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

92. Memorandum of a Conversation Between the Secretary of State and the President’s Special Assistant (Stassen), Washington, December 30, 1955¹

Washington, December 30, 1955

Harold Stassen dined alone with me, and we talked for a considerable time after dinner. Our conversation related principally to disarmament.

Mr. Stassen referred to the conviction to which his group had come that any substantial disarmament would not really be in the interest of the United States and that the optimum goal should be to try to stabilize the situation at about the present level. He said that to go below that level would be dangerous because of the greater ability of the Soviet Union quickly to reverse the field.

I said that if this were in fact our position, we would have to think hard about how to present it publicly. We could not go on much longer pretending that we were for reduction of armament, while using various excuses to avoid and postpone the issue.

I raised the question of piece-meal disarmament as indicated by the UN Resolution we had co-sponsored.²

Mr. Stassen said this Resolution was not intended to envisage piece-meal conventional reduction but merely to indicate that conventional reductions need not wait upon atomic reductions, but that conventional reductions were to be taken as a whole and not piece-meal as in terms of submarines, heavy bombers, etc.

I said that that was not readily apparent from reading the Resolution.

I also said that if we were to retain the usability of atomic weapons, it would be necessary to internationalize them to a greater extent than at present and to make them clearly the tool of the community to maintain order.

Mr. Stassen said he liked this idea and thought that we should perhaps put some atomic weapons³ at the service of other regional groupings.

I said that I thought the important thing was to vest the decision in a group of broader character than just the United States alone.

JFD

1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Disarmament. Top Secret; Personal and Private. Drafted by Dulles on December 31.
2. Regarding U.N. General Assembly Resolution 914 (X), see Document 88.
3. The word “power” is crossed through in the source text and “weapons” has been written in.