96. Letter From the President to the Secretary of State1
Dear Foster: I have given preliminary study to your memorandum.2 I think it contains a good idea; I am certain that that part which stresses the importance of political leadership is absolutely correct.
Here and there I have scrawled some hasty notes on the paper, but my basic question is something of this sort:
When flatly rejecting technical inspection as providing any practicable basis for disarmament, we thereby give to the Russians a great opportunity for hurting us politically. Yet another part of the program assumes that we can have a sufficient inspection or knowledge of productive capacity in both countries to insure that the amount of fissionable material in the hands of the international agency will be greater than that possessed by any particular country. In fact, we apparently assume that the proportion would be so great that any individual country would be foolish to challenge the international power.
These conclusions seem to be somewhat contradictory between themselves.
Yet by no means do I think we should give up the idea that you have brought along this far. In spite of all that has been said about the inadequacy of technical inspection as a base for any kind of atomic disarmament, I am not so sure that this is true to the extent that we should reject the whole idea out of hand.
If inspection were as thorough, as constant and as widespread as it could be made, and if such a proposal were accompanied by disarmament in easily discoverable means of delivery, it might be a very effective thing indeed.
Certainly it would be sufficiently effective that we could better afford to insist upon inspection as a part of every program we propose, rather than to reject it. At least we would avoid giving to the Soviets a world of propaganda ammunition.
There would be the further advantage that if only general inspection systems were approved, and the results were somewhat less than satisfactory, then the international pool theory becomes an alternative that it seems to me the world would seize upon with great relief and enthusiasm.
As ever,3
[Page 273]P.S.: By this last paragraph I mean that now the only recourse would be to insist on such a large aggregate of material in the international pool that no single state could possibly have a greater amount.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Dulles–Herter Series. Secret.↩
- Dulles’ untitled memorandum, January 22, and labeled draft #10, details how current trends with respect to nuclear weapons, unless counteracted, could become seriously unfavorable to the United States in several areas. (Ibid.)↩
- The source text is unsigned.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩