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

43. Draft Memorandum by the Secretary of State¹

Washington, June 29, 1955.

MEMORANDUM ON LIMITATION OF ARMAMENT

1. The purpose of national armament is to defend the nation. That defense can be either by ability to repulse attack and/or by such ability to counter-attack as will deter an enemy from attacking.

2. Under modern conditions, offensive capabilities have been developed to a point such that the most effective defense is massive retaliatory power. An enemy will be deterred from launching an attack, however effective he calculates this would be, if he believes that he will be destroyed by retaliatory counter-attack.

3. The United States has greater ability to deter attack than has any other nation or any potential combination of nations. This is true now and for the foreseeable future. Our economic base, almost equal to that of all the rest of the world together, can support indefinitely the high cost of modem weapons; our inventive and mechanically-minded people will surpass, or surely equal, others in invention and putting inventions into efficient production and use, and our present² collective security arrangements permit of a wide choice of sites, at home and abroad, from which retaliatory blows can be staged, and these sites are so numerous and so widely scattered that they could not generally be put out of service by a simultaneous surprise attack.

4. The Soviet bloc economy cannot indefinitely sustain the effort to match our military output, particularly in terms of high-priced modem weapons. Already there is evidence that the Soviet economy is feeling the strain of their present effort and that their rulers are seeking relief. They have been conducting a vast propaganda effort to bring about the abolition of atomic weapons and they now offer to reduce land armies if they can thereby get relief in terms of new weapons.

5. The greater military potential of the United States, as indicated by the two preceding paragraphs, gives the United States its maximum bargaining power and this is a power which should not be cheaply relinquished. Even though it is not used in direct bargaining, it constitutes a strong pressure on the Soviet Union to bring about the reduction of United States armament which would almost automatically follow from better international conduct by the Soviet Union. Mr. Molotov’s portrayal at San Francisco of how “good” the Soviet had recently become was, as I said there, making a virtue of necessity and that, if we wished virtue to continue, we should also continue the pressure of necessity.³

6. While the United States can reasonably assure its defense by massive retaliatory power, no other free nation can do so. Therefore, our allies depend upon us. They cannot themselves either repulse, or deter, attack by the Soviet Union and there is no prospect that they will ever be able to do so. This places them in an uncomfortable position of dependence on the United States, a dependence which they naturally desire to see terminated if it can be done “safely.” They are situated so that they are disposed to take more risks as regards “safety” than should the United States.

7. The frightful destructiveness of modern weapons creates an instinctive abhorrence to them and a certain repulsion against the strategy of “massive retaliatory power”.

8. The result of Soviet disarmament propaganda; plus our allies’ weakness and dependence on us; plus natural humanitarian instincts, combine to create a popular and diplomatic pressure for limitation of armament that cannot be resisted by the United States without our forfeiting the good will of our allies and the support of a large part of our own people, and thereby introducing into the situation elements of danger. Particularly, persistence in this course would endanger our system of foreign bases.

9. We must, therefore, propose or support some plan for the limitation of armaments.

10. Since, however, the present and likely future position, in fact, gives greater protection than any plan that rested upon agreement and supervision, we should not seek quickly or radically to alter the present situation. We should proceed cautiously so long as the present situation gives us important bargaining power and so long as Soviet leadership continues basically hostile, autocratic and controlled by those who are not inhibited by any moral scruples.

11. The major premise in any United States plan should be that, under present conditions, we cannot afford to take, and need not take, substantial risks. The minor premise is that Soviet creed and conduct, as they now are, when applied to modern conditions, do inherently import grave risks into any formal plan. The conclusion is that present steps to stabilize or curtail armament should be tentative and exploratory only until good faith and good will are demonstrated by the Soviet Union.

Any plan which implied the acceptability of the risks presently inherent in Soviet creed and conduct would involve giving up the greatest brake that there is against extreme emotional disarmament which would greatly endanger us and remove the greatest pressure that could be exerted on the Soviet Union to reform its ways.

12. It is suggested that while any present plan could and should hold out promise of future agreed stabilization and/or reduction of armament, the only phase now to be developed in detail, for present use, should be a phase designed to test out in the most simple way possible the possibilities of limited mutual inspection, and that there should not be any effort to agree upon any over-all plan until first a measure of inspection has been tried out and found to be workable.

13. Concurrently with this initial experiment in inspection and investigation, intensive efforts would be made to resolve some of the major political issues such as the armament of Communist China; the Soviet control of the satellites; the promotion of international Communism and the unification of Germany.

14. If and as the experiment in investigation and supervision proved workable and as political problems were solved, then the second phase of the armament program could be developed. This, as pointed out, would inherently involve some risks, but the risks might then be acceptable if satisfactory results came from the parallel efforts indicated by the two preceding paragraphs.

1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Disarmament. Personal and Private. The source text bears the typed notation “Draft #2.” A covering note from Dulles to Hoover, Merchant, Bowie, Smith, and Murphy, June 29, requests their comments before a 3 p.m. meeting the same day, an account of which is infra. Only Bowie’s response has been found. (Memorandum, June 29; Department of State, PPS Files: Lot 66 D 70, S/P Chronological Files) Copies of Dulles’ draft were also given to Christopher H. Phillips and Dillon Anderson.
2. The word “present” was added in handwriting to the source text.
3. For text of Dulles’ address in San Francisco on June 24, see Department of State Bulletin, July 4, pp. 6–10.