,REGULATION OF ARMAMEN-TS              3


from what could be achieved with them. On this, ,in turn, must depend&
some of ,the allotment of emphasis as between military and political".
objectives, as well ,as the concept of what we would be prepared to-
regard as a ,favorable issue of the conflict.
  'This, n turn, raises further important questions, which are more
than military, about our relationship to the other countries of the'
Atlantic Pact group.2 It has a strong bearing not just on what is done
by way of preparation for another war, but also on the policies which
we would wish to follow in time of, peace. It is part of the great
question, as yet: unsettled in either.the official or the public mind in
this Country, as to whether our conflict with world communism should
be regarded as one susceptible of settlement by the  devastations of
war alone: or as one requiring at least a supporting (if not a major)
victory-in the field of ideas'.
  Plainly, then, far more than our attitude toward international
control is involved in the decision as to the -purposes for which we
are to hold atomic weapons in the absence of such control. There is-
a clear warning here against any policy with, respect to the interna-
tional negotiations which does not flow from a basic decision on this
point, and is not part of a logical pattern of overall policy in both
foreign and domestic fields, likewise flowing from such a decision.
   [Here follows Part IV, 17 p~ages, in which Kennan comments fur-
ther on factors affecting the United States attitude toward atomic
weapons and their function in the national arsenal from the stand-
point of international control.]
                                 V
  Any discussion of the military implications of a decision not to
rely on the atomic 'bomb as "our principial initial offensive weapon
in
any future war"t brings up the subject of limitation of. conventional
armaments. Those who see a real military sacrifice in such renunciation
will be inclined to say that the U.S., having thus far successfully
resisted any coupling of the subjects of international Control of atomic
energy and disarmament in conventionial weapons, should now, in the
light of its-atomic superiority, insist upon linking zthe two subjects
and refuse to disarm atomically unless and until the Russians reduce
their conventional urmaments.
  2For documentation on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, see vol.
in,
pp. 1ift.
  $See footnote no. 39, p. 30. [Footnote in the source text. The fo~otnote
under
reference cites The ,National Defensei Program--Unification and Strategy:
.Hear-
ings Before the Committee on Armed Services, United ,States House of Repre-
sentatives (81st Cong., 1st sess.), p. 319. The hearings occurred during
October
1949. The particular quotation appeared in an article by General Omar N.
Brad-
ley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reprinted in the hearings from
the
Saturday Evening Post, October 15, 1949.]


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