Piecemeal Disarmament

...Perhaps the clue to this apparent inconsistency lies in the contrast between a comprehensive disarmament agreement which is limited regionally, and a measure of partial disarmament which is world-wide in scope and directly involves the homelands of Russia and China in inspection and control by non-Communist agents...

...This idea may also be too sophisticated to be realistic...

...On the other hand, Khrushchev's objection to an initial verification of each side's total forces is not unreasonable...

...Thus, though no doubt the recent Soviet-American statement on the principles of disarmament marks a step forward, there is small ground for hope that the two countries will make rapid progress toward a practical program for comprehensive disarmament by stages...

...If this were not so, the side which has given too low a figure for its initial strength would increase its superiority over the other with each reduction made...

...Moreover, as national armaments are reduced, the composition and powers of the international disarmament authority assume a more and more critical importance...

...Above all, if it worked, the example of such cooperation on security might embolden both sides to experiment with variants of the regional concept...

...In fact, it may be wiser to see regional agreements about areas outside the USSR not so much in the context of disarmament—a word to which a very rigid meaning is now given by Soviet orthodoxy —as in the context of security arrangements between Russia and her potential enemies, a persistent theme in Soviet diplomacy...

...But strategic asymmetry will still pose difficult problems for any program of comprehensive disarmament by stages: It is not easy to relate reductions in the foreign military bases on which the West depends with restrictions on Russia's ability to deploy her large land armies anywhere on her periphery in Europe and Asia...

...I believe that in Europe there is still just time for the U.S...

...But it would at least gain time for progress on other problems of disarmament —half of the potential members of the nuclear club in the next 10 years would be directly affected...

...This development would remove some of the USSR's objections to formal inspection systems for partial disarmament measures...

...Yet even the Russians have had to concede that a comprehensive disarmament agreement can only be achieved by stages over a substantial period of time...

...If so, the chances of adapting the pattern of world politics to meet the situation could be decisively improved if in Europe, Russia and the West have begun at last to seek their security in cooperation rather than competition...

...Inspection would be less of a bogy to Russia in a regional agreement: With the main forces of both sides unaffected, the West could not apply the information received to any decisive military advantage, and existing espionage and reconnaissance systems leave the Soviets few secrets in Eastern Europe anyway...

...this may be the underlying reason for the collapse of the test ban talks...

...Certainly the technical and political problems of inspection become less formidable as the area in which they are to apply is extended...

...Denis Healey is Labor Member of Parliament for South East Leeds...

...This issue underlies Khrushchev's demand for a troika to run the United Nations Secretariat—as indeed he has admitted...

...Yet Khrushchev has repeatedly insisted that he is not prepared to consider measures of partial disarmament, still less the sort of arms control measures so much discussed in the United States, whose purpose is essentially to stabilize the balance of military force at the present level...

...Although some psychological advantage may be gained by relating each stage in such a plan to the final goal of total disarmament, the fundamental problem remains: Given the asymmetry of the strategic situation of the Communist and Western powers, it is very difficult to find a means of relating any degree of partial disarmament to an appropriate system of control which does not give an unfair advantage to one side...

...Perhaps the most interesting possibility, one which has been aired by Soviet as well as Western experts, is that of approaching comprehensive disarmament of the great powers themselves by dividing each country into a number of regions to be chosen in turn by its adversary for total disarmament under control...

...Khrushchev's attempt to keep the Soviet Union's new series of nuclear tests secret from the Russian people shows that even he is sensitive to public pressure in this field...

...SECURITY THROUGH COOPERATION Piecemeal Disarmament By Denis Healey London Public opinion itself is powerful enough to insure that governments of the great powers will continue to proclaim general and comprehensive disarmament a major policy goal...

...If United States confidence is justified, most Russian military secrets will be revealed to the West as it develops effective reconnaissance satellites...

...The events of the last few months should have warned the West that NATO cannot hope to shift the balance of conventional forces in its favor when it is so much easier for Russia to reinforce her own troops from the Soviet hinterland...

...I do not think this means all hope of disarmament is dead for the time being...

...and Russia to obtain the consent of their allies to such an agreement, providing it is linked with a satisfactory settlement of political issues like Berlin...

...The Western powers surely cannot be blamed for insisting that the control body be allowed to verify the level of arms and forces remaining after any measure of disarmament has been carried out...

...Under this plan, neither side would expose all its military secrets to the other until the last stage, but the right of the adversary to choose the order in which the regions would be brought into the disarmament system— rather like the quota of on-site inspection in the proposed atomic test ban agreement—would enormously reduce the chance of keeping a decisive military superiority undiscovered...

...As Western intelligence improves, partial control systems may become politically more feasible in particular fields—e.g., over the means of delivery for strategic nuclear weapons...

...When the West attacks him for refusing even in principle to risk Soviet security on the impartiality of an international body, it should remember that the same refusal has been proclaimed in the last year by both Kennedy and de Gaulle...

...Khrushchev has drawn this distinction more than once by using the analogy that the Soviet Union would never allow outsiders into her front parlor or bedroom, though it might permit them in her garden...

...will not be able to resist German pressure for atomic weapons except in the framework of a regional arms control agreement which covers conventional as well as nuclear forces...

...It has long been obvious that, in Central Europe, an area of great political instability, each side has more hope of achieving security by agreement on limiting the arms race than by the hopeless pursuit of a decisive local superiority...

...This was indeed the Soviet leader's public reason for abandoning the search for an agreement to ban nuclear tests just when American concessions seemed to put it within reach...

...True, a regional arms agreement between Russia and the West in Central Europe would not last indefinitely unless followed by further agreements elsewhere, for the type o£ mutual confidence required to sustain it might prove no less indivisible than peace itself...

...Then, too, Khrushchev may be sincere in offering the West total control and inspection once total disarmament is achieved...

...For this reason I believe there is a real chance of negotiating an arms control agreement in Central Europe which, whether rightly called "disarmament" or not, would greatly add to the security of both sides...

...It is, of course, also implicit in the Security Council veto...

...The authority would become increasingly concerned not only with controlling the military balance between the great powers but also with providing a substitute for that balance as the main guarantor of order among the smaller powers, whose relative military strength would tend to grow as comprehensive disarmament got under way...

...But unless disarmament soon begins to reduce the military potential of the great powers themselves, the smaller powers will not tolerate the sort of regional agreement which freezes them permanently in a position of inferiority...

...for such a verification would give the West almost as much secret information as an inspection system required for total disarmament, without the corresponding degree of security against surprise attack...

...In the Far East, Russia has already lost whatever chance she may once have had of getting China's consent to a similar agreement...

...Khrushchev himself has recently revived the Rapacki Plan for arms control in Central Europe as a contribution toward a settlement of the Berlin problem, although this is at first sight a clear example of the sort of partial disarmament he rejects elsewhere...

...The first condition and final result of general and comprehensive disarmament, however, would be world government...

...In the case of Russia, there is the additional difficulty that to conceive of an international society to which both Communist and capitalist countries owe the same allegiance is blasphemy against the doctrinal basis of Soviet diplomacy...

...The emergence of China as a nuclear power in her own right may now be inevitable and imminent, with consequences as disagreeable to the Soviets as to the West...

...At the same time, Khrushchev should have realized that the U.S...