Evening star., 1951-12-12
The Deadlock Remains

It should surprise nobody that the Big Four,
after their ten days of secret disarmament talks
In Paris have come out into the open with
nothing more than an agreement to have the
United Nations General Assembly create
commission to deal with their disagreement.
This merely confirms what had been generally
regarded as a foregone conclusion at the very
start of the talks. To have expected better
outcome real meeting of minds-would have
been to take naively wishful view of the great
gulf that exists between the Soviet Union on one
side and France, Britain and the United States
on the other.
What the General Assembly will now
dertake to do is to merge the deadlocked Atomic
Energy Commission and the deadlocked Com
mission on Conventional ArmamentS into single
new agency made up of the Security Councils
II members plus Canada. That is all that the
Big Four's Paris agreement amounts to. The
projected agency-aSSuming that its creation is
not blocked by arguments over what sort of
directives should be addressed to twill simply
take over the two separate deadlockS and try
to break them with an all-inclusive ne-package
approach to the problem of controlling A-bombs
and every other type of weapon without excep
ton. AS matters Stand today, however, the
probability is that this consolidated effort will
result in little more than kind of consolidated
super deadlock.
This is so because of the difficulty of work
Ing out compromise between the rival Soviet
and Anglo French American disarmament plans.
In essence, our Western proposal calls for step
by-step action-cmaxed by an agreement on
rigid atomic control-to establish vetoless sys-,
tenn under which all the arms and armed forces
of the major powers would be subjected to the
strictest kind of unhampered international in
spection and regulation. In other words, while
outlawing weapons like the A-bomb and reducing
the size of military establishments everywhere,
the system would be conditioned on the creation
of genuinely effective machinery for continuous,
worldwide verification and policing to guard
against violations and evasons by any country
secretly preparing to launch war of aggression
mere glance at the Kremlin's counterproposal
Is enough to show why there has been nothing
but deadlock for the past several years.
For the Russian plan, in sum and substance
would have the effect of obliging the West to
give up at once the main thing-our present
atomic superiority-that protects it by serving
as deterrent to all-out Soviet aggression. That
is to say what the Krenilin demands is an
immediate unconditional ban on A-weapons 1t
demands, further that we agree to. this on the
basis of no better guarantee than an assertion
of it's willingness to cooperate eventually in
control organization functioning Wtthin the
framework of the Security Council. What that
means is that the Red veto would always be
available to prevent the real U. N policing behind
the Iron Curtain. Our side, of course, will never
assent to such fraudulent proposal and so
the present prospect-barring basic change in
Moscow-is that the disarmament deadlock will
continue while hstory's deadlieSt arms race goes
on and on.
Actually, it is difficult to see how this out
look can be improved by anything less than a
revolution in Soviet thinking and policy. For