Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume III, National Security Policy; Arms Control and Disarmament, Microfiche Supplement

546. Note From Caccia to Herter¹

Washington, March 22, 1960

Dear Chris,

The Foreign Secretary has asked me to send you the attached strictly personal message about nuclear tests.

When you have had time to consider it and the problems involved, he greatly hopes that you may give me a further opportunity of talking over this question with you before you send him any reply.

Yours sincerely,

Harold Caccia

Attachment

Message From Lloyd to Herter

TEXT OF MESSAGE

Dear Chris,

Harold Caccia has reported to me the conversation which he had with you on Sunday about the proposals put forward by the Russians at the Nuclear Tests Conference last Saturday. I understand that you will be giving further consideration to them in the course of this week, and I therefore hope you will not mind if I inflict upon you another letter setting out our attitude.

We regard these proposals as a most hopeful development. Of course we must go into the detail of them with great care and get precise clarification of what Tsarapkin really is proposing. He seems to have left some important points open for detailed negotiation. We must of course make sure that these points are settled in the way we want and I think it would be worth trying had to see whether this can be done.

I do not want now to rehearse at length all the arguments I put to you in my two messages of January 14 and 27. I hope you will look once again at those messages; but I would like in this one to set out as a series of headings the arguments I then used. These were:

(i) that the Russians would only accept an agreement which would suspend all tests;

(ii) that if we now fail to reach an agreement the odium for this failure is likely to fall on the West;

(iii) that similarly if we fail and tests are resumed, and even if Russian tests were atmospheric while yours were underground, the main odium for this resumption of testing would likewise fall on the West;

(iv) that it is possible and indeed likely that from the military point of view the Russians stand to lose more than the West if tests are not resumed;

(v) that we have in any case had a completely uncontrolled moratorium on all tests since the negotiations began nearly seventeen months ago;

(vi) that even the best possible agreement would, as we have always realised, involve a virtually uncontrolled moratorium on all underground tests at least for a period of two or three years during the installation of the system; acceptance of the principle of the present Soviet proposal would in effect scarcely add to that period;

(vii) that if we fail to get an agreement then

(a) we lose the first opportunity of installing controls on Soviet territory and hence a vital precedent for future disarmament agreements;

(b) we gravely prejudice the prospects of progress in the Ten Power Disarmament Conference;

(c) we lose the best prospect now open to us of checking the spread of nuclear weapons to other powers.

There is also the important argument which I did not use in my two messages of January 14 and 27 but which I have used with you before. Supposing we fail to get an agreement, we shall be in a period in respect of which the Russians have announced that they will not be the first to resume tests. If, when it came to the point, the United States were to decide that it would not resume tests either, then we shall have thrown away all the advantages which an agreement might have brought us and shall have, in fact, an uncontrolled suspension.

But the most important argument of all is that at long last there may be a chance of making an agreement with the Soviet Union on fairly reasonable terms which would involve the setting up of a control system in the Soviet Union. If achieved in the way we want, it would be the first piece of controlled disarmament that the world has really ever seen and could change the outlook both for the Disarmament Conference and for the Summit.

I will not examine the technical considerations here; but I am convinced that, if a satisfactory moratorium proposal were accepted, we could by inspection exercise some real degree of deterrence against the possibility of Soviet violations below as well as above the proposed threshold.

I know that you will reflect carefully on these arguments and on all the remaining factors which suggest that agreement on the basis the Russians have now proposed may be negotiable in a manner which would, on balance, be to the advantage of the West.

With best wishes,

Yours ever,

Selwyn

1. Source: Transmits letter to Herter from Lloyd on nuclear test conference. Secret; Personal. 5 pp. NARA, RG 59, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, U.K. Officials Correspondence with Secretary Herter.