Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, National Security Affairs, Foreign Economic Policy, Volume I

USUN Files

The Deputy United States Representative to the Commission for Conventional Armaments (Nash) to the Representative of the Department of the Air Force on the Executive Committee on Regulation of Armaments (Hamilton)

secret

Lake Placid, New York, September 1, 1949.

My Dear General: Since our RAC meeting of the 19th,¹ I have given a good deal of thought to the views advanced at that meeting—benefitted by the detachment and quietude of these Adirondack woods which I have been enjoying for the past week. I have also read and reread the State and Air Force draft papers² which we considered at the meeting of the 19th, as well as the copy of Dean Acheson’s memorandum for Secretary Byrnes³ which you handed me at the meeting and which I found of very great interest.

It seems plain to me that there is no disagreement on the part of anyone concerning our basic objectives or the general principles by which we should govern our efforts to attain them. The only disagreement that I can see is concerning the specific organ or medium to be selected (if the power of selection were to rest with us) for the channelizing of those efforts. As I understand it, the State Department favors the continuation of CCA as the most appropriate organ for this purpose (at least so long as the rest of the General Assembly continues to think so), whereas the military representatives on RAC are of the opinion that the CCA has outlived its usefulness (if ever it had any), is unable to deal with the problem any longer, and should suspend any further activities, leaving the matter for such future consideration as the Security Council may see fit to give to it.

This point of difference seems to me an extremely narrow one. Sometimes functional questions can be quite important (e.g., unification of armed forces), but I do not think this one is of really vital significance. Perhaps I am too much the product of my legal training in that I instinctively favor the maintenance of the status quo unless I can be shown some substantial reason for changing it. Perhaps, also, I am obtuse in failing to appreciate the weight of the arguments which have been advanced for urging a change in the status quo of CCA.

But I feel firm ground beneath me in the conviction that whatever we may have to gain from a change in the status quo of CCA, there is a real danger of serious disadvantages resulting from any determined effort to bring about such a change. Foremost of these disadvantages is the one which I advanced several times at the RAC meeting of the 19th: That affirmative action by the United States to suspend further work by CCA would be seized upon by the Russians and by them held up to the world as proof that the United States is not interested in efforts to promote peace, but is bent on another World War. I do not want to press my “slamming the door” expression, but I have not the slightest doubt but what that would be the label pinned on us by the Russians, if we were to pursue a CCA suspension policy, and I do not think we would be able effectively to distinguish ourselves out from under the weight of the metaphor. To say we are not slamming the door on further discussions of disarmament, but are merely urging the transfer of such discussions from the CCA to the Security Council, would be to invoke a procedural formality which would never be accepted by our friends—much less our enemies—as representing our sole and true motive. And I am concerned most of all about the effect on our friends—at home and abroad—which would result from our strongly urging the abandonment of any further activities on the part of the CCA.

We have established a solid front with our British, French and Canadian friends in the work of CCA during the past six months (and the Chinese, Norwegians, Cubans and Argentinians have been applauding and supporting our united efforts). I would hate to see us incur the risk of impairing that relationship in any way (it would be another matter if they were to come forward with any suggestions concerning a change in the status quo of CCA). At the same time we have held the support of that by no means unimportant element in Congress which goes along with the Atlantic Pact and the Military Assistance Program only so long as they can be reassured that our paramount aims are pacific and not bellicose.

Our friends in Congress may not even be aware of the existence of CCA, much less familiar with its work to date, but they would be extremely sensitive to any charge that the United States was withdrawing from discussions of disarmament—a charge which, as I have said, would inevitably follow any efforts on our part to suspend CCA. And their sensitivity in this respect would, in my opinion, be shared by the public generally, both in America and outside. By the effort to kill it off, CCA would immediately acquire a significance and prominence which it has never enjoyed heretofore. It would thereby become a symbol of something—an intangible but nonetheless very real something—the eternal hope that someday, somehow, the force of arms may be supplanted by the force of world peace. And I think it would be a very grave matter if the United States were to put itself in the position where an accusing finger could be pointed at us as being bent on the destruction of that symbol.

Now coming to a more practical side of the problem: The Acheson memorandum of November 7, 1946, almost prophetically put its finger on the real nerve center of the problem when it pointed out “the futility of any proposals for reduction in armaments unless there is some real possibility of agreement upon effective international safeguards,” and went on to add that “effective international safeguards are impossible without some form of inspection, or international operations, or other measures which involve ready access by an international organization to the various nations of the world.” The Soviets’ opposition to the French proposals for census and verification rests basically on their determination to keep the Iron Curtain pinned tightly against the venting that would be involved in any system of international inspection. The same determination underlies their opposition to the plan for the control of atomic weapons, and all their talk about “impairment of Soviet sovereignty” which would be involved in any system of international control is, in my opinion, only so much smoke to screen the real basis of their opposition.

I think every opportunity should be seized to blow away the smoke of the Soviets’ formal arguments and disclose the real grounds of their position. I think that when they are clearly understood the world will see how untenable those grounds are. I think the “common man” can grasp the imperativeness of an effective system of international control, and I think this issue should be singled out as the masthead of our position and that we should try in every way possible to nail the Soviets to it.

To this end CCA can be made extremely useful. Consideration and discussion of Item III of the Plan of Work—“Adequate Safeguards for a Plan of Disarmament”—would be an unusually appropriate vehicle for developing this utility. Some progress in this direction has already been made in the consideration of the census and verification proposals; the British, French and United States Representatives have all put the needle to the Soviet nerve-center and with some effectiveness The nerve should continue to be probed, and though it would be hoping for too much to say that the probing might ultimately compel the patient to have the tooth extracted, it is by no means unlikely that the sensitiveness can be developed to a point where the patient’s howls of anguish will disclose just where he is hurting.

To say that this probing process can be continued in the Security Council is to suggest that one needle may be as effective as two. Besides what occasion would there be for the Security Council to carry the process forward? Surely the Council would not be disposed to pursue the Plan of Work which has already been developed in CCA. On the other hand, it is not inconceivable that some new agency or organ might be set up to take over the implementation of Article 26 (covering, perhaps, both atomic weapons as well as conventional armaments). Then a new Plan of Work would have to be evolved, a new set of General Principles formulated, and a new opportunity thereby afforded the Soviets to go over again the old grounds of its opposition to what has already been accomplished in these respects.

But I am getting more argumentative than I had intended, so I think it best to sum up my ideas briefly and let them stand without further argument for what they may be worth:

(1) Affirmatively, I think it would be useful to continue the work of CCA with concentration on the vital principle that nothing can be accomplished in the field of disarmament in the absence of effective international control. I think it would be far more useful to proceed with Item III of the Plan of Work than with any further implementation of the census and verification proposals. I think the surest way of forestalling any move on the part of the General Assembly to call for such further implementation would be for the United States (or some other friendly power) to come forward at an early stage with a resolution noting what has been done in the way of the census and verification proposals and asking General Assembly approval thereof as constituting a fair response to its Resolution of 19 November 1948, calling attention in decisive terms to the Soviet opposition to the proposals in CCA and the Security Council, concluding that in the face of such opposition there would be no real point in going forward with any attempt to implement the proposals, and suggesting that the CCA now resume its Plan of Work and go ahead with consideration of Item III.

(2) If agreement cannot be obtained for adoption of the position advanced in. (1) above, then, as the very minimum, I think the United States must refrain from taking any affirmative position with respect to the suspension of further activities by CCA. If sentiment in this direction should be forthcoming from such other source, we could, after evaluating its strength, decide what we should do about supporting it or objecting it. But in the same session of the General Assembly to urge approval of the suspension of both AEC and CCA would be biting off far more than we could chew and I think we would thereby risk our ability to do a thorough job of mastication on the AEC bite which we already have in our mouth. I am not suggesting that we should stand for the continuation of CCA forever and a day. Perhaps after Item III has been thoroughly worked over and the Soviets’ opposition continues undiminished, we will be like the gal from Kansas City and “have gone about as fur as we can go.” But suspension of CCA at that point would be a quite different proposition from such a proposal today. Such a proposal today is, to be short and to the point, simply unsaleable.

Or at least its saleability is beyond the reach of

Sincerely yours,

Frank Nash

1. For the minutes of the meeting of the Executive Committee on Regulation of Armaments, August 19, see p. 122.
2. Documents RAC D–36 and RAC D–36/1, neither printed.
3. For the memorandum by Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, November 7, 1946, see Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. i, p. 1001.