Abstract

Along the lines of the initial proposal of US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in May 1965, the NATO Nuclear Planning Group was aimed at being a «select committee» where Alliance nuclear policy could be discussed at the highest level among a limited number of member states: the Group was to engage the Defense Ministers in confidential and concrete discussions on nuclear issues with no verbatim records, and was to be chaired by NATO Secretary General. Despite the representative role of the NPG chairman, Italian SG Manlio Brosio played an active part within the Group, by presenting his own proposals to member states and by engaging in what Brosio himself called his «long-lasting struggle» to include the so-called «small nuclear weapons» in NATO strategy, and to renew the North Atlantic deterrent. Due to the very functioning of the Group (the representative role of the chairman and the scarcity of official NPG records), the part played by Brosio at the NPG level has not yet been highlighted. Based on Brosio’s archives and on NATO archival material, this article is an attempt to fill the gap of the existing studies on the NPG, by examining the role of the Italian Secretary General in the first years of the Group and his personal contribution to develop guidelines for the tactical use of nuclear weapons. Also, it shows how – despite the limits of his role, the dissent of the United States, and his own doubts about the NPG – Brosio fostered his ideas within the new committee, and earned a reputation as an expert of nuclear issues – another mostly unknown aspect of his secretariat.