NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY


ment that they have established with some of their eastern European
satellites. Events have borne out of their view that the projection of
Moscow's political power over further parts of Asia would encounter
impediments, resident in the nature of the area, which would be not
only not of our making but would actually be apt to be weakened by
any attempts on our part to intervene directly. These impediments
are now obviously operating-to date more rapidly than we had
dared to hope. Elsewhere in the Far East-in Indonesia and Indo-
China in particular-things are also no worse today than we would
have thought likely two years ago.
   Thus the over-all situation in that area, while serious, is neither
 unexpected nor necessarily catastrophic.
   The demonstration of an "atomic capability" on the part of the
 U.S.S.R. likewise adds no new fundamental element to the picture.5
 While certain features of our original position were influenced by
 the fact or our temporary monopoly, the assertions that the present
 U.N. majority proposals were predicated on such a monopoly are
 simply nonsense. The probability of the eventual development of the
 weapon by others was not only one of the basic postulates of the
 original U.S. position but actually its entire motivation. Had this
 postulate not existed, security could easily have been achieved by our
 simply hugging our secret to ourselves. The whole rationale of an
 international control system lay in the assumption that the alterna-
 tive was a dangerous atomic rivalry. The fact that this state of affairs
 became a reality year or two before it was generally expected is of
 no fundamental significance.
   The H-bomb is admittedly a severe complication of the difficult and
 dangerous situation which has prevailed ever since the recent war.
 It gives new intensity, and a heightened grimness, to our existing
 problems. But it is we ourselves who have started the discussion about
 this weapon and announced the intention to develop it. The Russians
 have remained generally silent of the subject. They have said nothing
 about developing the weapon or using it against others, just as they
 have been scrupulously careful in general to deplore the very idea of
 the utilization of the mass destruction weapons in warfare. The idea.
 of their threatening people with the H-bomb and bidding them "sign
 on the dotted line or else" is thus far solely of our own manufacture.
 And there are no grounds for concluding that the Russians, who do

 On January 20, Kennan completed a 79-page memorandum on international
 control of atomic energy. The study also considered the question of develop-
ment of thermonuclear weapons and aspects of national strategic planning.
For extracts from the memorandum and comments on it by officers of the Depart-
ment, see pp. 22 ff.


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