Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, National Security Affairs, Volume II, Part 2

PPS files, lot 64 D 563, “Atomic Energy—Armaments 1952–1953”

Memorandum by Edmund A. Gullion, Member of the Policy Planning Staff¹

top secret

[Washington,] March 4, 1953.

• Subject:
• Consultants Report on Disarmament²

The following comments relate to the “Recommendations” of the paper in reference; to the Annex to that paper and to some drafting points in its “Discussion” section.

In my opinion, this excellent study is particularly valuable for its recommendations on information policy. My chief reservations have to do with the position presented in the Annex (“Some Possible Characteristics of a Realistic Agreement on the Regulation of Armaments”), which suggests that the principal element of some future arms control plan might be the reduction in atomic stockpiles and numbers of bombing airplanes below the level which could threaten irreparable damage to the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., together with the acceptance of a limited inspection scheme which “takes some account of the Iron Curtain”. These proposals are, I think, inadequate and represent a sharp break with American thinking to date on the necessities of an atomic energy control scheme which would present more safeguards than dangers. In presenting these ideas, however tentatively and hypothetically, the Report does not, in my opinion, satisfactorily explain why our existing plans for international control are no longer valid.

“Recommendation 1: Candor to the American Government and people.”

I believe this recommendation is very convincing, although the military establishments and the AEC may have some difficulty with it. The report disposes of possible objections by pointing out that our stockpile is now “fully large enough” so that revelation of its range might have a salutary, rather than a merely enlightening effect on the Soviet Union. It is difficult to see how the American people can be brought to do the hard thinking required about foreign policy, armaments policy and civil defense unless they have some knowledge of their atomic situation comparable to that presented in this report.

“Recommendation 2: Atomic Armaments and the Unity of the Free World.”

Under this heading the Consultants propose greater freedom in exchange of information on the “character of the problem” of the use of atomic weapons with our allies and friends. However, in a footnote, they expressly state that their recommendations do not “relate to the special problem of technical collaboration on the making of atomic weapons”. Apparently what the Commission favors is more inter-allied discussion of the strategic and battlefield situations in which atomic weapons might be used, with indications and contra-indications and the trend of American thinking on these subjects. This is a field in which we are apparently only feeling our way at present in view of the various restrictions upon our “freedom of action”. I think the language here reflects this groping approach. This recommendation is certainly good as far as it goes. I agree that this kind of exchange should be fostered, and believe that the Consultants are well advised in citing General Bradley’s emphasis on the military importance of confidence among allies.

The recommendation disclaims any idea that “we give up our right to decide for ourselves in an emergency whether or not we will use our atomic weapons”. Now, the line between the kind of exchange of information which can be permitted on “use” and that which cannot does not appear very firm. Perhaps it cannot be at this time. In any case, the approach our Government is now apparently using and which is inferentially endorsed by the Commission serves to narrow the “twilight zone” of uncertainty.

My major objection at this point is to the limited scope of the recommendation. Possibly the Consultants did not wish to court a controversy which might obscure their principal recommendations, but by excluding from consideration the topic of “technical collaboration”, I believe they are by-passing an essential question in the atomic field which they are in a better position than anyone else to tackle.

The provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) are a sore point in our relations with the United Kingdom and Canada. These nations have a case for thinking that the Act excludes them from scientific and technical information which they believe was promised them during the war at the highest level in accordance with an agreed division of labor in atomic research and a sharing of raw materials in which they had the advantage. This controversy has a long and very secret history and involves the division of power in foreign affairs under the American system between the executive and the legislature. The whole subject has been obfuscated by the discovery of spies in the British and American atomic energy establishments and this makes it difficult to approach it in the most rational manner. But at least we know now that the British have the bomb, that Canada is able to produce the bomb and that a number of other countries can do so in the relatively near future. Above all, we know that the Soviet Union incontestably has atomic weapons. The reasons for the rigid restrictions in the McMahon Act therefore no longer seem valid and, in fact, are possibly detrimental to our own interest. I believe that a great chance of dealing with this question will have been lost if this new Commission reporting to a new Administration does not face the issue squarely.

“Recommendation 3: American Continental Defense”.

The effectiveness of these very valuable recommendations largely depends upon a freer atomic public information policy, as postulated in the first two recommendations of the Report.

“Recommendation 4: Disengagement from Disarmament Discussions in the United Nations”.

The sense of this recommendation is that further such discussions within the organs of the United Nations should be minimized. This course has, in fact, been pursued by the United States since 1948.

I agree with the Consultants’ statement that the approach to arms regulation through commissions of the United Nations has hitherto been “unproductive”, but it is less clear what the report means when it says it has been “misleading”. It is true that these discussions, as they have progressed, have become increasingly unrealistic and assumed the character of set pieces in a propaganda morality play.

Early in the debate, most of the U.N. nations made the U.S. plan their own. It is probably counter-productive to belabor this fact now. However, this section of the report seems to dismiss the U.N. Plan in a somewhat casual fashion. It is referred to merely as “bearing the marks of its birth” and as a “monument to real hopes and good intentions”. Yet neither here nor elsewhere in the report do I find any systematic re-evaluation of our original proposals. Clearly the Consultants consider them at an impasse because the Soviets will not accept them, but if there is anything about the original plan which is no longer valid or technically feasible, it is not cited.

We used to think that it was the minimum for a scheme which would not permit more dangers from abuse than it prevented. But in hinting at the feasibility of a less thorough plan, the Consultants do not show why we were wrong. If it be argued that bomb-for-bomb “conventional” atomic weapons are less the “absolute weapon” than we had supposed, then we should recall the threat of the thermo-nuclear weapon.

I do not know what the Consultants have in mind when they say that “A modified version of the U.N. Plan might be relatively easy to prepare.”

“Recommendation 5: Communication with the U.S.S.R.”

Certainly any further constriction of the channels of communication with the U.S.S.R. would be a tragic mistake if it choked off a signal coming from them to us of their belated recognition of the vital need to do something to avert atomic catastrophe.

But, I believe the Consultants’ recommendations are vague and might even be interpreted to suggest more than they intend. At the outset, they propose that a “real effort” should be made to find ways of communicating with the rulers of the Soviet Union. “Serious negotiation”, it is conceded, is hardly possible at present, but “the lesser act of genuine^* communication can do no harm and might have real value.” Apparently, we are at the least to keep up a “continuous record of the way the Kremlin sounds in communication on this subject.” Moreover, says the report, it is more important for the time being to “listen for sounds from Soviet representatives” than to make many of our own.

I find it difficult to imagine how this particular conversational ball would be put into play. It seems to me to enter into a general discussion with the Soviet Union which would include consideration of armaments control, (which may be what a “real effort” would imply) but to arrive at these discussions prepared to hear sounds but make none. What would be the United States position? What would be the agenda? How is it proposed to get the Soviets to talk sense?

Although the recommendation cites the need for a “real effort” perhaps it means to do no more than to endorse continuance of the effort through routine diplomatic contacts. This may be preferable, provided our formal diplomatic representatives have an informed idea of the nature of the sounds they are to “listen for”.

It is disturbing that nothing is said here about the role of our allies in such a contact with the Soviets, especially since one medium of multilateral communication will be closed down as discussion in the U.N. is curtailed and since, if the Recommendations of the Annex are adopted, the Allies would be left in a position of great danger vis-à-vis Soviet atomic power, while the United States’ peril would have been reduced.

The Annex: “Possible Characteristics of a Realistic Agreement on the Regulation of Armaments”.

The most noteworthy feature of this paper is found in the Annex, which suggests the possibility at some future time of a plan of control of much different character than the U.S. and the U.N. have heretofore supported.

I understand that the Annex is regarded as tentative, hypothetical, contingent and not an integral part of the paper, and that these qualifications are supposed to be found both in the letter of transmittal and in the Annex itself. I do not, however, find this disclaimer spelled out sufficiently.

The Annex suggests three possible features of a control plan:

(a) That atomic stocks and bombing fleets would be reduced in the United States and the U.S.S.R. to a level from which neither great power could inflict decisive damage on the other.

(b) Contingent upon this action there would then be what the Consultants call a “relatively simple system of inspection, designed to prevent any major violation from going unnoticed;” and

(c) There would be a “considerable reduction in conventional weapons to balance any limitation on the instruments of mass atomic attack.”

These proposals amount to a major departure from the scheme of control conceived by the United States and adopted by most of the other nations. All of these points have in one form or another been rebutted or refuted by our own representatives in supporting the U.S. plan; nor, except for saying that the original plan “bears the marks of the year of its birth” and that a new plan must “take some account of the Iron Curtain” does the Consultants Report say what is wrong with the old one.

The principal objection to the first new proposal is that such a reduction in atomic stocks might leave the United States and the U.S.S.R. in relatively less danger from each other, but it would expose our European and British Allies to mortal peril. Moreover, although the Consultants may not have so intended, the Report can be read as meaning that this state of affairs would have been arrived at in discussions conducted largely bilaterally by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

Secondly, as to inspection, the United States has previously maintained that only complete ownership by an international authority of fissionable material and its close control from the time of its severance from its place of occurrence in nature to its ultimate fabrication would suffice to guard against diversions, illicit production and stockpiling. The Annex does not cite any developments other than Soviet objection to real inspection which would make this position any less valid. It does argue that a lesser surveillance would become feasible after stockpiles are reduced. The latter solution, as indicated above, is not itself without dangers, nor does it follow that the requirements for inspection are reduced thereby. As the Consultants themselves point out, the development of thermonuclear devices calls for a more stringent rather than a less rigid inspection system; and so does the discovery of additional source materials and improvement in production techniques.

In essence, the Consultants propose to accommodate a plan for control of atomic energy to the persistence of the Iron Curtain, provided atomic stockpiles are reduced. Nothing is said about whether reduction of stockpiles is to precede setting up a control plan, or the converse; we may, in fact, be in the position of accepting a Soviet timetable we have hitherto rejected.

Perhaps no plan can be produced that does not involve lifting the Curtain. In fact, the political condition precedent which the Consultants envision as making negotiation with the Soviet Union feasible would probably have to involve substantial dissolving of the Curtain. In that case, the control plan we would favor would possibly not be that described in this report.

In any case, the proposals in the Annex represent such a drastic change that, it seems to me, they should be expounded and justified by some such reasoning process as that of the original Acheson–Lilienthal Report. It is not enough merely to say, as the new report does, that “we believe that it would be possible to sketch a proposal for the automatic component of such a scheme which would eliminate the danger of an atomic knockout and at the same time avoid the comprehensive and elaborate mechanisms of the current United Nations Plan.”

Finally, as has been often pointed out in American consideration of the problem, there are dangers in linking a reduction of atomic stockpiles to a reduction in conventional weapons and land armies. It would be much easier for the Soviet Union to remobilize any elements disbanded under such a scheme than it would for us to try to recover the atomic stockpiles which have been “reduced”. Incidentally, nothing is said here of another problem which has troubled the U.S. planners, and that is the disposition of fissionable materials. Does “reduction” mean destruction or disposal and, if so, by what physical means, and in what place and under what political controls? And is it desirable and justifiable to sterilize or destroy (if that were possible) this valuable source of energy?

With reference to certain points in the “Discussion” section, I offer the following comments:

(a) The use of atomic weapons in the Far East.

The report argues that American thinking has been unclear and inadequate with respect to the proper occasions and methods for use of atomic weapons in the Far East. This view can be supported, I believe, by reference to the course of the Five-Power Military Conversations of October, 1952 on counteracting possible Chinese aggression in South East Asia.³ It is not clear whether the use of atomic weapons would be necessary to interdict a Chinese advance and whether the difference between American and British estimates of the size of the air force required could be explained by the lack of agreed terms of reference in respect of atomic weapons. Perhaps the Policy Planning Staff might appropriately interest itself in this subject.

(b) “Flexibility”.

I may have missed the point here, which can perhaps be blamed on the vagueness of the language as well as on my imperfect understanding. My difficulty is with the report’s use of this term and its synonym “freedom of action”. By “flexibility” the Consultants apparently mean: 1) that we should be able to exchange information on the facts of atomic life more freely with other nations of the free world; and 2) the possibility of relaxing a “rigid commitment to specific forms of military action” in our strategic planning, i.e., an all-out use of atomic armaments in case of general war. In view of what follows in the report, the Consultants may also mean that we are now too rigidly committed to one particular scheme for control of atomic energy.

The language of this section perhaps suffers by attempting to convey by implication something which the Consultants seem reluctant to state unequivocally: 1) that the curbs on exchange of information ought to be lifted; 2) we should be considering some orientation of our military potential other than major dependence on atomic weapons; and 3) that the UNAEC plan for the International Control of Atomic Energy is no longer applicable.

The stipulations about “flexibility” and “freedom of action” might be less vague if they were not so widely separated from the specific recommendations which they may be intended to foreshadow, and which are developed subsequently in the report, as for example, for a new plan for control of atomic energy based on a reduction of stockpiles. Unfortunately, as they are used at this point, it looks as if the Committee were girding itself to make drastic recommendations but was not prepared to go beyond circumlocution in describing them.

1. Gullion had served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Atomic Energy Matters in 1947 and 1948. In that position, he was the ranking official concerned with the Department’s atomic energy policy on a day-to-day basis. This memorandum was directed to Paul H. Nitze, Director of the Policy Planning Staff, and John H. Ferguson, Deputy Director.
2. Ante, p. 1056.
3. Underscoring supplied. [Footnote in the source text. Printed here as italics.]
3. For documentation on the conference under reference, see vol. XII, Part 1, pp. 230 ff.