Where Armament Meets Disarmament:

...The divergent perspectives of defense and disarmament converge on the inspection question...

...It was not nearly as simple as Vice President Richard Nixon thought in October 1956...

...This is especially true when we have no way of assuring that the Soviet Union has refrained from secret tests...

...Despite our latest official position in favor of a treaty coupled with a moratorium on small bomb tests, forces in the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission remain vitally interested in resuming tests...

...The Institute could also be a clearing house for arms control proposals—deliberately organized to bring ideas and people together on a practical basis for peace...

...Just behind them are eight more countries with a similar prospect over a slightly longer period of time...

...Now that the French example is before them, the fifth to Nth powers can confidently be expected to exert increasing pressure on us, the British and the Russians to placate in one manner or another their desire for nuclear prestige...

...It would initiate the process of international controls for which we have waited so long, and upon which the chances for all further progress directly depend...

...To the degree that forces within the governments involved desire to test regardless of whether tests can be detected, a solution for the detection problem would not end this controversy...

...By the same token, our chances for a world of greater safety and freedom depend on our ability to develop multiple strategies for peace...

...Some who recognize this fact recoil from what they see and tell us that our only alternative is to leave the outcome to fate...

...vival, our problem is how to curtail it...

...The Constitutional, legal and policy arguments which these developments have opened up are still gathering clouds on Capitol Hill...

...Nor was it as simple as Nixon indicated in November 1959, when he took the other side of the question and announced that anyone urging a resumption of nuclear tests was "ignorant of the facts" (a statement, incidentally, which throws a curious shadow over President Eisenhower's subsequent decision that pending any further moratorium or agreement we consider ourselves "free to resume testing...

...At the same time, we know that an indefinite suspension of tests without controls could damage our military capability...

...In its helpful new pamphlet, "The Nth Country Problem and Arms Control," the National Planning Association suggests that 11 more countries have the scientific and industrial capacity to follow France into the nuclear club with actual weapons over the next five years: Belgium...

...Leading members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy have publicly challenged the legal propriety of such a move...

...But it is high time that we faced these issues for what they are: two sides of the same coin...

...The strategy itself was the normal outgrowth of our fixation on big bombs and balanced budgets...

...But such defeatism, however understandable, is potentially catastrophic...

...Additional examples keep occurring: • Why has so little been done to implement the report issued on March 16, 1959 by a panel of seismologists under the direction of Lloyd V. Berkner...

...By Chester Bowles WHERE ARMAMENT MEETS DISARMAMENT A vast new research program is required to develop policies for both simultaneously FEW PUBLIC policies have been subjected to more scrutiny and pressure in the last few years than the twin issues of arms and arms control...

...Such a move could be a precedent for similar action in the case of other allies...

...when he denounced Adlai Stevenson's test suspension proposal as "catastrophic nonsense...

...THE CONTROVERSY over the sharing of nuclear weapons is the second major current example of how the different perspectives of defense and disarmament converge in the scientific and technical context of controls...

...Quite competent and cool observers believe that the uproar would bring about a special meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations to protest against our action, and that if the question were put to a vote, we should be lucky to get 10 votes out of 30...

...India...

...Britain and the Soviet Union to preserve their nuclear monopoly in the absence of international controls...

...If he is asked whether he thinks it will ever be possible to get missiles under international control, he is likely to answer unhesitatingly, "No...

...Our strategic planners are legitimately worried because the amount of available reaction time in case of attack is coming closer and closer to zero...

...There are critics who insist that the task is impossible...

...Why is the push not being made...

...A Congressman from Connecticut, he has served as Governor of that state (1949-51) and as Ambassador to India (1951-53...

...Lippmann may be exaggerating a little, but there can be no doubt that the damage to our moral position would be enormous if we resumed tests...

...Reportedly, too, the Administration wants to do this under the President's "inherent powers" as Commander-in-Chief...

...Out of mutual danger, too, may come new opportunities for agreements based on mutual interest...

...More reliable scientific preparation, in depth, might already have saved us much time, uncertainty and embarrassment...

...These two perspectives seem destined to live or die together, an inseparable if unstable combination...

...There can be little private gratification in the Kremlin, for instance, over the prospect of an independent nuclear capability in Communist China or in restless East Germany...

...He has tentatively suggested that one solution might be an atomic-armed international "fire brigade" to operate under NATO colors, but the proposal is still an embryonic one and Administration lawyers are desperately striving to prove that the "custody" of nuclear warheads would technically remain in American hands...

...In case of war, he stresses, there won't be time to negotiate a formal transfer...

...The Administration reportedly now wants to make atomic weapons available to Britain as warheads for IRBMs manned by British crews and for air-to-air missiles carried by British interceptors...

...We are, I am afraid, living in a fool's paradise of complacency...

...And one highly important factor which lends an air of unreality to the argument about whether we should or should not resume tests is the feeling that we are not really able to resume them anyway...

...Only last July, many Senators and Congressmen expressed their misgivings over the substance and manner of the Administration's handling of certain new agreements with seven NATO countries permitting the exchange of nuclear information...

...In its recent significant study on "The USSR and Eastern Europe," prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Columbia-Harvard Research Group may have had this in mind when it said: "In the long run...

...Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Communist China...

...The greatest current controversies in the nuclear field are excellent up-to-date examples...

...Yet the costs and the risks of not moving ahead in these areas are mounting daily...

...The continuing effectiveness of our deterrent strategy now depends on our ability to muster the skill, nerve and wherewithal to equip ourselves with multiple strategies for defense...

...First, there was the astonishing attempt to bottle up a Constitutional debate by a classified presentation to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy...

...Such arrangements might be based on accepting the proposition that there is no NATO equality of weapons, manpower, finances or industrial production...

...At a press conference on February 3 the President himself, to the consternation of his advisers, undermined carefully presented Defense and State Department views by adopting the contrary approach that a change would be needed in the present atomic energy law which prohibits "'transfers" of weapons from our "custody" and "control...

...All of this means that the nuclear club is the least exclusive club in the world, and new members can in no sense be vetoed at the whim of the self-conscious elite who now belong...

...Similarly, the answer is not likely to be found in the simple satisfaction of hoarding our own nuclear weapons while refusing to consider the very real prospect of the spread of nuclear weapons over our objection and without our help...

...Thus we are facing another real dilemma...

...A brief resume of each might shed light on the problems we can continue to expect as we pursue rearmament and disarmament together...

...The duration of the moratorium on small bomb testing still has to be decided...

...we may come to regard the Russians as our most conservative and responsible adversary, as we explore the possibilities of common interest in limiting certain aspects of the arms race...

...Since we have not moved ahead with vigor to close this major technical gap in the past, it is essential that we do so now...

...Internal NATO involvement of non-nuclear members in control, supervision, observation and planning activities might help to divert the ambitions of some members to emulate France...

...If one asks his 10-year-old son today whether in his lifetime he thinks it might be possible to take a fishing trip to the moon, the boy is likely to answer unhesitatingly, "Yes...

...The chances are that neither of these issues will be resolved prior to the summit meeting...

...The latest Soviet proposal and the Eisenhower-Macmillan counterproposal have now brought within striking distance the possibility for a summit agreement on a nuclear test ban...

...Canada, West Germany...

...From the defense perspective, General Lauris Norstad has been warning that the need for instantaneous defensive action in case of attack now requires that nuclear warheads be made available to some of our allies on some new basis inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization...

...And where is our system of values...

...Yet Phillip Farley, the State Department expert on disarmament and atomic energy, recently told the Senate Disarmament Subcommittee that the United States would benefit more than any other nation from a test ban...

...It would be an excellent center for coordinating our participation in the joint research activities which may be agreed upon with the Soviet Union...

...Once more what chance there may be for reconciliation lies in the field of control systems...

...It might involve general acceptance throughout the alliance of assignments of roles and missions to avoid useless rivalries and duplication...

...Moreover, the pitfalls which could prevent final agreement are still very much with us...

...If the Institute operates as I hope it would operate, we will be able to saw with more assurance than we can today that our efforts for arms control are a vital part of American policy...

...They concern nuclear tests and the transfer of nuclear weapons...

...Development of a credible, overall NATO nuclear deterrent strategy itself could reduce the provocations of separate nuclear deterrents and even reassure the Russians...

...Surely our patient negotiators, now in the 18th month of the three-power nuclear test talks in Geneva, do not regard the issue as a simple one...

...Yet the expectation is that if the May 16 summit meeting results in agreement on any subject, that subject is likely to have something to do with arms control...

...Fourth, the Administration's eagerness to avoid a Congressional debate on this subject has been especially disquieting...

...Italy...

...It outlined a three-year program of research and development which it thought would restore to full efficiency the inspection system for bomb tests agreed upon in 1958 at Geneva...

...This may appear extraordinary, but it is in no sense impossible...

...One view stresses the need for a wider sharing of nuclear weapons, arguing that denying our allies a capacity which our probable enemy already has is suicidal in an era of split-second strategy...

...In a field in which progress on all sides is difficult, it would be prudent to concentrate on those areas where more accurate scientific information might tip the scales of policy...

...400,000 is one-thousandth of one per cent of our annual defense budget...

...In principle, the USSR has committed itself to accept a complex global monitoring and control system that will include foreign observers and inspectors operating inside Russia...

...Our inadequacy in the field of arms control research is obviously one of our most glaring shortcomings...

...DANGEROUS deficiencies in our military and strategic positions have accrued from our lingering preoccupation with the reckless single strategy of massive retaliation...

...Our nuclear weapons now in Britain, for instance, are physically separated from the missiles which can carry them and which are under British control...

...chairman of the Senate Disarmament Subcommittee, which has done such outstanding and effective work in this field, has sought an appropriation of $400,000 which the State Department wants for its own use in procuring special foreign policy studies relating to disarmament, weapons control and possible technical means for enforcement...

...Viewed from the defense perspective on survival, our problem is how-to keep up with the arms race...

...What system can maximize the dedication of nuclear technology to common purposes and minimize the sense of deprivation which now serves as an incentive for non-nuclear powers to become nuclear...

...This is why a one-year moratorium on small bomb testing, as a quid pro quo for a treaty with a meaningful inspection system, would, I think, be a good bargain—providing it is carefully meshed with an effective joint research program conducted on a crash basis and designed to close the present gap in our ability to detect underground explosions...

...Of course there is still a measurable gulf between the Soviet proposal and the British-American counter-proposal...

...Time and again Senator Hubert Humphrey CD.-Minn...

...Many of our major difficulties stem from attempts to separate these two truths in our thinking...

...What new arrangements inside NATO can be made to present simultaneously the steadiest deterrent and the least provocation to outside aggression...

...But these divergent perspectives, under closer examination, may not be unalterably opposed...

...The answers are not likely to be found in the indiscriminate granting of nuclear weapons to just any ally, as some of the President's press conference remarks might be read to favor...

...Clearly, our defense debacle and our disarmament debacle are interrelated (although to a degree each has an inner logic of its own...

...Walter Lippmann has suggested that if we did "there would be an uproar around the world...

...Consequently, the central question facing us at the moment is how to pursue simultaneously the policies of rearmament and disarmament, of arms and arms control...

...Japan, Sweden, Switzerland...

...A treaty based on these propositions would be a tremendous step forward, even if it did not cover the presently undetectable small bomb tests conducted underground...

...The Arms Control Research Institute would conduct studies in the physical, natural and social sciences relevant to specific disarmament issues...

...Many distinguished atomic scientists now feel that the addition to the detection network of a series of unmanned seismic stations which could pick up small earth shocks might get the Geneva test conference over its last hurdles...

...On specific issues these policies would seem to pull naturally in opposite directions...

...Second, the President's remarks suggested that signals had once more been seriously crossed between the White House and the departments concerned...

...Once more there would seem to be surface evidence that the defense and disarmament perspectives are not complementary...

...Press reports indicate that preparations are underway for the resumption of certain nuclear tests within a matter of months if the talks in Geneva and Paris fail...

...Viewed from the human perspective on surCHESTER BOWLES, advisor to Senator John F, Kennedy in his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination, was recently appointed chairman of the party's Platform Committee...

...Joint scientific research inside NATO could be of great potential value in the fields of both arms and arms control...

...I have already discussed instances where advance technical preparation in depth might have spelled progress where we now have frustration and defeat...

...even their moods seem competitive...

...Critical differences remain over the number and kind of on-site and off-site inspections to be provided under the treaty...

...No one who really hopes for the successful conclusion of the test negotiations will readily agree that nuclear tests, however small, should be resumed as long as there remains a chance, however small, that agreement will be reached...

...It has always been highly improbable that the world's other 90 nations would be content to allow the United States...

...We propose to give this new agency the responsibility for a vast new research effort to fill those gaps which science and technology can fill in our preparation for peace and disarmament...

...NUCLEAR TESTING has never been a simple issue...

...What will end it short of catastrophe, I do not pretend to know...

...One obvious area for effort is to improve the scientific underpinning of the controversy over the detection of underground tests...

...They center around two fundamental truths: (1) Arms races throughout history have usually ended in war...

...But it would end a source of tremendous confusion and obstruction which has hitherto vexed all of our arms control efforts, and it is the only way our defense planners can be assured that the technological prohibitions flowing from a complete test ban will apply against the Soviet Union too...

...They are concerned over how to speed the transfer of nuclear weapons for use if and when an attack occurs...

...It is probably predicated on new procedural answers to this order of questions: What specific steps, if any, are consistent with both defense and disarmament requirements...

...But I do know that we have a right to worry, and we have an obligation to propose those things which seem sensible...

...2) Unpreparedness and unilateral or unsafeguarded disarmament have usually ended in national catastrophe...

...Seventeen articles out of a proposed 22-article treaty have been agreed upon...

...The other view stresses the equally realistic danger that a further proliferation of weapons increases the likelihood that they will never be brought under control, and that the dangers of the accidental or deliberate triggering of a nuclear war will be correspondingly enhanced...

...If current negotiations fail, we will still not be able to resume testing without bearing the full brunt of world opinion...

...Third, there is a growing feeling that what were intended to be specific Congressional restrictions on the custody and control of nuclear weapons have been greatly eased by Administrative interpretation...

...A fresh approach to our dilemma demands the recognition of both propositions as parallel routes to disaster...

...Time and again the funds have been refused...

...One of the latter is Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy's new proposal for an Arms Control Research Institute embodied in a bill he has introduced in the Senate, and in a companion bill which I have introduced in the House...

...Outside NATO the threatened spread of nuclear weapons is bound to have equally profound effects...

...It would set into motion the world's first trial international inspection system...

...Since October 31, 1958, when these talks began, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union have been painfully attempting to find an acceptable formula for inspection and control to allow the discontinuance of tests...

...They regard the policies as inherently conflicting—economically at odds, politically unmanageable and psychologically frustrating...

...Viewing matters from a defense perspective, they are eager to make cleaner bombs, test the proposed nuclear charges for the warheads of the Polaris and Minuteman missiles, improve the small warheads for the Nike-Zeus anti-missile and develop small, tactical, battlefield weapons...

...Naturally, from the disarmament perspective, there has long been active concern over the spread of nuclear weapons...

...His books include The New Dimensions of Peace and American Policy in a Revolutionary World...

...Within NATO it may be timely and possible, under the urgency of these new pressures, to negotiate new arrangements for a recognized and equitable division of labor...

...True, the attention given to arms has far exceeded that given to arms control, but our policies on both issues have been equally confused and the controversies surrounding them have refused to fall into any particular pattern...

...If we allow the test ban negotiations to drag on, the Russians will get what they have wanted all along—an informal, de facto suspension of tests which leaves the rest of the world without any means to determine whether the USSR is behaving...