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

82. Progress Report Prepared by the President’s Special Assistant (Stassen)¹

Washington, November 1, 1955.

VOLUME V

Proposed Policy of the United States on the Question of Disarmament (NSC Action 1419)²

Submitted to the Departments and Agencies concerned for a thirty-day review and for comment in writing to the Special Assistant to the President on or before December 1, 1955, such comment to be taken into account in a revision of this paper to be presented to the President, and to the Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council on or after December 7, 1955.

[Here follows Part I, an introductory section providing background information on United States disarmament policy during 1955.]

II

The Inspection and Control Method

On the basis of the totality of the studies conducted, a method of inspection has been developed responsive to NSC Action No. 1419, d-(1), which would be feasible and would be reciprocally acceptable to the United States. This method of inspection is being refined in a precise plan of inspection and its features are now sufficiently clear and definite to form the basis of important necessary policy decisions herein recommended as the basis of moving away from outdated and untenable policies to new policies which themselves should be of course considered to be subject to continuing review.

It is concluded that a comprehensive, effective, feasible, reciprocally acceptable international inspection and control system for armaments and armed forces could be established to serve certain limited but very important objectives of the United States, if agreed to by the USSR and by the other states involved.

The principal characteristics of such a system would be as follows:

A. It would be installed by stages.

B. Aerial and ground inspectors would be included:

1. The ground inspectors would operate through five regions and approximately 280 posts in the USSR and the Soviet European satellite area.

2. The aerial inspectors would base principally at four external bases with minimum use of USSR internal bases. Illustrative possibilities are:

a. United Kingdom

b. Turkey

c. Okinawa

d. Japan

3. Reciprocal inspectors in numbers, local posts, internal air bases rather than external bases, would be extended by the United States.

4. Escort personnel for all inspectors within the United States numbering approximately double the inspectors would of necessity be assigned, and similar escort relationships would be expected within the Soviet.

5. Verification and inspection personnel specializing in nuclear matters, steel, budgets and finance, electric power, transportation, and industrial production, would be included, but all would be under one inspection service command with one logistic support.

6. An internal and external communications net would be established which would assure reliable rapid communication with aerial and ground inspectors and control posts, and would provide automatic warning of interference or sabotage of the communications system.

7. The total inspection force required in the USSR and the Soviet European satellite area would be of an order of magnitude of 20,000 to 30,000 personnel, eight or ten squadrons of airplanes, three or four squadrons of helicopters, 4,000 or 5,000 vehicles, thirty or forty radio communications stations, and other related facilities, at an annual cost of $600 to $700 million.

8. Approximately 70% of the personnel on the inspection force in the USSR would be United States nationals, approximately 40% of the worldwide inspection personnel outside of the United States would be United States nationals, and between 40% and 50% of the worldwide cost would of necessity be borne by the United States.

9. Detailed statistics of electric power, steel, transportation, and industrial production would be required, which would reciprocally be feasible for the United States to furnish. This would be subject to spot-check verification.

10. Internal inspection of industrial production plants would in general not be included, but material intake, power use, and product output would be reported and be subject to external check.

11. Internal inspection of nuclear production plants and inspection of nuclear weapons would not be included, certainly not in the early and foreseeable stages.

C. The system established for the USSR and the United States would be acceptable and applicable to other states with significant military power or potential with comparative ease on a relative scale, taking cognizance of size of territory, level of armed forces, and degree of industrial and nuclear development.

D. An International Armaments Commission would be established, with a relationship to the United Nations, to supervise the comprehensive system, but it could not overrule the basic inspection of the USSR by the United States, and vice versa.

E. In each country being inspected, one state would be designated as the executive agent of the International Armaments Commission for purposes of inspection. The United States would be designated such executive agent for the USSR and vice versa. Nationals of other states would be included in the inspection service.

F. The states associated with the USSR and the states associated with the United States would in general be the inspectors of each other, and the neutral states would have minor observing roles and would further inspect each other in a manner agreeable to the United States and USSR.

G. Within the United States Government, the Department of Defense would be named as executive agent for carrying out both the inspection and the escort of inspectors.

III

A Significant Equation

The more thoroughly United States defensive, retaliatory, and nuclear weapon capacity is dispersed, the more necessarily extensive a great surprise attack by the USSR would be required to be successful, and the more certain preparations for it would be disclosed by an inspection system, and prevented. Thus, dispersal plus inspection is an important equation for United States security and for peace.

IV

The Intercontinental Missile

In the absence of a limitation agreement, it must be anticipated that within ten years the USSR will have intercontinental missiles with thermonuclear warheads in quantity. No effective defense now exists for such weapons other than their destruction before launching. The best theoretical defense, once they are launched, involves the defensive use of missiles with nuclear warheads above the defending country.

Intercontinental missiles cannot be perfected or produced in quantity without tests and without a scale of activity which would be detected by the inspection system contemplated.

V

Basic Principles and Premises

The totality of the further study sustains and confirms the basic principles and premises set forth in Volumes I to IV of the preceding reports.

A summary re-emphasis is as follows:

A. In the absence of any agreement on the inspection, limitation, control, or reduction of armaments and armed forces, the outlook for future decades includes increasingly great dangers of a nuclear war and is therefore very adverse to United States national interest. In such a situation, only a continued United States technological superiority in the competition for offensive and defensive weapons would provide the main protection for national security. While the maintenance of such superiority is by no means impossible, it might well become a diminishing factor as Soviet offensive powers increased.

B. An unsound agreement, not thoroughly covered by effective inspection and control, not maintaining a strong relative and actual defensive posture of the United States would be even more adverse, would increase the dangers of future war, and would itself be a source of added future tension through doubts, rumors, suspicions, and uncertainty.

C. A sound agreement, thoroughly and effectively inspected, added to substantial sustained alert United States military strength, would be highly desirable in the United States national interest, would reduce tensions, facilitate the settlement of other issues, and greatly improve the prospects of a just and durable peace.

VI

Recommended Policy of the United States

It is recommended that the following policy be now adopted, subject to continuing review and further modification, but as an essential step in moving away from outdated untenable policy and in maintaining a desirable negotiating initiative in the United States national interest.

A. The three priority objectives of the United States in its policy on the question of disarmament are as follows:

1. Open up the USSR and other communist controlled territory to effective inspection with related communication; establish current accountability of the movement of armed forces, especially those capable of carrying nuclear weapons in attack; continue to thoroughly disperse and alert United States armed strength, so as to provide against the possibility of great surprise attack.

2. Prevent, retard, or minimize the development of nuclear weapons capability by additional nations beyond the present three, USSR, United Kingdom, and United States.

3. Prevent, retard, or minimize the establishment of a substantial intercontinental missile capacity and of an expanded nuclear weapons capability by the USSR.

B. In order to attain these three objectives, the United States will take the following actions:

1. Continue to press for the acceptance of the President’s July 21 Geneva proposal.

2. Agree to reciprocal inspection generally along the lines proposed in this report.

3. Accept modest initial reductions in conventional armed forces on a reciprocal basis if tied to the implementation of the President’s proposal.

4. Provide that all future nuclear material production anywhere in the world will be for peaceful use, to take effect when an international atomic control agency can supervise the material subsequently produced, and maintain it in safeguarded stockpiles.

5. Develop a synthesis of the acceptable portions of the proposals of the United Kingdom, France, and the USSR.

6. Provide that satellites and intercontinental and outer space rockets shall be developed only through international collaboration for peaceful purposes and shall not be tested or produced for national weapon purposes.

7. Contribute to the openness of the USSR through expanded contacts and exchanges of citizens, culture, and information in various fields, including peaceful trade, if the President’s July 21 proposal is accepted.

C. The fulfillment of these three policy objectives will be vigorously pursued with a sense of urgency of time and without subordination to other objectives except on decision of the President.

1. Special attention will be given to initiating joint action with the USSR on some inspection steps, even though very small, in the direction of these objectives.

D. The United States will not agree, in the absence of a new decision which it is anticipated would need to be based on facts not now foreseeable, to any of the following:

1. The elimination of existing stocks of nuclear weapons or the prevention of re-fabricating existing stocks.

2. The reduction or limitation of any armaments or armed forces if an adequate inspection system to verify the reduction is not in place.

3. The withdrawal of overseas bases prior to a major verified reduction of USSR weapons carrying capacity and the resolution of major issues between the USSR and the United States.

E. If an inspection system such as here described is installed, the United States will contemplate a gradual equitable reduction on a reciprocal basis of nuclear weapons carrying capacity and of conventional forces, but such specific reductions shall be the subject of National Security Council consideration in the light of conditions then existing, and no blanket commitments of figures or percentages or other indication of levels shall be made in advance of such National Security Council consideration.

F. Subordinate to these priority objectives, and to the extent either necessary to attain them, or feasible to gain in addition, the United States will take the following actions on an equitable basis:

1. Agree to the international inspection, limitation, and control in a similar manner, of all armaments and armed forces of all states, with significant present or potential military power, including Germany, China, Japan, and India.

2. Agree to effective inspection of United States bases overseas in a manner agreeable to the state in which the base is located as a part of a comprehensive agreement.

3. Agree to the cessation of national nuclear tests as a part of a comprehensive arrangement.

G. A special effort will be made by the United States to establish an agreed inspection and control method with the USSR and the United Kingdom to apply to fourth countries who wish to enter nuclear power production with the assistance of one or more of the three.

1. This effort will be harmonized with the endeavor to attain the comprehensive system, but will not be necessarily dependent on the attainment of such a comprehensive system.

H. Any agreement entered into by the United States should include appropriate provisions which would have the following effect:

1. Grant to those parties which have in being nuclear weapons and production facilities for nuclear weapons material the right to open the agreement to renegotiation at any time on six months notice specifying unsatisfactory developments.

2. Grant to all other signatory nations as a group, or to the United Nations Assembly, the right to open the agreement to renegotiation by majority vote on six months notice specifying unsatisfactory developments, but otherwise the agreement to continue in full force and effect upon such signators without the right of withdrawal.

3. In the event of a serious violation of the agreement confirmed as such by the International Armaments Commission, grant to all signators the right to terminate by renunciation without advance notice.

a. Further grant to each signator the right to file with the International Armaments Commission a specific claim of violation of the agreement by any other signator, and to take counterbalancing steps to maintain relative position including steps which would otherwise be in violation of the agreement, provided, however, that the International Armaments Commission shall be notified of such counterbalancing steps when they are taken.

4. Provide that a violation of the agreement by any signator shall be considered as a threat to the peace under the United Nations Charter, and, therefore, bring into play all of the peaceful settlement measures and other relevant provisions of the Charter and in particular Article 51 on individual or collective self-defense.

VII

The foregoing policy decisions would place the United States in a position to take an essential initiative in its national interest, would erase policy clearly outdated and dangerous, and would provide ample opportunity for subsequent development of further policy and plans on the basis of experience and new facts, or for the modification and amendment under new circumstances or as a result of further study.³

Respectfully submitted:
Harold E. Stassen

1. Source: Department of State, Disarmament Files: Lot 58 D 133, Disarmament Policy. Top Secret. Attached to the source text is a draft memorandum, dated November 1, by Joseph S. Toner, Stassen’s executive secretary, indicating that a draft copy of volume V was submitted to the departments and agencies concerned for their written comments before its presentation to the National Security Council and the President. For Volume I of the Progress Report, see Document 33. Regarding Volumes II and III, see footnote 1, ibid. For Volume IV, see Document 40. Volume V was discussed by the National Security Council on December 22; see Document 90.
2. Regarding NSC Action No. 1419, see footnote 8, Document 45.
3. Five annexes, which are attached to the source text, contain eight documents relating to disarmament for 1955. All these documents are discussed or printed in previous pages of this volume.