Nikita's Plan

As usual, when blustering his worst, as he did last week, Nikita Khrushchev also exhibited his peace-loving side. This time it was a 5,600-word Soviet plan for "complete and generaldisarmament," sent to all 82 members of the U.N. The new plan, Nikita let it be known, was one that he had intended to present in Paris had Dwight Eisenhower not "wrecked the summit." He would hardly have made much headway with it there.

Main feature of the new plan was its acceptance of the proposition that Stage One priority in disarmament should go to the abolition of all space, air and ground vehicles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. This was a seeming concession to the French, who talk about first banning delivery of nuclear weapons instead of production because they are still hard at work producing.

Next, Khrushchev talked of a proposal for an international police force once disarmament was completed and provisions which, on their face, seemed to suggest Soviet acceptance of the longstanding U.S. insistence on stage-by-stage control and inspection. But all of Khrushchev's proclamations of his "lofty aims" could not disguise the fact that everything in the Soviet plan would work to Soviet advantage.

By insisting that the 12-to-18-month first stage of disarmament must include the abolition of all foreign bases as well as of nuclear means of delivery, Nikita's scheme would give Russia, with its huge conventional forces, crushing military superiority over the U.S. By subjecting the proposed international police force to the U.N. Security Council, the Soviets would also subject its operations to their veto. And after studying the inspection proposals, one U.S. disarmament expert commented: "The Russians would let you watch them destroy what they would say was 50% of their air force, but you would have no way of knowing it was 50%."

With his customary cynicism, Nikita Khrushchev had long since concluded that disarmament is a field in which victory goes not to the side that acts but to the side that most loudly professes its willingness to act. But, as Russians so often have, he was grievously underestimating the intelligence and resolution of his opponents. Though Western officials politely agreed to study the plan, there was no sign that any of them--including subtle, skeptical Charles de Gaulle--failed to see through Nikita's transparent maneuver.

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