Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Regulation of Armaments; Atomic Energy, Volume XX

214. Informal Memorandum From the Chairman of the Delegation to the Subcommittee of the United Nations Disarmament Commission (Stassen) to the Chairman of the Soviet Delegation (Zorin)¹

London, May 31, 1957.

The Chairman of the US Delegation is pleased to inform the Chairman of the USSR Delegation that following a recent thorough review by the US Government of the various questions and proposals in relationship to disarmament and decisions by President Eisenhower during the recent recess of the Subcommittee, the US Delegation is authorized to resume negotiations in an endeavor to conclude a partial agreement for a sound safe-guarded first step in disarmament. In these resumed negotiations the US Delegation is further authorized to meet half-way on a reasonable basis the positions and proposals of the other members of the Subcommittee including the USSR.

The Chairman of the US Delegation therefore in this first substantive discussion since the recess presents this informal memorandum to the Chairman of the USSR Delegation and engages in this discussion between the two delegations.

1. The US recognizes a certain validity in the comment advanced in the April 30, 1957 proposal of the USSR² to the effect that the Soviet Union has a territory much larger than that of the US and has lengthy frontiers. The US Delegation responds to the other comment in this regard in the Soviet proposal, however, that the collective security arrangements in which the United States has entered are for the purposes of defense and are not to be considered as a threat to the USSR or to any state which abides by the Charter of the United Nations. The US Delegation further notes that while the territory of the US is smaller and its frontiers are shorter than those of the Soviet Union, it also has in other respects a different strategic position. Many of the natural resources on which its highly productive economy depends are located in distant areas of the world. It has vital interests and defensive treaty associations in a number of regions, and the defense arrangements for these vital interests and the defensive treaty commitments in fact in many circumstances require relatively more of armed forces and armaments than does an internal security arrangement wherein natural resources and vital interests are within a national border, even though that national border may be extensive. For these and many other reasons the US Delegation can not agree to any recognition of different force levels for the USSR than for the US. In fact for over two years, since May 10, 1955, the USSR has been making proposals and negotiating on a basis which recognized the equality of force levels for the USSR and the US.

2. Nevertheless the US has taken into account the Soviet Union’s reaffirmation of first stage reductions to force levels of 2½ million men for the USSR and the US, but coupled with a statement of the Soviet interest in force levels lower than this, to 1-1.5 million men in what is described as a second stage of the implementation of the partial measures.

One of the important reasons for the US proposal that the first step of reductions should be of a more moderate nature to the extent of a force level of 2½ million men has been the essential requirement of adequate inspection in relationship to any disarmament commitment, and an awareness that the USSR did not wish to consent to a comprehensive initial inspection.

3. Therefore the US Delegation now states to the Soviet Delegation that on condition the first reduction under a partial agreement is carried through successfully to the level of 2½ million for armed forces, and the partial inspection is satisfactorily implemented and the essential states have adhered to the treaty, the US Delegation would be prepared to negotiate for further reductions in armed forces and armaments. The US Delegation views favorably the possibility of a second reduction under such circumstances to not less than 2.1 million men, and if this is executed successfully and the inspection expanded satisfactorily it would be the hope of the US Delegation that further reductions in armed forces might be negotiated, but not below 1.7 million. Reductions in armaments would be made correspondingly. The levels to correspond for the UK and France would be negotiated with these states. The legitimate security requirements of the nations concerned would be taken fully into account in light of responsibilities for individual and collective self-defense and in light of the political and military situations existing at those times.

4. In the matter of the corresponding reduction in armaments the US Delegation has also taken into account the Soviet proposal that the first reduction in armaments should be of a greater amount than suggested by the US, and that the specific levels be reduced by 15%.

One of the difficulties with this approach of 15%, since the USSR is only proposing partial inspection during this first reduction, is that it is not possible to know what the percentage of 15 represents. The US Delegation is frank to state that it does not know the precise amounts of Soviet armament, and at the same time it recognizes the Soviet reluctance from its viewpoint to report its complete armament at the present time.

Nevertheless the US Delegation wishes to move to meet the Soviet in regard to armaments reduction. The US therefore suggests that armaments to be reduced should be negotiated in specific quantities. The US is prepared to favorably consider initial reductions of substantial amounts of specific quantities of identified types of armaments significant in kind and of post World War II manufacture. If the Soviet will present its proposal in the form of such a specific list which it is prepared to reduce in relationship to the reduction in military forces to 2½ million, the US will present in return a proposed list of armaments which it would be prepared to reduce likewise substantial in amount of specific quantities of identified types of armaments significant in kind and of post World War II manufacture which it is prepared to have considered in relationship to its first reductions to the force level of 2½ million. Such specific lists would then be negotiated in relation to each other without regard to any percentage figure. Upon agreement on such a specific list there would be no possibility of later disagreement or confusion which might arise on any type of percentage calculation or less precise formula.

5. The armaments in these agreed lists could then be reduced by placing the items in the disarmament depots under international supervision in the fulfillment of the partial agreement in accordance with a reasonable time schedule. Their later disposal could likewise be by agreement when both sides certify that they have carried out the required reduction, and the international inspectors confirm that these armaments have been delivered to the disarmament depots.

6. The UK and France and other states would likewise present lists for first reductions of armaments which would need to be approved in the negotiations for their adherence to the agreement as the basis for their first reductions in armaments in relationship to their first stage levels of armed forces.

7. It is believed that this more simple and clear procedure will be better than any that either side has suggested heretofor. In the US view it is important that if a first step agreement is reached there be the maximum chance for its mutual fulfillment without any unnecessary room for subsequent disagreements over detail or for doubts to arise during the fulfillment.

8. In relationship to such reductions in armed forces and armaments, the consequential reduction in military expenditures should not present any difficult negotiating problem, the principle point for adjustment being the method and extent to which the budget and financial records would be reviewed in such a first step partial agreement.

9. The United States maintains its capability in nuclear weapons solely for defensive purposes. The United States is therefore not willing to completely renounce the use of such nuclear weapons and finds unacceptable the Soviet proposal for such a complete prohibition of use. To the United States it is unthinkable for it to take a commitment which on its face would mean that even though its armed forces or its vital interests or its collective security partners are attacked by large military forces, and, in fact, even if such attacking forces included the use of nuclear weapons, yet there would be a clause in a treaty that the United States was prohibited from the use of nuclear weapons.

10. Thus the United States will not agree to a partial agreement which includes such a clause or such a declaration.

11. On the other hand, the United States Delegation recognizes a certain validity to the comment of the Chairman of the Soviet Delegation that Article 51 of the United Nations Charter was drafted and agreed to prior to the advent of nuclear weapons, and that technically a reference to Article 51 means that a border incident or a very small armed attack across the border could be taken to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. The United States has no such intentions. The United States has demonstrated time and again the restraint with which it uses its military forces.

The United States further recognizes the vagueness of the word “aggression”. The United States therefore expresses its willingness, if the Soviet wishes to do so, to include within a partial agreement a provision, the precise wording of which is to be negotiated, which would have the effect that all signators agree that they are prohibited from the use of atomic and hydrogen weapons of all types including aerial bombs, rockets carrying atomic or hydrogen warheads, irrespective of range, atomic artillery, and any other atomic and hydrogen weapons except (a) in individual or collective self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter if an armed attack occurs which includes the use of nuclear weapons, or (b) if such an armed attack is of such a nature and magnitude that the attack cannot feasibly be repelled without the use of nuclear weapons, in the decision of the using state.

12. This formulation adopts indirectly a Soviet suggestion of a commitment not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, and combines it with a provision which to the United States is an inseparable parallel, especially when viewed with the prospect of reducing armed forces and armaments. Reference is made to the right to repel an armed attack when it is of such nature and magnitude that it cannot be otherwise feasibly repelled. It is the view of the United States Delegation that the best safeguard against the use of nuclear weapons is to prevent the beginning of armed attack and the beginning of war. Any war carries within itself great dangers of spreading. Any war in the modern age carries within it a great danger of becoming a nuclear war. Therefore, the United States intends to hold its military strength, whether of its present size, or of a reduced size under a partial agreement for disarmament, in a manner which discourages any miscalculation by any state of an unfortunate initiation of an armed attack contrary to the United Nations Charter.

13. The question of nuclear tests has been discussed at considerable length. The United States Delegation is prepared to favorably consider the acceptance, within a partial agreement, of the USSR proposal for a temporary cessation of nuclear tests, provided the USSR is prepared to favorably consider the acceptance of the US proposal for the cessation of the manufacture of fissionable material for nuclear weapons, both reached through detailed arrangements substantially as follows:

a. The United States Delegation does not consider that it is possible to detect all nuclear tests without an appropriate inspection system. Furthermore, the United States does not consider that intelligence monitoring methods conducted by individual states is a satisfactory method of carrying out an international agreement. On the other hand, it is recognized that there are some disadvantages in waiting for the installation of an inspection system, after the conclusion of a partial disarmament treaty before there is a cessation of testing.

b. Therefore, for this part of a partial agreement the United States Delegation would be prepared to favorably consider the cessation of all nuclear testing by all parties for an initial 10 months period, commencing immediately upon the effective date of the partial agreement, combined with the commitment of the parties to cooperate in the design and installation and maintenance of an inspection system which would be capable when installed of reasonable certainty of detecting nuclear tests and would be capable of maintaining an accurate measurement of radioactivity in the atmosphere, whether from nuclear testing or from nuclear accidents or other nuclear events occuring after its installation.

c. The United States Delegation would be prepared to further grant, in the partial agreement, to the Board of Control, the authority upon the installation of such an inspection system to either order the continued cessation of nuclear testing for a period beyond the ten months, or to order a limitation of the size of future nuclear tests, or to place limitations upon the amount of radioactive material to be re-eased into the atmosphere in future tests. If it is a limitation that is ordered, then to establish a method of advance notification of such limited tests and establish reciprocal limited access to them.

14. As indicated above, inseparable from the willingness of the United States Delegation to consider favorably such an arrangement is the requirement that the Soviet Delegation consider favorably the cessation of manufacture of nuclear weapons through the installation and operation of an effective inspection system under which a “cutoff” would be effected beyond which all such fissionable materials would go exclusively for non-weapons purposes, national or international, under international supervision. It is the impression of the United States Delegation, in view of the fact that the Soviet included the cessation of manufacture in the second stage of its March 18, 1957 proposal,³ which was to be carried out in 1959, and from the lack of response of the Soviet to the earlier United States proposal for cessation of manufacture in which the date of March 1, 1958, for installation of the inspection system was used, that the Soviet is not willing to establish a “cutoff” during 1958. In an endeavor to meet the Soviet position in this regard, the United States is therefore willing to defer such a “cutoff” date and to establish March 1, 1959, for the installation of the inspection system and one month later or as soon thereafter as possible under the effective inspection for the “cutoff” date.

15. With respect to the inspection system, the United States Delegation further comments to the Soviet Delegation that it does not contemplate an inspection system so onerous as amounts to the management control of the entire atomic economies of our respective countries. It is the United States Delegation’s view that a comparatively simple inspection system installed at the locations where fissionable materials are produced and used and at the stockpiles of such fissionable materials subsequently produced, can provide a sufficient degree of accuracy in accounting as to be adequately reliable. Such an inspection system would be compatible with both of the economic and social systems of our two countries.

Obviously, the precise inspection arrangement requires the work of technical experts, and necessitates agreement on the resulting design.

16. Subsequent to the fulfillment of the “cut-off” date of future production, the U.S. Delegation is willing that the US and USSR transfer to non-weapons purposes under international inspection any fissionable material previously produced and not already contained within nuclear weapons or not previously transferred to non-weapons purposes. On its part the US Delegation does not anticipate the US having any appreciable amount of such unused fissionable material on such a “cut-off” date, but adds this factor to its previous proposal as a suggested clarifying clause.

17. Also subsequent to the implementation of such a “cut-off” date, the US proposes that those states having nuclear weapons should commence agreed, equitable, proportionate transfers of fissionable materials from weapons in successive increments over to internationally inspected and supervised non-weapons purposes including stockpiles either national or international.

18. The US is aware that in the Supreme Soviet in February 1955 it was stated that the Soviet Union was abreast of if not ahead of the US in the production of hydrogen weapons. The US also estimates that the Soviet Union has expanded its production of fissionable materials since February 1955 and further estimates that the US has devoted more fissionable materials to non-weapons purposes since February 1955 than has the Soviet Union.

19. It is also well known that the United Kingdom had not had an opportunity to carry out the production of fissionable materials for weapons purposes at as early a date as the USSR and the US.

20. The US does not have precise information of the quantity of fissionable materials which the Soviet Union now has devoted to weapons purposes. Neither does the US have precise information of the amount of fissionable material which the Soviet Union will produce between now and April 1, 1959. Since the UK is associated with the US in a collective security agreement an argument could be made that the transfers from weapons purposes to non-weapons purposes under all these circumstances should be made in increments which will equal on the one hand one half by the Soviet Union and on the other hand one half by the UK and US combined.

21. In the interest of negotiating a partial agreement, however, and of ending the nuclear arms race, the US is willing that the UK increment in such a program of successive transfers shall be separately considered and shall in effect reduce the amount which both the Soviet Union and the US transfer to any total increment of transfer. Of the remaining quantity of an increment in addition to the amount transferred by the UK, the US is willing to join 50% and 50% with the Soviet Union.

22. On the other hand, if it is the view of the Soviet Union that, because of the initiation by the US of this specific proposal for transfers, the US should carry more than half of this remaining percentage, the US would be willing that the agreement provide that the amount to be transferred after the UK transfer is subtracted from the total shall be transferred 47% by the USSR and 53% by the US.

Thus, for example, and not as a suggestion of total quantity, if 200 kilograms of fissionable material of a specified and comparable analysis is to be transferred in 1960 from weapons purposes to non-weapons purposes, the Soviet Union would transfer 94 kilograms and the US would transfer 106 kilograms.

23. It is the further view of the US Delegation that in connection with nuclear commitments and prohibitions, such as the foregoing, with the inclusion of provisions affecting prohibition of use, testing, cessation of manufacture, and transfers from weapons purposes, all signatories who had not previously produced nuclear weapons would as of the effective date of the treaty voluntarily agree in consideration of the mutual benefits, they renounce the manufacture, possession, or acquisition of nuclear weapons. It would be made clear, however, that this renunciation would not prevent the training of the armed forces of such states in the use of nuclear weapons in precautionary measures for the contingent possibility of a nuclear war nevertheless occurring. It would also be clear that the renunciation of possession by a state would not prohibit the possibility of the possession of nuclear weapons on its soil by the armed forces of a state which had previously manufactured such weapons if the location of such weapons was not specifically completely prohibited within such zone.

24. It would also be clear that the “cut-off” date of fissionable materials would not prohibit the right to refabricate nuclear weapons, since such right of refabrication may well be exercised to make such existing nuclear weapons stockpiles into weapons which do not involve such large quantities of radioactive particles or weapons which might be designed for defense against aerial attack rather than for weapons designed for counter-attack, and for other reasons.

25. The US is willing to cooperate in the establishment of initial zones of aerial inspection and ground inspection in both a European-Russian zone and a US–Canada–USSR zone, provided the other states concerned in such zones consent, and provided the reciprocal and equitable character of the zones is reasonable and is precisely negotiated.

26. Neither of the two zones in the Soviet April 30 paper is acceptable to the US in the present form. In the US–Alaska–USSR area the Soviet has proposed that the initial zone include only 32 percent of the territory of the Soviet Union and this is of the relatively less developed area in which relatively less military forces are located. On the other hand it is proposed that 77 percent of the US should be in the initial inspection zone, including within that area the nuclear testing sites, a major atomic plant, many large air bases, numerous other important military installations, and a considerable number of key defense industries. It would appear more equitable if the first step involved relatively the same number of square miles on both sides of the collective security areas, but included within that similarity of square miles a similarity of percentage of the territory of the USSR and the US, and involved some comparable relationship and significance on each side of the specific areas proposed. These matters can be taken up in detail in negotiating on a reasonable basis.

27. In the European-Russian area the zone to be reasonable and acceptable must be moved to the east and to the north. Here again details could be included in detailed negotiations. The ground control posts would of necessity need to be considerably more extensive than the initial aerial and ground inspection sectors and have appropriate radar and other facilities.

28. The question of reduction in armed forces and armaments within any such initial zones will also involve the consent of the states concerned. It is at once clear that a reduction as proposed to the extent of one-third of the forces of the US stationed in the territory of Germany would be unacceptable and unreasonable in relationship to the first reduction to a 2½ million force level. The question of reducing the number of military air bases on both sides in conjunction with such first reduction to levels of 2½ million men may be examined, with a recognition that if any such reduction of air bases in the territory of other states is included in a partial agreement it would be carried out with the consent of such other states.

29. In an agreement all signators should specifically recognize the essential requirement of an effective inspection system to verify and guarantee in the case of all states alike the fulfillment and observance of each commitment, and each signator should undertake to cooperate in the thorough reciprocal installation and maintenance of such inspection.

30. The Soviet Delegation is aware of the views of the US Delegation as to the importance of including an appropriate method for the control of export and import of armaments within a partial agreement. This has been discussed in the Subcommittee.

31. The Soviet Delegation is also aware of the US Delegation’s views of the need to establish a system for advance notification of the international movement of armed forces.

32. The desirability of establishing an inspection system in the missile field and taking commitments in this regard, which we have previously discussed, is also reaffirmed.

33. In general the suggested method of organization of the regulation system previously presented by the US Delegation with reference to Article 26 of the UN Charter⁴ and within the framework of the Security Council is reaffirmed, including an appropriate right of suspension. Many of these collateral matters can be negotiated after the main points are agreed upon.

34. The US Delegation comments on the references to propaganda in the April 30th proposals that the US is constantly endeavoring to improve the prospects for a lasting and just peace, and that the successful negotiation of a mutual agreement for partial disarmament through sound and safeguarded steps would be a concrete manner of lessening the dangers of war.

35. The US Delegation will be available for further informal explanation of these views, if the Soviet Delegation has questions. The US Delegation anticipates at a later and appropriate time tabling formal proposals in the Subcommittee and undertaking detailed formal negotiations. Such detailed negotiations in the view of the US Delegation should take the form, if progress is made, of the preparation of draft language for a treaty of partial agreement for the first steps of disarmament, which draft treaty, when approved by governments, would then be ready for signing as a commitment of governments for ratification through respective constitutional processes.

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 330.13/6–557. Regarding the origin of this memorandum, see Supra.
2. For the Soviet memorandum submitted to the Subcommittee of the U.N. Disarmament Commission on April 30, see Documents on Disarmament, 1945–1959, vol. II, pp. 778–787.
3. For the Soviet proposal introduced in the Subcommittee of the U.N. Disarmament Commission on March 18, 1957, see ibid., pp. 752–757.
4. See footnote 4, Document 195.