The Formula As Before

For the 170th time in 15 months, U.S. Ambassador James J. Wadsworth retraced his worn route into a Geneva conference room last week to make one more patient try at an effective East-West ban on the testing of nuclear weapons. With him, Wadsworth brought a brand-new U.S. approach to the problem and, as always, hope.

Well aware that France was about to explode an atomic bomb, the U.S. proposed a treaty that it believed could lead to quickest practical agreement and serve until East and West could arrive at 100% control. Specifically, the U.S. proposed to end "forthwith under assured controls" 1) all nuclear weapons tests in the earth's atmosphere; 2) all tests in the oceans; 3) all nuclear tests in those regions of space where effective controls are currently possible; and 4) all controllable nuclear weapons tests beneath the surface of the earth. To get around disagreements on how to measure underground blasts, the U.S. proposed to check all those above a 4.75 rating-- on the standard seismographic "earthquake scale." The U.S. also proposed a program of joint research to improve the detection of small bombs underground, and eventually bring all tests under strict international control.

"Unacceptable, of Course." Admittedly, the plan left some areas open. But it went as far as present techniques could go, and it would do all that any agreement could do to relieve the Communist-fanned fear of rising radioactivity from the fallout of surface blasts. Yet for all the good it did, the U.S. might have saved its breath. The Soviet Union's immediate reaction: a flat "rejected." Cried Soviet Delegate Semyon K. Tsarapkin: "A conspiracy. It is unacceptable, of course." Moscow's reaction should have surprised no one. Month after month Western diplomats have floated into Geneva on floods of hope only to be dashed against inflexible Soviet demands. President Eisenhower's cardinal rule is that a ban on tests is no ban at all unless it is policed by an inspection system. Yet the Russians are unwilling to give the necessary guarantees, insist on a simple, all-or-nothing moratorium without adequate enforcement. The boss of the control post in Russia must be a Russian; the commission may investigate only a small number of suspicious seismographic disturbances in any one year.

The Lead & the Need. In Washington last week there was growing concern that the Geneva talks would drag on and on to no conclusion. During the past 15 months, the U.S. has halted all nuclear tests. Yet the Communists may well be secretly testing, while the U.S. sits patiently at the conference table. The U.S. still has a probable lead in nuclear weapons technology, but the nation's nuclear arsenal can stand plenty of improvement, particularly in the area of cleaner bombs and small tactical weapons. Important programs are needed in the field of miniaturization to develop warheads for the Nike-Zeus antimissile, for the Navy's Polaris and the Air Force's Minuteman ICBMs--all of which means nuclear testing.

Though the temporary moratorium on nuclear tests ended Dec. 31, President Eisenhower has made no decision on whether to resume the shots. The temptation is to wait for the summit meetings in May, just as the U.S. waited hopefully for Khrushchev's assurances on nuclear testing at Camp David last summer. But against a backdrop of 15 months of frustration, the great hopes of Geneva are fading fast. The danger is that the real Soviet objective at Geneva is to halt U.S. weapons progress, while giving nothing in return, thus in effect disarming the U.S. by talk. And that, as Ike has insisted so many times, is precisely what the U.S. must guard against.

-- Equal, by U.S. measurement, to a 20-kiloton, or Hiroshima, bomb.

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