507. Memorandum for the Record by Haskins1
SUBJECT
- Planning Board Meeting with Charles A. Coolidge
On Tuesday, November 10, the Planning Board met with Mr. Charles A. Coolidge, who has been appointed by the President to [Typeset Page 1817] head a joint review on behalf of the Departments of State and Defense of U.S. disarmament policy, and two members of his staff, Mr. Guido Perera and Admiral Davis. The purpose of the meeting was to hear from Mr. Coolidge a reflection of the preliminary thinking which he had gone through and to solicit any ideas which members of the Planning Board as individuals might have.
Mr. Coolidge began by saying that the U.S. must make some general far-reaching proposals and place them in an attractive setting; it is useless, he said, to put forward picayune measures. He said that we should declare what we ultimately hope to get and suggested the following four general objectives:
- (1)
- No nuclear weapons in the control of any individual nation
- (2)
- An international police force equipped with nuclear weapons
- (3)
- A World Court with increased jurisdiction
- (4)
- Reduction of national forces to a point where no nation could oppose the international police force (Robert Amory later suggested that the fourth objective should refer not only to “no nation,” but also “no likely combination of nations;” Mr. Coolidge agreed).
Mr. Coolidge said that of course these objectives represented a piece of “pie in the sky” today, but that he was thinking of an ultimate goals statement as something to vie with the Soviet “pie in the sky” proposal.
He suggested that we try to build on what we have got; that is, for example, that we use the United Nations. He did observe that the existing UN police force was badly mixed up.
He spoke in general terms of a codification of existing procedures as being a desirable early step, pointing out that it would not raise inspection problems. He said that a group at the Harvard Law School was studying the matter.
[Facsimile Page 2]In discussing Soviet capabilities, he referred to the “missile gap.” He said that the Soviets would have ICBMs in quantity before the U.S. and that then the DEW line will be no good at all. He said that the information he had was that the Soviets in their strategic missiles concept are relying more on mobility than upon base hardening.
He then spoke of the theory of a balance of mutual deterrence. Under this theory, there would be a sufficient number of defensive missiles remaining after an attack (as a result of base hardening or mobility or a combination of both) to permit a counter-attack upon the Soviet Union. He said that achieving such mutual deterrence would accelerate the arms race for a while, but that once we get the required number of missiles, a plateau would be reached and then defense expenditures could be reduced.
He touched briefly on the possibility of a partial disengagement of ground forces in Europe, whereby there might be a thinning out of [Typeset Page 1818] Communist forces in East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia and a concomitant thinning out of NATO forces.
He also referred to the so-called “nth” country problem and said that an excellent working paper on it had been prepared for the JCS.
He readily admitted that we cannot get to the goals unless and until there is a method of detecting clandestine nuclear detonations. He said that even the Russians had now admitted that there were insufficient means of detecting underground nuclear explosions.
- Source: Planning Board meeting with Coolidge. Secret. 2 pp. Eisenhower Library, White House Office Files, Project Clean Up, Disarmament, General.↩