The Dwindling Margin

In Paris, so the story goes, an American was challenged by a Frenchman to a duel. As the challenged party, he had the choice of weapons. His choice--"double-barreled shotguns at 20 paces"--posed such a strong threat of mutual annihilation that the Frenchman called the whole thing off.

Such negative protection is now the principal insurance which the U.S. has against an attack by Soviet strategic bombers. Last week the Russians announced that they have set off a hydrogen bomb explosion. The U.S. Government, within a few hours, confirmed that this was so.* In Washington, Representative W. Sterling Cole called his Joint Atomic Energy Committee together for a briefing by CIA experts on what they knew of the Russian explosion. President Eisenhower, in New York for a one-day visit, conferred with Chairman Lewis Strauss of the Atomic Energy Commission and White House Psychological Warfare Adviser C. D. Jackson.

Administration leaders made no wild or hasty pronouncements about the effect of the new Russian hydrogen power, but their concern was very real. Given the enormous destructive potency of the atom and hydrogen bombs, and the knowledge that Russia has solved the principle of both, there can be only fleeting comfort from the fact that the U.S. stockpile of bombs is currently bigger than the Russian. If X number of bombs will cripple a nation, it will be of small importance whether the U.S. has X plus 2,000 and the Russians have only X plus one.

The Round Table. Confronted by positive proof that time was running out. what could the U.S. do? One possible course of action was quickly suggested at the United Nations by U.S. delegate Alexander Wiley, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. New soundings should be taken, he said, on the chances of negotiating a workable scheme of international atomic control with the Russians. Wiley's proposal merited cool-headed consideration. One reason: no one has yet disproved the theory that the Russians, faced with imminent cracks behind their Iron Curtain, may be looking for a long cold-war breathing spell.

On the other hand, the U.N. is now especially vulnerable to any Russian diplomatic double-dealing which has a plausible appearance of honesty. In the hubbub over the Korean peace talks, the major U.S. allies have shown their hopeful conviction that the deep gulf between the free world and the Communists can now be bridged by a round-table discussion. The U.S. is trying to persuade the British and others that Communists, on their record, are apt to be insincere negotiators.

Deep Defense. A second course of action is being widely discussed, and its most articulate spokesman is Atomic Scientist Robert Oppenheimer. In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Oppenheimer sees the U.S. and Russia approaching the position of "two scorpions in a bottle," calls for a heroic effort to construct a deep new U.S. air defense system. Some U.S. airmen sharply challenge Oppenheimer on two grounds: 1) no conceivable air defense can be complete; 2) Oppenheimer's accent on defense implies a relaxing of the U.S. strategic air arm, the only weapon the U.S. has for carrying a retaliatory attack to the heart of Russia.

For weeks President Eisenhower has been wrestling with drafts of a speech to the U.S. detailing the facts of atomic security v. insecurity. The H-bomb announcement probably will spur the speech-drafting efforts, because the White House understands that something must be done in short order to remedy the state of continental air defenses. Nor is there any longer much doubt that the prospect of the shotgun duel now calls for political reassessments of the first magnitude.

* There have been at least 48 atom and hydrogen explosions since the first was set off on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, N. Mex. The U.S. has been responsible for 43, the Russians for four, and Great Britain for one.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.