FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1946, VOLUME I



be particularly loathe to believe that we could really withstand the
temptation to do this.
2. Background of the present Soviet Proposals.
  Q. What is the predominant motive of the proposals which
Gromyko has advanced in the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission?
  A. The predominant motive is a desire to turn the tables on us and
to produce a situation in which the Soviet Union, rather than the
United States, would be the sole power able to use atomic energy in
war.
  Q. How does this jibe with the Soviet proposal that existing stocks
of atomic bombs be destroyed and that further production and storing
of the weapons be prohibited?
  A. This proposal is designed primarily to effect the earliest possible
disarming of the United States with respect to atomic weapons. Once
that disarming had been achieved, the Soviet Government would feel
itself in a far stronger position to put forward its further desiderata
in connection with the international control of atomic energy.
  Q. But would not the Soviet Union then likewise be inhibited from
developing atomic weapons?
  A. Not at all. In making this proposal, the Russians are counting
on the American conscience and on the merciless spot-light of free
information and publicity in the United States, supplemented by the
vigilance of the communist fifth-column, to guarantee the faithful
fulfillments of such obligations on our part. At the same time, they
are counting no less confidently on their own security controls to enable
them to proceed undisturbed with the development of atomic weapons
in secrecy within the Soviet Union. If their proposal were to be
accepted, they could thus look forward with confidence to the day
when the democratic powers, caught in their traditional respect for
solemn international engagements and in the overriding power of
public opinion, would be stripped of atomic weapons where as Russia,
having been secretly developing them behind the scenes, would be
their sole possessor.
  Q. But the Russians have implicitly acknowledged the desirability
of some scheme of control. Do they not fear that this would hamper
them in secretly developing atomic energy?
  A. No. They do not fear this. They feel that if they could once get
the weapon formally abolished they could easily prevent the maturing
of any international agreement which could seriously hamper the
clandestine development of atomic weapons in the Soviet Union. Fur-
thermore, they know that their internal controls are so elaborate that
they would have good facilities for evading any ordinary interna-
tional control system. They are well aware that the only really effec-



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