The Dangers of Disarmament

"Same hors d'oeuvres, same entree, same brandy, same proposition. In a word, no progress," remarked an American as he emerged from another of those three-hour dinners* at Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's villa in Geneva. There seemed little point in staying on, but Secretary of State Dean Rusk delayed his departure for Washington because Gromyko had dropped hints that some new policy message on Berlin might arrive from Moscow at any moment.

Rusk need not have bothered. Gromyko, calling pudgy East German Foreign Minister Lothar Bolz down to Geneva from Berlin to add drama to the scene, handed the U.S. a position paper proposing that a "free city" of West Berlin (same old entree) and the access routes be supervised by an international authority. Right there with it was the old demand that the Western powers withdraw their forces from the city and accept the sovereignty of the East Germans. Rusk instantly rejected the proposal. The U.S. had made it clear to Russia, both at Geneva and before, that the U.S. is in Berlin to stay, and will go to war rather than be pushed out.

The Usual Myopia. The Berlin exchange hardly eased the disarmament discussions taking place in Geneva's Palais des Nations. As long as the threat of war continues over Berlin, the U.S. will subtract no weapon and no man from its armed forces anywhere. Moreover, the Kennedy Administration has said it will resume nuclear testing at Christmas Island in the Pacific late next month unless a firm nuclear test-ban treaty can be agreed on in Geneva by then--which seems impossible (see box).

All eight of the "middlemen" at the conference (Brazil, Burma, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Sweden and Egypt) were pressing both East and West to keep talking. With their usual moral myopia, several flatly condemned all further bomb tests. "Haven't you sufficiently contaminated, with your arms tests, the air we breathe, the milk we drink, the food we eat?" cried Egypt's Foreign Minister. Some "neutrals" had well-meaning but irrelevant proposals of their own to make: Ethiopia's Acting Foreign Minister Ke-tema Yifru pleaded that Africa be declared an "atom-free zone"; Sweden's Foreign Minister Osten Unden plumped for a "provisional" test moratorium without any safeguards.

Critics on the Sideline. Dean Rusk listened and replied patiently, but he, as well as the Russians, knew that all this was nonsense. The U.S. would not risk its security, and that of the free world, for the sake of public opinion in nations that do not have even a direct role in the East-West struggle. Writing in Foreign Affairs, John J. McCloy, until recently President Kennedy's disarmament adviser, takes the neutrals to task, with a candor not usually possible at international conferences.

Morally, says McCloy, the neutrals have dissipated "their position as guardians of the world's conscience" by not reacting more strongly against Soviet resumption of nuclear tests last fall or against India's cynical grab of Goa. Practically, very few of them "have even one man, much less an adequate staff, whose whole time and preoccupation are applied to [disarmament] . . . Those who sit on the sideline and merely chant 'general and complete disarmament without putting their minds to mastering the difficulties of the problem [do not] make much of a contribution."

Few neutrals seem to realize the dangers of an inadequately controlled disarmament program. Says McCloy: "The greater the degree of disarmament, the greater might be the temptations for a potential violator to transgress the agreement, and the greater the risks to those who were complying with it in good faith."

McCloy nevertheless hopes that mutual self-interest may eventually induce the Soviet Union and the U.S. to disarm. There is no sign of this at Geneva. At best, the two nations might negotiate some very limited accords, such as efforts to stop the spread of weapons to other countries. According to its present concept of "self-interest," Russia simply cannot afford to disarm. In a world truly free from the threat of nuclear war, Communism could not hold its gains. In Berlin, in the satellites, and possibly in China, it is largely the nuclear threat that keeps the West from exploiting Red weakness and rolling back Communism. As Rusk put it at Geneva, the Russian attitude makes no sense unless Moscow has decided that it must continue testing and arming. Said Rusk: "The groundwork has all been laid. Only one element is missing: Soviet willingness to conclude an agreement."

*Where conversation is not so voluminous as the clock might indicate. "You have to realize," said one participant in such affairs, "that when food is coming in and out of a room, you can only indulge in small talk. Then you have to divide in half for translation time. And then what's left you divide by the number of people participating."

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