SECURITY THROUGH DISARMAMENT

Kastenmeier, Robert

Security through Disarmament by ROBERT KASTENMEIER FOR MORE than a month last year one of the world's most distinguished groups of experts on disarmament waited impatiently in Washington...

...One of the weakest links in the chain of national security is this failure to do our disarmament homework...
...But McCloy not only has proved his ability and sincerity but has demonstrated that the United States may now be moving to a bipartisan disarmament policy to match its foreign and defense policies...
...This will guarantee him a great deal of independence...
...It is against the awesome power of what President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex" that he warned the American people and the incoming Administration as he was leaving office...
...Even today, newspapers publish spectacular stories about the new neutron bomb which would "absolutely require" that the test ban be lifted...
...The Pentagon argues .quite cogently that talk of peace and of arms reduction tends to undermine the national military "posture...
...position did not crystallize until months after the conference was launched...
...diplomats, politicians, scientists, and generals was unable to agree upon an American disarmament position...
...From 1948 to 1952, for example, there were seldom more than four professionals in the entire State Department working on disarmament—speech writers often formulated policy...
...The word "security" in the title of this proposed agency is important...
...Solid preparation, research, and foresight can prevent possible unemployment if "peace breaks out...
...An accident which can open the doomsday book with one resounding blast is now within the realm of possibility...
...but the AEC finds its glamor appeal useful at a moment when we are considering whether or not to end the moratorium on tests...
...At the conference itself, our delegates pored over slide rules and books after hours...
...Adequate appropriations, coupled with full support of the executive branch of government, will in all likelihood enable U.S...
...First among these are the technical and military questions: How do we actually detect a hidden missile site...
...We can be confident that if the President's bill breaks through the storm clouds hanging over Berlin and is passed in this session of Congress, and if a well qualified man is appointed director, there will be a new birth of life in disarmament thinking...
...However, their primary responsibilities cannot and do not include the possibility of disarmament...
...The over-emphasis on armaments is reflected in the fact that we spend $50,000 on armaments for each dollar on disarmament...
...In 1958 we proposed a conference on surprise attack, and when the Soviet Union accepted this proposal five months later, the United States still had not prepared its position, had not done its technical research, and had not selected its negotiators...
...It would handle all disarmament negotiations...
...In the policy-making struggle, inadequately staffed disarmament teams have been fantastically outnumbered by rival groups within the government...
...f It would act as a powerful council for peace within the executive branch of government...
...Gaetano Martino, former Italian Foreign Minister, seemed excited as its members looked forward to their first high-level talks...
...We know only, as President Eisenhower has said, that "there is no longer any alternative to peace...
...In 1955 When President Eisenhower offered his Open Skies proposal to the Geneva summit meeting, the Administration was divided until the last minute over the basic concepts of the proposal...
...It is similiar to proposals offered earlier by Representative Charles Bennett, Florida Democrat, and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Minnesota Democrat...
...Security through Disarmament by ROBERT KASTENMEIER FOR MORE than a month last year one of the world's most distinguished groups of experts on disarmament waited impatiently in Washington while United States officials frantically worked behind closed doors in a last-ditch attempt to set forth an American disarmament position...
...In June the President moved to develop research for a better strategy by proposing a United States Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security...
...When these agencies join hands with the giant corporations, the strength of the combined lobbies is almost irresistible...
...The sheer numbers of personnel who can master and mobilize facts, figures, and authorities to join ranks on the issue of the moment give added strength to the AEC-Defense position...
...The Disarmament Agency would serve three primary functions: % It would have permanent responsibility for doing a thorough job of disarmament research...
...Although the President's bill is all that one could reasonably ask to fill the disarmament research gap, it will mean nothing unless the agency's director is a man thoroughly prepared for his assignment and dedicated to the goal of disarmament as a realistic possibility...
...If war comes, not only will our own security end, but the ideas and traditions we hold dear will also be wiped out...
...Not only are we obviously ignorant on disarmament...
...Again, we were forced to resort to stop-gap measures in piecing together a position paper...
...The appointment of McCloy, an experienced military expert, a Wall Street banker, and a Republican, to the disarmament post was termed by Khrushchev "putting a goat in the cabbage patch...
...Behind this story of waiting diplomats and half-hearted, hastily written proposals, is the vast American disarmament research gap...
...From the strictly military point of view, therefore, talk of disarmament is a contradiction...
...No nation should delude itself into thinking it has a strategy for the 1960's if that strategy is nothing more than the policies of the last two decades...
...Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security would seek to redress the balance both in disarmament policy-making and in international negotiations...
...The Coolidge team, after laboring the full six months, completed its work but, either because of the ad hoc nature of the group or the limitations of its instructions, its policy paper and conclusions were totally inadequate...
...It would stretch its research to studies of how the United Nations should be reorganized to guarantee world peace and security in a disarmed world...
...There has been no well coordinated, adequately financed, and fully authorized study of new approaches to arms controls and disarmament...
...The group, which included David Ormsby-Gore, British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs...
...Knowing that the problem has been fully and carefully studied, the agency's proposals should carry new weight at the policy-making level and help the President make recommendations to the country with confidence that his proposals are sound...
...other ways must be found to preserve American and world security...
...In these times of increasing arms expenditures and threatening international clouds, it may seem to be a contradiction in terms to talk about disarmament research...
...The President's proposal for a U.S...
...If this happens, we may well be taking the first serious and thoughtful step on a trail marked "Security through Disarmament...
...He will have direct access to the President and have the rank of Undersecretary...
...Later, at the London disarmament talks, the U.S...
...The timing has been such that Defense has been eminently successful in destroying State's bargaining position...
...In another instance, the Atomic Energy Commission announced the possibility of a new "clean" bomb which required testing at a time when test ban talks were being held in London...
...disarmament officials to outline new approaches to disarmament for the first time...
...This unpreparedness with solid research for disarmament has, therefore, weakened us on two counts: Disarmament thinking is unprepared and ill-considered, and, accordingly, we are unable to negotiate from wellconsidered positions...
...The growth of military technology and nuclear power have outmoded war as a method of preserving security...
...The shaky crystal soon shattered when Harold Stassen was unceremoniously dumped and the lack of a prepared and wellbacked American position was exposed publicly...
...Having the President's ear will enable him to give a full account of himself and his agency in the internecine struggles with the Pentagon and the AEC that are liable to break out...
...It stresses the fact that disarmament is not a contradiction but a powerful way to guarantee our security...
...The Pentagon, for example, has announced armed forces cutbacks while the State Department was negotiating total disarmament positions...
...It is not overly optimistic to say that the new proposal for a Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security could well be the most important force for peace in this country...
...They employ power press agent tactics on an extensive and effective scale...
...When, after long delay, the Russians accepted our proposal, we once more were unprepared...
...Notwithstanding this testimony, the mistake was repeated in 1959 at the nuclear test ban conference...
...On his return, our delegation chief, William C. Foster, revealed our lack of preparation by testifying before a Senate subcommittee: "I doubt that we have really given the intense study to the kind of measures which will make this [prevention of surprise attack] possible and which we would have to do before we go back into these further talks...
...the fact that no body of enlightened official opinion on arms control and disarmament exists leaves the field wide open to agencies such as the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Department, which are recognized in Washington as the biggest and most powerful of the cold war lobbies...
...We literally do not know what is feasible and what is possible...
...Even if war is not brought about by planned action, the chances of accidental war are greater with each passing day...
...Newspapers had hailed the arrival of this team of international statesmen...
...scientists were unable to go beyond the most limited technical discussions in their negotiations...
...The war lobbyists extend their activities far beyond the presentation of ideas...
...The agency would be given responsibility for making studies of how to adjust the American economy to a reduction in defense spending...
...In reality, the neutron bomb is not a super-weapon and does not appear to offer its possessor any unique advantage, even if developed...
...In this context, the arms race becomes utter insecurity...
...Finally—and of utmost importance— it would make thorough studies of how the fruits of disarmament can best be managed and controlled...
...His proposal for a research and negotiating agency follows on the heels of my National Peace Agency bill, which thirty other Congressmen joined in introducing, and it carries out the promise of the Democratic platform and the work of the Democratic Advisory Council's Science and Technology Committee...
...Secondly, the Disarmament Agency would be charged with making studies of the political and foreign policy implications of various disarmament proposals...
...Jules Moch, former French Defense Minister...
...But President John F. Kennedy has neatly characterized the irrationality of a purely military strategy: "No leader of any nation should rest content with the precarious equilibrium of terror...
...We had proposed the conference a year earlier...
...Spreading the possibility of settling international disputes and picturing the Russians as capable of rational negotiations tend to humanize an enemy that military men would prefer to paint only as an irrational devil...
...Regretfully, to date we have not made a serious effort to study alternatives to the arms race...
...This would encompass not only such specific diplomatic questions as that of expected German reaction to the military neutralization of central Europe, but study of the fundamental question of how a secure peace can be built...
...Written into the President's proposal are a list of specific research topics, which encompass broad ranges of research...
...A review of past disarmament conferences reveals this profound lack of preparation since the early days of the postwar period...
...The result was so disjointed and unfinished that U.S...
...The Administration's bill was drafted by John J. McCloy, the President's Special Adviser on Disarmament...
...Sincere and dedicated to their cause, these huge government institutions make their views felt with incredible effectiveness...
...It would seem that this should have been a relatively easy task, since six months earlier President Dwight D. Eisenhower had set up a team of highly respected men, headed by Boston lawyer Charles A. Coolidge, to do the spadework for an American disarmament position...
...So dangerous is the proliferation of nuclear weapons that the noted British expert, C. P. Snow, has calculated that there is a statistical certainty of accidental nuclear war within the next ten years...
...How do we know if a tremor is an earthquake or a bomb...
...How can we use modern computors to give inspection teams rapid techniques of accumulating, sorting, and digesting arms control data from hundreds of diverse inspection sites...
...The importance the President attaches to this new agency is best illustrated by the status conferred upon the director...
...But behind the scenes in Washington a flustered group of U.S...

Vol. 25 • September 1961 • No. 9


 
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