As indicated in Chapter IV and in the preceding comments, the UN plan
for the international control of atomic energy is wholly out of date,
and the sooner we realize it, the better for us and for the world. It
was at best a noble ideal, which did not have the slightest chance of
realization from the very start. A re-examination of the entire problem,
even before the advent of the H-bomb, had been long overdue. Today it is
all the more imperative. Since such a re-examination requires, or at
least implies, the withdrawal of the plan, originally sponsored by this
country, it should be done by an international board, preferably at the
suggestion of some nation other than the United States.
The new board, in considering the whole problem anew, should avoid our
original error of regarding control of atomic weapons as a problem
wholly separate from that of other weapons of mass destruction. It
should recognize the facts of life and not aim at bringing the
millennium overnight. It should not seek absolute security, since the
facts show it to be unattainable. Rather should it accept as a wise
maxim that even partial security is better than none.
If the board set for itself certain limited objectives, they would have
a much better chance of universal acceptance than if its aims were too
high, as they were in the original United States plan, now the plan of
the majority of United Nations. Its first limited objective should be a
general agreement to outlaw the use of all weapons of mass destruction
against civilian populations. This would mean outlawing the use not only
of A- and H-bombs against large urban centers of population, but also of
all other conventional weapons for the mass killing of noncombatants.
A second limited objective should be the outlawing of radiological
warfare in all forms, which should include the use of the rigged H-bomb
as well as the use of A-bombs in a manner that takes advantage of their
radioactive effects. This would mean the prohibition of the explosion of
A- or H-bombs from a low altitude, or their explosion underwater in a
harbor.
These limited objectives would still permit nations to manufacture
atomic weapons and to use them as tactical weapons against military
personnel, while they would eliminate their use as strategic weapons
against large urban centers. The very possession of atomic weapons by
both sides, however, may in itself prevent their use even tactically. In
fact, there would still be the hope that they would serve as effective
deterrents against war itself.
The advantage of such a plan of limited objectives is the likelihood, or
at least the possibility, that even Russia would not dare to turn it
down and thus stand before the world as preventing the prohibition of
the use of atomic weapons against civilian populations. And once we
reached agreement with Russia on one set of limited objectives, the door
may possibly have been opened for further agreement on other limited
objectives.
Peace, step by step, appears to be the only alternative to possible
catastrophe. One limited objective after another must become our major
policy.