Disarmament: Hope or Trap?
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
PERSPECTIVES Disarmament: Hope or Trap? By William Henry Chamberlin To borrow a phrase from the long obsolete Kellogg Pact, never has there been a time when reason spoke out so strongly for...
...Surely it makes little political or military sense to withhold from our allies information and weapons which are now accessible to our adversaries...
...Science, and particularly atomic science, is decidedly unstatic...
...Is it possible to achieve a working inspection system so elaborate as to close every loophole, to look over the shoulder of every nuclear scientist...
...The USSR did not risk the propaganda disadvantage of breaking the test moratorium merely for the fun of letting off a series of loud bangs...
...The gloominess of present prospects for disarmament derives from two principal sources: 1) the special nature of Soviet Communism...
...In the light of our experiences in two world wars, there can be little expectation that a war fought with nuclear weapons will lead to any positive goals...
...To begin with, the United States would have risked becoming hopelessly second-class in nuclear striking and defense power...
...The political and moral consequences of such a discovery would not be pleasant to contemplate...
...Few people would be willing to argue the negative in a debate on the proposition that a nuclear war would be one of the greatest catastrophes in the long and troubled history of the human race...
...New discoveries can alter the balance of power drastically...
...Meanwhile, the Soviet Union would have gone ahead with test series after test series...
...and 2) the peculiar difficulties of assuring compliance with an arms agreement in an age when swift scientific changes make for rapid obsolescence of old weapons and the continual discovery of new ones...
...In view of the Soviet Union's record in disarmament negotiations, it is surprising that any American should have questioned the necessity of the current U.S...
...And never has there been so much official talk of disarmament as a goal to be sought...
...already has formidable destructive capacity, further experimentation is no longer necessary...
...Before the age of nuclear weapons, it was not too difficult to make a fairly reliable inventory of such factors in national military strength as men under arms, tanks, planes, warships, etc...
...Its purpose, clearly, was to advance the capabilities of its nuclear weapons...
...Indeed, if President Kennedy is open to criticism, it is for not ordering the resumption of U.S...
...Over and above the Kremlin's repeatedly proven bad faith, the problem of maintaining an inspected and controlled system of disarmament is astonishingly complicated...
...Should the U.S...
...tests immediately after Nikita Khrushchev violated the test moratorium last September...
...The problem has at least been vastly simplified for us by the Soviet Union's flat refusal to accept any form of inspection whatever...
...It might be advisable, in addition, to talk less about disarmament and more about strengthening the nuclear weapons capacity of our partners in NATO...
...And, according to qualified American scientists, the Soviet Union did to some extent accomplish what it set out to do, especially in the vital field of developing an antimissile missile...
...Today, however, some of the deadliest weapons are developed covertly in science laboratories...
...In the long view, I believe, an open arms race is less dangerous to peace and national security than an inspection system full of opportunities for evasion...
...Yet, as a matter of practical policy, never has disarmament seemed so far from achievement...
...sit on its hands and allow the USSR to continue its researches and experiments, we might very well wake some day to find our own nuclear power blunted while the Soviets' was greatly increased...
...It is profoundly fallacious to argue that, because the U.S...
...atmospheric tests in the Pacific...
...By William Henry Chamberlin To borrow a phrase from the long obsolete Kellogg Pact, never has there been a time when reason spoke out so strongly for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy...
...Despite these considerations, the outlook for a disarmament agreement that represents a hope—and not a trap—seems extremely dim...
...If President Kennedy had been foolish enough to defer to the wishes of some of this nation's well-meaning but fuzzy-minded anti-nuclear test organizations, what might reasonably have been expected...
Vol. 45 • May 1962 • No. 11
