Calling the bluff of the Western powers in the United Nations disarmament negotiations, 1954–55

Abstract

This article, based on British and American archival sources, examines the response of the Western powers (mainly the US and the UK) to the Soviet disarmament initiatives in 1954–55. We shed some light on the Western states' attitude to the UN disarmament negotiations of this period, arguing that the two sides never actually came close to a settlement, since at least the Western side was hesitant to commit to any actual measures of disarmament. This article challenges part of the Cold War historiography that has incorrectly portrayed this particular period as the most opportune time for achieving disarmament.

Notes

¹ For the purposes of this study, disarmament entails the actual reduction or abolition of weapons whereas arms control denotes any measure of restraint on testing, manufacturing, possession, deployment or use of weapons, not involving however any actual reduction of weapons.

² L. Bennet, International Organizations. Principles and Issues (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997), 213.

³ For the notion of propaganda and the way it was conducted during the Cold War, see K. Osgood, ‘Hearts and Minds. The Unconventional Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 4, 2 (2002): 85–107; K. Osgood, ‘Form before Substance: Eisenhower's Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy’, Diplomatic History, 24, 3 (2000): 405–33; A. Yarrow, ‘Selling a New Vision of America to the World. Changing Messages in early US Cold War Print Propaganda’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 11, 4 (2009): 3–45; G. Rawnsley, ed., Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).

⁴Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, [FRUS hereafter] Vol. III (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1983) ‘Propaganda in the United Nations’, paper prepared by the United Nations Planning Staff, Bureau of UN Affairs, 107, 109.

⁵ J. Nogee,‘The Diplomacy of Disarmament’, International Conciliation, 526, (January, 1960): 282.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ TNA: PRO FO 371/101347/UP 233/157 ‘Telegram no 265, from New York (UK delegation to UN) to FO, 7 May 1952. See also FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. II, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1979) ‘Minutes of meeting with the panel of Consultants on Disarmament at the Department of State’, 901–3.

⁸ TNA: PRO FO 371/95673/UP 237/91, 5 September 1991, Disarmament: A Draft Memorandum for the Defence Committee.

⁹ TNA: PRO FO 371/101343/UP233/27, Letter from UK delegation to UNGA, Paris to FO, 12 January 1953.

¹⁰ P. Baker, The Arms Race. A Programme for World Disarmament (New York: Oceana Publications, 1958), 12–30; A. Myrdal, The Game of Disarmament. How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 83; M. Evangelista, ‘Cooperation Theory and Disarmament Negotiations in the 1950s’, World Politics, 42, 4 (1990): 502; H. Bull, etInternational Institute for Strategic Studies, 1987), 31; W./International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1987), 31; W. Clemens, Soviet Disarmament Policy, 1917–1963 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1965), 126; J. Garnett, Theories of Peace and Security (London and New York: Macmillan, 1970), 140. Important exceptions include D. Tal, The American Nuclear Disarmament Dilemma (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008) and S. Schrafstetter & S. Twigge, Europe, the United States and the Struggle for Nuclear Nonproliferation (London and Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004).

¹¹ D. Tal, ‘The Secretary of State Versus the Secretary of Peace: The Dulles-Stassen Controversy and US Disarmament Policy, 1955–58’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41, 4 (2006): 723.

¹²FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. II, ‘Staff Study by Representatives of the Special Committee of the National Security Council’, 11 June 1952, 978–79.

¹³ Ibid., ‘Paper Approved by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defence and the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission’, 8 March 1952, 876–77.

¹⁴ Ibid., ‘Minutes of the Meeting of the Secretary of State with the Panels of Consultants on Disarmament’, 28 April 1952, 896.

¹⁵FRUS 1955–1957, Vol. XX, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1990) ‘Editorial Note’, 58.

¹⁶ A. Adamthwaite, ‘Overstreched and Overstrung: Eden, the Foreign Office and the Making of Policy, 1951–55’, International Affairs, 64, 2 (1988): 249.

¹⁷ The Commission comprised the then 11 members of the UN Security Council.

¹⁸ For details about the negotiations in the AEC and CCA, see, among many others, J. Freeman, Britain's Nuclear Arms Control Policy in the Context of Anglo-American Relations (London: Macmillan, 1986), 7–15; W. Frye, ‘The Quest for Disarmament since World War II’, in Arms Control: Issues for the Public, ed. L. Henkin, (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1961), 210–21.

¹⁹ For the negotiations in the DC during this period see, among others, C. Blacker & G. Duffy, International Arms Control: Issues and Agreements (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984), 100–2; D. Bourantonis, The United Nations and the Quest for Nuclear Disarmament (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1993), 32–3.

²⁰ Tal, American Nuclear Disarmament Dilemma, 62. See also FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. II, ‘Memorandum of Conversation’, 6 January 1954, pp. 1324–5 and ‘The Secretary of Defence to the Secretary of State’, 12 April 1954, 1383–4.

²¹ Ibid., ‘Report by the Panel of Consultants of the Department of State to the Secretary of State’, January 1953, 1057 and 1059–60;

²²FRUS, 1951, Vol. I, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1979) ‘Report of the National Security Council by the Secretary of State and Defence’, 6 July 1951, 477–82.

²³ Ibid., ‘Report of the National Security Council by the Secretary of State and Defence’, 6 July 1951, 477. The 112 NSC report was used as the basis for US positions from 1951 until 1955. See for instance FRUS 1952–1954, Vol. II, ‘Memorandum by the Secretary of State to the Executive Secretary of the NSC’, 859–60 and ‘Memorandum by the Chairman of the NSC Planning Board to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defence and the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission’, 10 December 1954, 1580–82.

²⁴FRUS, 1951, Vol. I, ‘Report of the National Security Council by the Secretary of State and Defence’, 6 July 1951, 482.

²⁵ TNA: PRO FO 371/112379/UP 232, ‘Telegram no 560 from Washington to FO’, 1 April 1952; see also TNA: PRO FO 371/112379/UP 232/90, Telegram no 217, from Washington to FO, 1 April 1952. See also FRUS 1952–1954, Vol. II, ‘Aide-Memoire: Disarmament, the British Embassy to the Department of State’, 1395–6.

²⁶ TNA: PRO FO 371/112380/232/15, ‘FO Aide Memoire’, 1 April 1954.

²⁷ TNA: PRO FO 371/112380/UP 232/101, ‘Letter from P. Dixon to Secretary of State’, 2 April 1954.

²⁸ UN Doc. DC/SC.1/PV.17, 14 June 1954.

²⁹ TNA: PRO FO 371/112380/UP/232/112, ‘Letter from the UK delegation to the UN’, New York, to FO, 6 April 1954.

³⁰ TNA: PRO 371/112384/UP 232/223, ‘FO Memorandum, United Kingdom Proposals on Policy to be Adopted in the Sub-Committee of the Disarmament Commission’, 24 May 1954.

³¹ TNA: PRO FO 371/112380/232/15, FO Aide Memoire, 1 April 1954. See also FRUS 1952–1954, Vol. II, ‘The Department of State to the British Embassy, Aide Memoire’ and ‘The British Embassy to the Department of State, Aide-Memoire’, 21 and 23 April 2004, 1393–97.

³² TNA: PRO FO 371/112383/UP 232/158, ‘FO minute from Mr. Williams’, 14 May 1954.

³³ TNA: PRO 371/112382/UP 232/158, ‘Telegram no 1713, From FO to Washington’, 20 April 1954.

³⁴ Schrafstetter and Twigge, Europe, the United States and the Struggle for Nuclear Nonproliferation, 63.

³⁵ UN Doc. DC/SC.1/PV. 17, 14 June 1954.

³⁶ UN Doc. A/9/PV. 424, 30 September 1954.

³⁷ TNA: PRO FO 371/112393/UP 232/500, ‘Telegram no 1422 from FO to New York’ (UK delegation to the UN), 15 October 1954; TNA: PRO FO 371/112393/UP 232/499, ‘Letter from FO to UK delegation in New York’, 16 October 1954; see also TNA: PRO FO 371/112393/UP 232/500, ‘Telegram No 1002, from New York to FO’, 15 October 1954.

³⁸ United Nations, The UN and Disarmament, 1945–1970 (New York: United Nations, 1970), 54–5.

³⁹ See the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ‘Soviet Capabilities and Probable Soviet Courses of Action Through 1960’, number 11-3-1955, para. 162 and paras. 166–170.

⁴⁰ See, for instance, FRUS 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State’, 4 January 1955, 5–6.

⁴¹FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. VIII, (Washington, DC: Government Publishing Office, 1987), National Intelligence Estimates Nos. 601, 624, and 627, pp. 1196–1205, 1235–8 and 1248–53.

⁴² TNA: PRO FO 371/112391/232/446, ‘Memo of FO’, 8 September 1954 and TNA: PRO FO 371/112392/UP 232/486, ‘FO Memorandum: Analysis of the Soviet Proposals’, 30 September 1954; see also TNA: PRO FO 371/117370/UN 1192/70, ‘Cabinet, Official Committee on Disarmament, The Relation between German Rearmament and General Disarmament’, 20 January 1955.

⁴³ TNA: PRO FO 371/112391/UP 232/447, ‘Letter from New York (UK delegation to the UN) to FO’, 15 September 1954.

⁴⁴FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. II, ‘Telegram from the Acting Secretary of State to the Embassy in France’, 16 October 1954, 1534.

⁴⁵ Schrafstetter and Twigge, Europe, the United States and the Struggle for Nuclear Nonproliferation, 65; I. Bussschaert, ‘Les Questions Militaires et Stratégies dans la Pensée et dans L'Action de Pierre Mendès France’, in Pierre Mendès France et le Rôle de la France dans le Monde, ed. R. Girault et al., (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires, 1991), 161–3.

⁴⁶ See TNA: PRO FO 371/112392/UP 232/490, ‘Letter from FO to British Ambassador in Moscow (Sir Hayter)’, 23 October 1954; PRO, FO 371/112392/UP 232/486, ‘FO Memorandum: Analysis of the Soviet Proposals’, 30 September 1954; TNA: PRO FO 371/117370/UN 1152/70, Cabinet, Official Committee on Disarmament. See also E. Luard, A History of the United Nations, Vol. I (London: St. Martin Press, 1982), 331.

⁴⁷ TNA: PRO FO 371/112391/UP 232/447, ‘Letter from New York (UK delegation to the UN) to FO’, 15 September 1954.

⁴⁸ TNA: PRO FO 371/117370/1192/74, ‘FO Memo: Tactical Plan for disarmament talks’, 31 January 1955.

⁴⁹ TNA: PRO FO 371/117370/UP 1192/74, ‘Tactical Plan for disarmament talks’, 31 January 1955.

⁵⁰ TNA: PRO FO 371/117371/UP 1192/97, ‘Letter from FO the UK delegation to the UN’, 10 February 1955. The fact that this was an exercise to test Soviet sincerity makes plain that the assumption found in several scholarly accounts, like that of Cavers that ‘the West made some concessions in the interest of agreement’ was wrong. D. Cavers, ‘Arms Control in the UN: A Decade of Disagreement’, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Vol. XII, 4 (1956): 109.

⁵¹ TNA: PRO FO 371/117368/UN 1192/25, ‘FO Memo: Disarmament’, 13 January 1955.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ See TNA: PRO FO 371/117373/UP 1192/123, ‘FO Memo: Canadian views on disarmament’, 11 February 1955; for the US consent on the British initiative, see FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Report of a Conference between the President and his Special Assistant, 22 March 1955, 61–2.

⁵⁴ UN Doc. DC/SC.1/PV.35, 29 March 1955.

⁵⁵ TNA: PRO FO/371/117372/UN 1192/110, ‘FO Memo: Disarmament’, 11 February 1955.

⁵⁶ See TNA: PRO FO 371/117373/UP 1192/123, ‘FO Memo: Canadian views on disarmament’, 11 February 1955.

⁵⁷ UN Doc. DC/SC.1/PV. 47, 10 March 1955.

⁵⁸ Baker, The Arms Race, 12.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 22.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹FRUS 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Letter from the Representative at the United Nations to the Secretary of State’, 76.

⁶² See Evangelista, ‘Cooperation Theory and Disarmament Negotiations’, 503. For the US views see FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Special Study for the President- NSC Action no 1328’, 96.

⁶³ TNA: PRO FO 371/117381/UN 1192/336, ‘Telegram no 861 from FO to Paris’, 12 May 1955; see also TNA: PRO FO 371/117381/UN 1192/341, ‘Telegram no 250, from Vienna to FO’, 14 May 1955.

⁶⁴ TNA: PRO FO 371/117383/UN 1192/374, ‘Telegram no. 580, from FO to New York (British delegation to the UN)’, 26 May 1955; see also TNA: PRO FO 371/117388/UN 1192/497, FO ‘Memo: Tactics to be employed when the Sub-Committee meets again’, 26 July 1955.

⁶⁵ TNA: PRO FO 371/117383/UN1192/386, ‘Letter from New York (British delegation to the UN) to FO, 28 May 1955. As a matter of fact, Khrushchev admitted in his speech to the Central Committee Plenum of the CPSU in July 1955 that the Soviet proposals of 10 May 1955 ‘…permit us the possibility of taking the initiative’; for this speech see Central Committee Plenum of the CPSU Ninth Session, Concluding Word by Com. N. S. Krushchev, 12 July 1955, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110452. Still, some scholars have argued that Khrushchev had a genuine interest in disarmament, which ‘…derived from his belief that the Soviet Union could afford to reduce its reliance on military power and benefit from a demilitarization of the Cold War’. V. Mastny, ‘Soviet Foreign Policy, 1953–1962’, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, ed. M. Leffler and O. Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 317.

⁶⁶ TNA: PRO FO 371/117381/UN 1192/336, Telegram no 861 from FO to Paris, 12 May 1955.

⁶⁷FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Letter from the Deputy Representative on the UN Disarmament Commission to the representative at the UN’, 11 May 1955, 78.

⁶⁸FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Memorandum by W. Hall of the US Mission to the UN’, 12 May 1955, 86–7.

⁶⁹ For this review, see FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, 20–90.

⁷⁰ See Progress Report Prepared by the President's Special Assistance (Stassen), Special Staff Study for the President-NSC Action no 1328, in FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Special Study for the President- NSC Action no 1328’, 93–109.

⁷¹ The delay prompted the US President to urge the various agencies to act very rapidly and offer their input on Stassen's report. See FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, 11.

⁷² UN Doc. DC/SC.1/PV. 55, 6 September 1955; see also FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Letter from the Deputy Representative on the UNDC to the Secretary of State’, 5 August 1955, 107.

⁷³ A. Nutting, Disarmament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 19.

⁷⁴ TNA: PRO FO 371/117393/UN 1192/611, ‘Letter from New York (British delegation to UN) to FO’, 2 September 1955.

⁷⁵FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XX, ‘Special Study for the President- NSC Action no 1328’, 93–109.