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

90. Memorandum of Discussion at the 271st Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, December 22, 1955¹

Washington, December 22, 1955

[Here follow a paragraph listing the participants at the meeting and agenda items 1–4.]

5. U.S. Policy on Control of Armaments (NSC Action No. 1419; Memos for NSC from Executive Secretary, same subject, dated December 16 and 21, 1955)²

The President inquired of Mr. Anderson what was the next item on the agenda. When Mr. Anderson replied, the President inquired how long Governor Stassen would require to present his report. Governor Stassen answered that this could be done in as little as five minutes. Secretary Dulles, however, stated that he did not believe that any useful discussion on the subject of disarmament could be carried on in five minutes. The President accordingly suggested that the Council take a 10-minute break, after which he would return and remain a half an hour to hear Governor Stassen’s report. In leaving the Cabinet Room, the President said in a hearty voice that he was a “pretty frail flower these days.”

After the President’s return, Governor Stassen proceeded to summarize the written report on the subject (copy filed in the minutes of the meeting).³ He made it clear that he expected no Council action on the recommendations of his report at the present meeting. After Council discussion, he indicated that he and members of the President’s special committee on disarmament would undertake as a matter of urgency intensive discussion in the responsible departments and agencies. Thus he hoped to resolve disagreements or, failing that, to make completely clear the remaining issues. Perhaps within three weeks he could thus come back to the Council with a revision of his report and in expectation of Council action on it.

At the conclusion of his report Governor Stassen again said that between now and mid-January he would discuss unresolved problems with the departments and agencies and bring back a revised report to the National Security Council.

The President turned to Governor Stassen and told him that he would be very fortunate indeed if he could provide the Council with a satisfactory report before the arrival of Prime Minister Eden toward the end of January.⁴ Nevertheless, said the President, the report just given by Governor Stassen was very valuable indeed, although the President said that he was puzzled by Governor Stassen’s point of departure, namely, the creation and acceptance of a complete inspection system in the Soviet Union. It seemed to the President a very hard problem to find either the money or the manpower to carry out so elaborate a ground inspection system as Governor Stassen made the point of departure for any program in the direction of reduction of armaments. On the contrary, the President felt that we could do a pretty reasonable inspection job if the inspection was confined initially to aerial reconnaissance. Such reconnaissance would be bound, in the nature of things, to reveal a great deal about the status of Soviet armament.

The President went on to say in this connection that he was quite sure the Soviets had never given any thought to any inspection plan which involved the presence in the Soviet Union of anything like twenty to thirty thousand foreign inspectors. In all probability, on the contrary, the Soviets, in the plan proposed by the Soviet Union, were thinking in terms of a mere handful of inspectors—doubtless as futile and useless an inspection as had been set up in Korea after the Armistice. It was essential that we be realistic regarding the probable Soviet attitude. What the President had in mind, he said, was “testing out with little steps, one at a time”. This was the proposal which the Soviets had brought up to him when he was at Geneva.

The President said that, nevertheless, all these points were mere details in comparison to the one big criticism he had of Governor Stassen’s report. The President said that we had initially proposed his plans for aerial inspection chiefly as a means of creating an atmosphere of mutual confidence. While he said that Governor Stassen had made a few allusions to the political situation between the U.S. and the USSR, he had by no means stated the necessity for developing two parallel programs, one to contain a series of political settlements and the other to contain progressive steps toward disarmament. If these two programs did not march along together, the President said that he was sure that there never would be created any atmosphere of confidence and, accordingly, any genuine progress toward disarmament. The President stressed the necessity, therefore, of developing theoretical programs to cover the area of political settlement and the area of disarmament. We could make no progress in the one program without concurrent progress in the other, and Governor Stassen’s report should emphasize this fact. Thus the problem was even more complicated than Governor Stassen’s report had indicated. In concluding, the President called for the views of the Secretary of State.

Secretary Dulles commenced with a tribute to the fine and useful job which Governor Stassen had accomplished. Nevertheless, it was easy to perceive in the report very serious difficulties. What principally concerned Secretary Dulles in the present draft report were certain inherent inconsistencies. Secretary Dulles then pointed out that when the National Security Council had discussed Governor Stassen’s previous progress report on disarmament some six months ago,⁵ he, Secretary Dulles, had made the suggestion that we adopt the approach of trying to discern certain specific individual areas in the broad field of disarmament where an effective inspection system might conceivably be agreed to and worked out. Secretary Dulles still believed that this proposal was greatly preferable to the overall and general approach to disarmament which Governor Stassen had taken in his report. While of course, he said, it would be very useful to have the underlying studies, on which Governor Stassen had based his report, Secretary Dulles said that the over-all approach to which he had referred was made very clear by the elaborate inspection system with which Governor Stassen’s plan commenced. We can be absolutely sure that the Russians will never accept any arms inspection system which involved twenty to thirty thousand non-Russian inspectors on Russian soil. If we put forward such a plan we could be sure that we would be accused of making propaganda. Such an all-or-nothing proposition— that is, no steps toward disarmament until this elaborate inspection system was in operation—would make the United States a laughing stock. Moreover, Governor Stassen himself had not consistently followed his professed position that no steps toward disarmament could be taken until this great inspection plan had been accepted by the Russians and put in operation. To illustrate this inconsistency, Secretary Dulles pointed to item 7 of the recommendations in Governor Stassen’s report, and said that this item did call for modest reductions in conventional armed forces and armaments before the inspection system was completely in operation.

Governor Stassen explained and defended the position that he had taken, and insisted that inspectors to the number of twenty or thirty thousand could not be described as unnecessarily large in view of the vast extent of the Soviet Eurasian empire. The President commented that this number, which amounted to two divisions, might not actually be inordinate, but he agreed with Secretary Dulles that the Soviets would never accept such a proposal.

Secretary Dulles professed to be unclear, from Governor Stassen’s explanation, as to what, precisely, was Governor Stassen’s position on the relation between the inspection plan and the first steps toward disarmament. Did Governor Stassen mean that the United States would refuse to accept any reductions, however modest, until the entire inspection plan had been fully accepted by the Soviet Union and was actually in force? Governor Stassen replied in the affirmative, whereupon Secretary Dulles said that he was compelled to describe this position as completely unrealistic. Over and above this, continued Secretary Dulles, he had thought that the United States had already committed itself to a partial and piecemeal approach to actual reductions. We should certainly not place the United States in the position that it wouldn’t do anything at all until it could do everything. The President expressed his approval of Secretary Dulles’ last point.

Secretary Dulles continued with the statement that in his view the great problem was to single out what kinds of installations and what kinds of armaments we can successfully and effectively inspect without having recourse to the full and all-out inspection called for by Governor Stassen.

The President stated that if the Soviet Union actually gave us a blueprint of their entire military layout and permitted us to conduct aerial reconnaissance over Soviet territory, some kind of agreement with respect to the reduction of armaments and military installations would be feasible. Thus you would not be killing the whole plan from the very outset. We must not appear to the world, said the President, to be laying on the table so large and complicated an inspection system that other nations will accuse us of blatant insincerity. The United States would never get anywhere if it followed such a course.

Secretary Dulles, in illustration of his point of trying to secure inspection of specific military items and areas, cited submarine construction. He said he believed that it would be possible to control the construction of submarines by the Soviet Union without being obliged to have vast numbers of inspectors on Soviet territory. Perhaps, he added, there were a great many other military items which were in a similar case. He again emphasized his opinion that the case-by-case approach to inspection and disarmament was possible. The all-or-nothing approach was impossible.

Governor Stassen replied that he and his staff had given careful consideration to this very matter of inspecting and controlling the construction of submarines. He had come to the conclusion, however, that simply to agree to so limited an inspection might very well give rise in the free world to a quite false sense of security. Accordingly, this proposal had been rejected. The President commented that if we could get rid of submarines we could get rid of something that was extremely dangerous to us. He added, however, that he did not wish to say or do anything which would discourage Governor Stassen, and suggested that Governor Stassen’s people get together with General Twining’s experts on aerial photography and find out from them just exactly what we could and could not effectively inspect through the agency of aerial reconnaissance.

Secretary Robertson commented that in the interests of assisting Governor Stassen he would suggest that State and Defense get together promptly and agree together on certain basic assumptions with respect to the program of political settlements which the President had said should go hand in hand with the program of disarmament. Secretary Robertson said he had in mind such issues as Germany, Communist China, and such other matters as would have to be taken into consideration if the President’s proposal were effectively to be carried out.

The National Security Council:⁶

a. Noted and discussed the report on the subject by the Special Assistant to the President on Disarmament, transmitted by the reference memorandum of December 16, in the light of the views of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, transmitted by the reference memorandum of December 21.

b. Noted that the Special Assistant to the President on Disarmament, in the light of the discussion and after further consultation with the responsible departments and agencies, would submit a revised report for Council consideration prior to the forthcoming meeting of the President with the British Prime Minister.

S. Everett Gleason

1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, NSC Records. Top Secret. Drafted by Gleason on December 23.
2. Regarding NSC Action No. 1419, see footnote 8, Document 45. Regarding the memorandum to the NSC, December 16, see footnote 3, supra; the December 21 memorandum is not printed.
3. Report of the Special Assistant to the President to the December 22 Session of the National Security Council, not printed. (Department of State, Disarmament Files: Lot 58 D 133, Disarmament Policy)
4. Prime Minister Anthony Eden of the United Kingdom visited the United States from January 30 to February 3, 1956. Regarding his visit, see Document 105.
5. Volume IV of Stassen’s progress report was discussed at the NSC meeting on June 23; see Document 40.
6. Paragraphs a and b that follow constitute NSC Action No. 1496, approved by the President on December 28. (Department of State, S/S–NSC (Miscellaneous) Files: Lot 66 D 95, NSC Actions)