USUN Files1

Memorandum by the Deputy United States Representative to the Commission for Conventional Armaments ( Osborn )2

To:

  • Admiral H. K. Hewitt, USN
  • General W. D. Crittenberger, U. S. Army
  • General H. R. Harmon, U. S. Air Force
  • United States Mission to the United Nations

Subject: CCA

With your intimate knowledge of the situation here, I believe I should inform you of the urgency of the work in the CCA.

I am Chairman of the Commission this month and it will be meeting not later than the week beginning January 17th.

The Commission has a new mandate from the General Assembly under which it will formulate plans for an international agency whose sole function at first will be to receive information on arms and armaments verified on the spot and publish it. Before we start on this work the question will arise as to whether we should first complete the unfinished business of the Commission. This unfinished business consists of sending to the Security Council an interim report which includes the Commission’s resolution on item 2 of the plan of work.3 This resolution [Page 13] has already been approved by the Commission by a vote of 9 to 2. It provides, among other things, that the regulation and reduction of armaments can only be effected in an atmosphere of international confidence, of which one of the essential conditions is the international control of atomic energy.

We have already voted this resolution, but we have not sent it to the Security Council and until we do we can always change our minds and reverse our vote, though this might be difficult. I myself have very serious doubts as to whether we want to advise the Security Council that a reduction in the Russian arms can only take place after we have destroyed all of our atomic weapons and the means of producing them. It seems to me that the decision to take this position arose out of conditions existing two or more years ago and which no longer apply. I feel so strongly about this that I hesitate to carry out my previous instructions unless I am specifically advised that they apply equally to the present situation.

I have asked Mr. Elliott4 to take this matter up in the RAC and get a reply from the Services before the 17th of January. Anything you can do towards expediting this matter will be greatly appreciated.

The next matter to come up will be of the same nature. After the first two or three meetings, the CCA will undoubtedly start actual work to carry out the mandate of the General Assembly. If before that time I am clearly informed as to the position of the United States, which of course will be determined almost wholly by the decision of the Services, I will be in a position to conduct an intelligent negotiation with some hopes of obtaining U.S. objectives. If, however, I am without instructions during the period when this work begins to take form, we can give much less assurance that the form the work takes will be in the long run acceptable. This matter is also being put before the RAC by Mr. Elliott, and I would greatly appreciate anything you can do to speed up the decision.

  1. Files of the United States Mission at the United Nations.
  2. The file copy bears the initial of Warren It. Austin, United States Representative at the United Nations.
  3. For the text of the Plan of Work adopted by the Commission for Conventional Armaments on June 18, 1947, and approved by the Security Council on July 8, 1947, see United Nations, Official Record of the Security Council, Second Year, Supplement No. 14, p. 142 (hereafter cited as SC, 2nd yr., Suppl. No. 14). The plan consisted of six points: 1) terms of reference, 2) general principles, 3) safeguards, 4) practical proposals for regulation and reduction of armed forces, 5) extension of the system to non-United Nations members, 6) submission of a report or reports to the Security Council.

    At the time that it approved its Second Report, S/C.3/32/Rev. 1, August 18, 1948, not printed, the Commission for Conventional Armaments decided that the document would become final in the absence of requests for reconsideration prior to September 15. On September 14, Yakov Alexandrovich Malik, Soviet Representative to the CCA, Informed the Chairman of the Commission that his Delegation could not accept the report. The CCA was unable to meet to consider possible revision due to the fact that the General Assembly was to convene in Paris on September 21. The Second Report of the CCA was therefore not transmitted to the Security Council in 1948. For information on the work of the CCA in 1948, see documentation on regulation of armaments in Foreign Relations, 1948, vol. i, Part 1, pp. 311 ff. The records of the Commission for Conventional Armaments are not published as a body in the Official Records of the United Nations. The mimeographed records of United Nations organs, including those of the CCA, are available in United Nations Depository Libraries.

  4. John C. Elliott of the Division of International Security Affairs, Department of State; Acting Chairman of the Executive Committee on Regulation of Armaments.