An International Armed Force?

With the U.S. facing East-West disarmament negotiations in mid-March and a summit meeting in mid-May, Secretary of State Christian A. Herter decided that an official statement of U.S. disarmament goals was urgently needed to clear up confusion both in the U.S. and abroad. Last week, after consulting with President Eisenhower, Herter set forth those goals in a major policy speech to Washington's National Press Club. It was at once a hard-headed warning about the perils of disarmament for disarmament's sake and a misty-eyed vista of a disarmed world patrolled by an international police force --a vista that would have won blaring headlines for any Secretary of State but Low-Pressure Salesman Chris Herter.

"The free world depends on our present relative strength for its survival," said he.

"We will not compromise it out of a desire for quick but illusory results in arms control." The goal of U.S. disarmament policy is to create a "more stable military environment," and thereby lessen two grave dangers inherent in the arms race.

Danger No. 1 is what Herter called "war by miscalculation" -- the possibility, for example, that one side might try to launch a surprise attack in a mistaken belief that the other side was preparing one. To guard against the miscalculation danger, the U.S. is working toward "safe guards against surprise attack," including "aerial and mobile ground inspection." During a time of crisis, inspection teams might prevent a nuclear war by "helping to verify that neither side was preparing a surprise attack upon the other." Danger No. 2 arises from the prospect that as time goes by more and more nations will acquire nuclear weapons. "The more nations that have the power to trigger off a nuclear war, the greater the chance that some nation might use this power in haste or blind folly ... To guard against this danger, the testing of nuclear weapons and eventually the production of fissionable materials for weapons purposes must be prohibited under effective inspection."

Lessening these dangers, said Herter, would "enhance our national security and reduce the danger of war." But to assure peace, the U.S. must also work toward the long-range goal of "general disarmament." Herter made it clear that he saw no possibility of reaching general disarmament through bilateral negotiations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Instead, he offered a distant goal of global disarmament within a world framework of "universally accepted rules of law," backed up by an international court and international armed force.

Under a system of enforceable world law, nations could proceed to "reduce national armed forces, under safeguarded and verified arrangements, to the point where no single nation or group of nations could effectively oppose this enforcement of international law."

In working toward both a "more stable military environment" and the longer-range goal of general disarmament, the U.S. has to keep in mind that the purpose of disarmament negotiations is to "promote our national security," not undermine it. The U.S., he said, must not succumb to "hollow slogans, such as 'Ban the bomb,' 'Give up foreign bases,' or 'Cut armed forces by one-third.' " Each possible arms-limitation agreement must be measured by "one practical yardstick: Would U.S. and free-world security be greater or less under the agreement?"

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