Abstract
The most gaping hole in American foreign policy today is our lack of a concrete plan for disarmament. No nation talks more of its dedication to peace. No subject recurs more frequently in the president's addresses at home and abroad. No hope is more basic to our aspirations as a nation than our hope for the day when our bombs can be converted into reactors, our rockets can be devoted to exploring space, and the funds now in our defense budget can be used to build a better, happier, healthier nation and world.
Push-button weapon systems based upon instant response–but capable of both mechanical and human error–could plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust through an act of inadvertence or irrationality.
No sane man should accept these facts with equanimity. No leader of any nation should rest content with this precarious equilibrium of terror. No issue, in short, is of more vital concern to this nation than disarmament; no issue could demand more priority of top-level attention than disarmament, and yet this nation has no consistent, convincing disarmament policy.
There are, of course, many powerful voices in the government, both in and out of the Pentagon, who do not want disarmament, or, professing to want it, do not really believe in it. Disarmament to them is still merely a fuzzy ideal for fuzzy idealists. There can be no disarmament, they say, until world tensions have ceased.
But who, I ask you, are the true realists–those interested in serious efforts at arms control, or those who talk of war and weapons as though these were the good old days, in the pre-World War II, or nuclear monopoly, or pre-missile eras?
I do not say that we should rely simply on trust in any agreement. Certainly we need an inspection system that is as reliable and thorough as modern science and technology can devise. However, even with such a system, there will be risks. Peace programs involve risks, as do arms programs, but the risks of arms are even more dangerous. Those who talk about the risks and dangers of any arms control proposal ought to weigh–in the scales of national security–the risks and dangers inherent in our present course.
Certainly I would never permit an effort for disarmament to excuse any lag in our defense effort now. For it is an unfortunate fact that, while peace is our goal, we need greater military security to prevent war and an effective deterrent to encourage talks–and to bargain at those talks from a position of strength. In fact, as George Kennan has pointed out, we would facilitate the acceptability of nuclear arms control if we were to increase the strength of our conventional forces as a means of weaning ourselves away from total dependence on nuclear weapons. But we must also remember that there is no greater defense against total nuclear destruction than total nuclear disarmament.
Plans for disarmament–specific, workable, acceptable plans–must be formulated with care, with precision, and, above all, with thorough research. For peace, like war, has become tremendously complicated and technological. I do not believe all the problems of peace can be solved by increased research–science and technology cannot fill our present gaps in vision, in leadership, and in sound, creative planning. But research can give the vitally important knowledge that we must have if we are to lay the groundwork for effective control of today's vast and complex weapons systems. The dread weapons of chemical and bacteriological warfare require still different inspection systems that will challenge the resources of Western science.
But we owe it to ourselves–to all mankind–to try to give peace more than our words and our hopes.