91. Memorandum From the Director of Intelligence and Research (Cumming) to the Secretary of State1
SUBJECT
- Intelligence Note: Foreign Policy Speeches by Khrushchev and Gromyko
In today’s (December 21) concluding session of the Supreme Soviet, Khrushchev and Gromyko delivered speeches on foreign policy, discussing, in particular, the disarmament question. In addition, the Supreme Soviet adopted a decree on foreign policy.
The main points in these three pronouncements, full texts of which are not yet available, were as follows:
- 1.
- Gromyko in effect rejected the idea of a Foreign Ministers Conference as an attempt to make Soviet representatives sit down … with the same men with whom the USSR negotiated … fruitlessly … over many years.” He said the proposal for talks “could neither satisfy the Soviet Union nor be accepted.”2
- 2.
- Gromyko proposed a special UN session or a disarmament conference of unspecified composition. Both these proposals, or variants thereof, have been advanced periodically by the USSR during the past four years.
- 3.
- Khrushchev repeated recent Soviet calls for a top-level East-West conference to solve international problems. He apparently continued to be vague as to participants, but Gromyko indicated that Moscow would press for Chinese communist participation in such a meeting as well as in talks on disarmament alone.
- 4.
- Both Khrushchev and the Supreme Soviet Decree took note of the NATO statement that the West would not use force unless attacked and, ostensibly in consideration of this statement, the Supreme Soviet instructed the Soviet Government to consider further unilateral reductions in Soviet military forces. Since 1955, the USSR has announced two major unilateral troop reductions totaling 1,840,000 men. These reductions appear to have been carried out to a substantial degree, although full confirmation is lacking. No reductions are thought to have occurred in 1957. Announcement of a new cut in response to the NATO conference had been considered likely by the Intelligence Community. Khrushchev also stated that pending agreement on disarmament the USSR would continue to develop modern weapons although within “reasonable limits” so as not to overburden the Soviet economy, an almost unique statement for a Soviet leader.
- 5.
- Both speakers took favorable note of Norwegian and Danish statements at NATO while being especially critical of Turkey, Italy, and the UK. Gromyko questioned Bonn’s sincerity on the issue of [Page 191] missile bases and indicated that in the case of Germany, Moscow would continue pressing for exclusion of all nuclear weapons.
- 6.
- Khrushchev, like the CPSU Central Committee Decree of December 17, stressed the importance of the recent international Communist party conferences in consolidating the Communist movement in the face of “reactionary” efforts to split it. He regretted Yugoslavia’s failure to sign the 12-Party declaration as showing that ideological and political differences continued to exist. On the other hand, he stressed the “joint front” existing on many important issues and promised efforts to remove remaining differences.
- 7.
- There were no new substantive proposals in the three pronouncements; they recapitulated the suggestions contained in the recent Bulganin letters, stressing in particular the need to recognize the status quo, to set up an “atom-free” zone, and to sign a non-aggression agreement between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
In general, the statements struck a note similar to that in Bulganin’s letters. They indicated no particular haste to enter negotiations, but rather reflected a belief that at the present juncture, the USSR can afford to hold out for talks more nearly on its own terms, (especially with respect to participants), than on previous occasions. Moscow seems intent on fostering inclinations in the West toward negotiation and toward going slow on new military decisions by striking a favorable attitude toward Norway and Denmark as well as Canada, by such unilateral concessions as the announcement of another troop reduction, and by Khrushchev’s unusual inference that Soviet military development will be limited so as not to curtail the needs of other sectors of the economy. The statements make clear again that if negotiations should eventuate, a priority Soviet goal will be to obtain explicit Western recognition of the status quo in Eastern Europe.
A similar memorandum has been sent to the Under Secretary.