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between major protagonists in equal amounts; so that the balance
between them remains unimpaired. To me that's useless. The only
thing that is significant is the transfer of predominant forces
to an international or supra-national agency endowed with the
power to prevent rearmament and to prevent aggression. In other
words, it's making nations live under a rule of law. Until you
have that, as far as I'm concerned you have nothing.

MR. LONG: Aren't you subject to criticism for the tried and true fallacy of the excluded middle; namely, that if one cannot go all the way to a world rule of law, that one can do nothing?

MR. BENOIT: I do think that disarmament should be viewed as a means - and the only effective way - of achieving national security.

MR. LONG: You simply don't want us to kick the big problem under the rug, in the process of looking at these small ones.

MR. FELD: Might I interject at this point? Perhaps you would prefer, Mr. Benoit, if we called it arms control, or arms limitation, or arms reduction. In any event, certainly partial measures are in the air, test bans and so on, and these are things which are being discussed seriously. Perhaps they don't go far enough.

MR. BENOIT: The only reason I mentioned it was because I was concerned whether or not it made disarmament more probable. My point is I don't think it does.

MR. HOLTON: But you see, a certain point is arrived at in history where people do manage to change their minds rather fundamentally. You, I think, were quite right in saying that what is required is not

[Lc]

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merely a readjustment of arms parities, but a very fundamental
systems change in order to get to the desired long-range ob-
jectives. But in order to achieve that national change of mind,
you must, I think, historically have come to the place where we
are now. This is why I think this moment is so hopeful, and why
it is to be grasped before it disappears again. It isn't just
Mr. McNamara who gives this rather startling testimony - it is
just about everybody. You remember that Krushchev in a rather
wicked way, in his talk to the East German Communist Party in East
Berlin in January, said, "I will tell you a secret: our scientists
have worked out a hundred megaton bomb. But according to our sci-
entists' calculations a hundred megaton bomb must not be used in
Europe." And he went on to say, "Don't expect us to use it in the
defense of Berlin because Berlin will be taken out by it." This
is where numbers begin to make a qualitative change of mind, where
you realize that you have reached a certain level beyond which
thinking has to be modified. And this is what I see, because of
the accumulated weapons as we now have. The usual numbers cited
are of the order of thirty thousand megatons just in the American
arsenal, perhaps fifty thousand in the world-wide arsenal. In
terms of damage of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki type, this would be
roughly on the order of a million bombs. This itself cannot be
merely a number. It is a number that makes a change in people's
imagination and in the way that they have to look for new solu-
tions. So it seems to me that we will not come to that desirable
goal you picture until we have really seen, without mentioning the
word disarmament at all, how the present strategy gets us to a
point where disarmament becomes one of the ways toward a sound

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military strategy.

MR. FELD: Mr. Coffin.

MR. COFFIN: It occurs to me that one of the first things, and probably the first essential before any disarmament is to spread, is the logic of terror. That is, you reach a point where you recognize that you cannot use the weapons of terror. At the same time I think that, as you suggest, we cannot assure ourselves that by merely doing away with megaton bombs we will have any sense of security. For example, Sir Solly Zuckerman, who is the chief British military scientist, gave a critique of the NATO war games which were held about three years ago. They were using only tactical nuclear weapons and kiloton weapons, and his critique was very interesting. When you come into war you reach the human factor that local unit commanders tend to overuse a weapon. That is, if they felt they could destroy an enemy unit with two weapons, they would use five. At the end of three or four days, according to his estimate - this is of course just simulated use of nuclear weapons in the kiloton range - four hundred thousand troops would have been killed and the homes of three and a half million people would have been wiped out. This is just a small little tactical war that took place within three days in northern Germany.

So I say that you have to realize that your problem basically is not doing away with megaton bombs; it's doing away with kiloton bombs, it's doing away with the kind of bombs that created the fire hurricanes in World War II. We have reached the

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point of inhumanity and people must understand this. They do
not understand at the present time, at least in our country.

MR. FELD: The conclusions stated by Sir Solly Zuckerman are common, so far as I know, to almost all attempts to simulate in war games what would happen if nuclear weapons were introduced. Not only the destruction but also the tendency toward escalation are strong factors which have probably led to the disillusionment with the potentialities of nuclear weapons, large and small, that is now so widespread, even in our own Defense Department, and certainly in other departments of our government.

Nevertheless, partial measures of the type that we've been talking about, and of other types, would seem to have, if no other importance, a great symbolic importance in starting the thing going, in moving us off the arms race and toward some kind of accommodation and eventual serious disarmament.

I wonder if you have some comments, Mr. Long?

MR. LONG: There's a whole spectrum of possibilities. There are some, for example, which at a first approximation don't concern the major powers at all. I think of a nuclear free zone in Africa or in South America, which would be somewhat apart from the major power confrontation but still seems worth serious thought. The partial measures which can be agreed on quickly and safely between the major powers will have a great role in easing the negotiations toward more substantive things. We of course are heavily involved in the test-ban negotiations at the moment, an example par excellence of an interesting and I hope useful partial measure.

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MR. COFFIN: Not getting any place, though, are you?

MR. LONG: I remain fairly optimistic. I honestly believe that the U.S.S.R. and the United States positions on a test ban are fairly close.

MR. COFFIN: Well, isn't each side trying to maintain some vast superiority over the other one though? Isn't this a kind of a teeter-totter thing that goes up and down all the time?

MR. LONG: The nuclear test ban? Oh, I don't think so. I think that the position is one of genuine appreciation of the character of the proposals on both sides, and a rather modest separation. Now this is not to say that the separation isn't important, nor is it to say that it may turn out to be insuperably wide. I do remain optimistic.

MR. FELD: Mr. Benoit.

MR. BENOIT: May I say one word about the reason for my distrust of these partial measures. As I said, I think the history of negotiation is very largely an example of a ritual activity to relieve anxiety and guilt at pursuing the arms race. Partial measures may serve the same purpose. They may establish our good will and establish that something is being done without taking the fundamental change in course that alone in the long run has any true significance.

MR. KISSINGER: To me a fundamental change of course would be implied by a recognition that no one can really win a general nuclear war. This is a point on which we are very ambivalent. I agree with those on the one hand who think the President feels that this statement

-18-

is true, but there are many people who, having studied the problem for a long time, have become infatuated or obsessed with the technical aspects and who would contradict it. So we have constantly been torn between these two considerations, both in our strategy and I would say, if Mr. Long forgives me, in our disarmament proposals. If both sides came to the recognition that any nuclear war is something that cannot be won, to which you cannot apply the traditional maxims of diplomacy, I think we would have a basis to go on to more sweeping measures. Any step that leads in this direction, that makes it harder for people to "prove" that you can win a general nuclear war, or any nuclear war, would change the atmosphere fundamentally. This is why I am distrustful of saying you can do nothing unless you can institute world government tomorrow. The kind of partial measures that would bring about a change in atmosphere I consider very useful.

MR. FELD: Let me quote again from Mr. McNamara's testimony of January 30th on the subject of the desirability of curtailing the arms race and perhaps arriving at some kind of a disarmament agreement. He says: "As the arms race continues and the weapons multiply and become more swift and deadly, the possibility of a global catastrophe either by miscalculation or design becomes ever more real. More armaments, whether offensive or defensive, cannot solve this dilemma. We are approaching an era when it will become increasingly improbable that either side could destroy a sufficiently large portion of the other's strategic nuclear force either by

[LC]

-19-

surprise or otherwise to preclude a devastatingly retaliatory blow. This may result in mutual deterrence, but it is still a grim prospect. It underscores the need for renewed effort to find some way, if not to eliminate these deadly weapons completely, then at least to slow down or halt their further accumulation and create institutional arrangements which would reduce the need for either side to resort to their immediate use in moments of acute international tension. The United States and the Soviet Union as the two great nuclear powers are the nations most directly endangered by these weapons and therefore have a great mutual interest in seeing that they are never used."

MR. COFFIN: It might be pointed out that worth while as Secretary McNamara's statement was, and all of the steps toward disarmament, you still have not reached the main problem of the public and the organizations that put pressure upon the government. For example, your own agency, Mr. Long, was cut I believe 39 percent by Congress while it added to the military budget.

MR. HOLTON: Could I ask Mr. Benoit a question? To what extent do you think that worries about the economic impact of disarmament have influenced the continuing build-up of arms?

MR. BENOIT: I think that under our structure of government, with the heavy influence of local areas in determining policy, pressures have been put on to make sure that if a given total national level of defense expenditure occurs, everybody gets his cut. Cutbacks in a particular area and not in others will be fiercely resented.

[Lc]

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But I was doing postwar disarmament planning on the economic side during World War II and I saw how quickly economic forces overrode all such objections when the opportunity to make a sharp cutback occurred. I honestly don't think this is terribly relevant to the future.

However, let me just say one other thing. The vague fear that we might have a depression, or a very serious time economically, hasn't exercised any significant influence on our hesitancy about disarmament up to this point because the political problems of disarmament are so overwhelming and we haven't even begun to solve them. But there might well come a time when we had solved some of the problems and were approaching a negotiated disarmament agreement. At that time, if such diffuse, vague fears of the economic repercussions did occur, they might well be important in influencing our judgment.

MR. FELD: Mr. Coffin.

MR. COFFIN: I can give you two specific examples on that. One is the Skybolt controversy. One of the main lobbies against dumping the Skybolt is the Machinists' Union. One of their officials said to me, "twenty-thousand workers are gonna be out of jobs in our plants, and unless they can find other jobs we're gonna fight like the dickens against this. We're going to go up and lobby on the Hill, we're going to talk to Chambers of Commerce," and so forth.

Another example was a member of the Appropriations Committee of the Senate who told me quite frankly that he would not

[LC]

-21-

vote for disarmament because, he said, his own state would be in
a very serious position if the military bases and contracts were
removed. This is a problem which affects the individual Congress-
man and the individual Senator much more than it does the mili-
tary. In many areas this has become a very serious problem of
income.

MR. FELD: Mr. Kissinger.

MR. KISSINGER: The question, I think, is more complicated. We haven't really ever come close enough to a disarmament proposal that would cut deeply into our economy to know what domestic pressures would then build up. The partial measures up to now haven't affected the economy much, one way or the other.

MR. BENOIT: The partial measures are frequently of a character that would in-
crease employment in the total operation.

MR. HOLTON: I've found myself very encouraged by the remarks that the arms
decrease is not a necessary aspect of our general prosperity.
To quote from an article by Mr. Benoit: "It does not mean that
defense spending is necessary for prosperity, but only that the
economy has been stimulated by defense expenditures when they
expanded, and that we have had inadequate compensatory programs
to replace defense expenditures when they have been curtailed.
European countries and Japan, with far smaller defense expendi-
tures than ours, have considerably outstripped us in their rate
of growth." I wonder if you would elaborate on this, Mr. Benoit?

[L.C.]

-22-

MR. BENOIT: There is nothing peculiar in defense spending that any other kind of spending wouldn't also supply, though it's true that government spending has a higher employment input than, let's say, most civilian consumer spending. Aside from employment, the character of the spending isn't the crucial thing. The crucial thing is that there be adequate total spending. We had a major problem after Korea in that the cutbacks were moderately severe. As a matter of fact, in total they were something like what I envision disarmament being - namely, five percent of the probable gross national product after all net offsets. After Korea, the cutbacks were not really envisioned as disarmament or as requiring a definite offset fiscal policy which would make sure that the economy didn't suffer. Not only were defense expenditures cut, but at the same time there was a one-third cut in federal non-defense expenditures, which is rather idiotic if you're trying to keep the economy stable.

MR. FELD: Admitting, as I think most people would, that there are no objective reasons why we could not disarm without getting into serious economic troubles, isn't it important that many people, if not most people, think that we would be in trouble if we started to disarm? Like the Machinists' Union.

MR. BENOIT: I don't want to suggest that this is a pipedream, that there is no problem. There could be a very serious problem. I can even envisage what I call a laissez-faire reaction to a thirty-two billion dollar cut in defense expenditures with no offsets provided, resulting in up to a fifty-seven billion dollar reduction in the gross national product, which is to say a depression. This could happen, but I think

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[LC]

we'd be crazy to pursue such a laissez-faire policy; I think it's
rather unlikely that we would.

MR. HOLTON: What you are really getting at is that you cannot do this without considerable commitment to government planning - such as there was not in the Eisenhower Administration perhaps - and also some willingness to see the budget in unbalance for quite a while.

MR. LONG: It is not even so clear that it must be government planning; that is, there must be a general appreciation of the problem. In that connection, it seems to me of interest that many of the significant defense industries are clearly putting possible disarmament into their long-term forecast equations and are asking, where should we be going, what types of diversification, and the like. It seems to me of further interest that some of the groups most interested in studying disarmament for us under contract turn out to be the defense industries.

MR. BENOIT: I don't think the word planning is particularly appropriate. I hesitate to use it, because in the minds of many people it implies central planning of the type that I think is incompatible with our economy and social system. What is required is a modern economic understanding of fiscal policy, and of the need and desirability of compensatory fiscal policy, including deliberate budget-deficit financing when needed to provide adequate offsets, either by means of tax cuts or by means of compensatory government programs to substitute for the defense programs being cut back. I believe both will be required. The crucial thing is a willingness to do that and an institutional setup that allows

[Lc]

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one to do it flexibly and quickly enough.

MR. FELD: Henry, did you want to say something?

MR. KISSINGER: I would add that a thirty-two billion dollar cut in the defense budget isn't something that's going to happen from one year to the next. During the process of negotiation and ratification, if we are half-way sensible, we're going to have plenty of time to think through the kind of policies that Mr. Benoit is talking about. We will not be faced with a sudden shock.

MR. BENOIT: Even so, while my model has a twelve-year period, nearly half of it occurs in the first three years, because the part that is economically significant is, one, reduction in troop forces, and, two, the cut-off in new production.

MR. FELD: There is a parallel problem I would like to raise now. We seem to feel that the economic problems may be largely psychological and require the ability to do the right things at the right time; they are not really difficult problems in the economic sense. There are political problems of a parallel nature. Assuming that both our government and the Soviet government could agree that fairly wide-scale disarmament of some kind or another is desirable and negotiable, whether this would be accepted in our country is a serious political problem. Certainly the tenor in Congress these days would seem to oppose any attempt at arriving at an accommodation with the Russians - or even, in fact, talking to the Russians.

MR. RENOIT: As a fervent believer in disarmament I'll say something shocking.

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I don't think anybody, even our officials who are dealing with this problem, yet has the remotest idea of how it can actually be done. This is a technical-political problem of tremendous difficulty. We are culpable in not bending our thoughts seriously to how it might be done and being willing to do some original thinking outside of the traditional channels of political theory as to the requirements for doing it. The thing I reproach political scientists for is their insistence on staying within the narrow blinkered path of traditional political theory in thinking about disarmament. The general public has been given only a few general hints about an international disarmament organization or an improved United Nations, none of which really has the least content that would supply any answers to the very vital problems involved.

MR. KISSINGER: I completely agree with Mr. Benoit that any really fundamental answer is likely to break with traditional ways of thinking, but the dilemma arises that not everything that breaks with traditional ways of thinking is necessarily a fundamental answer. Another perplexity I have noticed is that there are really two groups of people that tend to push some of the total solutions. Some, like Mr. Benoit, are convinced that marginal adjustments are not really going to alter the picture. Another group has a tendency to push the extreme solutions because they think that this is the best way to prevent marginal adjustments and any adjustments at all. I've seen in Washington that sometimes the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the World Government people meet on the assertion that unless you can show a plan for immediate world government which is guaranteed to work, you're not going to do anything at all.

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[LC]

MR. FELD:

Might I perhaps just make a few brief remarks? I believe that both the United States government and the Soviet government are interested in disarmament, not purely in terms of propaganda positions, but for very objective reasons having to do with increasing their own national securities. In addition, there are of course the economic reasons.

One of the main problems until now has been that when we have talked about general and complete disarmament, and when the Russians have talked about general and complete disarmament we have really talked about different things, and the plans which have been tabled in Geneva are indeed very different, and to some extent irreconcilable. The American plan proposes a rather gradual approach to disarmament in which we cut down weapons and weapons systems rather gradually while at the same time instituting inspection of one kind or another, not suddenly and immediately, but at least rapidly enough so that by the time we arrive at any appreciable disarmament from our point of view the inspection is really widespread and complete.

The Russian proposals have essentially been proposals for cutting down drastically on armaments, especially nuclear armaments, in the earlier stages before any appreciable inspection of the type that we talk about has been instituted - although verification of the destruction of armaments would be a rather effective inspection measure if we had a pretty good idea of what they had. What has changed the picture in recent months has been the apparent recognition on the part of the Soviet Union that if they are unwilling to accept in the early stages of disarmament the

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kind of widespread inspection that we regard as necessary in order to cut back nuclear armaments to essentially zero levels, then they must also be willing to permit in the earlier stages the retaining of a certain level of armaments to guarantee that the system will work.

In a speech that Mr. Gromyko made in the United Nations on the 21st of September is a paragraph that I personally regard as a major breakthrough in the negotiating position of the Russians. He said: "Taking account of the stand of the Western powers, the Soviet government agrees that in the process of destroying nuclear weapons delivery vehicles, at the first stage exception be made for a strictly limited and agreed number of global intercontinental missiles, anti-missile missiles, and anti-aircraft missiles of the ground-to-air type which would remain at the disposal of the U.S.S.R. and the United States alone. Thus for a definite period the means of defense would remain in case someone, as certain Western representatives fear, ventures to violate the Treaty and conceal missiles or combat aircraft."

I would think that this position, if serious, and if negotiable, does represent a possible means of getting a disarmament agreement and that one can now seriously talk about meaningful disarmament, and not only palliative measures.

But now I'd like to throw this question open to discussion.

MR. HOLTON: How can we be sure that we are properly gauging what is acceptable to the Russians, what is meant by them, when they say such things as you have just quoted - and vice-versa? Kuznetsov at Geneva said, "Two or three inspections have always been cited by

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the U.S.S.R. because it was originally understood by the U.S.S.R. that this is what the U. S. needs, and no more." The whole problem of communication at the negotiation table is one which should be discussed clearly. Mr. Long, I wonder whether this communications difficulty is not a rather severe obstacle in trying to gauge how much credence to give to a statement such as Gromyko's.

MR. LONG:

Let me first react briefly to the Kuznetsov statement that you read. I think it is entirely conceivable that there was a genuine communications failure in assessing what was essential to the United States position. I don't find this really critical, because the difference between their two or three and our eight to ten seems to me to be a resolvable one.

The more general question of the differences in inspection requirements and in minimal-level requirements happen to be a case where we are actually coming closer together. I think the Gromyko statement is at least partially a response to a clear indication from us that there was a gray area in their proposal that we didn't understand, and we seriously doubted whether they understood. Similarly, I think we didn't quite succeed in our inspection discussions in making the point that we really were interested in making the amount of inspection parallel to the amount of disarmament. We proposed a particular type of progressive inspection, the so-called zonal inspection, to which the Russians have reacted rather negatively. More important from our standpoint is that we don't in any sense think this is a unique way of doing progressive inspection, and I really think we have made the point to the Russians that the inspection area is one in which

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we can meet.

The difficulty with the Gromyko thing, however, is that we
have not got further in specificities, and similarly I'm afraid
that the question of inspection has not got down to the specific
points. So there is a problem of bringing these somewhat general
statements, by Gromyko or by us, to specificity.

MR. FELD: Can we really meaningfully discuss and understand each other, let alone negotiate, in that goldfish bowl in Geneva, or do we require other means of communication which would be more effective? Henry.

MR. KISSINGER: I'd like to go back to an earlier statement. You said the U. S. government and the Soviet government now "clearly recognize." I think the way modern governments are constituted they are incapable of clearly recognizing anything. There are conflicting pressures within our government, and within the Soviet government. I'm not sure that from an analysis of what they have proposed one can deduce that they are committed now to disarmament. I consider it even possible that they don't know what they are committed to, but that they are rather feeling around to see what options may open up for them. If we talk about communications, it would be useful to realize that confused people are dealing with each other, rather than that devilish motives on both sides are in conflict.

Now, on the problem of communication, it's of course incorrect to assume that Communists read Lenin every morning and then apply it literally all day long, but I think there is a certain pattern of thinking that develops if one is brought up in a

[LC]

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Marxist society. I would say quite frankly that some of our scientists have not realized that to the Russians the distinction between official and unofficial representatives is not as clear as it is to us. I've attended scientific conferences from which, if I had been a Russian, I could have gone away with the sincere conviction, for example, that two or three inspections were perfectly acceptable to the United States. This misunderstanding of Kuznetsov's is not necessarily a propaganda trick, but may derive from the fact that they cannot distinguish the private opinion of scientists connected with the government as consultants from the official views of the government.

MR. HOLTON: Which may not have yet been formed.

MR. KISSINGER: Which may yet not have been formed. Now, there is one other difficulty. We have a tendency to believe that not to be dogmatic is a great virtue and that therefore if one goes into a conference with a rather vague outline the negotiation itself is going to reveal the truth. The Russians, operating on a different theory, may consider our vagueness a trick. I feel that time and again we've gone into conferences with proposals that were imposed on us by the deadlines of the conferences rather than by careful thought. A number of inspection proposals, if we had had six more months to study them, might have been put forward in a more detailed way. This constant modification of our position, which to us is a sign of openmindedness, may tempt the Russians into being more obdurate than they might otherwise be just to see what other modifications may develop. This is a problem of communication which we haven't sufficiently explored.

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MR. HOLTON: On a previous broadcast one of the participants said that negotiations can only put an official signature on something that has already become possible before, and which the governments have decided is possible before, so that negotiations are now, as it were, the making public of previously arrived-at possibilities.

MR. LONG: There will inevitably be a substantial number of modest items which still must be settled in negotiation - perhaps even in a somewhat formal way. But for the basic assessment I think you're quite right.

MR. KISSINGER: I would like to make one point about the interrelationship between political structures and disarmament. One part of this political structure that we haven't talked about here doesn't even include the Soviet Union - it includes the Western Alliance. As long as the Western Alliance thinks of itself as a collection of national sovereignties, a situation may develop where disarmament negotiations produce incentives for the spread of nuclear weapons and where almost any adjustment has such a disruptive effect and produces so much chaos that the overall impact would be destabilizing rather than stabilizing. If one could get the Western Alliance to treat the disarmament problem as a unit, rather than as a collection of national sovereignties, such issues as disengagement and tactical weapons could be considered in a completely different framework. One place to begin this adjustment of the international comity is where it's seemingly easier, namely, in the Western Alliance.

Secondly, it is important to think about the question of what kind of a world we envisage ten years from now - not so much

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in terms of weapons systems, but the kind of relations among what
are now called states - and then work back from that toward agree-
ments. This seems to me an essential precondition. The purely
technical approach may not be enough, even though I agree with
many of the partial measures.

MR. FELD: I'd like to call on Mr. Benoit. Do you think that we're in a
position at this point to begin to spell out the blueprint of the
kind of a world that Henry is talking about?

MR. BENOIT: Absolutely not. I think we need a breakthrough in political thinking of the same magnitude that atomic energy involved in physics before we even think seriously about disarmament. I think Dr. Kissinger, with whose last remarks I agreed fully, illustrated the deficiencies when he referred several times to world government as probably what I was talking about. This stereotype is precisely and exactly what I mean by the limited, blinkerlike approach to the problem. One thinks in terms of black and white alternatives with no serious idea of the flexibility and variety of political institutions and their capabilities of evolution in wholly new forms. The European Community is an example of genuine novelty. And it's precisely that kind of thing that I'm thinking of.

MR. LONG: Let me point to a partial measure to reduce the proliferation on
nuclear weapons. The test ban is one, and I think there are sev-
eral others that could substantially reduce the proliferation of
nuclear weapons. Why is this important? It's important because
all-out nuclear war is quite unlikely to result as part of a de-
liberate strategy. It's much more likely to result from accident

[lc]

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or miscalculation. Accident and miscalculation have some reasonable chance to be held in check if the number of countries involved is quite small. But if we are dealing with an increasingly larger number of countries with nuclear weapons in their hands, I think this possibility of accidental war or serious miscalculations increases very, very sharply. So I think this is a partial measure which has a clear defense and would be an important one.

MR. FELD: Well, how does one do it? One can conceive of measures which will convince many small nations that they should not aim at producing independent nuclear capabilities. France is a problem, but perhaps even France can be stopped. But can you think of a measure that's going to prevent the Chinese from wanting to have nuclear weapons and getting them as fast as they can?

MR. LONG: I, of course, can't think of a measure. On the other hand, I can imagine the possibility that a set of measures, of which the nuclear test ban would be one, could sufficiently modify the general moral pressure so as to make it very much less attractive to the Chinese to go down this route. This clearly doesn't mean I think it would stop it, but I think there's a reasonable chance.

MR. FELD: Mr. Benoit.

MR. BENOIT: We've been thinking in terms of traditional conceptions of what disarmament is all about, but if disarmament is not necessarily the reduction of national weapons systems, but the transfer of

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them to a supra-national force, then the crucial element is
whether we are already planning definitely to take the next steps.
We could start on disarmament in this sense almost tomorrow. And
of course, it would be desirable to do so while as few nations as
possible have arms. I'm sure - I've spoken with the disarmament
negotiator of France - that France would be among the first to
agree if a real disarmament program were set up. Now the Chinese,
of course, would be difficult, but the issue at stake is the sur-
vival of civilization, or possibly of humanity, and I personally
would feel no compunction whatsoever if there were agreement in
the world to maintain the sort of disarmament that I had in mind,
about imposing a regime of disarmament on such nations as did not
wish to accept them. Unless this itself would require a nuclear
war, in which case one would be in exactly the same position that
we are now in with respect to Soviet Russia.

MR. FELD: Mr. Coffin.

MR. COFFIN: I might inject some facts about the Chinese situation. This is a Tokyo statement of January 30th. "The Defense Agency does not expect Communist China to own effective nuclear armaments until late 1960's or early 1970's. Defense Agency officials believe that Communist China will carry out its first nuclear explosions in a year or two, but that will not mean the country will be nuclear armed. China will need several more years before it owns nuclear weapons of strategic value they said. The officials made these estimates on the basis of information available to them concerning the development or the production of plutonium in China and ex-

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per experiences in Britain and France. After the Chinese succeed in producing atomic bombs, they will have to develop bombers or missiles to deliver the bombs, which may take several more years, the officials said. That means the Chinese will not own an effec- tive nuclear striking power until late 1960's to early 1970's." Which means, of course, you have at least some time.

MR. HOLTON: I propose that we look for the remaining time at plausible plans for disarmament in the short run, not just in the long run. In a sense, even the development of atomic energy was a step-by-step process. Is disarmament now possible in terms of plausible plans, their possibility and probability of implementation? We should perhaps go to this middle ground between the ultimate goal which we all share with Mr. Benoit and Mr. Coffin and the suspicion of treachery which is leveled by other groups at the far end of the spectrum anytime that any plan whatever is mentioned. I'm think- ing even of Mr. Rockefeller, who said that "bilateral and secret negotiations might prejudice the future security of the United States and the whole Free World" in response to finding out that negotiations are taking place on the subject of a test ban. In- between the impossibility of doing anything and the impossibility of implementing the final goal there is this large range of pos- sible, plausible, part-way measures. Perhaps we can turn now to some rather concrete plans - their merits, their dangers, their timetables.

MR. FELD: Well, I do see one. The negotiation and establishment of certain large, nuclear-free zones - for example, in the Caribbean and

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South America, in Africa, perhaps in the Near East - might be a
negotiable item at present. It might be especially desirable if
it were negotiated along with measures of inspection and possible
enforcement through the United Nations. These are areas in which
the United Nations probably can act because the major powers are
not present to any appreciable extent.

MR. BENOIT: Much more hopeful, I believe, as a course toward disarmament would be an agreement between ourselves and at least our friends as to the development of a supra-national institution between us that could begin the shift of national defense forces to a supra-national agency - something like an enlarged NATO, if you wish, but with a completely different point of view. This would begin to teach us the basic problems of establishing an international organization that we could trust to be reliable to do what it's promised to do, not to exceed its appropriate delegated authority, and to undertake the mission - now performed by national governments and national armies - of protecting the security of the underlying population.

MR. LONG: Let me make two quite different points. I would enter a mild demurrer on this question of the relevance and utility of nuclear-free zones by just quoting a phrase, the phrase "non-armament."

In many ways it will turn out to be easier to get non-armament than disarmament. If you can stop things before they start, it's a simpler task. That doesn't address the relevance, but the feasibility perhaps.

In terms of relevance, there are two ways that one can focus
on trying to get an international situation under which people can

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live in peace. One direction, the one I think you have been fo-
cusing on, is the role of some infrastructure. There is another
one, however, which involves the very substantial buildup of trust,
of confidence, of relaxed feelings. That's the kind of thing that,
for example, makes it easy for us to have an unarmed border with
Canada. It's really this set of feelings we have engendered. Go-
ing down the road of partial measures is a practical way to begin
to build up this feeling of mutual confidence that people's goals
and motives are similar. I'm not willing to believe that the lion
will quickly lie down with the lamb, but if it turns out on closer
examination that both belong to the same species, it may not look
so hard.

If I can amplify slightly why I think this matter of trust is
so important, it comes to questions as to what kind of confidence
one can have that any particular measure is being obeyed and what
degree of confidence one must have at various levels. Now any
analysis that we make leads to a spectrum of necessary confidence
levels. For a substantial reduction in nuclear weapons the degree
of detail that you must know about the numbers and character of
the remaining weapons is not terribly great, the reason being that
there's a spectrum of doterrents here. But when one pushes farther
and farther down the road of disarmament, and one in effect fi-
nally contemplates the position of no nuclear weapons, no mass
destruction weapons at all, then the possibility of a complete up-
set of the balance by a very small number is a real one. The prob-
lem is, how do you get confidence that these don't exist? One
way, of course, is to have a massive inspection system, and if you
have no implicit trust, this is, I take it, an essential. On the

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other hand, if in the process of getting there you have developed mutual confidence in each other's motives, if you develop an atmosphere of some feeling that you understand why people want things, then it might turn out that the character and degree of the verification needed were quite different. That is, I think, the case for tension reduction.

MR. FELD: Apropos this question of building up mutual confidence, don't you think, Mr. Benoit, that carrying out your proposal of an enlarged, supra-national NATO alliance would in fact do the opposite as far as the Soviet Union is concerned, would arouse in them worries and fears that they were being ganged up on, and might even press them toward a rapproachment with the Chinese and in the direction of accepting more readily the Chinese position with respect to conflict?

MR. BENOIT: That's why I said something like but different. That's very important. What I mean is an organization that is deliberately set up to make it possible for Russia and China to enter, in which it's perfectly clear that it will be enforced against us as well as against anybody else, and that involves a genuine weakening of the national capability to engage in armed action of any type. I think this would be reassuring in the sense that it would be clear that we were definitely in the act of abandoning the powers that nations have exercised throughout history and that we were really working towards something quite new. I don't think we really can impinge on Soviet thinking on this thing until we have shown them that we are thinking in really new ways.

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MR. FELD: You don't envisage that the United Nations has any serious role?

MR. BENOIT: No, I don't.

MR. FELD: Why?

MR. BENOIT: Because it's deliberately set up as a society of nations with na-
tional governments at the helm, and it has absolutely no capa-
bility of exercising any constraint on the major nations. It was
deliberately designed that way.

MR. FELD: What measures do you think now lie on the horizon - or lie close enough on the horizon so that we can see?

MR. LONG: I hope that a test ban is on the near horizon. It seems to me that the differences that now separate the U.S.-U.K. and U.S.S.R. positions are sufficiently small so that one can reasonably hope that negotiations will be fruitful. I think that there are possibilities of measures on the non-dissemination, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in other countries, of measures to keep weapons of mass destruction out of space. I think that there are a number of substantial disarmament measures which might or might not go with general and complete disarmament treaty, but which would carry with them the air of a first stage toward general disarmament. I won't say these are on the near horizon - I don't think we've studied them that fully - but are the kind of thing that on present study would look to be mutually advantageous.

MR. FELD: Would you include among these, for example, the reduction of strategic nuclear delivery systems from the present hundreds -

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well, close to a thousand - down to a level of perhaps fifty or a hundred, as something that one can see looming on the horizon as a possibility.

MR. LONG: You have gathered from earlier discussions on the questions of those famous two or three inspections that the numbers game is a very dangerous game to play, so I would greatly prefer not to focus sharply on numbers, but it certainly seems to us that there is a possible area of agreement that would involve a very substantial reduction in the numbers of nuclear vehicles.

MR. FELD: And conventional armaments?

MR. LONG: Yes. I think there is a role for conventional forces. The problem there is somewhat more complicated because, perhaps more sharply than nuclear weapons, that does bring the problem of China to the fore.

MR. HOLTON: I wonder whether we can go around the table on this question: In view of the distance we have come, looking first at arms and current strategy, then at the plausibility, in principle, of disarmament and at the obstacles to its realization, and now at some specific steps which might be taken, what would the world be like if, nevertheless, the promise is not fulfilled over the next ten or twenty years, if the arms race continues, if other countries enter, as they are about to? What is the problem going to be like if our faith as expressed in the title of this broadcast does not come through? And then, what are the alternatives to this pessimistic extrapolation? What do we see as a possible timetable for

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a gradual disarmament which will bring some sort of sane stability?
Perhaps we should start with Mr. Benoit.

MR. BENOIT: The crucial thing is to focus our thinking on what is necessary for survival, not a whit more than that perhaps, but not a whit less. If I'm correct in assuming that a really major breakthrough in political thinking is required for disarmament, there is simply no use in our exploring the traditional lines of thinking about it, let alone trying to negotiate on it, because such thinking and such procedure only operate as an anodyne to anxiety and make us think that we are really approaching a degree of security which in fact we're not. I see no substantial worsening of the situation in the continuation of the arms race. In some respects it may be helpful in increasing the nation's anxiety. I think that the Cuban crisis was a real help, and that perhaps we'll need several more such things in order to make us realize that the kind of world we're living in is frightfully dangerous. Only then perhaps will we be shaken out of the complacency which keeps us operating around the same circle.

MR. HOLTON: Mr. Coffin.

MR. COFFIN: I observe life on a somewhat lower level than people in the academic life, and I have little faith in human nature. I would say that unless there are major changes in people's thinking, within the next twenty-five years the world will be over. I see no alternative. I watch people in the military, I watch people in political life, and one cannot go ahead with quarrels as violent as ours and as deep as ours without having some very violent war

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and a war which would destroy everything. I see no alternative.

MR. FELD: Frank, would you like to speak?

MR. LONG: I curiously find myself both much more pessimistic in some sense than Mr. Benoit and more optimistic than Mr. Coffin. Let me react to the comment of Mr. Benoit's that it was good to increase people's anxiety. I really doubt that. I think that increasing anxiety without offering people solutions leads to neurosis, that if one goes down the path to increasing people's anxiety one must have a solution to offer. Furthermore, I find myself an honest proponent of the philosophy of gradualism here - gradualism on some reasonable time scale. I think that emphasis on the kind of substantive partial measures I was talking about - substantial arms cuts, a test ban, nuclear-free zones, the whole spectrum of disengagement possibilities - can cumulate to a major change. In the chemists' analogy, it can have a catalytic effect. I think one must start. It's these first moves that begin to enhance confidence that people are tuned to the same wavelength, have the same motives, wish for the same goals. Then it becomes progressively easier. I am persuaded that the practical path is one which accepts the current world and starts taking what steps can be taken - with, however, a sense of urgency. I am uneasy about waiting for a basic political breakthrough. This may be simply the innate conservatism of the scientist who almost invariably sees his science developing by steps rather than by breakthrough.

MR. FELD: Mr. Benoit.

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MR. BENOIT: I just want to correct one impression. I am not in favor of a radical overnight change, or expect it to be possible. I am in favor of gradual steps. The crucial thing is that they be steps in the right direction, and I think that the kind of short steps that people are considering now lead off on the side and are really irrelevant to the crucial way in which I think it's necessary to move to get disarmament.

MR. FELD: Mr. Kissinger.

MR. KISSINGER: I agree with most of what Mr. Long said and there is no sense in repeating it. I believe that there is a utility in gradual steps and that these gradual steps could have a catalytic effect. I'd like to talk about two problems that have not been mentioned by anybody else.

The first is with reference to the statement that if there is no disarmament the world will come to an end. I think disarmament is crucially important, but I don't believe we should talk ourselves into the frame of mind that without disarmament the world must inevitably blow up, because this resigns control over our fate. If there is no disarmament, there are a number of things we can unilaterally do in order to stabilize the environment, and I do not believe we should take a resigned position, even in the unfortunate event of no progress toward disarmament.

The second thing is that I think we should, in our strategic postures and in our foreign policies, keep in mind the impact of what we do on other countries. In respect to our strategic posture, we badly need a reassessment of the notion of strategic

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superiority, because as long as we are committed to that concept
in its present form, we freeze ourselves into a rigid position
both in strategy and in disarmament. With respect to our rela-
tionships to our allies, I think we will have an important
choice to make as to whether we want to emphasize their conven-
tional or their nuclear contributions. If we emphasize their
nuclear contributions, then we might be able to consider such
proposals as disengaged zones in Europe. If we emphasize their
conventional contribution, then I don't see any point in dis-
seminating nuclear weapons to a multilateral NATO force. I be-
lieve that we have to be very careful in trying to deal with
such issues as DeGaulle's view of Europe by creating artifi-
cially such institutions as the multilateral NATO force, which
will have the practical consequence of disseminating nuclear
weapons to all the non-nuclear powers in Europe, even if on a
multilateral basis; of creating enormous fears about the role of
Germany; and of making a later negotiation about disarmament
very much more difficult. In other words, one way to approach
the disarmament problem is to think, even in issues that do not
seem to relate to disarmament, what the impact will be later on
the disarmament question.

MR. FELD:

Perhaps, having done so at the beginning, I can also at the end
overstep the bounds of the moderator and state an opinion. It
seems to me overwhelmingly likely that we will have disarmament.
To paraphrase something which has been said by lots of people -
the last time I saw it quoted was from Mr. Gilpatrick, the
Deputy Secretary of Defense - the main question is whether we

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will have it before nuclear weapons have been used, or after. At the present the major obstacles to achieving disarmament before some kind of a nuclear disaster takes place is a purely political one - the failure on the part of responsible people in our country, in the countries of Western Europe, and in the Soviet Union to recognize the overriding importance of getting started on this road. It's much easier to do things which you can see immediately may have some partial use or which, because people are emotional and sentimental and don't understand things, seem to be more popular. I'm much concerned about the general political irresponsibility on this question in our country, not only among people who don't know, but among people who should know better, among presumably responsible politicians. This seems to me to be a basic problem, and I think we have been addressing ourselves to it.

I think it appropriate at this point that we ask our host, who has kept himself in the background, to state his views.

MR. HOLTON:

I am optimistic. I believe that, as our discussions have shown, if the idea of disarmament had never existed, we and the Soviet Union would now have to get together and invent it, as the soundest and safest course to protect each nation's security. Moreover, a number of concrete steps toward that goal are now possible for the first time, and perhaps for the last time. Let me check off a few reasons for this optimism at a dark period of our history to reinforce and to add to what has been said here.

The so-called "balance of terror" has at least the advantage of being a kind of balance from which one can go step by step to lower levels of nuclear armament on both sides. In the past, the

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Russians have appeared to feel too far below a balanced level to start safely on a downturn in the arms spiral. We on our side have felt obliged to keep the gap in our favor as large as possible. Living at the edge of the volcano so long has made both sides quite clearly more sophisticated on how one deals with the danger.

Let me give you some examples. On a tactical level, I am sure we have learned not to get caught unprepared when the other side breaks a moratorium, but instead to have test-readiness, standing by for immediate action as soon as the other side breaks the moratorium, and thereby discouraging this eventuality. This is what Mr. Foster has been proposing at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Now, again, as Mr. Long's presence here symbolizes, there has grown up in the last few years a profession of experts on arms control and disarmament on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This reflects the realization that a desire for disarmament, which I believe is genuine on both sides at the highest policy level, is not enough, and that for the sake of new technical ideas and for the sake of continual political education we need such experts attached to the Executive.

On a strategic level, we have learned, on the whole, not to expect quick and certain results, but instead to weigh probable risks against probable gains. At the negotiating table our five long years of test-ban negotiations certainly don't make for optimism, but here too the glacier has moved.

At last

the Soviet Union now accepts the idea of an on-site inspection, installation of detection equipment on its soil, and the free movement of foreign technicians to service this equipment. We

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on our side have retrenched from the large number of inspections and of unmanned seismic stations we used to demand. So we are coming together eventually.

In the realm of geopolitics, each side has taken a long look into the future and has seen some very uncomfortable things. I think one is the spreading of weapons to China, and the other is the spreading of weapons to our European allies. James Reston wrote a short time ago: "What particularly troubles people in Washington is the fear that President DeGaulle's insistence on a French nuclear force will lead inevitably, not tomorrow but one day, to the nuclear rearmament of Germany. And this in turn will send a shudder, not only through the United States, through the Soviet Union, but throughout the world."

In terms of our domestic economy, Senator Humphrey's survey of the economic impact of disarmament on U.S. companies has found a remarkable readiness of these companies to plan and build against the day when disarmament agreements would cause them to make fundamental readjustments in production and manpower deployment. Finally, and most significantly of all, I believe, is the likelihood of sound disarmament steps is better than ever because both in the U.S. and in the Soviet Union the leader and his advisers are quite clearly convinced that disarmament is not going to endanger national security. On the contrary, it is one of the essential ways of achieving it. In both countries, the leader of the country is sane, is popular, and is strong, so that if he really makes up his mind to do so, he can stand up against the powerful opponents which each is facing in his country on this

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subject of disarmament.

Now, these, it seems to me, are some of the main elements that
allow us to say "yes" to the question of today: "Is disarmament now
possible?"

Thank you, gentlemen.

## Notes on Participants:

Emile Benoit is Professor of International Business at Columbia University, Chairman of the Panel on the Economic Impacts of Disarmament of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and a consultant to the United States State Department and The United Nations Secretariat.
Mr. Benoit is the author of *Economic Adjustments to Disarmament*.

Tristram Coffin, Washington journalist, was for some years the White House correspondent for CBS and has written widely on disarmament. He is the author of *Missouri Compromise and Your Washington. The Passion of the Hawks*, a book on the nature of the military, will be published late this spring.

Bernard T. Feld is Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been a participant in the "Pugwash Meetings" (Conferences of Scientists on World Affairs) in Austria, 1958, 1959; Moscow, 1960; Stowe, Vt., 1961; and Cambridge and London, 1962. His publications include: *The Neutron* (volume II of *Experimental Nuclear Physics*), *The Technical Problems of Arms Control*, and "Inspection Techniques on Arms Control" in *Arms Control, Disarmament and National Security*.

Gerald Holton is Professor of Physics at Harvard University. Editor of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1957, he was until 1961 the Editor of *Daedalus*. Among his publications are: *Introduction to Concepts and Theories in Physical Science*, *Experimental Physics*, *Foundation of Modern Physical Science* (with D. H. D. Roller), and (as editor with S. R. Graubard) *Excellence and Leadership in a Democracy*.

Henry A. Kissinger, Professor of Political Science at Harvard University and member of its Center for International Affairs, is a consultant to the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Mr. Kissinger is the author of *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy* and *The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy*.

Franklin A. Long is the Assistant Director, Science and Technology, of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and consultant to the President's Science Advisory Committee, Washington, D. C. He

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was Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Cornell University from
1950 to 1960.

This program was edited from a previously recorded taping session.

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[lc]

A Short list of selected books for:

Is Disarmament Now Possible?

Barnet, Richard J. Who Wants Disarmament? Boston: Beacon Press, 1960.

Benoit, Emile. Economic Adjustments to Disarmament. New York: Institute for International Order, 1961.

Blackett, P. M. S. Studies of War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1962.

Brennan, D. G., Ed. Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security. New York: Braziller, 1961. (Based upon the Fall 1960 issue of DAEDALUS, Arms Control; contains a full bibliography.)

Bull, Hedley. The Control of the Arms Race. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961.

Economic Impacts of Disarmament. Washington: United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1962.

Feld, Bernard T., Ed. Excerpts from the Statement of Secretary of Defense McNamara before the House Armed Services Committee. Washington: Council for a Livable World, 1963.

Frisch, David Henry, Ed. Arms Reduction: Program and Issues. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961.

Henkin, Louis, Ed. Arms Control: Issues for the Public. American Assembly. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961.

Kissinger, Henry A. The Necessity for Choice. New York: Harper, 1961.

Melman, Seymour, Ed. Disarmament: Its Politics and Economics. Boston: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1962. (Available only through subscription to DAEDALUS.)

Schelling, T. C. and Morton H. Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961.

Verification and Response in Disarmament Agreements. Washington: Institute for Defense Analyses, 1962.

Wadsworth, James J. The Price of Peace. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962.

Young, Wayland. Strategy for Survival. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1959.

Article:

Kissinger, Henry A. "NATO's Nuclear Dilemma." The Reporter, Vol. 28, No. 7 (March 28, 1963) pp. 22-37.