There have been recent conversations between officials of the State
Department and the British Embassy on disarmament.
2. There is attached, for the secret information of the State Department, a
copy of a paper resulting from an interdepartmental study of this subject at
the official level in London. It would be appreciated if this could be
returned as soon as possible to the British Embassy as it is the only one
available here.
3. His Majesty’s Government still have under active consideration the
question as to the best forum in which to launch any concrete proposals on
disarmament which may be agreed, but have reached no final conclusion on
this point. They are, however, of the opinion that neither the Committee of
Twelve on Disarmament at present in session in New York nor any joint
Commission which might be set up as a result of its recommendations would be
suitable. The need to take account of the forces of Communist China is an
important consideration. Further it would clearly be advantageous to reserve
any proposals on this subject for a more impressive occasion, such as a Four
or Five Power Meeting or the opening session of the General Assembly.
4. Since, however, the proposals have a bearing on the work of the Committee
of Twelve it is important that nothing should be done in that Committee’s
discussions which would be a hindrance to discussions in another forum, or
to force His Majesty’s Government or other friendly powers to reveal their
position prematurely. It is therefore hoped that in the meantime and pending
further discussions between officials, the United States representative on
the Committee will refrain from putting forward any proposal to which the
attached paper indicates serious objection.
5. So far as safeguards are concerned, His Majesty’s Government have, after
careful study of the United States proposals set out in Security Council
Document S/C.3/43 of 9th August 1950,1 come to
[Page 502]
the conclusion that such a
comprehensive system of inspection would be unacceptable to the United
Kingdom, since it would involve an undue degree of interferences in national
life and the disclosures of secret industrial
processes. United Kingdom support for the majority proposals for the control
of atomic energy, which include a rigorous scheme of inspection, cannot
therefore be taken to imply support for the extension of a similarly
rigorous scheme to the field of conventional armaments.
6. It should also be emphasized that the attached paper has been based on the
assumption that atomic weapons would be simultaneously brought under
international control on the lines outlined in the majority proposals
endorsed by the General Assembly. His Majesty’s Government would welcome an
assurance that the United States Government still adhere to that plan, since
otherwise it would clearly be necessary for His Majesty’s Government to
reconsider their entire position.
7. In conclusion it should be repeated that the attached paper cannot be
taken as committing His Majesty’s Government in any way at this stage. It is
put forward as a possible basis for secret discussions on the official level
with State Department representatives, for study and comment in the light of
a similar study which it is understood has been independently undertaken in
Washington. It is hoped that by means of a free interchange of opinions
identity of view may be reached on the question of positive disarmament
proposals which might be put forward by the Western Powers.
8. Since no copy of the document has in the meantime been communicated to the
representatives of any other Government, observation of strict secrecy in
regard to these discussions and the contents of the attached paper is of the
utmost importance.
[Annex]
Report by the Official Committee on Disarmament of the
United Kingdom
top secret
Disarmament
Between 9th May and 13th July, 1951, we held a number of meetings to
consider the present level of world conventional armaments and armed
forces with the aim of:—
- (a)
- Recommending the best possible proposals which the Western
Powers might put forward to the Soviet Union at Four-Power Talks
[Page 503]
in order to find a
means of dealing with the problem of the limitation and control
of such armaments and armed forces; and
- (b)
- considering possible proposals which the Soviet Government
might put forward and the way in which the Western Powers might
meet such proposals.
2. One of the items on the agenda for the projected Four-Power
Conference, which was proposed by the Western Governments, was:—
- The existing level of armaments and armed forces and measures
to be proposed jointly by the U.S.S.R., United States, United
Kingdom and France for the international control and reduction
of armaments and armed forces.
During the period in which we were in session, the preliminary Four-Power
Conference in Paris broke down and the likelihood of a Four-Power
Conference was reduced. However, it is possible that recent events in
Korea may result in a Fouror Five-Power Conference being held later in
the year. Apart from the Western Governments’ initiative referred to
above, the question of disarmament and the limitation of armaments would
be bound to be raised in any such talks. Moreover, it is essential that
the United Kingdom Government should decide on its policy towards the
problem, which is of major political importance in view of both the
feeling in this country on the subject and the important part which
proposals relating to disarmament play in Soviet “peace” propaganda.
3. The analysis which this report contains is concerned with the Soviet
Union and the three Western Powers: the United Kingdom, France and the
United States. No account was taken of the other North Atlantic Treaty
Powers and their colonies and the Common-wealth countries on the one
hand or of the satellite States on the other hand, since these were not
to be represented at the Four-Power Conference and there was not so
large a difference in the military potential represented by these two
groups as seriously to affect the balance of forces between the Soviet
Union and the three Western Powers. China has not been regarded as a
satellite and her armed strength has been taken into account in arriving
at the conclusions set out in the Report.
realistic proposals
4. We began our examination of the disarmament problem with the intention
of putting forward realistic proposals which would stand some chance of
being accepted by the Russians and which we ourselves could feel we
could implement in the event of an improvement in the international
situation. We considered a number of schemes of which the most important
were:—
[Page 504]
(a) The
possibility of prohibiting or limiting the size of certain hinds of
armaments.
We examined this possibility in the light of pre-war attempts along the
same lines but were forced to conclude that we could add nothing to the
view expressed by the Chiefs of Staff in 1947 that any agreement which
limited the ability to construct the best equipment within those classes
of armament which were not prohibited would destroy the technical
advantage we possessed of brain-power lead over other nations. Moreover,
the limitations likely to be imposed would in most cases be unfavourable
to us, as was the case in the Naval Treaties, when our requirements for
ships to meet world wide commitments placed us at a disadvantage in some
respects vis-à-vis other nations who had built for limited commitments
only.
(b) Collective
parity between the Soviet Union and the three Western
Powers.
This was the solution which appeared most likely to be acceptable to the
Russians and also one which would commend itself to the neutral
observer. From the point of view of the United Kingdom and France it
would be open to the grave objection that the greater part of the United
States forces would be stationed in peace-time on the other side of the
Atlantic, so that parity would mean a heavy preponderance in Europe in
favour of the Soviet Union. Parity between the Soviet Union and the
three Western Powers would also fail to take any account of the threat
to the security of the Western Powers which the Chinese forces would
represent. We found, moreover, that it would be objectionable as serving
to emphasize the division of the world into two blocs and that it would
involve serious difficulties in the discussion of equivalence.
(c) Balancing
the forces of the Soviet Union and the Western Powers while allowing
to each side its requirements for internal security
purposes.
The idea behind this approach was that the Soviet Government needed
substantial forces for internal security purposes. It might be therefore
that, even if the Soviet Government had more men under arms than the
Western Powers, the striking force available to the former would be no
greater. It was found, however, that the number of divisions which the
Joint Intelligence Committee estimated was required by the Soviet
Government for internal security purposes was so large as to constitute
an intolerable threat to the Western Powers in the event of the Soviet
Government deciding to use even a small part of them for aggressive
purposes.
[Page 505]
(d) Limitation
of expenditure on armed forces to a percentage of the national
income or a percentage of the budget.
We decided that such an approach would not yield any useful results. Even
in the case of the United Kingdom, estimates of the national income are
stated in official publications to be “subject to a very wide margin of
error” and it is probable that in the case of the Soviet Union the
essential statistics are altogether lacking. Owing to the rouble being a
purely internal currency there is no effective rate of exchange which
would enable rouble prices to be compared with pound or dollar prices.
National incomes fluctuate from year to year. As far as national budgets
are concerned, these do not afford a basis for the comparison of
military expenditure owing to the fact that quite different systems of
accounting and presentation are in use. Even the introduction of
standard systems would not overcome the practical difficulty that equal
sums of money, expended by different governments on military
organisation and defence give completely different results. Many
services, such as the construction and maintenance of airfields,
barracks and arsenals are regarded as military expenditure in some
countries and as civilian production in others.
(e) Disarmament
by Stages.
We also examined the possibility of disarming by stages, but we found
that this involved the same difficulties as in the case of the schemes
discussed above, both from the point of view of safeguards and from that
of arriving at overall levels of effectives.
5. At this stage we took into account the fact that, if there were any
hope of disarmament proposals being implemented, they would have to be:—
- (a)
- acceptable to the Russians or, at any rate, provide a workable
basis for negotiations with them; and
- (b)
- compatible with the minimum national security requirements of
the United Kingdom, France and the United States.
It would also be highly desirable that they should:—
- (c)
- result in a substantial measure of disarmament on both
sides.
6. The examination of the above schemes convinced us that it would be
impossible to devise any proposals which would fulfill all these
conditions.
possible propaganda line
7. We then considered whether it would not be possible to evolve
proposals which, while they would almost certainly be rejected by the
Russians, would appear to the rest of the world to be reasonable ones
and would be of such a nature that we could ourselves always implement
them in the unlikely event of their being accepted. We therefore
examined:—
[Page 506]
(a) Limitation
of Armed Forces to a Percentage of the Population
From a propaganda point of view the most satisfactory figure is 1 per
cent., which is simple and straightforward, but it would only give the
United Kingdom an overall figure of 507,000 and this would be
insufficient to meet normal peacetime requirements. Since the combined
figures for the three Western Powers would be 2,434,000 as opposed to a
Soviet figure of 2 million, this difficulty could be overcome by making
adjustments as between the three Western Powers. It would then, however,
be open to the Soviet Government to make similar adjustments in the
event of the population percentage formula being extended to apply to
the armed forces of other Powers. From the point of view of the actual
figures produced, the most satisfactory percentage would be 1½ per cent.
This would result in Soviet armed forces of 3 million and Western forces
of 3,651,000 made up of United Kingdom 760,500, France 630,000 and
United States 2,260,500. Nevertheless the Soviet Union would (as in the
case of paragraph 4(b) above) still have a large
preponderance in Europe, and China would be entitled to maintain armed
forces amounting to 6,945,000 in the event of the formula being extended
to other Powers—an extension which it would be difficult to resist.
possible five-power basis
8. We found that it was impossible to produce even propaganda proposals
on a Four-Power basis, as these left China out of account. Although
there might be room for some difference of opinion as to the extent of
the military threat which was represented by the Chinese forces, there
was no doubt that even the appearance of failing to take them into
account would have a disastrous political effect in South-East Asia and
would be unacceptable to Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, the three
Western Powers had commitments in the Middle rand Far East, which had to
be met from any agreed level of armed forces: some of such commitments
had to be balanced against Chinese Forces. We therefore considered what
proposals we could put forward on a Five-Power basis.
(a) Collective
Parity between the Soviet Union and China on the one hand and the
three Western Powers on the other.
The only method which we could suggest of overcoming the difficulty
represented by the existence of a large Communist China was to seek a
Five-Power rather than a Four-Power Agreement and to aim at an overall
parity between the Eastern and the Western Powers. From the point of
view of the United Kingdom it was important that the agreed figures
should neither be so high as to impose an intolerable strain on the
economic and social structure of the country nor so low as to prejudice
the maintenance of forces’ technique and the ability to
[Page 507]
expand rapidly in the event of the
agreement breaking down. It would therefore be best to propose actual
figures for the armed forces of the principal Powers, as was done on a
former occasion by the United Kingdom delegation to the Disarmament
Conference at Geneva. The requirements of the United Kingdom could best
be met by the following figures:
| Soviet Union |
1,500,000 |
| China |
1,500,000 |
|
3,000,000 |
| United Kingdom |
750,000 |
| France |
750,000 |
| United States |
1,500,000 |
|
3,000,000 |
The present forces of the United Kingdom are 813,000, rising to 864,000
in June 1952. The figure proposed would give us some measure of relief
but would be adequate to meet our normal peace-time security
requirements in the territories for which we are responsible and to
maintain forces’ technique. France only expects to reach 735,000 in June
1952, so that it would mean that France would have to take a rather
larger share of the burden of European defence than she is at present
planning to do. It would mean large reductions in the American forces
which will rise from 2,740,000 now to 3,594,000 in June 1952; in the
Soviet forces which are at present believed to be 4,400,000; and in the
Chinese forces which are at present believed to be 2,600,000. It would
result in parity between the Soviet Union and the two Western Powers in
Europe and would in theory permit the withdrawal of the United States
forces from Europe. In practice this might not be so because of the
commitments of the United Kingdom and France in other parts of the
world. On the other hand, the Soviet Union also has to maintain a part
of its forces in the Far East. This approach would in our opinion offer
the best line from a propaganda point of view since, although it is
unlikely that it would be acceptable to the Soviet Government, it is
simple and straightforward and inherently reasonable. It does, however,
suffer from the defect, common to any disarmament proposals based on
first-line strengths, that such proposals are misleading to the extent
that they do not give the whole picture. This is particularly serious in
dealing with the Soviet Union, where the reserves of trained man-power,
of which we are unable to estimate the size, must be enormous.
safeguards
9. Bearing in mind the fact that the Chiefs of Staff are firmly of the
opinion that any system of disarmament must be safeguarded by a system
of verification and inspection, we considered whether it were
[Page 508]
possible to arrive at a
limited system of safeguards which would be adequate to ensure that
disarmament agreements were being carried out, but which would not
involve the disclosure of our own forces beyond the limited which the
Service Departments were prepared to accept on a reciprocal basis and
which did not involve such close supervision as to constitute an
intolerable degree of interference in national life. We came to the
conclusion that only a very approximate check could be kept on effective
personnel, even less on reserve personnel and virtually none on stocks
of armaments and equipment, of installations or of potential. In
particular, we found that, though some check could be made to verify the
reports submitted by the examined country, only the most rigorous
supervision could provide reasonable security that unreported armaments
did not exist. For this reason we were unable to find any alternative to
an inadequate system of inspection, with all the dangers that that
entailed, except in a full control on the scale proposed in the Majority
Recommendations of the Atomic Energy Commission of the United
Nations.
10. We nevertheless decided that there would be propaganda advantage in
proposing that the basic training establishments of the Four Powers
should be opened to inspection. (Any inspection of other forms of
training would reveal the trend of technical developments, but the
Western Powers would also presumably be prepared to submit to the
inspection of pre-military units, such as the cadet forces, and of the
police, to ensure that they were not of a para-military nature.) If the
proposal were rejected by the Soviet Government, their action would
constitute evidence that they had no intention of permitting a system of
inspection on their territory, without which there could be no effective
safeguards in the event of an agreement to reduce or limit armaments; if
they agreed, it would involve the inspection of military establishments
in many parts of the Soviet Union since the Soviet Government could
scarcely maintain that basic training was not carried out locally. The
proposal could be justified on the grounds that the intake of such
establishments provides a certain check on the total number of
effectives without furnishing information regarding the armaments or
methods of training which neither party could, in the present state of
international relations, be expected to divulge. A declaration,
accompanied by verification, of the present level of effectives is, as
has already been suggested by His Majesty’s Government, a means by which
some measure of confidence may be established and the ground prepared
for some far-reaching proposals.
possible soviet proposals
11. In considering what proposals the Soviet Government were most likely
to put forward and how they might best be met, we felt that the proposal
of an overall cut of 33⅓ percent, made by M. Vishinski
[Page 509]
in Paris in September 1948,2
was quite likely to be put forward again. We recognised that, in the
changed circumstances of 1952, the Russians might realise they had less
to gain from such a proposal and might substitute something different.
Nevertheless we had to work on the basis of the only recent Russian
ideas on the question of disarmament of which we were aware. The
percentage cut proposal was rejected on the grounds that it would
perpetuate the existing preponderance of the U.S.S.R. over those states
which had disarmed after the war, that it invited the Western Powers to
sign a blank cheque without any knowledge of the existing position and
that it contained no guarantee that the U.S.S.R. would accept a
satisfactory system of inspection. These objections still hold but, assuming that the U.S.S.R. is not also increasing its
armed forces, there will be a substantial preponderance in
favour of the Western Powers by mid-1952. We do not, however, consider
that even then it would be to the advantage of the United Kingdom to
accept, or themselves to put forward, the proposal to impose a
percentage cut since the greater part of the increase between now and
mid-1952 will be in the United States forces. The imposition of a 33⅓
percent cut in mid-1952 would leave the United Kingdom with 576,000* men, France with 490,000 men and these, with such United States
forces as were stationed in Europe, would be opposed to Soviet forces of
nearly 3 million. There is no prospect of rectifying this disparity
without reaching some form of agreement which results in a more than
proportionate reduction in the forces of the Soviet Union, since the
size of the forces which England and France can maintain is limited not
only by the size of their populations but also by their economic
strength. The disparity would also apply whatever figures were taken for
a percentage cut and could only be rectified by a decision to station a
large proportion of the United States forces in Europe.
general conclusions
12. Even in the period 1920–30 when the Western Powers felt themselves
much less threatened than they do today and when international
[Page 510]
relations were less tense, it
never proved possible to reach agreement on the limitation of military
and air armaments and only a limited degree of naval disarmament was
achieved. It has become clear in the course of our examination that no
scheme of disarmament can hope to succeed unless there exists a genuine
disposition on both sides to reduce armaments and a reasonable measure
of confidence in the good faith of those participating in it. The
Russians have given us no reassuring signs and until they do so any of
the proposals put forward in this paper must remain academic. One must
not, however, exclude the possibility that the growing strength of the
Western Powers will eventually force the Russians to adopt a more
positive attitude to the question of disarmament in which case one or
other of the proposals in this paper may then become practical
politics.
recommendations
13. Our present conclusion is that, if it should be necessary in the next
few months to put forward proposals for the limitation of armaments,
these should be:—
- (a)
- Over-all parity between the Soviet Union and China on the one
hand and the United Kingdom, France and the United States on the
other hand on the basis of 3 million effectives on each
side.
- (b)
- Provision of adequate safeguards to ensure that the agreement
was observed.
- (c)
- As a first step to (b) the mutual
inspection of basic training establishments.
[London,] 19th July, 1951.
