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has turned from eliminating stockpiles of thermo-nuclear weapons to methods of restraining their use. And with the diffusion of nuclear technology, through the spread of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, effective control of nuclear weapons (by even the smaller Powers will be almost out of the question.) Moreover, once a weapon is developed its applications are until ever wider realms of strategy become dependent on it. A nation may be willing to forego the offensive uses of nuclear weapons, but it will be most reluctant to give up its defensive applications, such as anti-aircraft or anti-missile devices, for example, in advanced stages of their elaboration, weapons find a dual purpose: to kill and damage, however, there will be a dual purpose of the launching site for ground-to-air

missiles can be used as well for ground-to-ground weapons; a nuclear weapon launched from a plane against enemy bombers will be equally useful against enemy supply centers. In short, weapons can be kept from being added to stockpiles only at their inception when their implications are least understood. Thus the only time to control the soon-to-be missiles would be within the next two years before they go into mass production. By the time their dangers are realized, the possibility of preventing their addition to existing arsenals by means of inspection or control has usually disappeared.

The difficulty of developing a meaningful control machinery to end the production and development of certain weapons has caused most disarmament negotiations since 1955 to concern themselves with means to prevent surprise attack. Since, so the argument goes, one of the causes for present tensions is the insecurity caused by the consciousness of imminent catastrophe, and that consequently an inspection system which would reduce the danger of surprise attack would also remove some of the urgency from international relationships. This was the reasoning behind President Eisenhower's proposal

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a retaliatory strike. The relationship of force to diplomacy is not to be established as a variation of all-out war. The possibility of total security has ended with our atomic mono-poly. Limited war and the diplomacy appropriate to it is a means to escape from the sterility of the quest for absolute peace which in the face of a dedicated revolutionary Power paralyzes by the vagueness of its hopes and for absolute victory, which in the face of the enormity of modern weapons paralyzes by the vastness of its consequences.

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military decisions are no longer possible. Other criticisms
assert that a program of war limitation assumes a degree of
human rationality for which history offers no warranty. But
history offers no example for the extraordinary destructiveness
of modern weapons either. A program that sought to establish
some principles of war limitation in advance of hostilities would
seem to make fewer demands on rationality than one which attempted
to improvise the rules of war in the confusion of battle.

The United States should therefore shift the emphasis of
disarmament negotiations from the technically almost impossible
problem of preventing surprise attack to an effort to mitigate the
horror of war. It should do so, moreover, in order to make a
distinction between Soviet "ban the bomb" propaganda and disarma-
ment. We should leave no doubt that any aggression by the Com-
munist bloc may be resisted with nuclear weapons and we should
create the framework for this, well in advance of any emergency.
But while we should treat the use of nuclear weapons as not
negotiable, we should make every effort to limit their effect
and to spare the civilian population as much as possible. We
could therefore announce that Soviet aggression would be resisted
with nuclear weapons if necessary; that in resisting we would not
use fission-fusion-fission weapons of more than 500 kiloton's
explosive power unless the enemy used them first; that we would

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use "clean" bombs with minimal fall-out effects for any larger
explosive equivalent, unless the enemy violated the understanding;
that we would not attack the enemy retaliatory force or enemy
cities located more than a certain distance behind the battle
zone (say 500 miles); that within this zone we would not use
nuclear weapons against cities declared open and so verified by
inspection, the inspectors to remain in the battle zone even
during the course of military operations.

We would lose nothing even if we made such an announcement
unilaterally since our strategy for an all-out war is based in
any case on permitting the other side to strike the first blow.
In case of a local Soviet attack a program of war limitation
would have the advantage of having made clear our understanding
of limited war well in advance of hostilities. To be sure, it
is not likely that the Soviets will formally accept such a pro-
posal because the belief in the inevitable horror of nuclear war
is the condition of atomic blackmail. In order to undermine
the willingness of the non-Soviet world to resist the Soviets have
every interest to paint the consequences of war in the most
drastic terms. But whatever the utility of the pronouncements
of impending doom for paralyzing resistance, the Soviets would
face a considerable dilemma if we maintained our position even
in the face of a Soviet rejection. Whatever their distrust, they

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use "clean" bombs with minimal fall-out effects for any larger
explosive equivalent, unless the enemy violated the understanding;
that we would not attack the enemy retaliatory force or enemy
cities located more than a certain distance behind the battle
zone (say 500 miles); that within this zone we would not use
nuclear weapons against cities declared open, and so verified by
inspection, the inspectors to remain in the battle zone even
during the course of military operations.

We would lose nothing even if we made such an announcement
unilaterally since our strategy for an all-out war is based in
any case on permitting the other side to strike the first blow.
In case of a local Soviet attack, limited war could be fought
according to rules established well in advance. If the war begins
with an all-out surprise attack on us the same relation obtains
as heretofore and we could react or resist by using every weapon in our
arsenal. The same would be true if the Soviets sought to threaten
our national existence directly even if by means less than all-out,
war would possess a powerful incentive to test our sincerity.