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™ ‘tant first step without upsetting the present strategic balance. A major prob- lem is how to phase the building up of a system of general inspection while at the game time making a drastic reduction in nuclear delivery systems by their actual destruction under iniernationai verifica- tion. Taking military considerations only into accoynt, I believe that a procedure acceptable to both blocs could be de- vised, The difference hitherto between the proposed Western and Soviet first steps in relation to nuclear weapons has been often simplified to the statement that the U.S.S.R. wants disarmament with- Wlact as: West Wants con- tro] without disarmament. It would be more accurate to say that the clash is on the phasing of the stages of disarmament and the stages of control. In its 1960 proposals the U.S.S.R. sug- gested that, in the first step, international teams should be dispatched to inspect the destruction of all rocket weapons, military aircraft and other carriers of nu- Tt did not Dronose the inspection or control of those that re- main waiting to be destroyed. Full in- spection of a country was to be under- taken only when all weapons had been destroyed. It is clear that the U.S.S.R.'s first steps of disarmament are consist- ent with its presumed military policy of relying for its safety from nuclear attack on a relatively small force of purely retaliatory nuclear weapons in secret sites. On the other hand, the U.S. proposals in 1960 envisaged widespread inspec- tion in the first stages and no actual dis- armament until the second stage. This proposal might make military sense if put by a weak nuclear power to a much stronger one. But when put by a strong power to a weaker one, rejection must have been expected. If the U.S.S.R. had accepted the proposal, the geographical secrecy of its nuclear sites would have been lost and it would have been vulner- wat anntent an tha OPELR WTC kee URE LEI elear wea pons. able to nuclear attack from the much. stronger West. Any realistic first stage must start from the fact that the present nuclear balance, such as it is, has a highly asym- metric character: the West's much great- er nuclear power is balanced by Soviet geographical secrecy. Since the military balance is asymmetric, so must be any mutually acceptable first step. Conces- sions must be made by both sides and these must be based on the realities of the military postures of the two blocs. The U.S.S.R. should accept general inspection not, as in their proposals 1 hitherto, when disarmament is complete but at some intermediate stage on the road to disarmament. Reciprocally, the West should not demand widespread in- spection before any disarmament has taken place, as it has done hitherto, but only after substantial destruction of nu- clear armaments has taken place under ‘international verification. In the first stage, therefore, all parties might supply to one another a list of nuclear weapons and their delivery sys- tems, together with research and produc- tion facilities. The exact location of sites would not be included at this stage. An agreed number of weapons: would then be destroved and their de wld thea her nti be verified by on-site inspection by the international control organization. When this destruction has been verified, a gen- eral inspection, using some sampling technique, would begin. The object would then be to verify the correctness of the original declared inventories by checking the numbers remaining after the agreed reductions had been verified, and to proceed to the elimination of the armament remaining. A word must be said about the place of a test-ban agreement in the stages of a disarmament plan. If this agreement did not involve a type of inspection that might reveal the Soviet nuclear sites, it would be advantageous for it to be in- eluded in the first stage, or preferably agreed to at once. If, however, it in- volved widespread inspection that might reveal these sites, Soviet military plan- ners would certainly advise its rejection. It would then have to wait for the second stage of disarmament, when general in- spection starts after the destruction of agreed numbers of nuclear weapons in ihe first stage. Some such compromise between Western and Soviet proposals would seem to meet many of the reciprocal eri- ticisms made by the two parties of their respective 1960 proposals without com- promising the military security of either. The problem becomes more difficult, however, when nonmililary considera- tions are taken into account. Since non- military considerations have played a major role in shaping the defense poli- cies of the great powers, they must in- evitably also affect their disarmament policies. For exampic, if it is difficult io find legitimate military reasons for the vast number of U.S. nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, it is clear that military arguments alone are not likely to be dominant in U.S. discussion of a possible drastic first step toward nuclear disarmament. This is wiuely admitted in the U.S., wnére the impediments to dis- armament are being seen more and more as economic, political and emotional in origin rather than as based on opera- tional! military considerations. A vital as- pect of the problem f for the U.S. is the ehect that drasii¢ disarmament siéps would have not only on the economy as a whole but also on those special sections of high-grade, science-based and highly localized industries that are now so over- whelmingly involved in defense work. A valuable step would be for both the U.S. and Soviet governments to produce and publish detailed and politically realistic economic plans for the transition to a purely retaliatory capacity. t is fair to conclude that a realistic military basis for an agreed drastic first step in disarmament may not be impossible to find, The urgency of the situation was declared with eloquence by President Kennedy in his speech to the United Nations in September: “Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.... The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race.” This great goal of disarmament will be achieved only if the real nature of the arguments against disarmament are clearly identified and frankly faced. The problems of disarmament must not be obscured, as they sometimes have been in the past, by ingenious but falla- cious military doctrine applied to false intelligence estimates. The growing power of China, and the evidence of an ideological rift between it and Bussia, provide an added reason for urgescy in the drive for disarmament. The US.S.R. and the U.S. will be wise to lim# drastically their nuclear arms before China becomes a major nuclear power. kt is to be observed that what- ever inflrence China may now be exert- ing on the U.S.S.R. to adopt a harder policy with the West certainly arises in part fran the failure of Premier Khru- shchev’s campaign for disarmament. This failure greatly weakens Khri- shchev’s argument for the feasibility of peaceful coexistence of the Suviet and the Western worlds. It would seem ur- gently secessary to attempt to bring China nto the disarmament negotiations ns soonas possible,