600.0012/12–451
The Director of the Psychological Strategy Board (Gray) to the Under Secretary of State (Webb)
Dear Jim: Items keep appearing in the papers to the effect that the United States will reduce its arms budget next year, and that our allies will do the same, as a result of economic necessity.
If it is true that we plan to reduce our arms expenditures, we may be throwing away a great opportunity by a casual release of such information.
It seems to me that we could announce the possible coming reduction in a dramatic way as a token of our sincerity in presenting our disarmament proposals. The President, for example, could announce that we will cut our arms budget so many billions as a demonstration of our peaceful purposes and of our faith in our inherent strength. This would help give an element of plausibility to our disarmament proposals and could be followed by similar announcements in Britain and France.
If it should be decided that we should make a virtue of necessity in this way, of course, steps should be taken to bottle up further casual statements. Obviously, such an approach would also require some fast planning and diplomacy to make sure that the European nations do not go into a tailspin on rearmament.
I should like very much to discuss this with the members of our Board at our luncheon on Thursday.1 At this point this matter has been discussed only with the Assistant Director of the Office of Plans and Policy in my staff.
Sincerely,
- December 6.↩