USUN Files
Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. John C. Ross, Adviser, United States Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly
Comments by Dean Acheson on Disarmament with Particular Reference to Conversation with Mr. Baruch on October 28,42 to Mr. Molotov’s Speech on October 29, and to Senator Austin’s Speech on October 30
I spent three hours with Mr. Acheson Saturday morning43 during which time he developed his whole philosophy on the matter of atomic energy as it related to the general question of disarmament.
He said, first, that it was important to distinguish between international and national control. Second, he said that a clear distinction must be made between enforcement and inspection. On both of these points he said there had been a great deal of public misunderstanding; with particular reference to the enforcement question he said that Mr. Baruch and his people had been trapped in this cul-de-sac.
On the question of enforcement, Mr. Acheson said that there just is not any United States marshal or sheriff who automatically can enforce the law. He said that the situation was very much like that of the relations between the states of the United States. There is no United States Federal authority that can step in in disputes between the states.
It is asserted, he said, that there must be an automatic sanction against a violator. He asked what sanction is automatic, and answering his own question said there just is not any.
He said that the misunderstanding with regard to this matter of enforcement is based on misunderstanding of the true nature of big power relationships. This question must be considered in the light of the basic industrial and economic structures of the big powers. [Page 984] Supposing armaments were reduced to the level of peace forces, you would have to get a treaty with a tremendous emotional driving force. Every nation would be obligated by the treaty to take action against an aggressor, that is, a violator of the treaty.
He then asked who is the possible aggressor? It wouldn’t be any of the small powers because that is not our problem. The possible aggressor in everybody’s mind in the United States is the Soviet Union. What kind of a situation would you have should the Soviet Union violate a treaty? The answer, he felt, was quite simple. Whether within the United Nations or among the signatories of a treaty there would be an almost immediate division into two blocs: Eastern Europe, India, probably China would come under Soviet domination; the United Kingdom, Canada, probably Latin America, and Western Europe would come under United States domination. There would be a rough balance of power and the treaty would, therefore, really be ineffective because you would have war. This is actually the situation which confronts us today without a treaty.
Summarizing what he had said, Mr. Acheson went on that the talk of enforcement is really paper talk. The main point, he said, is treaty or no treaty, will governments take action or will they not. If a treaty would help a little, let’s have a treaty by all means. But meanwhile let’s not kid the American people along. It is perfectly clear that the peace forces envisaged in the Charter would be no good against a major power.
He said that in a recent speech he had tried to touch on this problem subtly by saying that you don’t solve a difficult problem by turning attention to an insoluble one. He said that Mr. Baruch, by his emphasis on enforcement, had gotten us into an insoluble problem.
I then outlined to Mr. Acheson the very tentative views which Senator Austin had expressed the day before (see notes of this conversation on November 1),44 with particular reference to the possibility of finding some middle ground of accommodation with the Russians.
Mr. Acheson commented that he thought Mr. Austin was probably now in the same position that Mr. Byrnes was in a year ago when Mr. Byrnes was thinking along similar lines.
Stating his personal conviction, Mr. Acheson said he felt the Russians were using the United Nations as an instrument for their own purposes and that they do not subscribe to the fundamental spirit of the United Nations.
He said that this situation in the United Nations seemed to him to be comparable to the theory of the liability of government depending directly on its acceptance by the very large majority of the people. He [Page 985] said that any organization, any government, is based on the emotional, spiritual acceptance of it by 95% of the people. When you have 20% of the people who are not going along, the government just does not work. He said this is true in our own country with our strikes and labor difficulties. He said it has been true with the British in Ireland, and [in] Palestine [and] in India. He said that when 20% of the people are against the government its entire ethical foundation is lost.
Going on from this point Mr. Acheson said there were two possible approaches: first, we could support the United Nations and continue our efforts patiently to draw the Soviet Union towards an accommodation with us. Second, plan to lick the hell out of them in 10 or 15 years. It was clear that we were committed to the first and should do it and not diminish our efforts, but that as practical men we should realize that our efforts might not succeed and that we must therefore be prepared, should it be necessary, to adopt the latter course.
He said we obviously must set up an enforcement system but that we should not rely on it too heavily.
This brought him to an analysis of what was meant by inspection. Here again he said there was a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. He made it clear that in the case of atomic energy, inspection as ordinarily conceived made no sense at all. There was absolutely no way by sending inspectors around looking at things to tell what was going on until the very last stages of the production of atomic energy for destructive purposes. At this point the discovery was too late because the final processes were extremely speedy. He said that inspection as ordinarily conceived was misleading in the same way that the lawyer’s doctrine of probing into the intent of the human mind was misleading. He said that any lawyer who had ever engaged in criminal practice realized how extremely difficult, if not impossible, it was to determine criminal intent. Lawyers had been trying for a long time to get away from this doctrine. It was necessary in the matter of atomic energy inspection to get into the field of administrative action. This meant getting all the best people concerned working together in this field toward the use of atomic energy for beneficial purposes.
Relating what he had just said to the question of international or national control, Mr. Acheson said that it was very, very important to realize that by the very nature of the atomic energy enterprise there was no half-way point. It was impossible to stop leaks or diversion of atomic energy for war purposes by inspection at one point or another. There were three great steps in the atomic energy field—mining, production of fissionable materials, and use of fissionable materials. International operation at all three steps was essential. Inspection or international operation at any one or two of the steps was simply worthless.
[Page 986]Digressing somewhat on the subject of the popular conception of inspection, Mr. Acheson said that as in the case of the prohibition, as in the alcohol factory, the whole situation is geared to trick the inspector. Under the circumstances of international control involving the participation of people of various nationalities in all three steps in the atomic energy process, foreign nationals would be in the atomic plants not as aliens but as operators; inspection would be an incidental function growing out of operation.
Mr. Acheson then discussed other weapons of mass destruction. The problem here was considerably more difficult because less tangible. On the other hand, there was some room for speculation whether the same principle we had been endeavoring to apply in the atomic energy field might not be applied in the other weapons field. If we could get into the other weapons field the best people, that is, scientists, whether Russian, British, French, or American, for the positive development of our knowledge towards beneficial purposes, the best people then would simply not be available for destructive development. In this way, for example, we might make great strides in developing the science of immunology and related sciences.
Digressing a moment, Mr. Acheson said that when people talked about stopping the production of fissionable materials they failed to realize that this was not quite as simple as the apparently similar concept of sinking navies. It would be impossible for us to stop the production of fissionable materials without losing the tremendous investment it was possible for us to make as a result of the war pressure and which we could hardly hope to regain. The vast potentialities of atomic energy for peaceful purposes would thus be lost.
Mr. Acheson then went on to say that Mr. Baruch had added the concept of sanction in the veto to our atomic energy presentation. He said that Mr. Swope was sick of it and would like to get away from these two points. The Baruch staff was trying to get out of this situation by some interpretation of Article 51 in the sense of there being not only a right but an obligation of self-defense. This is what Eberstadt probably thinks. Mr. Acheson thought that this was not a very important concept. Mr. Acheson then went on to mention a telegram which had been sent down the night before by John Hancock for him which referred to Stalin’s statement about the Soviet willingness to accept international control and a conversation which had taken place with Alexandroff, the Russian scientist attached to the Atomic Energy Commission.45
Coming specifically to the question which Mr. Baruch had raised with Mr. Acheson and which he had previously raised with the President [Page 987] and Secretary Byrnes, namely, whether we should not press for a showdown vote in the Atomic Energy Commission with the Russians, Mr. Acheson said it seemed to him that there were two considerations involved; one, possible relationship of such a vote to the work of the Council of Foreign Ministers and, second, whether as a matter of policy it would be a good thing to have such a vote anyhow. On the Council of Foreign Ministers point, this, of course, was something which the Secretary himself would have to decide.
On the question of policy, Mr. Acheson said that we had to decide whether we had reached a point of irreconcilable difference or not with the U.S.S.R., or whether taking the recent report of the scientists attached to the Atomic Energy Commission as a basis, we could not proceed intelligently by a committee process to the examination of the consequences of control or lack of control, national or international, at each of the three atomic energy steps. Such a study, he said, might reasonably be completed in thirty or ninety days and would really give a scientific, rather than a political, basis for determining whether there is some possibility of reconciling our differences with the Russians.
Digressing again for a moment, he said that some people say you should be able to control atomic energy much as the traffic in opium is controlled, but the situation here was entirely different. In the opium case violators were individuals and could readily be punished. In the atomic energy case, or the disarmament case, violators are states and you could hardly expect states to police themselves.
Further on the question of pressing for a vote in the Atomic Energy Commission, Mr. Acheson doubted whether Mr. Baruch actually had the ten votes he thought he had. He doubted whether the other governments actually agreed with Mr. Baruch’s position. He said he had definite information that the British did not agree.
Mr. Cohen, who came into the room at about this time, said that even if some country did agree, they would perhaps not want to vote against the Russians on such an important issue.
Mr. Marks at about this point had also come into the room and our discussion continued with particular reference to the Molotov general disarmament proposals. The thought was developed more or less jointly among us that we should avoid any line of playing into the Russian hand to such an extent that general disarmament would swamp our atomic energy objectives. Mr. Marks made a very strong case against Soviet intransigent unwillingness to consider the necessity of international control with adequate safeguards. He argued strongly in support of the Baruch proposal to force a showdown vote.
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Acheson had a somewhat softer attitude and it [Page 988] was more or less generally agreed that it was important to let Mr. Baruch take his vote but that the vote should not be taken in the sense of any drawing of a final issue but more in the sense of a definitive taking stock of progress to date.
It was agreed that Mr. Baruch should not be dissuaded, that Senator Austin and Mr. Baruch should both consult Mr. Byrnes, that while the sharpening of a final issue should be avoided, sharpening of the fundamental issue of Soviet intransigence against international control was necessary.