April 4, 1956

Mr. George F. Kennan
Institute for Advanced Studies
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey

Dear Mr. Kennan:

I have not yet thanked you for your
most stimulating contribution at the
meeting of Mr. Johnson's sub-committee.
I hope you understood that I was playing
the devil's advocate a large part of the
time.

I am enclosing a reprint of an
article in *Foreign Affairs*. I should very
much welcome your comments.

Enc.

THE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

SCHOOL OF HISTORICAL STUDIES

December 1, 1958

Dear Mr. Kissinger:

Let me return to the paper you were kind enough to send me on
November 21 and which I mentioned briefly to you the other evening.

I think it is a brilliant and extremely useful attack on an evil
the importance of which as a cause of our poor performance in international
affairs is far more important than the American public ever dreams.

The only improvement I could suggest is that you make an effort to
distinguish more clearly here between the intra-governmental committee,
staffed by regular governmental officials, and the outside consultative
committee. A great deal of what you say is applicable to both, but I
found myself becoming only gradually aware, as I read the paper, of the
extent to which it was focused on the committee of outside consultants
or the outside research institution which contracts to suggest solutions
to governmental problems.

In a book called _The American Style: Essays in Value and Performance_, which was scheduled for publication November 26, you will find an article by myself, on pages 124-144, which treats in part, in a much cruder way, of the subject you have in mind. I think that we have both approached from different angles a single problem which is one of lack of sheer philosophic understanding in our society about the nature of knowledge as applied to the problems of government. What we suffer from, to be specific, seems to me to be the illusion that there are ways by which we can avoid recourse to personal judgment and responsibility as the final determinant of national policy.

I very much hope your paper will soon see the light of day in published
form.

Sincerely yours,

Mr. Henry A. Kissinger,
Center for International Affairs,
Harvard University,
Littauer Center,
Cambridge 38, Mass.

December 8, 1958

Mr. George F. Kennan
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey

Dear Mr. Kennan:

Thank you so much for your
letter of December 1st, which meant
a great deal to me. I will keep your
comments very much in mind when I revise
my article.

May I also say how much it means
to me to know that you are part of the
Discussion Group at the Council. I think
I can share your anguish about the approach
of the technologists, yet I feel very strongly
that unless those of us who are concerned
about this problem deal with some of these
strategic issues, the technicians will
inherit the earth.

I look forward to seeing you
at the next meeting of the Discussion
Group.

COPY

Statement by
The Honorable George F. Kennan
for the Subcommittee on Disarmament of
the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
Wednesday, February 4, 1959

A. Questions of Arms Control

1. There are weighty and cogent reasons which militate generally against the success of any effort to bring about the reduction and control of armaments by formal international agreement, particularly multilateral agreement, and why history, though affording plenty of examples of efforts in this direction, records few successful ones, except where the weapons in question were obsolete or particularly inhuman, or where the political incentive to military ocmpetition had already been removed. But beyond these general difficulties, there are certain special inhibitions and fears which now burden the chances for any progress towards arms control by agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In Russia, the chief difficulty lies in two phenomena, both deeply rooted in Russian statesmanship of the Tsarist as well as the Soviet period: first a passion for secrecy and an extreme, often unreasoned, fear of any foreign observation of life and conditions within the country; secondly, the habit of maintaining ground forces on a massive scale, exceeding any visible requirement of external defense. The first of these phenomena complicates at every turn questions of inspection and enforcement of any conceivable agreements on arms controls; the second helps to produce so great a disparity in size between Soviet and Western ground establishments that it becomes difficult to find any workable criteria for mutual reduction of such forces. About these conditions, there is little

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we can do at this time.

2. There are, however, certain similar abnormal regidities in our own position which also deserve attention.

First, we have allowed military costs and administrative procedures to develop in such a way that it is difficult for us to maintain in peacetime anything more than a relatively small ground establishment. This means that we have little to offer, as a bargaining counter, in any negotiations looking to the reduction or limitation of ground forces. By maintaining too small a conventional force, in other words, we contribute to the disparity that complicates agreement, just as the Russians contribute to it by maintaining too large a one.

Secondly, precisely because we have convinced ourselves that we could not compete in the development of conventional forces, we have allowed ourselves to become dependent, in our planning and calculations, on atomic weapons, and have committed ourselves to the first-use of such weapons in any serious military encounter, whether or not they are used against us. Aside from the fact that these weapons now have virtually suicidal implications, so that a war in which both sides used them would be a catastrophe in itself, this staking of our defense policy on atomic weapons has placed us in a position where we feel we could not accept abolition of the weapon even if our major adversaries, who have repeatedly invited us to join in its general abolition, were to offer us the most ideal facilities for inspection as a means of assuring ourselves of their good faith in such a move.

We are thus barred from progress in the control of convention -

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al armaments by the extreme disparity in size between our <u>conventional</u> establishment and theirs. And we are barred from going very far in the direction of reduction or limitation of <u>atomic</u> armaments by the fact that we would, as things stand today, feel ourselves dependent on the continued cultivation of such armaments and on their use in the event of war, even if our adversaries had dispensed with them entirely.

3. These observations lead me to conclude that the element in our own posture in matters of disarmament which requires most careful re-examination is the question of our own military costs and of the reasons why we are unable, for the amount we spend, to maintain a larger combat force, as distinct from administrative overhead and supporting services.

In the absence of the creation by this country of a much stronger conventional establishment, I see little chance of progress in negotiation for control of armaments, beyond the area of the testing of atomic weapons.

## B. <u>The Relation of Arms Control to European Security</u>

While there is extensive interaction between armaments and political issues in the development of international conflict, it is my view that it is the political issues which are basic, that armaments are more apt to be a function of political disagreement than vice versa; and that, accordingly, efforts to reduce tensions by seeking agreement on the reduction and control of armaments, while leaving the political issue unresolved, are not hopeful.

Nevertheless, I must point out that in the present instance, certain developments, notably the decision to introduce atomic