Disarming Proposal

Headlines announced the failure of the Geneva Conference last week as a failure to reunify Germany. Equally significant, though less dramatic, was the failure to agree on disarmament. Secretary of State Dulles came away condemning the Russian proposals of a nuclear arms ban and troop withdrawal from Europe as "paper pledges." Moscow, in turn, blamed the United States. Referring to the Geneva debates, Pravda, the official Communist party newspaper, charged American diplomats with confining their discussion to President Eisenhower's proposal "for the exchange of military information and aerial photography of [each other's territory], divorcing this issue from the pressing task of ending the arms race." Actually, both accusations were right. Neither side presented the other with a practical program for disarmament.

The Eisenhower-Stassen plan, which Dulles pushed at Geneva, is really only a "prelude" to a general arms reduction. Its very premise is that the U.S. and Russia will remain fully armed. No matter how closely American planes explored Soviet territory, they could not discover a secret nuclear stockpile. An aerial detection device does not exist. Inspection by air would only assure the U.S. that Russia is not massing for a surprise attack. Yet such a system would set the military machines of both powers on edge. The slightest mistake of the enemy's intentions made by an inspecting plane could trigger off mutual destruction.

It is clear why neither Moscow's "paper pledges" nor Dulles' "on edge" proposal was acceptable to the other power. Each side recognizes that the only adequate guarantee that the other is disarming is to have complete ground inspection of each other's territories. Yet neither power is willing to let the other come snooping around every inch of its land. The real problem, then, is how and by whom inspection will be made, and this is a question of administration, not of theory. Instead of pursuing a bilateral agreement with Russia which each side would distrust, the U.S. should put disarmament in the hands of an unbiased agency. The United Nations is the obvious administrator.

At present the U.S. is very willing to look to the U.N. for a proposed disarmament solution, but not for its administration. The only way to allow the U.N. to manage a general disarming is to give it more authority by changing its charter. In order to enforce disarmament the U.N. should have two basic powers which it now lacks: (1) a restricted but effective military force under its own control to back up its decisions, and (2) a World Court empowered to summon any disobeying nation before it. These powers would avoid war as a means of enforcement, and if administered impartially, should be acceptable to all countries.

Last week, in a U.N. session discussing Charter review, the U.S. conceded that a review conference needs "a more favorable political climate" than now exists. It therefore supported a compromise resolution under which the Assembly would not consider Charter review before 1957. President Eisenhower should recognize that disarmament and Charter review go hand in hand.

When he made his aerial inspection proposal last July, the President gained a considerable backing from world opinion. Now that Russia has refused to cooperate with his July plan, he should swing his support to the U.N. Such a policy could have even better propaganda value. Even though Moscow went on record in the U.N. last week against altering the Charter at any time, the Administration ought to press for a review conference. Instead of championing a vague "prelude" to disarmament it could then deal with the question directly.