110. Memorandum for the Record by the President’s Staff Secretary (Goodpaster)1
At the President’s request, I have studied Governor Stassen’s memorandum, with attachments, relating to a major public initiative in the field of disarmament.2
I suggested to the President that he might wish to consider putting this matter in the form of a sequence of concrete actions for peace, and enlarging it to include other initiatives. In the field of disarmament, joint actions would be called for, beginning with inspection measures to build up confidence, and extending on to arms limitations. This might be a substitute for the “treaty of amity and friendship” advanced by Bulganin3 A second field for concrete action is the Atoms for Peace project, in which we are now probably ready to make allocations of many thousands of kgs. of nuclear material for peaceful (largely power) uses. Others might be invited to match our offers.
A further phase of the sequence of concrete actions would be in the area of an “international code of conduct”—which would go far beyond generalized precepts, into instances of behavior such as stirring up trouble in the Middle East, tension with regard to Formosa, etc.
The President indicated he was inclined to think that an approach of this kind could be very helpful in connection not only with disarmament, but also in connection with some of the major world problems we are now facing.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Staff Secretary Records, Disarmament.↩
- See footnote 2, supra.↩
- For Bulganin’s draft treaty, attached to his January 23 letter to Eisenhower, see Department of State Bulletin, February 6, 1956, p. 195.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩