REGULATION OF ARMAMENTS


11


The Soviets have repeatedly charged that the United States does not
wish to prohibit the use of atomic 'bombs. This is, of course, untrue,
and the United Nations Plan clearly provides for their abolition with
the establishment of an effective control system. Incidentally, Mr. Vy-
shinsky, during the 'atomic energy debate in the last General Assembly
meeting made in the same speech the following charges that seem to
answer one another:
  a. That the "American plan" was put forward in bad faith in the
firm conviction that the USSR would not accept it.
  b. That the "American plan" 'was a diabolical Wall Street plot
to
obtain control of the atomic energy resources of the USSR and the
rest olf the world.
  3. The paper damns with faint praise the United Nations Plan. Dr.
Conant 4 said, in effect, during the drafting of the Plan:
  "Our objective must be to produce a control plan that is not only
fool proof, but as nearly as possible rascal proof."
I think the authors of the Plan succeeded in this. Internationally,
the Plan is highly regarded. At Paris in 1948,40 United Nations coun-
tries approved it. In New York last November, 49 countries voted
for the ,Canadian-French resolution reaffirming its essential prin-
ciples. The USSR and the USSR alone stands in the way of its accept-
ance. Isn't this another instance, like so many others, where everyone
is out of step except the USSR? .Isn't the next move up to the USSR?
Why must we ,take the initiative in advancing new proposals all the
time? The Squires and Daniels "suppression formula", which is of
course the backbone of the paper's main proposal, was, published in
1947.5
  The Soviet Government, therefore knows'all about it, and yet the
Soviet Government has made no new proposals since June, 1947; pro-
posals which are wholly inadequate and unacceptable.
  4. I assume that we can maintain 'a wide superiority in atomic
weapons over -the Soviet Union, probably 'for an indefinit period of
time. It seems to me that we need military advice from the Joint Chiefs

  'Dr. James B. Conant, President of Harvard University; member of the
Secretary of State's Committee which drafted the U.S. proposal for the inter-
national control of atomic energy in 1946; member of the General Advisory
Com-
mittee of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission since 1947.
  1 See Arthur M. Squires and Cuthbert Daniel, "The International Control
of
Safe Atomic Energy," in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April, 1947,
pp. 111-
116. Subsequent articles by Squires and Daniel appearing in the Bulletin
include
the following: "An International Moratorium on Atomic Energy for Power
Uses,"
June 1948, pp. 183-184; "Freedom Demands Responsibility," October
1948, pp.
300-304; and "Scientists' Responsibilities," January 1949, pp.
27-28.