FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1950, VOLUME I


  In conclusion, negotiation is not a possible separate course of action
but rather a means of gaining support for a program of building
strength, of recording, where necessary and desirable, progress in the
cold war, and of facilitating further progress while helping to mini-
mize the risks of war. Ultimately, it is our objective to negotiate a
settlement with the Soviet Union (or a successor state or states) on
which the world can place reliance as an enforceable instrument of
peace. But it is important to emphasize that such a settlement can only
record the progress which the free world will have made in creating
a political and economic system in the world so successful that the frus-
tration of the Kremlin's design for world domination will be complete.
The analysis in the following sections indicates that the building of
such a system requires expanded and accelerated programs for the
carrying out of current policies.
A. The First Course-Continuation of Current Policies, with Current
    mad Currently Projected Programs for Carrying out These
    Policies.
  1. Military aspects. On the basis of current programs, the United
States has a large potential military 'capability but an actual capa-
bility which, though improving, is declining relative to the U.S.S.R.,
particularly in light of its probable fission bomb capability and pos-
sible thermonuclear bomb capability. The same holds true for the
free world as a whole relative to the Soviet world as a whole. If war
breaks out in 1950 or in the next few years, the United States and its
allies, apart from a powerful atomic blow, will be compelled to con-
duct delaying actions, while building up their strength for a general
offensive. A frank evaluation of the requirements, to defend the
United States and its vital interests and to support a vigorous initiative
in the cold war, on the one hand, and of present capabilities, on the
other, indicates that there is a sharp and growing disparity between
them.
  A review of Soviet policy shows that the military capabilities, actual
and potential, of the United States and the rest of the free world,
together with the apparent determination of the free world to resist
further Soviet expansion, have not induced the Kremlin to relax its
pressures generally or to give up the initiative in the cold war. On the
contrary, the Soviet Union has consistently pursued a bold foreign
policy, modified only when its probing revealed a determination and
an ability of the free world to resist encroachment upon it. The rela-
tive military capabilities of the free ,world are declining, with the
result that its determination to resist may also decline and that the
security of the United States and the free world as a whole will be
jeopardized.


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