4 July 1968: NATO to External - Prospects for Arms Control

This message from Canada’s delegation to NATO analyzes comments by US Ambassador Cleveland to the NATO Council on the future of arms control. After a year and a half of waiting for a concrete Soviet response to the American proposal to negotiate a limitation of strategic arms, the Soviet Foreign Minister had finally expressed a willingness to move forward at the end of June. External Affairs was informed that Cleveland wanted strategic arms limitation talks to become a permanent subject of Council consultation. 

It is also worth noting that Ambassador Cleveland considered that the Soviet change in position could partly be attributed to “awareness that non-nuclear states were impatient for nuclear states to make progress with arms control.” This would likely have been noted by Ottawa, since Canada was one of those concerned non-nuclear states of influence.