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Walking the Plank to Nowhere

Before the present era of officially
cultivated national smugness began,
some beginnings had been made from
which an adequate world policy in
the atomic age conceivably could have
been evolved. Unfortunately, long-
range implications of these first steps
have never been clearly recognized
and formulated; instead, these steps
have been presented as emergency
measures, first in the postwar recon-
struction, then in the cold war with
the Soviet Union. This degradation of
the ultimate purpose-due partly to
the leaders' own pragmatic approach,
and partly to their concern with the
"saleability" of the programs to Con-
gress and the people-has been one of
the main reasons for the subsequent
disillusionment, and present slump in
our foreign policy. Nevertheless, it is
worth remembering that at the time
when these foreign programs were
conceived and carried out, American
leadership was widely recognized in
the world and much good will was
built up in Europe through the Mar-
shall Plan, and in Asia through the
Point Four Program.

Now, this foundation has largely
disintegrated. Instead of further prog-
ress toward unity, disagreement and
rivalries have appeared in the non-
Communist world and good will to-
ward America has been largely dis-
sipated.

This deterioration has been due not
—or not mainly—to errors in the con-
ception or execution of this or that
special policy, but to wrong general at-
titudes from which these individual
policies were derived. A forward-look-
ing foreign policy, inadequately for-
mulated, but at least vaguely under-
stood in the preceding period, has
been repudiated by the present ad-
ministration. From the path of en-
lightened humanitarianism-based on

dim understanding of the essential in-
terdependence of all nations in the
atomic age-American foreign policy
has returned to the old path of short-
range power politics.

What is needed now is a re-exam-
ination, not of this or that special pol-
icy, but of the foundation on which
truly successful long-range policy can
be built.

A realistic revision of American for-
eign policy has to take into account
the following inescapable facts, how-
ever repugnant some of them may be
to many Americans.

1. The development of atomic and thermonuclear weapons, and of long-range planes and missiles, capable of delivering these weapons, has made it *permanently* impossible for any nation, however powerful—and this includes the U.S.—to avoid complete devastation, and losses of tens of millions of lives, if a major war is allowed to break out at any time in the future.

2. Even while we cannot escape
the necessity of building up the maxi-
mum possible capacity for defense and
retaliation against an atomic attack,
we must admit to ourselves that these
measures will *never* give us the kind
of national security we have enjoyed
in the past. Security will return only
if and when mankind adopts a new
way of thinking about international
affairs, and develops an organization
making war impossible. In other
words, America's security is bound-
not as a temporary emergency, but
for all future-to the security of the
world as a whole.

3. While we can and must strive,
with patience and perseverance, to
achieve whatever degree of equitable
and controlled disarmament which
proves technically and politically feasi-
ble; (or, failing this, to stop the arms
race short of the development of an

ultimate combination of weapons of mass destruction with means of their uncheckable delivery to any point on earth) we must cherish no illusion that a success in this direction can bring back national security as we knew it in the past. It would be a dangerous delusion to count on the possibility that a major war in the future will be fought without full use of nuclear weapons. In a world committed to all-out development of atomic power as the basis of industrial progress, every major nation will be capable of producing and using atomic and thermonuclear weapons in war—even if means could be found to effectively eliminate these weapons from national arsenals in peace. This elimination itself is rapidly becoming a technically difficult, if not impossible, assignment.

This means that a policy directed toward the reduction of armaments (or slowing down the arms race), however necessary, cannot relieve America of the necessity to face up to the main challenge history has put to our generation—the challenge of building a world community in which peace will be secure—not merely for an extended period of time, but forever.

Peace has become the major concern of all the people of the world. The only way in which America can regain her leadership is by dedicating her policies to the ultimate aim of a peaceful world community, evoking a vision more inspiring and more convincing than that of the world federation of Communist dictatorships to which our competitors for the minds of men are committed. We must light a beacon to steer our policies by, before we can hope to convince other nations to join us in common voyage.

Stable peace will be difficult if not impossible as long as wide areas of the world suffer from hunger, poverty,

and ignorance. It is not in the power of a single nation, even one with the unique resources of America, to relieve this situation everywhere. Even a com-

mon and sustained effort of all nations could assure only a slow progress. It is, however, of fundamental importance for America to recognize that her prosperity cannot continue indefinitely without an assurance of improvement in the well-being of the whole world. Our own enlightened self-interest requires that we accept a share of responsibility for the advancement of all mankind, commeasurable with our capabilities, and do this quite independently of the momentary requirements of the power struggle in which we are involved. The success of the relief and reconstruction policies, initiated by America after the war, has been due largely to recognition by recipient nations—despite a vicious hostile propaganda—that this assistance was rendered in a generous, humanitarian spirit. Recently, although technical assistance has continued, its motivation has changed. American leaders have openly announced that their predominant concern is with the system of military alliances against the perils of Communist imperialism; and thus has found expression in the switching from economic to predominantly military assistance. As a result, our technical assistance programs are now elicit-ing, at best, grudging acceptance, and at worst, suspicion and abuse. This reaction has created understandable resentment in the American people, and has led to widespread desire to terminate what seems to be a costly but unrewarding effort to win friends abroad.

In order to become again effective, the technical assistance programs need

to be brought back to the humanitarian
level on which they were initiated.
They must be separated from what-
ever military support we may have to
continue providing to our allies.

A new American policy, consciously
directed toward the establishment of
a peaceful and prosperous world com-
munity, would have the greatest im-
mediate impact if it were initiated by
a declaration making it clear to the
world that a major break is intended
with the world-wide traditions of for-
eign policies subservient to narrowly
defined, short-range "national inter-
ests." An atomic age doctrine, or proc-
lamation of independence, may be a
proper beginning—a public recognition
of the inescapable association of Amer-
ican security and prosperity with the
security and prosperity of mankind as
a whole, and assurance that our future
foreign policies will be based on this
fundamental fact; and a pledge that
we will bear our share of the political
and economic responsibility for the
well-being and peace of the world.

In this clearly established long-range
perspective, day-to-day policies in vari-
ous areas of the world will cease to be
emergency actions, and acquire a new
purpose and meaning. For example,

policies intended to secure the free-
dom of navigation in the Suez Canal
through effective international control
will acquire new conviction as part of
a general program of gradually estab-
lishing such control over all major
waterways (as President Truman pro-
posed shortly after the Second World
War).

There should be no illusion that the
aim of this new policy can be reached
easily or soon. It can be only the end
of a dangerous and long path, to be
hoped for in a future which, at this
time, we can only dimly perceive.
Yet, unless we know where this final
aim lies, the small steps we can make
now-steps we are actually making
every day-will remain random and
often contradictory, and will lead no-
where in the end. We will lack perse-
verance in the face of obstacles.

At the present time, our aim-
conscious or subconscious-is to return to
the nineteenth century, when the se-
curity of sovereign national states was
safeguarded by their armaments and
their alliances. Some may think that
this is the only "realistic" aim because
it refers to something that has always
existed in the past. Yet it is no more
real than the proverbial "shows of yes-
teryear"-melted forever in the giant
fireballs of Alamogordo and Bikini.

Reprinted from
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

PUBLICATION OF
PROMOTING ENDURING PEACE
489 Ocean Avenue, West Haven, Conn.

Promoting Enduring Peace, Inc., does not advocate or express opinions on legislative matters. The responsibility for statements of fact and opinion in the publications or material distributed by it rests solely with the author.

# Ten Years That Changed the World

## EUGENE RABINOWITCH

> "Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world."

HENRY ADAMS, 1862

### 1. The Clock Starts Ticking

With this number, the *Bulletin* enters its second decade, its first issue having appeared on December 15, 1945. It was founded by a group of scientists whose participation in the development of the atomic bomb convinced them that, with this discovery, a radical change had come in the role of science in public affairs. They believed that mankind was entering, unaware, into a new age, fraught with unprecedented dangers of destruction. In spring 1945, this conviction led some scientists to an attempt—perhaps the first one in history—to interfere, as scientists, with the political and military decisions of the nation. Leo Szilard's memorandum to President Roosevelt (March 1945)¹ and the report to the Secretary of War by the so-called "Franck Committee" on June 11, 1945,² counseling, for reasons of long-range policy, against the use of atomic bombs in Japan, were the first manifestations of this new concern of scientists with public policy.

Their arguments made hardly a ripple in the flow of events that led to the holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.³ The government was unprepared to see in the atom bomb anything but a bigger blockbuster—a welcome means

for rapid termination of the siege of Japan. With few exceptions, public opinion rejoiced over Hiroshima and Nagasaki as demonstrations of American technical ingenuity and military ascendency. The certitude that other nations would soon acquire similar weapons, and the vision of American cities crumbling in future "atomic Pearl Harbors," of which scientists spoke with deep apprehension, were discounted by the public as obsessions of a "little band of frightened men," whose consciences were troubled by their participation in the development of such an enormously destructive weapon.

The "atomic scientists" saw ahead a long task of public education, to make the peoples of the world understand the challenge with which the "atomic age" confronted them: to establish permanent peace or to face destruction of their civilization in an atomic war. The *Bulletin* was to be the voice by which these scientists could speak to the public, as well as a forum in which they could discuss matters of public policy for their own enlightenment.

Senator Brien McMahon was one of the few statesmen who early understood the paramount importance of atomic energy for the future of mankind. The motto on the *Bulletin's* masthead: "It is our solemn obligation . . . to lift our eyes above the lesser problems and to discuss and act upon . . . the supreme problem before our country and the world" is from a speech which he had prepared for delivery a few days before his untimely death.

For most other national leaders—as for the public in general—the threat of the atom appeared remote beside the

many urgent problems posed by day-to-day national and international developments.

A year and a half after the first appearance of the *Bulletin*, Edward Teller sketched its now familiar cover design—the clock with the hands obviously pointing to a few minutes before midnight.

### 2. Could the Clock Have Been Stopped?

To prevent the atomic clock from striking the hour of doom, the idea of international control of atomic energy was early conceived by scientists. There never was—there never could have been—much hope that if large-scale production of nuclear materials were permitted to get under way in several nations enjoying essentially unrestricted sovereignty, nuclear weapons could be effectively eliminated from their arsenals. In 1945, however, massive nonmilitary atomic fuel production had not yet started; and it was not unreasonable to hope that rapid establishment of an international control system could forestall the diversion of atomic materials to the making of weapons, and thus prevent a race in atomic armaments—or, at least, delay its beginning long enough for all nations to realize what changes in national sovereignies would be necessary to avoid this race for ever.

From the point of view of gaining time for reflection, perhaps the most logical suggestion was that of a moratorium on all large-scale nuclear technology—for industrial power as well as for military purposes.⁴ Such an agreement—much simpler to control than a prohibition of military applications of an otherwise freely growing atomic industry—would have stopped the atomic clock dead, until the United Nations decided that the political setup of the world had become safe enough to give atomic power the go-ahead signal.

¹ Leo Szilard, "Atomic Bombs and the Postwar Position of the United States in the World-1945," reprinted in *Bulletin, III* (December 1947), 351-53.

² Committee of the Metallurgical Laboratory of Chicago (J. Franck, Chairman), "A Report to the Secretary of War, June 1945," reprinted in *Bulletin, I* (May 1, 1946), 2-4, 16.

³ Henry L. Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," *Bulletin, III* (February 1947), 37-44, 66-67.

A different approach was chosen in the Acheson-Lilienthal report,⁶ which became the basis of American proposals to the United Nations. It envisaged a full-speed development of nuclear technology under the aegis of the U.N. To make this development safe, the ownership of dangerous nuclear materials, and the operation of all installations capable of producing them, was to be vested in the international agency.

The "positive" vision of international cooperation in atomic technology kindled the imagination of scientists all over the world; the "negative" idea of delaying progress in the name of safety appeared unattractive beside it. Since American aversion to "stopping the wheels of progress" was more than matched by the adulation of technical progress in the Soviet Union, the "stop and think" proposal—which perhaps could have had a better chance of practical success than the more ambitious "positive" plan—found no official support on either side. Yet, neither the U.S. nor the USSR could then (or can now) claim an urgent need for atomic industrial power (Great Britain being the only major nation where this need may soon become acute).

While the bold proposals of the Acheson-Lilienthal plan mired down in the morass of negotiations with the Soviet Union—distrustful of American purposes, evasive in her tactics, and fundamentally hostile to the idea of pooling the economic efforts of the Communist "world of the future" with the "doomed" non-Communist world—the atomic arms race gathered speed. Instead of being stopped, the minute hand on the *Bulletin* clock moved forward—in October 1949, with the announcement of the first atomic explosion in the Soviet Union; and, again in September 1953 with that of the first hydrogen bomb test in Siberia. (The first explosion of a full-scale American thermonuclear bomb was never officially announced!)

⁴ Quincy Wright, "Draft for a Convention on Atomic Energy," *Bulletin*, I (April 1, 1946), 11-13; Cuthbert Daniel and Arthur H. Squires, "The International Control of Safe Atomic Energy," *Bulletin*, III (April 1947), 111-13, 135; Cuthbert Daniel, "An International Moratorium on Atomic Energy for Power Uses," (letter to Sir Alexander Cadogan) *Bulletin*, IV (June 1948), 183-84; D. Cavers, *Bulletin*, III (October 1947), 283-88.

⁵ See Acheson-Lilienthal Report, *Bulletin*, I (April 1, 1946), 2-9.

### 3. Falling Behind Time

Public understanding of the danger into which the atomic arms race had plunged the world has been slow in developing. In fall 1945, President Truman called the atomic bomb secret a "sacred trust," which America was going to keep "on behalf of mankind." In September 1949—prompted by the AEC—he announced the first atomic explosion in Soviet Russia; but at the end of his term, in 1952, Truman was still unconvinced that the Soviet Union really possessed the bomb! No wonder similar doubts persisted in the minds of many less well-informed Americans; most of them believed that if the Soviet Union had produced an atomic bomb, it was only through stealing American secrets; and that once all leaks were stopped, she would rapidly fall behind in the race. This delusion still lingers on in the minds of many unfamiliar with the century-long Russian leadership in many fields of applied mechanics (including ballistics) and with the high present level of Russian nuclear physics.

Many military leaders, out of slowness of perception, or because of vested interests in existing weapons, long refused to recognize the revolutionary nature of nuclear bombs. To prove his conviction that the atom bomb had been "oversold," a U.S. Air Force colonel offered to stand on one end of a runway at the National Airport in Washington while an atomic bomb was exploded at the other end. Navy men pointed to the survival of many ships, after the Bikini tests in 1946, as proof that nuclear weapons did not make conventional naval forces obsolete.

Much prodding, mainly by scientists (in particular in the "Project Lincoln" and "Project East River" reports)⁶ was needed before American military leaders became convinced that the Soviet atomic-air progress made necessary extensive preparations for the defense of America's mainland—"active," or "continental" defense, to detect and destroy bomb carriers, and "passive," or "civil" defense, to minimize the losses inflicted by bombs which reach their targets.

In the last few years, the development of continental defense (radar chains and land-to-air guided missiles) has been considerably accelerated, but the progress of civil defense

⁶ For discussion of Project East River, see special issue of *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists*, September 1953.

remains slow. Starved for men and funds, and deprived of up-to-date information on weapon effects, American civil defense authorities have long continued to toy with the idea of surviving atomic attacks as the British survived the blitz in 1940—by hiding in shelters. Many city buildings still display arrows marked "To Shelters"—which could as well read "To Death-Traps." The shock of the H-bomb explosion was needed for this suicidal idea to be replaced by the recommendation that cities in the path of an attack be evacuated.⁷ Nearly two years later, no major American city has yet had the courage to try out the practicability of this concept in a full-scale exercise. As to dispersal of population and industry (which could afford a certain protection against all kinds of atomic attack⁸), we as yet have almost none of it. Instead, new skyscrapers are going up in the most congested areas; and some basic industries have continued their concentration in metropolitan centers already replete with major targets.

Hesitation has also stunted our international policy in the atomic field. Hampered by "pre-atomic" (a better word may be "antediluval") attitudes of influential segments of public and congressional opinion, our representatives entered the U.N. atomic energy control negotiations with no feeling of desperate urgency. They wanted to proceed "gradually"; but events have rapidly swept over their caution and their "safe" stages.

With our allies, we have followed the same policy of *festina lente*, making only belated and restricted agreements on the sharing of atomic information—thus causing them to spend time and effort on investigations and tests, the results of which we could have predicted, and provoking a similar secretiveness on their part. This policy also hampers the training and integration of NATO forces into a single body of maximum efficiency.

### 4. Looking Backwards

One "way out" of the dead end of the atomic arms race has been suggested by some whose eyes are habitually riveted to the past. If wars cannot be abolished, they say, let's make

⁷ See "Planning an Effective Civilian Defense," *Bulletin*, X (September 1945), 291-93; also, Val Peterson, "Mass Evacuation," ibid., 294-95.

⁸ The *Bulletin* devoted an issue to this subject in August-September 1950.

terrence idea is kept in proper perspective—as a desperate, temporary means to achieve a “breathing spell,” during which mankind can search for a permanent solution, there is not much one can say against it; in fact, the last ten years have left us with little to rely upon, as safeguard of peace, except deterrence. But when this concept is glorified as a final answer to the problem of war, a victory of technocracy over diplomacy, establishing the Strategic Air Command (and its Soviet equivalent) as permanent arbiters of peace in an unregenerate world, what an unrealistic utopia it becomes! What a fantastic perversion of the lofty concept of peace—a world of enshrined hatred and mistrust, in which the best efforts of each nation will be permanently bent toward improving its own machinery of mass destruction, and outwitting other nations, scheming to frustrate this machinery! What a degradation of science, to be put in the perpetual service of such an apparatus of terror—even if its purpose is to preserve peace!

The arguments put forward in 1945 against Langmuir's suggestions still stand—despite the advent of the hydrogen bomb, of the radioactive fallout, and the approaching advent of intercontinental missiles. The best that can be derived from such an atomic deadlock is a postponement of the explosion. That mankind can base its hopes for survival on indefinite maintenance of a perverse and immoral state, in which evil is kept in check only by the fear of worse evil, is a grotesque idea. Atomic deadlock can have positive value only if man uses the breathing spell it provides, to develop a permanent foundation for peace without terror.

## 7. From Defense to Deterrence

The believers in peace through mutual terror imply that defense against the atomic-air threat will never catch up with the attack. In this assumption they are probably correct. At present, the United States possesses a strategic air force supplied with hundreds, if not thousands, of atomic and thermonuclear bombs of various caliber, and of advance air bases permitting these planes to reach every spot on the globe. It is reasonable to expect that if vulnerability (or an uneasy political situation) should cause the U.S. to retire from these bases, longer-range bombing planes (and later, transcontinental missiles), will preserve American capacity to carry

destruction to any spot in the world from bases in America. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether our present “continental defense” establishment could destroy, say, as many as one-half of the planes engaged in a mass attack on U.S. territory. It is even less likely that, whatever effort we may put into perfecting these defenses, we will be able to protect America so effectively that not even a small number of jet bombers will get through, lay waste many of our cities, and infect large areas with radioactive fall-out. This does not make continental defense efforts useless, for an effective continental and civil defense may still make the difference between a destruction that can be repaired and one that can only be avenged. Furthermore, without the maximum protection of this type, our capacity for retaliation may itself be endangered.

With the anticipated advent of intercontinental missiles streaking through the stratosphere at a speed of thousands of miles per hour, the relative effectiveness of defense is bound to be further reduced. Missile warheads may have to be lighter, and, therefore, less powerful than plane-carried bombs; and many missiles are likely to go far astray; but, even an almost random rain of a thousand thermonuclear missiles could completely devastate large sections of industrial America. The same applies, of course, also to the Soviet Union—although its wider open spaces may make its position slightly more favorable. Satellite countries, as well as the free countries of Western Europe, probably are even now defenseless (and indefensible) against air-atomic attack.

Barring entirely unforeseeable developments, a realistic long-range prognosis must thus assume for the future that major nations will maintain the ability to inflict, at will, enormous damage on their enemies, and will have only a very limited capacity to protect themselves from a similar fate.

This is an entirely new situation in history. A strong state was presumed, in the past, to be able to shield its territory and its citizens from enemy attack. Fortresses, field fortifications, slit trenches, or tank barriers barred overland invasion, and armed ships guarded approaches by sea. The protection it afforded its citizens was, in fact, the first raison d'être of a state. If it failed in this task in the past, as it often did, it was the fault

of its leaders—kings or statesmen, who had failed to prepare for the emergency; generals who had used the wrong strategy or tactics; diplomats who had not secured allies. Today, we still speak of “adequate national defense,” conjuring the mental image of a country girded by walls and watchtowers (or their modern equivalents), and guarded by stout-hearted men—a protection behind which national life can continue in safety. Yet, our military leaders know that this kind of “national defense” they cannot provide, and in all probability, never will be able to provide in future. The word “defense” has therefore acquired a hollow sound. Instead of defense, we have—or soon will have—only deterrence; that is a tremendous change, and it may take more than a generation fully to comprehend it.

## 8. Security Through Disarmament?

If military strength cannot physically protect a nation from destruction, perhaps diplomats can end the jeopardy by negotiating an atomic disarmament pact. This is, perhaps, the main hope by which mankind lives at present. And yet, two questions must be asked: First: do we really want such a pact now? We have to choose between the theory that the balance of two atomic threats stabilizes peace, and the theory that a removal of these threats will make peace more secure. The Soviet Union has never wavered in proclaiming the second thesis; but Western policymakers have tried to support both at the same time! It would be, of course, a shock—and provoke much anti-American sentiment abroad—if we were to proclaim now that atomic disarmament, although possible and desirable between 1945 and 1948, has ceased to be so, now that all major nations have embarked on large-scale atomic production for industrial purposes, which will enable them to acquire atomic weapons very soon after the beginning of a war; nevertheless, the United States should, perhaps, not hesitate to put a blunt statement to this effect before the world's opinion.

There is another and less controversial reason why negotiations on abolition of atomic weapons have lost conviction. Even if both negotiating parties were fully persuaded of the desirability of this measure, the belief in its technical possibility is dwindling. For several years now, the Bulletin has been pointing out how difficult to

solve, if not insolvable, are the problems involved in accounting for the increasingly decisive *stockpiles* through any kind of objective process of verification. Also, the snowballing output of atomic materials for power purposes makes reliable check on the diversion of this production from industrial to military applications more and more difficult; while the immensely increased destructive potential of every pound of fissionable material (owing to the possibility of using it as detonator in a thermonuclear bomb), makes every undiscovered leak much more dangerous. Recently, these arguments have crept more and more often into public discussions of the problem. The Western negotiators seem to have recognized that unless the Soviet Union can show how the problems of past inventory and future leaks can be met, further discussion of atomic disarmament has little sense -except as propaganda. It would be desirable if scientists of neutral Asian countries-many of whom support the Soviet thesis that atomic weapons should be eliminated "under proper controls"-would produce some concrete ideas as to how this aim can be achieved under the conditions of "atomic plenty" (radically different from those of "atomic penury," under which the control idea was proposed in 1945 by American scientists).

Doubts about the *destability* of the abolition of atomic weapons, and the even graver doubts as to its *technical possibility*, have turned the attention of Western representatives in the U.N., toward measures aiming, not at abolition of these weapons, but at the prevention-or early discovery-of preparations for aggression. We are pressing for the adoption of Eisenhower's "open sky" proposal; the Soviet Union has countered it with the proposal to station U.N. inspectors at ports and road junctions, an acceptable suggestion, but obviously quite insufficient in itself. In fact, it may be doubted whether even aerial inspection will long remain a reliable method of discovering preparations for atomic air attack. At least, General LeMay, in a recent interview with the *U.S. News and World Report*¹² said that after the bases have been properly dispersed and made self-sufficient in personnel and supplies, a large-scale air-atomic attack could be staged without obvious preparations.

To sum up, a realistic appraisal of the atomic disarmament situation leads

to the conclusion that nations cannot reasonably expect deliverance from the nightmare of atomic destruction from their diplomats-any more than they can expect it from their defense chiefs.

This is what ten years of atomic energy have wrought. Truly, they have shaken the foundations on which human society has rested since the dawn of history; the existence of tribes, nations, states, and empires- each a law unto itself-offering its members, in exchange for loyalty and obedience unto death, effective military or diplomatic security from overwhelming attack by a rival group.

If history in our time were essentially that of the white race and the Western world-as was the history we were taught in schools-the import of the last ten years would be unambiguously clear. It seems likely that last spring's conference of the Big Four has signified the recognition of the truth by all of them, including the Soviet Union. If this surmise is true-and it is supported by the text of the recent Nehru-Bulganin communique¹³-the Soviet leaders have comprehended at last that atomic weapons have made a major war within the Western world suicidal for both sides. Not so long ago, Malenkov's assertion that "atomic war will bring about the end of all civilization" contributed to his downfall, and was replaced by Molotov's smug, orthodox version that "atomic war will bring about the end of capitalism." Since then, the facts of Bikini and Wrangel Island (if this is where the Soviet H-bomb tests are held) may have vindicated Malenkov. Technology has thus triumphed over dialectics; ten years of nuclear energy have proved more decisive than John Reed's "Ten Days that Shook the World."

## 9. Deadlock in West-Turmoil in East.

World history is played, in our time, however, on a stage much wider than Western Europe and America. The dominant event of the last ten years in the Western world may have been the advent of atomic and thermonuclear bombs; but in Asia and Africa, this factor is the awakening of native

¹³ "The meeting of the heads of governments at Geneva in July 1955, led to recognition by the great powers represented there of the futility of war which, owing to the development of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, could only bring disaster to mankind." (From the text of the Indian-Soviet joint declaration issued on December 13, 1955.)

nationalism. While the West becomes immobilized by fear of atomic war, the East is in turmoil and flux. National pride and national hatred-passions which the Western world is about to outgrow under the common threat of atomic destruction-remain powerful forces in the young nations, first tasting (or yearning to taste) the heady wine of sovereignty.

It is this simultaneity of the end of history as we knew it in the Western world, and the beginning of history in Asia and Africa, which makes the present world situation so confused and unpredictable. The atomic deadlock in the divided West would in itself represent a highly dangerous situation, but, at least, the danger would be unique and clear to all, and the breathing spell provided by the deadlock could be long enough to heal the scar that runs across the map of Europe. The many-sided conflicts between the lusty, young national states of Asia and Africa and the temptations they offer for intervention by the two opposing camps, adds many insidious fire hazards to the one obvious danger in Europe.

In Europe, we are faced with the problem of maintaining peace despite a highly arbitrary bisection of the continent-cutting across the living bodies of nations-or subjecting them entirely to unwanted domination, because we know that any attempt to change this division by force is likely to end in catastrophe. Asia and Africa are as yet far from a comparable state of rigid division. Sharp demarcation lines have been drawn across Korea and Viet Nam, and through the Formosa Straights; but even they can be made meaningless by events in neighboring states-Laos, Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, and Thailand, over which neither of the two camps has firm control. Until the Near East, Africa, and the Far East all are either clearly divided between associates of the two Western camps, or-as most new nations fervently hope-consolidated into a separate stable political system, the peace of the world will remain precariously embroiled in the game of power politics played by twenty-five new sovereign nations, with the open or secret interference of master minds in Moscow, Peking, Washington, London, and Paris.

The facts of the situation leave us, for the time being, no choice of policy in the West except to reinforce the political unity, military power, and economic stability of the Atlantic Alliance, thus making still more rigid its

¹² *U.S. News and World Report*, December 9, 1955.

deadlocked conflict with the Commu-
nist empire. Similarly, the facts of the
situation leave us no other course in
the Near and Far East, but to exercise
our idealogical, political, and econom-
ic influence to assist the forces of po-
litical freedom and economic progress
in the hope that, ultimately, these in-
dependent nations will find that their
interests have more in common with
ours than with those of the totalitarian
imperialism. However, the maximum
success we can expect from this pol-
icy will be the extension of the rigid
dividing line between the two camps,
which now exists in the Western
world, over the whole globe—a world-
wide metastable equilibrium of uncer-
tain permanency; and it is by no means
certain that we will be able to achieve
this degree of civilization before being
bludgeoned into war.

Such is the state of mankind after
ten years of atomic energy—a precar-
ous balance of mutual terror in the
West, a dangerous flux (from which
we hope a similar rigid stabilization
will ultimately emerge) in the East. If
we reject the nostalgia for the “lim-
ited wars” of the past; if we cannot
believe that atomic technology can, by
itself, remove the jeopardy into which
it has placed mankind (by “atoms for
war,” or by the dread of atomic de-
struction keeping nations on the path
of virtue as the dread of hell is said to
keep individuals from sinning), where,
then, do we see a rationally possible
and adequate way out of the dilemma?

As scientists, we probably all—or al-
most all—agree that no solution can be
based on the negation of facts, or a
refusal to evaluate them as objective-
ly as possible; and that much of the
world's hopes are based today on such
negation and refusal. Explaining and
analyzing facts, and educating public
opinion to their acceptance, whether
they are pleasant or not, has been one
of the tasks of the *Bulletin* from its in-
ception; and to this task it will remain
dedicated.

However, facts alone do not suggest
action, unless a final aim has been set.
This aim is, to our mind, the survival
and progress of civilized society; and
the analysis of the facts of the atomic
age seems to show convincingly that
this survival depends on the develop-
ment of ethical standards at once
broader and higher than practical men
have been prepared to accept and live
by—broader in that they have to em-
brace all mankind and not just a single
nation; and higher, in that they have
to renounce selfishness and the resort
to naked power, not only in relations
between individuals within a nation,
but also between nations. As has been
often argued in the *Bulletin*, the first
step toward this aim must be its clear
recognition and adoption by our own
country. This will put us on the road
starting from our real position in the
world and leading in the right ulti-
mate direction. From then on we will
have to find the path as we go along.

Is it wishful thinking, if it sometimes
seems that despite new waves of na-
tionalism, despite recurrent paroxysms
of national and class hatred, a con-
fused but powerful pressure for a new
organization of mankind is rising
throughout the world? In the West,
people begin to recognize that their
national states cannot give them the
security for which they created them;
in the East, newly awakened racial
pride finds satisfaction in showing for-
mer colonial masters, not only that
Asiatics and Africans, too, can create
powerful states, but that, better than
these former masters, they can keep
peace and gain understanding among
themselves. A ground swell is rising,
sapping the emotional and ideological
foundations of national sovereignies,
changing the views and attitudes of
men toward the state, and reversing
their accustomed hierarchies of wants
and values.

The atom did not bring about this
change all by itself; it was foreshad-

owed by the sufferings and disillusion-
ments which the two world wars
brought to all participants—and partic-
ularly to those who had unleashed it.
Comparison of the literature and art,
which came out of these two wars,
with the literature and art accumu-
lated from the dawn of human history
up to the twentieth century, shows
that the most sensitive section of so-
ciety—its artists—had re-assessed the
formerly paramount values—national
glory, military prowess, sacrifice on the
field of honor—long before the advent
of the atomic bomb; but it was this
ultimate weapon, which irrevocably
devalued the old ideals in the eyes of
whole peoples, including even their
military leaders. Soviet speakers may
accuse American military leaders of
waiting impatiently for the chance to
cut loose; but no American officer—
probably, no officer in *any* army in the
world—now waits impatiently for a
war to break out, as ambitious officers
of all armies used to wait in the past,
before the atomic bomb wrote *finis* to
Napoleonic dreams.

Before even a new generation has
succeeded the one that witnessed the
breakthrough of mankind from the
world of atoms and molecules into the
world of atomic nuclei, humanity is in
full upheaval. The forces of inertia
and tradition, the spirit of “nothing is
new under the sun,” of “wars have al-
ways been with us and will always re-
main,” are in world-wide conflict, in
the minds of individuals and nations,
with an inchoate, confused, but uni-
versal clamor for an end to history as
a sequence of wars.

It is by no means certain that this
vague and disorganized movement will
assume clear form, and triumph before
the deluge of atomic war is upon us;
but it is to the support and clarifica-
tion of this aim that the *Bulletin* in-
tends to devote itself in the second
decade of its existence, as it has tried
to serve it in the past.

Reprinted for private circulation from the
BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
Vol. XII, No. 1, January 1956

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

Reprinted for private circulation from the
BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
Vol. X, No. 1, January 1954
PRINTED IN U.S.A.

# A Speech for the President

EUGENE RABINOWITCH

The following draft of an imaginary presidential speech was written before the President delivered his solemn address before the United Nations General Assembly on December 8. It may appear presumptuous to publish this imaginary address together with the actual words of the President. My justification for doing so is that a comparison of the two texts brings out more clearly than could be done in any other way, the wide discrepancy between what seems to be feasible as practical statesmanship now, and what logical thinking seems to require as the minimum condition for the safety of our civilization.

AMERICA has passed, in its short but eventful history, through many critical hours. At its birth, 180 years ago, the founders of the Republic engaged in a war of independence, armed with little more than courage and faith. Some eighty years later, their descendants fought a civil war for the preservation of the Union, in the face of doubts and discouragements that seemed grave indeed at the time. Thirteen years ago, we were attacked by a coalition of two mighty aggressors, and practically the whole of our Navy was put out of action on the first day of the war. Yet, in all these crises, the President could tell the nation that if it but persevered for a few months or years in its exertions and sacrifices, victory would be won, and won it was.

It falls to me to be the first President to tell our nation, that though at peace, we are confronted with a peril graver than any America has faced in past wars, and that it is not in our power to remove this threat by exertions that have proved adequate in the past. It falls to me to call for efforts and sacrifice without hope of reward except at the end of a long and dark journey of unforseeable duration.

When the perils we and the whole world are facing began to take shape before my eyes, I became convinced that the American people must share in the understanding of their danger and in the search for salvation. I consulted with many advisers. Some of them warned me against talking to

the people as long as I could not show them an easily accessible path to overcome the perils. They told me that to reveal the threat, and to confess that I had no easy prescription for its removal, would be bad politics. What weighed more with me was the warning that people, in their alarm and anxiety, might turn to leaders who would promise them cheap salvation—demagogues who would tell them that all we need to regain security is to renounce the freedoms on which this Republic has been founded, root out subversion, silence the opposition, and find safety in “fortress America,” no matter what happens to the rest of the world.

These warnings, I had to agree, were based on a shrewd assessment of human reactions to danger and frustration; but I could not listen to them. To do so would be to betray democracy, and to endanger our chances of ultimate salvation. This Republic is based on the belief in the wisdom of the people. We hold that, properly informed, people will act with celerity, reason, and imagination. To renounce this belief, would be to choose enlightened dictatorship or oligarchy in preference to democracy.

I was further told that in order properly to inform the American people about the perils of the situation, I would need to disclose technical and military information which would benefit our enemies. This argument, too, I had to reject. The facts which I need to state are simple and undoubt-

edly known to our adversaries. The all-important fact is that several nations now possess weapons of immense power, capable of destroying Western civilization which is largely embodied in cities, harbors, and industries. We have these weapons; the Soviet Union has them; and in due course, all nations willing to invest the considerable, but not prohibitive funds and manpower needed for this purpose, will own them. We, who started the development of atomic weapons with a two-billion dollar wartime investment, have acquired a head start of several years. In consequence, we now possess more atomic bombs than anybody else; in fact we have enough atomic bombs of the original, so-called “fission type,” each capable of destroying a city of 200,000 people, to wipe out every such city on the face of the earth. We have successfully tested a land-bound device, and will soon test an air-deliverable bomb, of a new type, hundreds of times more destructive than the bombs we dropped on Japan in 1945—the so-called hydrogen or “fusion” bomb, capable of wiping out a city of a million people. Presently we will be able to deliver these engines of destruction to any point on earth by long-range aircraft; we are engaged in the development of other means of delivery, less subject to interception, such as guided missiles and long-range rockets, and expect that this research will be successful within a few years.

According to unmistakable evidence, based on objective monitoring devices and other intelligence data, the Soviet Union possesses both fission and fusion weapons, with a power similar to ours. We do not know their number, but have no reason to assume that it will not be, in a few years, sufficient to visit universal destruction on the cities of the world. The time when the Soviet Union first came into the possession of atomic weapons undoubtedly was advanced by the penetration into our wartime plants of Soviet agents, but to assume that effective secrecy measures could have given us then—or can give us now—lasting

5

security, is a delusion against which I must warn the American people. We must assume that the Soviet Union— and other nations—will be able to match any advances we may still make in the development of more destructive weapons, and of more perfect means for their delivery. Science, in its world-wide progress, has opened in our time, the gates to a new world—the world of atomic nuclei—for all mankind to enter. This discovery has given the leaders of all nations access to weapons capable of destroying, at a moment's notice, all that our civilization has built up in centuries. There is no way to avoid the danger arising from these discoveries—either from the United States or from any other part of the world—short of putting an irrevocable end to war.

We are now engaged in a contest with a totalitarian dictatorship, having at its disposal the resources of one-third of Europe and one-half of Asia. This dictatorship, presently armed with atomic and hydrogen weapons, is committed to a political philosophy according to which the rest of the world is its preordained and implacable enemy. Its leaders hold that the struggle of the two economic systems they call “socialist” and “capitalist” is the central theme of history in our time; that this struggle may be interrupted here and there by a truce, but that it will not end until one of the two contestants is wiped out. They believe that the “capitalist” countries, representing a decaying and doomed way of life, are bound to plot against the “socialist” world, but that in the end they will be destroyed, and communism will rule the world. We can only hope that soon the Soviet leaders will realize that this interpretation of history—if it ever had any validity, which we doubt—has now become patently wrong, and that before the threat of universal destruction, the common interest in survival should and can be made to take precedence over the aspirations of conflicting political and economic systems. We will welcome any sign, direct or indirect, that their minds are not closed on these matters; but as long as no such change is visible, it is not in our power to terminate the contest which never was of our choosing. Even while we are ready to seize on every opportunity for the relaxation of world tensions, and willing to seek agreement with the Soviet Union in any area in which accommodation ap-

pears possible, we cannot allow those efforts to interfere with our efforts to maintain and increase the capacity of the non-Communist world to deter and resist the drive of Soviet imperialism.

The danger of war is threefold. A temptation for an aggressor to unleash it lies in the defenselessness of our teeming cities and rich industries; in the ferment of the awakening nations of Asia and Africa, discontented with their poverty and resentful of the West; and in the disunity of the nations of the West. We must deal patiently and resolutely with all three dangers, to strengthen the stability of the divided world.

To combat the first danger, we must proceed with the utmost dispatch with the development of means for the early detection, and effective interception, of any attempt to paralyze our country by a sudden atomic attack. All the inventiveness of our scientists and engineers must be mobilized for this purpose. This program calls for considerable increase in our defense expenditure, but it would be irresponsible gambling not to undertake it. The success of our program will not guarantee us complete immunity, but it will make the aggressor doubt whether an attack would be decisive—and hold his hand. With the same purpose in mind, we must accelerate the lagging program of dispersing the most vital industries and making American communication lines at home and abroad less vulnerable. This, too, will require large expenditure, and—what is worse—distasteful but necessary restrictions of economic and individual freedom.

The second danger calls for the greatest efforts on our side to help the new nations of the East improve their standard of life and find hope for the future in a political framework which, even if it does not always satisfy our ideal of democracy, at least leaves the way open for a development toward the ideal. An auspicious beginning was made with the so-called Point Four Program; I intend to call for a substantial increase in this program. To be successful, it must be pursued on a humanitarian basis, without any military or political conditions attached to it. The new nations of the East are proud of their recently acquired independence and are sensitive to anything that reminds them of the past political domination by the West. We must assure them, by word

and deed, that we respect their independence and their status as equals in the family of nations, and that they are free to work out in their own way the solution of their internal and external political problems. We must stand by to help them with our wealth and experience, in the hope that no nation will choose of its own volition the road to tyranny, when hope burns brightly ahead on the path of freedom.

Stalin has bequeathed to his successors a blueprint for success based on what I have called the third danger we have to combat—the disunity of the West. The experience of recent wars, from World War I to the Korean War, has demonstrated that the greatest danger of war lies in an aggressor's belief that the opposing nations will not stand together—particularly, if the initial object of the attack is a weak and remote country—Serbia, Poland, Finland, or Korea. In the age of atomic weapons, when standing up to aggression means risking the destruction of your own homeland, this calculation may acquire a new plausibility for an aggressor. Only by establishing a perfect unity of the free countries of the Western world, can we put an end to such dangerous hopes. To advance toward this aim would require a continuous and increasingly intimate involvement of American military forces in Europe, and generous economic cooperation with the Western nations. From the American point of view, these commitments often appear as one-sided assistance in reconstruction and defense, extended to other nations at the cost of American wealth and manpower. In the eyes of many Europeans, still suffering from the losses and destruction inflicted upon them by the last war, the same program often appears as their involvement in a power conflict between two great empires, over which they have no control—an involvement carrying with it a certainty of total destruction in the case of war, and providing no guarantee that they will not be abandoned to their fate whenever America decides to withdraw from Europe. We must remove, once and for all, at least this last argument for European neutralism. We must make it plain, by acts, that we stand with these nations in an organic, permanent, and indissoluble union—one for all, all for one. The difficulties, now seemingly unsurmountable, of the integration of France, Germany, and England into the West European Commonwealth, will dis-

6

appear as soon as this American commitment is established beyond doubt.

These three policies will place an increasing burden on our shoulders, and will not give us a full guarantee against war. However, we can hope that they will provide the maximum attainable deterrent to an outbreak of war. Beyond this, we have to place our hope for the future on developments within the Communist-dominated area, developments which we cannot influence, except indirectly, by presenting to the world a picture of unity, steady progress, and readiness for conciliation. History or mass psychology cannot tell us how long a political and economic system based on fanatic adherence to a dogma utterly at variance with the realities of life can survive, and whether such a system can, with time, become reconciled with the outside world without a last violent attempt to assert its supremacy. Yet, our safety from the disaster of an atomic war ultimately depends on the answer to this question, which all the tremendous economic and military power of the United States and its allies, cannot decisively change or speed up. This is what I had in mind when I said that we will need patience, wisdom, and imagination to remain steady and resourceful through long years of insecurity and frustration.

Concentration on the danger to peace from aggressive and dogmatic Soviet imperialism, however justified it is at present (or may remain for many years to come), should not make us forget that atomic weapons have raised the spectre of the destruction of civilization in any full-scale war which may break out from now on into all future time.

Western civilization is about two thousand years old, if we count it from the spread of Christianity; a few hundred years older, if we count it from its beginnings in Greece and Judea. It has established its home from the Pacific coast of Siberia to the capes of Brittany and Spain that jut into the Atlantic, and from Alaska to the Tierra del Fuego, and has spread its influence far beyond this area, over all of Asia and Africa. Its scientific and technological achievements have been unprecedented in the history of the human race; its accomplishments in art, philosophy, and religion equal, if not surpass, those of any other of the known world civilizations. We,

who are a part of it, are accustomed to think of it as the civilization—the final emergence of mankind into the road of universal and continuous progress, after several promising, but local and ultimately unsuccessful attempts.

Yet, we can clearly see now that this civilization, too, can perish; and that it carries the seed of its destruction in itself. Other civilizations have been destroyed by the sword of invaders; ours is headed toward suicide in an atomic war. However, the true reason for the downfall lies—perhaps always—in inner inadequacy, in a lack of capacity for moral growth to match economic and technical progress. The danger that threatens our civilization is that three thousand years after the Sixth Commandment and two thousand years after the Sermon on the Mount, we still have not learned how to eliminate murder from our society. We—and that includes all nations of Christian tradition—have made murder a crime within the state, but have permitted it to remain a virtue when carried out on large scale between states. War has been with mankind since its beginning. Scorned by the wise and abhorred by the compassionate, it has been glorified in legend, art, and history as the highest test of human virtue and loyalty. It has been accepted throughout history—and is still accepted by most people—as an inevitable calamity in the life of nations.

This is where our generation is faced with the choice of making a clean break with the past, or facing a catastrophe. Whatever the justification of war as a means of furthering national aspirations has been in the past, this justification does not exist now. The Court at the Hague, the League of Nations, and the United Nations, have been attempts to build a world without wars. These attempts have proved unsuccessful—the U.N. itself became a belligerent in Korea. For this failure equal responsibility must be accepted by all nations. True, militaristic and totalitarian regimes were the culprits who broke the pledges in 1914, 1939, 1941, and 1950.

Nevertheless, we, as well as the other democratic nations, bear full responsibility for having permitted the lawlessness in the world to continue into the atomic age. Like all other nations, we have felt more strongly about the advantages of full national independence and sovereignty and the diminution of the freedom of action which would arise from our sub-

mission to an international order, than about the necessity to put an effective end to war. We are accustomed to hearing ourselves praised for our peaceful policies, and feel justified in blaming other nations, who have had the misfortune of falling into the bondage of totalitarian dictatorship, for being a threat to peace; but from a long-range point of view, we should be concerned with our own errors, and ask what we ourselves can do to prevent the present Soviet-Western war threat from being only the first in a series of threats, each facing mankind with increasingly complete annihilation. We must turn our back, decisively, on the era of nations which are a law unto themselves, and seek the lodestar of our political thought and action, in the establishment of a world system of law.

Therefore I propose that the American people solemnly dedicate themselves to the establishment of permanent peace on earth in their own enlightened interest in the fulfilment of their duty to mankind. As a first step toward this aim, I propose that Congress proclaim in joint session the conviction of the American people that man's acquisition of power over the atom has made all resort to war criminal madness, certain to bring down the whole of our civilization. We should call on all nations to join in this proclamation. To establish the sincerity of this proclamation and our intent to implement it, I propose that we consider an amendment of our Constitution, making the establishment of a world order of law and effecting the abolition of war the aim of our Republic, and providing a constitutional way for America to become part of such an order. Legal provisions of this kind have already been introduced in the constitutions of other countries—the most recent being the Netherlands. Finally, as a first step toward an approach to this idea, possible in the present divided world, I propose that we enter into consultation with like-minded nations about steps which could be taken without delay, toward initiating such an international order.

The peril is great. If we meet its challenge and remain wise, patient, and humane, we can hope to emerge at the end, as saviours, not only of our own lives and freedoms but of the civilization we share with many other nations.

7

Reprinted for private circulation from the
BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
Vol. XIII, No. 1, January 1957
PRINTED IN U.S.A.

# The First Year of Deterrence

EUGENE RABINOWITCH

## I

LAST January, looking back upon the first ten years of the atomic era, the *Bulletin* called them “Ten Years that Changed the World.” With decisive changes in industry yet to come, changes in military technology brought about by the release of nuclear energy already have wrought havoc with the traditional meaning of the concepts that have dominated human history since its dawn: security in peace, and victory in war. Deterrence by threat of air-atomic destruction has largely replaced defense as means of protecting ourselves and other nations and assuring freedom of action in world affairs. The inevitability of this revolutionary change impressed itself upon most thoughtful observers immediately after Hiroshima; but it was the year 1956, the eleventh year of the atomic era, that witnessed the first demonstration of its concrete meaning. Yet, the same year has also seen a renewed burst of nationalistic passions, and a display of selfish national policies—as well as much smug rationalization of the permanency of these traditional forces as the main movers in world relations. The contradiction between the living reality of the atomic age, calling for a harmoniously unified humanity, and the obsolete belief in the paramountcy of fractional interests, has brought mankind a great stride closer to atomic self-destruction. The hand on the *Bulletin's* cover has moved nearer the hour of doom!

## II

THE year 1956 could be called A.D. I—the first year of deterrence. True, as early as the Indochinese war and the Quemoy-Matsu crisis of 1954, American leaders started talking of “massive retaliation” as a means of preventing (or punishing) future aggression. This ominous threat, however, did not then become concrete and immediate. Similarly, the conviction that the peace in Europe has been and is maintained primarily by the American capacity for air-atomic destruction as the answer to any advance of Soviet military power beyond the 1945 demarcation line, though widely shared by military and political authorities, has never become alive in the imagination of peoples, to whom the word “war” still connotes primarily a vast movement of armies, as in the two World Wars, and in whose minds the word “security” conjures up the picture of a protec-

tive wall of steel and concrete, manned by soldiers and armed with guns. On the last occasion when war in Europe seemed to be a real possibility—the Berlin blockade of 1948-49—atomic retaliation was not openly threatened by the West—although its possibility must have played an important role in restraining the Soviet army from interference with the American air lift.

In the last year or two, it has become a generally accepted proposition that the threat of air-atomic destruction has ceased to be a unilateral American deterrent to aggression; but it has been widely assumed that world peace remains assured by the capacity of the U.S. and the USSR to destroy each other by thermonuclear bombs; the existence (or at least the imminent approach) of such a state of “absolute mutual deterrence” was taken for granted by most of the contributors to the *Bulletin's* Symposium on “Science and Military Strategy” in May 1956. Despite this wide acceptance, an air of abstraction and unreality still hung about the concept of “peace through mutual terror”—until last November gave us a first object lesson in air-atomic deterrence. Ironically, it was not the original protagonist of this concept—the U.S. Strategic Air Command—who gave this demonstration, but that newcomer in the field of air-atomic strategy, the Soviet High Command. The opportunity was supplied by the discord in the Western camp, which led to the separate Anglo-French excursion into Egypt. Suddenly, the Soviet Union found herself

in the position America had enjoyed between 1945 and 1950: able to threaten air-atomic destruction without fear of immediate retaliation in kind. Furthermore, in contrast to America's situation after 1945, the Soviet Union was not confronted with powerful "convention-al" armies poised on the opposite side of the East-West demarcation line. With the capacity for immediate and ruthless utilization of a strategic advantage, characteris-tic of a totalitarian regime, the Soviet leaders seized upon the opportunity. A few days after the Anglo-American ultimatum to Egypt, Britain and France were presented with a virtual Soviet ultimatum threatening, by clear implication, air-atomic destruction of both countries if they did not call off the Suez expedition. This threat may have been a bluff—at least, in part. It is by no means certain, for example, that (as Bulganin's letter of November 5 implied), the Soviet Union al-ready possesses rocket missiles able to deliver hydrogen warheads to targets in Western Europe. General Gruen-ther expressed doubts on this point; it may be signifi-cant that the reference to rocket delivery, contained in the text read over the Moscow radio, disappeared from the note presented a day later to Prime Minister Eden. However, this point is not essential, since delivery of H-bombs by manned planes, of which the Soviet Union is undoubtedly capable, would have been quite suffi-cient to lend weight to the threat. In any case, by the time the note was officially delivered, the ultimatum had already achieved its aim: England and France had an-nounced their readiness to stop military operations and to withdraw their troops from Egypt as soon as the face-saving United Nations police force could replace them.

## Why France and Britain Called Off Their Invasion of Egypt

"I don't think it was moral suasion [that has caused France and Britain to abandon the Suez invasion]," said A. C. Douglas Dillon, U.S. Ambassador to France, in a radio interview on CBS, on December 11, 1956; they went ahead with their Suez opera-tion despite sharp criticism in the United Nations and the United States. Nor, he added, was it the pressure of dwindling oil supplies—"that hadn't had time to make itself felt."

"The only new element that had come in," he said, "was these Soviet threats, which were very, very strongly phrased."

FOOTNOTE: Newspapers reported on December 13th that State Department spokesmen expressed an-noyance with Ambassador Dillon's statement be-cause it would cause Arabs to see in the USSR and not in the U.S., Egypt's savior against the Anglo-French attack.

For the first time in history, a major world power (or rather, two such powers) were stopped dead in their tracks at the outset of a victorious operation which they considered absolutely vital for their survival. The Suez expedition had appeared so important to England and France that they considered a rift with their principal ally—the United States—as well as a unanimous reproba-tion by the United Nations, and even a possible break-up of the British Commonwealth, as not too great a price to pay for it—yet, the threat by the Soviet Union to turn on them the fury of Russian "deterrent" weap-ons was enough to cause the abandonment of the whole enterprise.

This demonstration of the power of air-atomic deterrence is a turning point in history, and we should not be distracted from recognizing its significance by inci-dental events, such as the diplomatic pressure the United States exerted upon England and France, or the speeches given, and resolutions passed in the United Na-tions. These latter consequences the leaders of England and France had probably anticipated and discounted. They hoped—and probably, with reason—that rapid mili-tary success of the Suez occupation and the downfall of the Nasser regime in Cairo would be followed—as simi-lar successes achieved by force had been in the past—by a gradual acceptance of the *fait accompli* by the whole world. What England and France did not anticipate was a readiness of the Soviet leaders to unleash all-out atomic war in response to a local conflict so far from their own borders.

Of course, *after* the decision to stop the Egyptian in-vasion was taken, all the previously dismissed argu-ments against it—disunity at home (particularly in England), moral pressure of the United Nations, threat of oil shortage and the consequent possibility of eco-nomic squeeze by the U.S., have acquired new strength. They have helped to push England and France toward complete and unconditional abandonment of all "posi-tions of strength" they have acquired in the Suez area.

Now, a myth is beginning to grow. It is so much less alarming for England to have yielded to the voice of the majority in the U.S., than to have been compelled to change policy by a brutal threat of Soviet H-bombs! It is so much more satisfactory for the U.S. to have asserted the power of its leadership in the fight against colonialism, than to have merely ridden the coattails of the Soviet might! The affair can even be made to appear, in retrospect, as a triumph of virtue—virtue of moral integrity on the side of America, and virtue of contrition on the side of England and France! And the U.N. can be credited with having demonstrated, for the first time, its capacity to stop aggression by major powers. Such is, in fact, the rapidly growing myth of the Suez fiasco, abetted, for different reasons, by practically every national leadership in the world—American, Anglo-French, neutralist—and even Soviet.

### III

THE first lesson of the November events seems to be that if Western Europe wants to regain the freedom of action the United States and the Soviet Union alone now seem to possess on the world stage, it must, first of all, accumulate its own arsenal of atomic and thermonuclear weapons. However, even if Western Europe, overcoming her traditional political disunity, could make the effort needed for this purpose, she will remain at a disadvantage in the effectiveness of her deterrent power, because geography puts the small Western European area within easy range of all kinds of Soviet bomb carriers, while many Soviet targets are far from the airfields and missile-launching sites in Western Europe.

In the absence of its own air-atomic power, Western Europe is and will remain dependent upon the United States to match the Soviet threat. It was because the American attitude toward the Soviet threat was obviously unclear, that England and France found themselves unable to resist it on November 5. The American answer, reasserting the mutuality of deterrence, eventually *did* come—but only several days after the Anglo-French expedition had been stopped dead at Port Said. This answer was contained in the farewell speech by General Gruenther to the NATO command on November 13 (undoubtedly approved beforehand in Washington.) General Gruenther said that any military incursion of the Soviet Union into Western Europe would lead to instant destruction of the Soviet Union by the American Air Force, and he warned that even an elimination of African or European SAC bases by Soviet rockets could not prevent the retaliatory attack, since the latter can be delivered by long-range jet bombers from bases in America. Undoubtedly, it was to emphasize the latter point that it was officially revealed on November 27 that eight B-52 jet bombers had completed nonstop flights over circuits 14,000 to 17,000 miles long, between Maine and California, via Greenland, the North Pole, and Alaska.

This American counterthreat has restored the balance of air-atomic deterrence in Europe, and the East-West "dialogue" over the Middle East has switched to more conventional topics—such as alleged Soviet arms delivery to Syria, and the possibility of an intervention by Soviet "volunteers" in Egypt. This does not prove, however, that, to the extent to which the West can match the air-atomic destructive power of the Soviet East, it enjoys—as of old—a full sovereign freedom of action in pursuit of its interests on the world stage. The paralysis of the West before the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution is a clear warning of how restricted this freedom actually is. In contrast to Anglo-French independence in the face of Germany's attack on Czechoslovakia in 1938, the present paralysis represents more than a lack of political will; rather, it follows from an actual,

physical incapacity to devise and carry out an adequate and purposeful action. Even in full possession of their power, including the power for atomic destruction, the Western powers cannot play all their cards in today's power game—except when their national interests are so overwhelmingly involved that the threat to use the ace in their pack—air-atomic power—becomes justifiable at home and plausible abroad. An American threat to use atomic weapons in defense of a cause such as the liberation of Hungary would not have found full support at home, and could have been taken for a bluff in Moscow. It would thus run the risk of ending either in painful retreat or in actual atomic holocaust; thus failing in its primary—and only reasonable—purpose of deterrence.

In situations of this type, totalitarian regimes have a much greater freedom than democracies. Such a regime can declare that a conflict anywhere in the world is of such importance that it justifies the threat of atomic war (as the Soviet Union did in the Suez case). It does not need for this a genuine popular support at home; and their threat cannot be dismissed abroad as a bluff, because it comes from a regime rightly held capable of brutal and irresponsible action. Mr. Dulles may have invented the game of brinksmanship, but Mr. Bulganin can play this game with much greater ease.

### IV

THE deterrence dialogue between the East and the West did not quite end with General Gruenther's judiciously delayed answer to Bulganin's ultimatum. The Soviet Premier had one more word to put in, and he did it in his disarmament letter to President Eisenhower on November 17. Unfortunately, the American press, which has largely missed the full significance of the Soviet ultimatum to Britain and France (despite its incredible bluntness), and has given little prominence to General Gruenther's equally blunt answer, has altogether neglected this important passage in Bulganin's letter, probably dismissing it as part of the vociferous propaganda which, since Vishinsky's time, has customarily preceded every new Soviet proposal in the disarmament area.

In the passage in question, Bulganin suggested, albeit obliquely, that America should not believe that the mutual threat of air-atomic destruction restricts the freedom of the Soviet armies to invade Western Europe. He proclaims the Soviet capacity to conquer Western Europe "even without the use of up-to-date nuclear and rocket weapons," saying that "the strategic situation as it has developed itself in Western Europe now is even more favorable for the armed forces of the Soviet Union than it had been at the end of the Second World War." What strategic situation does he have in mind? Obviously, the situation of mutual air-atomic deterrence. It is easy to see why, in Bulganin's opinion, the strategic

situation is now more favorable for the Soviet Union than it was immediately after the war: unilateral American capacity for air-atomic attack did balance, at that time, the Soviet preponderance in armed power; while now, this capacity is canceled out by similar capacity of the Soviet Union. Bulganin seems to believe that America will be unwilling to risk her own atomic destruction by unleashing an all-out atomic war in defense of Western Europe. Consequently, it is only the Soviet Union's "love of peace" and not the threat of U.S. air power that prevents the Soviet Army from taking over Western Europe; and, Bulganin implies, one day this love of peace may be put to a test too severe.

In this way, the American resolve to answer a direct Soviet attack on Western Europe by mass retaliation against the Soviet Union, so categorically reasserted by General Gruenther, is questioned by the Soviet leader; and by the very token of this doubt, our threat of retaliation loses some of its deterrent power.

The obvious second lesson of the situation, so gleefully presented by Bulganin, is the necessity for the West to build up with all speed the unfinished NATO army in Europe, until it appears capable of stopping the advance of Soviet tank divisions without resorting to all-out thermonuclear war; only then can this force adequately supplement the deterrent power of our air-atomic arm and prevent a fateful miscalculation by the Soviet leaders.¹ In an interview, given by General Norstad, to the *United States News and World Report* on November 30th, the new commander of the NATO forces did not hide the fact that the present forces under his command are insufficient for this purpose. There is, however, no reason for this situation to be permanent. The Western alliance has a considerable preponderance in manpower over the Soviet Union—not the other way around, as is so often taken for granted in disregard of statistical facts. (The countries of Eastern Europe obviously do not effectively add to Soviet manpower and are not likely to do so in the near future. The structure of the Soviet economy has now become similar to that of the West and its former advantage—a large peasant population which could be put into uniform without endangering industrial production—has all but disappeared.)

In the meantime, all must be done to dispel any doubt the Soviet leaders may entertain of the certainty of an all-out atomic answer of the United States to an invasion of Western Europe. There is one way to achieve this aim: This is not merely to restore the shaken political unity of the West, but to make it much stronger and more permanent than it has been in the

past. A decisive change in this direction can be achieved by the conversion of the NATO alliance into a political body so thoroughly integrated that no doubt could arise that an attack on any part of it will provoke the same reaction as an attack on the whole of it. It may be difficult to achieve this higher unity immediately in the wake of a sharp rift between the allies (although, given imagination and will, even this is not impossible); but at least, the aim of political integration of the West must be acknowledged by leaders in America and Europe, replacing in their minds the aims of an old-fashioned military alliance, which is inevitably temporary, and is exposed to all the decisive forces of independent—and often contradictory—national policies of its members. The December NATO conference has brought signs of increased recognition of this aim by Europeans—but a sharp rebuke of it by Secretary Dulles.

The danger of war in Europe has become much more urgent—and less apt to be kept in check entirely by mutual air-atomic deterrence—since the sharp dividing line between the two power spheres, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, has shown signs of instability. (The whole concept of "peace through mutual deterrence" is built on the premise of a rigid and permanent division of the two camps!) The heroic—almost successful and still not quite abandoned—attempt of the Hungarian nation to break away from the Communist camp, has revealed deep cracks in the supposedly monolithic structure of the Soviet empire. The fight of the Hungarians can be followed, at any time, by a second upheaval in Poland, an uprising in Eastern Germany, or a revolution in the Balkans. The inevitable—and growingly desperate—attempt of the Soviet leadership to keep their empire from disintegrating, can lead to situations of gravest danger for peace—situations in which the Iron Curtain may cease to be a mutually respected rigid barrier, separating the "legitimate" (except for verbal protests) field of operation of Soviet tank divisions, from the now "forbidden" West. If such a situation should arise, it will be of crucial importance for our future, if not for the survival of all mankind, that the West should be able to interfere with the "freedom of action" of Soviet armies by means other than the threat of unleashing an all-out thermonuclear destruction!

Here lies, at present, the most terrible danger to mankind. If American political leadership can be blamed for its handling of the Middle Eastern situation, it is because it has assigned to the (extremely urgent) necessity for America to acquire the support of Asiatic and African nations, a higher priority than to the (even more urgent) necessity of preserving the unity of the West. It has thus contributed to the creation of a danger which it has been the consistent primary objective of American foreign policy to avoid—the danger of a new war in Europe.

The third lesson of the two closing months of 1956 is

¹ The unanimous pleas of the European NATO members for tactical atomic weapons, reportedly made at the NATO meeting December 10-14, are the expression of the desire to "close the gap" without awaiting the building of German divisions and the return of the French contingent from Algeria. On December 14, it was announced that America will provide NATO with atomic guns, but not atomic ammunition.

the necessity to restore and reinforce the unity of the West, giving to this task the paramount priority among all American political aims.

V

THE lessons taught by the crisis of November 1956, if taken to heart, can provide only temporary help in an emergency. They can help in the establishment of a "pseudo-peace," based on mutual deterrence in the most rigid form—a state of affairs in which a move by either of the two camps anywhere along their momentary frontier, will be restrained by a manifest danger of unleashing both a major "conventional" war (fought with atomic weapons) and a full-scale thermonuclear catastrophe. However badly we need to achieve this "metastable" state, only a few technological dreamers, with little feeling for human reality, can look forward to it as a truly stable and desirable final solution.

Mankind will not advance beyond the doubtful ideal of a frozen state of ubiquitous mutual deterrence, unless it derives, from the events of 1956, a deeper and more stirring lesson: if it does not recognize in these events the demise of the whole concept of "freedom of action" on the world stage of all "sovereign" nations pursuing their "national interests."

VI

IT IS doubtful that this lesson is being properly read and taken to heart at the present time. In the most stirring event of 1956—the freedom fight of the Hungarian people—world opinion was aroused, above all, by the demonstration of the will of a downtrodden people for national independence. Yet, how obsolete and oddly unreal now is the ideal of absolute national independence! What was originally a source of strength in the movement for human freedom in the Western world—the association between the ideas of individual freedom and national independence—has now become its fatal weakness. These two ideas have been inextricably entwined in the hearts and minds of men ever since the fight for American independence, and particularly since the national liberal uprising in Europe in 1848, and the many subsequent struggles when men sought to free themselves from the oppressive European Empires. It is this fusion of the ideals of personal freedom and national independence that has prevented the democratic nations of the West, from finding at the summit of their power—after the First World War—the path to a truly effective democratic world organization, which alone could have put an end to wars, and thus preserve, and encourage the spread, of individual freedoms. The fight for national struggle for national determination begun at Lexington in 1776, and, elevated by President Wilson in 1917 to a sacred ideal of democratic humanity, still continues in 1956 in Europe as well as in Asia and Africa—while absolute national

independence has become obsolete if not impossible in consequence of the world-wide progress of technology and the global integration of national economies, engerged by this progress. The achievement and preservation of individual liberties is now clearly tied up with the integration of mankind into a single organic body, and effective abolition of the power of nations to make war—the ultimate expression of national sovereignty. Yet the hearts and spirits of men, not only in newly emerging nations of Asia and Africa, but even in the history-wise peoples of Europe, still respond most strongly to appeals for national liberation and independence. "Noninterference in internal affairs of a sovereign nation" remains a hallowed principle, to which everybody feels obliged to pay at least lip service—although the examples of modern totalitarianisms in Russia and in Germany should have made it abundantly clear to all who are not blinded by tradition that there are internal affairs of nations which are of vital—and therefore legitimate—concern to all mankind. No nation can remain free and secure in our technological age if a political group is permitted to destroy individual liberty and establish totalitarian domination over any other nation; because under the cover of national sovereignty, this domination can be made the basis for a threat of destruction of all other nations.

The fight against the Soviet tyranny has assumed more acute forms in Poland and Hungary than in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, because in the first two nations, the traditional hatred of Russian domination has remained alive even within their Communist parties—not because Hungarians and Poles were more attached to individual freedom than Czechs or Bulgarians. (As a matter of fact, the Czechs, in particular, have had a much better record of securing and enjoying political freedoms than the Poles and Hungarians, who have preserved a feudal social system longer than any other nation in Eastern Europe!)

It has been reported that some Hungarian rebels have proclaimed that they were fighting, not for Hungarian independence, but for the integration of Hungary with the West; but undoubtedly the mainspring of the uprising has been—and remains—the striving for national independence. This is fully understandable; nobody can criticize the heroes of Budapest if in their minds political tyranny appears synonymous with foreign, Russian domination. It was pathetic, however, to see the representatives of democratic peoples of Europe, Asia, and America stand up in the United Nations and denounce the suppression of the Hungarian revolution, above all, as "interference with the internal affairs of an independent country." (In a grotesque counterpart, the Soviet and satellite speakers insisted that the United Nations have no right to concern themselves with the "internal affairs" of the "independent" Hungarian people.) As if the most tragic aspect of Hungarian drama was that the

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weapons that crushed the fighters for freedom were Russian, and not Hungarian weapons! As if world compassion becomes legitimate only when tanks shoot up students, workers, women, and children, who speak a different language, and belong to a different race than the tank crews! This emphasis on the rights of nations and on the interests of national states, in an age which calls above all for respect for the rights of the individual and recognition of the interests of humanity, is expressed in 1956—at least, officially—by Communists and anti-Communists, by former imperial and former colonial peoples alike; and this bodes ill for the future of mankind.

## VII

THE world-wide yearning for atomic disarmament is fed, to a large part, by a related reluctance of nations to recognize the irrevocable change which the discovery of atomic energy has brought into their situations and a nostalgic desire to return to a time when nations enjoyed sovereign freedom of decision, in war and peace, and could play the game of power politics without fear of their own and universal destruction. If, by some miracle, atomic weapons could be made to disappear, history could return into its old groove; and this miracle seems to be the fervent hope of all national governments in the world, from Moscow to London and from New Delhi to Washington. Yet, it is a completely and utterly unrealistic hope. The expansion of technology, and the intertwining of national economies, have already produced a de facto unified world, in which any major conflict means the opening of a wound in a living body, and any major war entails a blood-letting from this fissure which weakens the organism as a whole; but prior to the discovery of atomic energy, mankind could hope to pass through a sequence of such blood-lettings and cicatrize its wounds after each of them. The great jump from the chemical into the nuclear age has made the continuation of this historical "tradition" impossible. This jump is irreversible: never again can there arise a system of independent and sovereign nations, able to conduct their international policies as their "national interests" dictate them, resorting to force when other methods fail, without endangering not only their own existence, but the survival of the whole human race.

This does not mean that we do not need to strive for atomic disarmament; but that we can strive for it positively only in the context of a general policy directed toward the integration of mankind into a single community, and not grope for it in a backward way, in the vain hope of restoring the lost freedom of action in individual, sovereign nations. Unfortunately, it is in the latter mood that most nations in the world (including the so-called "neutral" ones) now seek atomic disarmament and will never be able to find it. Progress toward disarmament and security is now possible only after unreserved recognition of the actually existing, and from now on forever inescapable, community of fate of all mankind, and consequent readiness of individual nations to subordinate national interests to the interests of mankind as a whole. There is no national government now that does not bear responsibility to all humanity, and not merely to its own people.

## VIII

THE question of the continuation of thermonuclear bomb tests, so violently discussed in 1956, is of relevance in this context. The arguments used in this controversy dealt, on the one hand, with the importance of the tests for American national defense, and, on the other hand, with their danger to the health of the present generation, and the hereditary endowment of its descendants. Whether this danger is great or small, the most important thing is that it is universal and compulsory. The American government (or any other government conducting such tests) is—or should be—weighing the national interest of its own country against the danger to which the pursuit of this interest exposes all men on earth. It is traditional for a nation to accept hardships and risks to defend its national independence and to further what it considers its national interests; but can a nation—any nation—claim the right to impose without consultation, hardships and risks on all other nations? Not unless its paramount aim is the common interest of all mankind; not unless it accepts its responsibility to all men, and not only to its own people! It is not enough to say that in perfecting her atomic weapons, America actually serves the interests of all nations, because Communist tyranny threatens all men (including those who are unaware of this threat). As long as our overriding concern is with our own nation only, we cannot expect mankind to accept our judgment in questions affecting all of it. What is needed, is a genuine change of heart, and a convincing demonstration that the common interests of mankind, rather than the limited interests of a fragment of it, are our prime concern. (Of course, the same applies to all other governments, too; but the failure of others to acknowledge their share of responsibility does not make ours less compelling or urgent.)

## IX

IT MAY be asked: Is not the proper answer provided by the policy of "supporting the United Nations" and "acting through the United Nations," as the United States has pursued in the Suez crisis? Not as long as our support is restricted to policies which happen to coincide with what our leaders consider our national interest! Like every other nation we want other nations to obey the will of the United Nations (as expressed in

resolutions for which we have voted!) even if these de-
sires run contrary to the national interests of the coun-
try to which they are directed. The acid test comes
when the desire of the majority of nations contradicts
our own national interests. So far, every nation placed
in this position has failed the test and has put its na-
tional interests above considerations for the community
of nations. The Soviet Union has flaunted the desires
of the U.N. majority on innumerable occasions; so did
France when the Algerian question came up; so did
India in the Kashmir dispute; South Africa is doing so
in the question of racial discrimination. England and
France were all set to defy the United Nations in Egypt,
and only restrained from doing so by Soviet threat of
violence. Can the United States honestly assert that our
government would have acted differently from other
countries if an important American national interest
were involved—as for example, the Guatemalan crisis,
or the present question of H-bomb tests (which may
well come before the forum of the United Nations
sooner or later)?

The even more relevant question at the present time
is: How would the United States have reacted if the
Republic of Panama had seized the Panama Canal
(placing us in a situation similar to that of England and
France in Suez), or if other nations would have claimed
the right to participate in the supervision of this canal
(thus placing us in a position similar to that of Egypt)?
The answer is clear—we would have acted as we see fit
in our national interest, and resisted "interference in our
internal affairs." Yet, there is probably only one way in
which America can effectively strive for an equitable
solution of the Suez controversy, and this is by pro-
claiming, that no waterway of vital importance to many
nations can be treated as private property by one of
them whose territory it happens to traverse. In the light
of this principle, it would become obvious nonsense to
consider the desire of Egypt to exercise sole authority
over the Suez Canal as part of the fight for liberation
of former colonial countries from imperialist oppression.

The Suez canal is not a natural resource of Egypt,
appropriated and exploited by colonial powers. It is not
a natural resource at all, but an artifact which European
technology has created; it serves the interests of world
trade and thus of all nations. It is not colonialism to in-
sist that this enterprise should be administered by those
who use it, and its income used primarily for its own
maintenance and improvement. This seems to be no
more than obvious justice; but in a world where nation-
al possession is the supreme law and national sovereign-
ty the supreme good, this justice can find little recogni-
tion. For this, the supremacy of national sovereignty
and national interests in situations involving wider
groups of people must first be challenged as a matter of
general principle. If the United States would announce
such a principle (as President Truman once proposed,
and Senator Flanders, among others, has again sug-
gested recently); if we would express our willingness to
apply it also to the Panama Canal, a new moral founda-
tion would be laid for a just solution, not only to the
Suez controversy, but to many future controversies. Of
course, there is a long path from the proclamation of
such a principle to the elaboration of an equitable pro-
cedure for its application to specific cases, each inevita-
bly different from the other (as the Panama Canal situ-
ation is different—legally, technologically, and economi-
cally—from that of the Suez Canal); but a break in
principle with the recognition of unrestricted suprem-
acy of national interests in areas where many nations
—or all mankind—have a legitimate interest, is neces-
sary, if mankind is to advance toward a stable, peaceful
future—and it has no other!

These are some of the lessons of A.D. I—the year of
the Hungarian revolution, of the Suez drama, of the H-
bomb test controversy, the year that has seen the first
prototypes of intercontinental missiles raising their
heads to the sky on their giant scaffolds, and has heard
world powers threatening to wipe each other off the
map at the press of a button—knowing that this is not
an empty boast, or will not long remain one.

Mr. Henry Kissinger
Harvard International Seminar
10 Weld Hall
Cambridge 38, Mass.

Dear Henry:

I wonder whether you received the card I sent you
from Europe, I don't exactly recall where or when.

Well, it is high time now that America, with its new,
bold, impressive policy in the Middle East starts effective action.
Much could be done on the individual level, perhaps the most.
Please keep in mind that we should consider, now more than at any
other time, ways and means to promote a combined American - Middle
Eastern organization to work on economic affairs. How much can you
do to help on your side, at least to tell people concerned that it is
time now for them to go further. This will be for their own benefit,
as well as for ours. In the long run, it will help greatly in establish-
ing stability in this area.

I shall be leaving for Iraq, Iran and Pakistan in about
ten days. The more I travel in Europe and the Middle East the more
I find this imperative need to promote private enterprises and organiza-
tions which could help tremendously, mainly in the U.S. - Middle Eastern
relationships. It has been said that I am becoming a "specialist" on
seminars and international conferences. As a matter of fact, I am going
to a conference on Religion and Freedom in Karachi and I shall also be
working on the organization of two or three seminars to be held in Turkey,
Iraq, and Iran in 1957. No doubt you have put aside now the Seminar
we talked about. It could still be considered for some time in
September 1957.

I shall be anxiously awaiting to hear from you soon in
detail.

With best regards, I am,