Washington-U.S.A.
COFFIN, TRIS
WASHINGTON—U.S.A. By Tris Coffin Capital Scans New Methods For East-West Negotiation New ideas for breaking what Canada's Lester Pearson calls the "dangerous stalemate in international policy...
...He replied: "I think there is much less danger of their doing it than there was with a man like Hitler...
...Pearson made three other points: • "No state, unless it has aggressive military designs such as those which consumed Nazi leaders in the '30s, is likely to divert to defense any more of its resources and wealth and energy than seems necessary...
...The forces which you and your allies collect for your own security can, in a bad international climate, increase, or seem to increase, someone else's insecurity...
...This thought was then echoed by the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in a statement by 196 individual scientists who asked for "a broad international conference of scientists" to follow and widen the scope of the Pugwash talks...
...On the BBC, he also urged the West to be less eager to buy off nations that threaten to go Communist, relying principally on allies who had the will to defend their own independence even without us...
...At the conclusion, the scientists agreed that nuclear warfare could not be limited to one region and would cause "a disaster of unprecedented magnitude...
...But it is hoped that increasing informal contacts among scientific and intellectual leaders of both sides may, over a period of time, sufficiently alter the political climate to make future negotiations more productive...
...Early in his political career, in September 1952, he said: "For myself, no matter what my future private or official status, I shall never cease working for a real and lasting peace...
...The Pugwash conferences are, in effect, a laboratory for the kind of informal, private East-West discussions that both Pearson and Kennan recommend...
...Arms, produced by fear, out of international tension, have never maintained peace and security except for limited periods...
...Eugene Rabinowitch, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has asked Western scientists to accept this offer because the Russian scientists "recognize the necessity to find a solution to the problem of 'avoiding wars' rather than merely that of 'abolishing' nuclear weapons...
...that nuclear wars must be prevented...
...What is needed is a new and vigorous determination to use every technique of discussion and negotiation that may be available, or, more important, that can be made available, for the solution of the tangled, frightening problems that divide today, in fear and hostility, the two power-blocs and thereby endanger peace...
...asked Kennan if there was a danger of the Soviets going berserk and starting war...
...By Tris Coffin Capital Scans New Methods For East-West Negotiation New ideas for breaking what Canada's Lester Pearson calls the "dangerous stalemate in international policy today" are being studied and avidly discussed in the White House, State Department and on Capitol Hill...
...Among the ideas stirring Washington are those of three men: Lester Pearson, winner of the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize and former Canadian Foreign Minister...
...Communist, capitalist and socialist have been sitting down together in their shirtsleeves...
...President Eisenhower is reported to be definitely interested in going before the United Nations with a new and dramatic appeal for world peace, and is casting about for proposals he might submit...
...Last July, 24 Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Western scientists met at Pugwash...
...frank, serious and complete exchanges of views—especially between Moscow and Washington—through diplomatic and political channels...
...In the Canadian Parliament, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker suggested that a meeting of world scientists might be best handled according to the Pugwash formula, while Pearson noted: "Such a meeting might have good results and certainly should do no harm provided that the Soviet scientists were in a position to speak—as I believe ours would speak—as individuals and not merely as the mouthpiece of the Russian Communist policy or propaganda...
...Mv impression is that they are quite cautious people in that respect...
...I favor conferences where serious-minded people will recognize that differences in religions, in political approach, in economics and centuries of different environment are not necessarily a bar to peace...
...and USSR...
...Dr...
...President Eisenhower has shown an interest in the Pugwash talks and their informal approach...
...According to Eaton, "It made for a remarkable community where the cards were all on the table, where everyone was above board with everyone else...
...They included the secretary-general of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the vice-rector of Peking University, the former director-general of the UN World Health Organization, Japanese and American Nobel Prize-winners in science, the executive vice-president of the Atomic Scientists Association of Britain, and the editor of the U.S...
...No one, in the present state of world tension, expects such private meetings to produce immediate, startling solutions to the world's outstanding political problems...
...Therefore, the best defense of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war and international agreements which will put peace on a stronger foundation than the terror of destruction...
...A vicious chain reaction begins...
...Ambassador to Russia...
...His interest is shared by Senator Wiley, ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, who said: "We must keep the door open for reason and judgment to come in by exchanging ideas in quiet, off the record...
...Following this, the Science Council of Japan resolved in October: "We consider that the meeting of scientists at Pugwash is of great significance, support the spirit of the statement, and hope that meetings of scientists of the same nature will be held in the future on a more extensive scale...
...specifically, he urged Europe and America to "learn to live without" the Arab East...
...Kennan recommended "channels of communication to other countries, including our adversaries, which are private, and through which one can have a different type of discussion than one can have before the cameras and press correspondents...
...We must keep on trying to solve problems, one by one, stage by stage, if not on the basis of confidence and cooperation, at least on that of mutual toleration and self-interest . [not] a Big Two or a Big Three or a Big Four [meeting] at the summit, where the fooling is precarious and the winds blow hard, but...
...George F. Kennan, former U.S...
...The Soviet statement said: "We Soviet scientists express our full readiness for common effort with scientists of other countries to discuss any proposals directed toward the prevention of atomic war, the creation of secure peace and tranquility...
...Eaton recommended that such talks be held privately (not under Government auspices) in either Canada, the West Indies, or India...
...In these hearings and again more recently in his London lectures, Ken-nan suggested that the I nitcd States might stimulate a mutual withdrawal of armed forces from Germany...
...Kennan told the Senate Disarmament Subcommittee earlier this year that he did not consider the USSR an immediate military threat, that the Kremlin could be appealed to successfully on the basis of self-interest, and that agreements reached on this basis might be kept...
...Arab, Jew and Christian...
...and that continued test explosions spread leukemia and bone cancer with an ever-expanding risk...
...I do not think that is the nature of their program...
...The economic burden of armaments is now almost overpowering...
...Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
...There was no agenda, no daily interviews or press conferences...
...In the past, the end result has always been not peace but the explosion of war...
...For the past three years, scholars, statesmen, businessmen, scientists, educators and editors...
...He is happiest in the role of peace-maker and has an almost emotional feeling about himself as a soldier turning swords into plowshares...
...In Oslo, Pearson said: "The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy eventually we will have total war...
...and Cyrus Eaton, financier and host to the informal international meetings at Pugwash, Nova Scotia...
...second, if it were not allowed to obscure the fact that it is the policy of governments and not the views of individual scientists that are, in the last analysis, decisive...
...There is only one way you can win World War III and that is to prevent it...
...Senator Alexander Wilev (R.-Wis...
...He also urged constant exchanges between scientists, educators, artists and other people of the U.S...
...I think it is a mistake to regard them as men who are only looking for a moment to launch a military onslaught on the rest of the world...
...Economic cooperation and free trade should be widened...
Vol. 40 • December 1957 • No. 51
