Carter Vows a Curb on Nuclear Exports to Bar Arms Spread,” The New York
Times, 26 September 1976, p. 1.

105. For Silveira’s warning, see Silveira to Geisel, Paris, Secret/Urgent, 7 October 1976, in AAS, mre
be 1974.03.26.

106. “Top Secret Memorandum of Conversation between Kissinger, Genscher, Von Staden, Hartman,
Wolff, Rodman and Sonnenfeld. Subject: American Elections, Place: Waldorf Tower, Secretary’s Suite
35 A, New York City,” 7 October 1976, in DNSA.

107. “Nuclear Policy Statement by President Gerald R. Ford,” 28 October 1976, quoted in Brenner,
Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation, p. 270.

108. Ibid.

109. Ibid., p. 277.

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stricter standards on nuclear exports by limiting them, except in rare cases, to
countries that had signed the NPT or accepted full-scope safeguards.110

Brazilian ofﬁcials feared that the new political climate in Washington was
bound to complicate the FRG’’s ability to implement the nuclear deal, and
they started to contemplate two options. First, “to accelerate the national
projects of enrichment and reprocessing (if possible with naturalized West
German expatriates), or to consider the possibility of [developing] natural
uranium reactors [that would not create dependence on enriched-uranium
imports].”111 The second option was to step up the diplomatic battle against
the Carter offensive.112 Brazil could try to rally the support of other coun-
tries that feared a new era of nuclear restrictions. How seriously and to what
extent Brazil’s military rulers discussed these options is unknown. Regardless,
they did not have a chance to react because the Ford administration took the
opportunity of the transition period before Carter’s inauguration to give the
negotiation with Brazil one more chance.

Presidential Transition in the White House

The nuclear suppliers were scheduled to meet in mid-November 1976.
Kissinger and the Carter transition team had agreed that the “key to progress
is persuasion and not coercion of our nuclear partners” (e.g., France and
West Germany). To “maximize . . . the conﬁdence” of those involved, the
United States also backtracked on the previous policy of suspending fu-
ture supply contracts. Policy Planning Director Winston Lord wanted coun-
tries like Brazil to “rely on fuel-cycle services instead of the technology that
can be used for weapons options.”113 Rather than imposing solutions, the
United States should encourage responsible behavior on the part of the major
suppliers.

In the meantime, Kissinger started talks to convince France not to trans-
fer any nuclear technology to Pakistan. In exchange, West Germany would
commit not to go ahead with the most sensitive elements in the Brazil deal.
These talks started in 1975, and a year later they were gathering momentum

110. Ibid.

111. Ueki to Geisel, Despacho, 4 November 1976, in EG, pr 1974.03.26/2.

112. Ibid.

113. Lord to Kissinger, “Your Meeting with Senator Ribicoff,” Conﬁdential, 4 November 1976, in
NARA, RG 59, CWR Memos to the Secretary, October 1976–January 1977, Lot 77D117, Box 5,
Entry 5176,.

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quickly. According to the U.S. assessment, the FRG had “apprehensively
[begun] to sense” that if France were to take the bait regarding its Pakistan
agreement, then West Germany would have to follow suit vis-à-vis Brazil.114

The State Department negotiated directly with France, Pakistan, the
FRG, and Brazil from November 1976 until Carter’s inauguration in January
1977. The coordinator of U.S. efforts was Deputy Secretary of State Robin-
son, who came to oversee a “nuclear group” in Foggy Bottom. Rather than
insist on a moratorium on sales, as Carter had advocated during the cam-
paign, the Ford administration set out to engage in direct talks with both
Pakistan and Brazil, handling them “bilaterally, conﬁdentially and at high
political level.”115 In November the United States offered to provide economic
assistance and nuclear fuel if Brazil agreed not to acquire sensitive technolo-
gies from the FRG.116 In reassuring Brazil that the United States would honor
nuclear fuel supplies after all, the State Department was effectively reversing
the decision made in Washington back in August 1974.117

The Brazilians felt the pressure, especially because rumor had it that
the FRG might renounce the deal altogether and the Dutch had launched
a campaign to cancel URENCO enrichment services (crucial for fueling the
Brazilian power plants).118 Hence, the Brazilian government accommodated
Washington’s demands by telling U.S. ofﬁcials that “outright cancellation”
would be too difﬁcult from a political standpoint. But they signaled that
“some arrangement for a moratorium on this agreement could prove to be
an acceptable solution.”119 Brazil’s change of course was a big victory for the
U.S. team, which asked Kissinger to brief Carter on the status of the conversa-
tions “with a view to making him aware that public threats may only serve to
harden French-Pakistani and West German–Brazilian political positions.”120

114. Vest to Kissinger through Robinson, “French and German Positions on Non-proliferation Issues
at London Nuclear Suppliers Meeting,” Secret Memorandum, 15 November 1976, in NARA, RG 59,
Lot 77D117, Box 3, Entry 5176.

115. The nuclear group, which actively supported implementation of the Fri Review, consisted of
George Vest (political-military affairs), Lou Nosenzo and Gerald Oplinger, Jerome Kahan and Jan
Kalicki (policy planning), and Myron Kratzer (oceans, environment, and science).

116. Lord to Kissinger, “Non-Proliferation Paper for Meeting with President-Elect,” Secret, 19
November 1976, in NARA, RG 59, Lot 77D117, Box 5, Entry 5176.

117. Robinson to Kissinger, “Your Meeting with Secretary Designate Vance: Pakistan/Brazil, Memo-
randum,” 20 December 1976, in NARA, RG 59, Lot 77D117, Box 5, Entry 5176.

118. Gray, “Commercial Liberties and Nuclear Anxieties,” p. 462,

119. Robinson to Kissinger, “FRG/Brazil Reprocessing Plant,” Conﬁdential Memorandum, 17
November 1976, in NARA, RG 59, Lot 77D117, Box 5, Entry 5176.

120. For Brazilian attitudes toward the Ford-Carter presidential transition, see Spektor, Kissinger e o
Brasil, pp. 153–159.

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By December 1976, the United States had also secured the commitment of
Pakistani Prime Minister Zulﬁkar Ali Bhutto for an indeﬁnite deferral of the
nuclear deal with France (in exchange for U.S. approval of A-7 aircraft sales
to Pakistan).

Negotiations with Brazil moved along two tracks: one ofﬁcial and in the
public eye, the other private and secret. Washington’s hope was that emissaries
could secure a deal informally before ofﬁcial diplomatic negotiations began.
On 28 December 1976, Seymour Rubin, a U.S. jurist who had collaborated
with Democratic administrations from the 1940s thorugh the1960s and was
personally close to Carter, ﬂew to Brasília to meet with General Golbery do
Couto e Silva, chief of staff and right-hand man to the Brazilian president. Ru-
bin traveled as a private emissary of both Ford and Carter, and his meetings
with the Brazilians were kept secret (even from the Brazilian foreign minis-
ter).121 Rubin asked for a Brazilian moratorium on purchases of reprocessing
and enrichment technologies in return for a U.S. commitment to supply both
reactors and nuclear fuel. Couto e Silva reacted positively but deferred the
ﬁnal say to President Geisel.122 In early January 1977, Robinson traveled to
Brasília for further talks, now with President Geisel himself, and they agreed
to hold additional conﬁdential negotiations over speciﬁcs. Geisel insisted that
the informal agreement be kept secret until its ﬁnal terms were settled. This
was understandable, insofar as Brazilian ofﬁcials were increasingly concerned
about potential congressional action (with the support of the incoming Carter
administration) against the Brazilian nuclear program. Geisel was also highly
sensitive to the nuclear issue for his own domestic reasons. Having committed
to liberalize the authoritarian system further, he held out the hope of eventu-
ally return power to a civilian government. To that end he had to keep the
hardliners in the military in check. Public disclosures of secret talks with the
United States regarding the potential abandonment of Brazil’s nuclear plans
could be disastrous for his own image and standing among the armed forces.123

121. The visit was probably decided on 2 December 1976 when Robinson, Lord, Rubin, and Lin-
coln Gordon met. On the same day, Robinson met Gerard Smith, who was soon to become Carter’s
ambassador-at-large for nonproliferation. See Robinson to Kissinger, Daily Activities Report, Memo-
randum, Conﬁdential, 2 December 1976, in NARA, RG 59, Lot 77D117, Box 5, Entry 5176. Am-
bassador Crimmins informed Robinson of the meeting. See SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable
1976BRASIL10511, Secret, 23 December 1976, in DOS/CFP; and AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState,
Cable 1976STATE309641, Secret, 23 December 1976, in DOS/CFP.

122. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1976BRASIL10592, Secret, 29 December 1976, in
DOS/CFP.

123. Charles W. Robinson and Carlo Patti, telephone interview, 1 July 2010. We could not locate any
documents to conﬁrm the visit. On the meeting between Robinson and Geisel, see also a personal

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

The secret meeting reveals a new side to Geisel, who is normally portrayed
as fundamentally anti-American. Facing an inﬂation rate of 45 percent per
annum and grappling with a major economic slump, he was in a pragmatic
mood. He was also receiving information that the the FRG might choose
to placate the nonproliferation policies of the incoming U.S. president by
rescinding the deal with Brazil.124 On 7 January 1977, Robinson summarized
the state of affairs to Kissinger:

We have made signiﬁcant progress with Pakistan, France, West Germany, and
Brazil in moving forward our nonproliferation objectives. We are now at a point
where we can take further signiﬁcant steps. . . . The underlying approach on
all of these cases involves inducing the parties to accept indeﬁnite deferral of
sensitive nuclear projects in return for assured nuclear supply and fuel services,
under US guarantees and credits if desired. It aims to put none of the parties at
economic disadvantage and to fully meet their energy needs.125

The challenge was to get the West Germans on board. For this, it was
paramount to bring incoming Secretary of State Cyrus Vance into the loop,
He was the one who would have to approve the decision “to move our Brazil-
ian probe to ofﬁcial channels.” Although Kissinger thought any serious moves
“should now wait for the 20th [of January],” Vance went ahead and ap-
proved the proposal.126 Brazil was at the heart of the conversation between
Lord, Robinson, George Vest (the head of politico-military affairs at the De-
partment of State), and two incoming Carter administration ofﬁcials, Joseph
Nye (the deputy to the undersecretary of state for security assistance, science,
and technology and chairman of the National Security Council Group on
Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons) and Lucy Benson (deputy secretary
of state). Nye and Benson were “surprised and enormously pleased with the
progress made,” lending credence to the notion that the Ford administration
had created a framework for nuclear nonproliferation dialogue that the Carter

communication from June 2010, which can be found in A. David Rossin’s forthcoming book on U.S.
nuclear policy under Presidents Ford and Carter.

124. For Geisel’s own take on these issues, see Maria Celina d’Araújo and Celso Castro, eds., Ernesto
Geisel (Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 1997). On possible ﬁnancial loans, see Robinson to Kissinger, Daily
Activities Report, 7 Conﬁdential Memorandum, September 1976, in NARA, RG 59, Lot 77D117,
Box 5, Entry 5176.

125. Robinson to Kissinger, “Pakistan/Brazil Points for Your Meeting with Cy Vance,” Top Se-
cret/Nodis, Memorandum, 7 January 1977, NARA, RG 59, Lot 77D117, Box 5, Entry 5176; and
“Non-proliferation—Next Steps on Pakistan and Brazil,” Memorandum of Conversation, Top Secret,
7 January 1977, in DNSA.

126. Robinson to Kissinger, “Next Steps on Pakistan and Brazil,” Top Secret, 11 January 1977, in
NARA, RG 59, Lot 77D117, Box 5, Entry 5176.

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administration could carry forward.127 In the meantime, the Brazilians agreed
to receive an ofﬁcial emissary of the Carter administration to negotiate the
terms of the agreement, while keeping the private talks running until late
February.128

Rubin arrived in Brazil on 19 January 1977 for a new round of conver-
sations with Couto e Silva, who insisted on keeping the secret talks unofﬁcial
for the time being and appointed retired ambassador Vasco Leitão da Cunha
as Brazilian representative. Leitão da Cunha had served as ambassador to the
United States and as foreign minister in the military junta that took power
in 1964, and he enjoyed good personal ties with Lincoln Gordon (who had
served as U.S. ambassador to Brazil during the 1964 coup) and Rubin.129
The Brazilians, however, were slowly bringing more of their own participants
on board, as Foreign Minister Silveira became privy to Rubin’s mission. In
a private meeting on 25 January, Rubin conﬁrmed the new administration’s
support of the previous December’s action plan and also agreed to meet Leitão
da Cunha in subsequent days.

But as discussions began, any sense of trust between the two sides was
shaken by an off-the-record comment Nye made to the U.S. press to the effect
that negotiations were under way to persuade West Germany to stop all tech-
nology transfers for enrichment and reprocessing to Brazil, in exchange for a
guarantee on U.S. fuel deliveries.130 The Brazilians were furious. The U.S. am-
bassador warned Vance of the damage of Nye’s leak.131 Still, negotiations kept
moving forward. During a ﬁnal meeting with Rubin in Rio de Janeiro, Leitão
da Cunha declared that Brazil was not Pakistan (i.e., the Brazilian nuclear pro-
gram had peaceful intentions exclusively) and that the Brazilian government
wanted to avoid U.S. congressional action against its nuclear plans.

127. Robinson to Kissinger, “Non-proliferation Letter to de Guiringaud,” Top Secret, 11 January
1977, in NARA, RG 59, Lot 77D117, Box 5, Entry 5176.

128. Robinson to Kissinger, “Next Steps on Pakistan and Brazil.”

129. SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1977STATE012266, Secret Eyes Only, 19 January 1977,
in DOS/CFP; and AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1977BRASIL00689, Secret Eyes Only, 25
January 1977, in DOS/CFP.

130. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, “Nye Interview on Brazil-FRG Nuclear Cooperation,” Conﬁ-
dential, 25 January 1977, in Remote Archive Capture (RAC)/Jimmy Carter Library (JCL), NLC-133-
121-2-54-8. Brazilians had been talking to the incoming administration about the need to differentiate
Brazil from Pakistan, noting that Brazil in its agreement with the FRG had renounced all intention to
produce a nuclear device. See BrazEmbassy Washington to Brasília, “Política: EUA: Não-Proliferação
Nuclear,” Top Secret, n. 274, 27 January 1977, in AAS, mre pn 1975.09.25.

131. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable 1977BRASIL00696, Secret, 25 January 1977,
DOS/CFP.

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Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate Nuclear Brazil

Within days, however, the tenuous understanding between the United
States and Brazil came under additional pressure. President Carter sent Vice
President Mondale to Bonn to inform the West German government in pri-
vate that the United States was “unalterably opposed” to any nuclear trans-
fers to Brazil. When the Brazilians learned that the incoming administration
was putting pressure on Bonn to cancel the West German–Brazilian agree-
ment without involving Brazil itself in the conversations, they again showed
anger.132 They agreed to open another “quiet channel” with a U.S. emissary for
further conversation.133 However, talks between the United States and Brazil
over the nuclear issue unraveled for good when the U.S. State Department
circulated a press release claiming that the Brazilians had agreed to renegotiate
the nuclear deal. In reality they had not agreed to any such thing—at least not
ofﬁcially or in public.134

Hermes, the West German architect of the nuclear deal, told Brazilians
that the FRG would keep the agreement alive and guarantee fuel supply for
Brazilian power plants.135 In mid-February, Leitão da Cunha met with U.S.
emissaries and informed them that Brazil was no longer interested in talks.136
Brazil would engage in general issues of global nonproliferation with the the
United States, but it refused to discuss its own nuclear program. President
Geisel told his advisers that no Brazilian diplomats should discuss or even
mention the nuclear program in talks with the U.S. nonproliferation team
that was scheduled to ﬂy to Brasília in subsequent weeks.137 Unsurprisingly,
the meetings between the Brazilian foreign minister and U.S. Deputy Secre-
tary of State Warren Christopher in March 1977 came to nothing. The two
delegations talked past each other. The Brazilians stated clearly that Christo-
pher’s trip was pointless and should, therefore, be cut short. Although the

132. Craig R. Whitney, “Schmidt May Modify Rio Atom Pact,” The New York Times, 27 January
1977, p. 4. See also BrazEmbassy Washington to Brasília, “Política: EUA: Não-proliferação nuclear.”

133. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, “Brazilian Nuclear Debate: Foreign Minister Defends Brazil’s
Right to Its Destiny,” Conﬁdential, 26 January 1977, in RAC/JCL, NLC-133-121-2-54-8; Vance to
Silveira, Secreto Exclusivo, 27 January 1977, in AAS, mre be 1977.01.27; and SecState to AmEmbassy
Brasília, “Message from the Secretary to Foreign Minister Silveira,” Conﬁdential, 27 January 1977, in
RAC/JCL, NLC-133-120-7-46-3.

134. AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, “U.S.-Brazil Nuclear Relationship,” Secret, 2 February 1977, in
RAC/JCL, NLC-133-121-2-54-8.

135. Silveira to Geisel, “Cooperação nuclear Brasil-RFA: Visita do embaixador alemão,” Informação
ao Senhor Presidente da República, Secreto Exclusivo, 15 February 1977, in AAS, mre pn 1974.08.15.

136. SecState to AmEmbassy Brasília, Cable 1977STATE035757, Secret, 20 February 1977, in
DOS/CFP.

137. “Analise tática da consulta com os norte-americanos,” Secreto, 25 February 1977, in AAS, mre
1974.08.15.

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nuclear issue remained the dominant concern for both sides, the United
States also hoped to use the trip to put sustained pressure on the Brazilian
regime’s record of gross human rights violations, including torture, killings,
and forced exile. Whatever room for accommodation had once existed, it now
disappeared, leading to acrimony and long-lasting friction between the two
countries—as well as between the United States and West Germany—over
sensitive nuclear exports to Brazil.138

Even as U.S. ofﬁcials increasingly came to see Brazil as a nuclear prolifera-
tion risk, they sought to remain the main supplier of sensitive technologies and
to keep Brazil as a major political and diplomatic ally in the Latin American
Cold War. However, the Nixon and Ford administrations, and Kissinger in
particular, failed in this regard. The expanding global nonproliferation regime
and the change it brought to the U.S. government, alongside growing resis-
tance within the U.S. political system to any policy of rapprochement with
dictatorial governments in the developing world, complicated Kissinger’s at-
titude of accommodation vis-à-vis Brazil. As the Brazilian nuclear posture
became increasingly tied to national pride, Kissinger tried to avoid open
confrontation. He understood that his own geopolitical design would suffer if
he lost his key partner in South America, and he was also fully aware that a rift
between the United States and Brazil could beneﬁt other technology suppliers,
such as West Germany.

Kissinger tried but failed to ensure that the presidential transition team
under Carter struck a deal to preserve the political and commercial connec-
tions that the Nixon and Ford administrations had set out to build and re-
tain with Brazil. Kissinger chose to suspend overt opposition to the 1975
Brazil–West Germany nuclear agreement to avoid alienating the Brazilian gov-
ernment, while also seeking a formal commitment from Brazil to renounce
sensitive technologies and urging the FRG to impose a moratorium on the
export of reprocessing technologies to Brazil. As Carter took over, both the
White House and the State Department morphed into the “nonprolifera-
tion agencies” that Kissinger had warned against. Within a year, the Brazil-
ian regime authorized the beginnings of a covert program to enrich uranium
outside any international safeguards.

138. On the meeting in Brasília, see Silveira to Geisel, “Programa nuclear Brasileiro: Entendimentos
com os EUA e com a Holanda,” Secreto Exclusivo, Informação ao Senhor Presidente da República,
n. 48, 2 March 1977, in AAS, mre pn 1975.04.25. See also AmEmbassy Brasília to SecState, Cable
1977BRASIL01616, Secret, 3 March 1977, in DOS/CFP.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Cold War Studies
for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Research for the article
was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientíﬁco e
Tecnológico (CNPq) (grant number 46011/2014-2). The two authors con-
tributed equally to all sections of the article.

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