326. Telegram 1283 From USUN1
1283. Re: Mytel 1277.
One of principal gains we made from SC debate of Arctic Inspection Zone was way debate dramatized difference between our willingness to open our territory for inspection and flat Soviet refusal.
Making this contrast clear brought out sharply principal reason why we keep our defenses at their present level.
Our defense measures are principal propaganda targets used by communists to undermine our popularity in world. Popularity affects tenure of our bases among other things and therefore is an important military factor.
We must therefore make every effort to make sure non-communist world understands our reasons for continuing to be suspicious of Soviet intentions and thus our reasons for keeping up our defenses.
Experience in SC shows that when our openness is compared with their secrecy, we gain decisively. This is the point we have been trying to make when we insisted on inspected disarmament. But the point is not often made with enough clarity to make the man in the street understand it. We ought to be stating it over and over again because it is a point on which they are fundamentally weak and we are fundamentally strong.
We can build on what we achieved in SC last week by following up with theme of communist secrecy versus our openness.
[Facsimile Page 2]This is simple yet fundamental idea which should be pressed at every opportunity.
[Typeset Page 1349]For example:
- 1.
- Whenever the disarmament question comes up we should continue and redouble our emphasis on inspection—on “open sky”, on the idea of “openness”, on the suspicions and dangers of war caused by excessive secrecy.
- 2.
- As soon as possible but not later than the 13th GA we should draw together this and other topics—Open Sky, the IGY, the cultural exchange program—into a top-level, long-range proposal for opening the USSR and the US to unrestricted travel by each other’s citizens; unrestricted sale of each other’s newspapers, magazines, books and films; exchange of professors by hundreds and university students by thousands; equal access to each other’s domestic radio and TV networks; and similar steps to build mutual confidence in an open world. There should be no difficulty in making such a proposal so far reaching USSR would undoubtedly reject it but so reasonable that we would earn wide sympathy and USSR would be put on continuing defensive.
- Source: U.S. openness contrasted to Soviet secrecy. Secret. 2 pp. NARA, RG 59, Central Files, 330/5–858.↩