No More Learning

In a long
debate in the Legal Committee the Soviet delegate
argued that an aggressor state should be defined as one
which initiated any kind of armed attack, with or without
a declaration of war, on the territory of another nation;
which undertook armed intervention in another country's
domestic affairs; which instituted a blockade against
another state; or which supported armed bands invading
it. The United States and Great Britain stood out
against this clearcut definition of aggression; and it is
difficult to understand why.
Third, the Soviet delegation at the General Assembly
supported a resolution, passed over U. S. opposition, that
the political and civil liberties section of the proposed
Human Rights Covenant include an article stating that
"All peoples have the right of self-determination. " This
new Covenant is being drawn up by a special U. N.
Human Rights Commission and will be legally binding
on all nations which ratify it. It will embody in inter-
national law much that has been set forth in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which has moral force
only.
The Soviet Union implemented its strong backing
of national self-determination by asking for the with-
drawal of all foreign military forces from Libya, in order
to give reality to the newly announced independence of
that country. Some months later the Soviet delegate on
the U. N. Security Council voted with the minority to
place on the Council agenda the matter of the French
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Protectorate of Tunisia, after the French Government
had wielded the Big Stick against the nationalist move-
ment and had jailed the Tunisian Prime Minister and
most of his Cabinet. *
Fourth, the U. S. S. R. submitted a resolution, which
met defeat, calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities
in Korea, the conclusion of an armistice and withdrawal
from the country of all foreign troops and volunteer de-
tachments within three months. It also moved, unsuccess-
fully, to have the U. N. Security Council consider meas-
ures to help bring the slow-moving cease-fire and truce
negotiations in Korea to a successful conclusion.
Fifth, Foreign Minister Vishinsky urged another reso-
lution, likewise not adopted, that the establishment by
several states of military, naval or air bases on foreign
territory was incompatible with membership in the
United Nations.
Sixth, he called, again unsuccessfully, for a Five-
Power Pact of Peace between France, the People's Repub-
lic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and
the United States as a step "to counteract the threat of
a new war and to strengthen peace and friendship among
nations. "27
Seventh, the Soviet Union moved that the five Great
Powers reduce their armed forces and armaments by one-
third, within a year after such a disarmament accord;
that a world disarmament conference be held not later
than July 15, 1952; and that all governments should file
with the U. N. "complete official data on the status of
their armaments and armed forces, including atomic
weapons, and concerning military bases on foreign ter-
ritory. "28 In connection with the last-mentioned resolu-
? Cf. p. 382.
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
tion the Soviet delegation recommended that an interna-
tional control organ be created under the Security Coun-
cil for the "checking of information presented by the
states about the status of their armaments and armed
forces. "29 The U. N. Assembly referred these three pro-
posals to the new Disarmament Commission, which now
combines the functions of the former Commision on
Conventional Armaments and the former Atomic Energy
Commission.
As compared with the 65. 1 billion dollars or 76 per-
cent of the 1952-53 Truman budget allocated for defense,
the 1952 Soviet budget of 119. 2 billions earmarked for
defense 28. 4 billions (at the official ruble exchange rate)
or 24 percent. Discounting the fact that the Soviet Gov-
ernment budget covers a much larger proportion of the
national economy than the American, the percentage
devoted to the military still is far smaller than in the
United States.
The clarifying Steps to Peace: A Quaker View of
Foreign Policy, a 1951 report of the American Friends
Service Committee, sets us right on another important
comparison. It is widely believed, the report states, "that
the United States disarmed unilaterally after World War
II, thereby weakening itself and opening the way for
Soviet expansion. The fallacy in this is in its frame of
reference, for while it is true that we demobilized our
army to a much larger extent than did the Russians, the
military strength of the United States has never been
measured by the size of its standing army.
"For geographic reasons we rely primarily on sea and
air power, while the Soviet Union is primarily a land
power. If all categories of weapons are included, as they
must be in any fair analysis of military strength, the
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
theory of America's unilateral disarmament collapses. In
the years since the war, our production of atomic weapons
has proceeded at an increasing tempo, accompanied by
the maintenance of a far-flung network of air bases and
the bombing planes necessary for their delivery. Our
navy, by far the largest in the world, has been maintained
on a standby basis. In no post-war year has our military
budget fallen below eleven billion dollars. This is hardly
unilateral disarmament. "30
Eight, the Soviet delegation brought before the As-
sembly important new proposals, also referred to the Dis-
armament Commission, for the international control of
atomic energy. These embodied significant concessions
on the part of the Soviet Government. The American
State Department had previously claimed that the Soviet
plan was unacceptable because it meant that the conven-
tion on banning atomic weapons would be signed before
adequate inspection could be instituted. But Foreign
Minister Vishinsky now proposed that the machinery of
inspection should go into effect simultaneously with the
agreement to prohibit and destroy all atom bombs.
Another American objection to the position of the
U. S. S. R. had been that the Soviet offer of periodic inspec-
tion of atomic facilities, from the mining of raw materials
to plant production, was not a sufficient guarantee against
violations. However, Vishinsky's 1952 compromise pro-
vided that agents of the international control agency
should have the right of continuous on-the-spot inspection
in every country, with the qualification that the agency
was not entitled to "interfere in the domestic affairs of
states. " The Soviet Government had already agreed in
October, 1950, that this agency was to make all its deci-
sions on investigation and inspection by majority vote
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? COEXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOH?
and not subject to any veto. It had also suggested that
atomic materials be de-natured in such a way that they
could not be used for atomic weapons.
Later Deputy Foreign Minister Malik went into
further details concerning the Soviet idea of inspection,
saying that the representatives of the international au-
thority "will have access to all plants producing, stock-
piling and using atomic raw materials as well as plants
which exploit atomic energy. They will have the possibil-
ity of getting to know the production operations to an
extent necessary for control purposes. They will conduct
the weighing, measuring and different analysis of atomic
raw materials, materials and half-finished products. They
will have the right to demand from the government of
any state various information and reports on the activ-
ities of plants producing atomic energy and the right to
verify this information. . . . They will have the right to
conduct special investigations in cases of suspicion of
violation of the convention on the prohibition of atomic
weapons and to make recommendations to the Security
Council on measures of warning and prevention with
regard to violators of the convention. "31 All this sounds
sufficiently explicit.
The major point still at issue, then, between the
American and Soviet Governments regarding atomic
regulation is the insistence of the United States, under
the plan drawn up by Mr. Bernard M. Baruch, on inter-
national ownership and operation of all atomic facilities
throughout the world. The Soviets have opposed this
ownership project as a "super-trust"; and are afraid that
the U. N. agency in charge might limit or prevent Soviet
application of atomic power to peaceful economic devel-
opment. And we must ask whether in the last analysis
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
the Congress of the United States itself would permit the
drastic and far-reaching interference with national sov-
ereignty implied in international ownership of all Amer-
ican atomic resources and installations.
In any event it is high time for the U. S. Government
to show that it is willing, in the interests of world peace,
to revise in some degree the Baruch Plan, which was orig-
inally presented to the U. N. in June, 1946, and had as its
major premise America's monopoly at that time of the
atomic bomb. When it became known in 1949 that the
Soviets definitely possessed the secret of atomic fission, the
situation immediately changed. Walter Lippmann sum-
med it up: "Now that the Russians have broken the
monopoly, the basic premise of the American policy has
disappeared. A totally different policy, based on the
radically new condition, will have to be formulated. . . .
There is no alternative to the negotiation of a modus
vivendi based on the balance of power and of reciprocal
advantages. "32
The direct answer of the United States to the Soviet
proposals for immediate disarmament, immediate aboli-
tion of the atomic bomb and immediate international
atomic control was to offer a complicated plan for a step-
by-step census by United Nations inspectors of all armed
forces and armaments throughout the world as a prelude
to any disarmament whatsoever. The Soviet idea had
been that each of the Big Five, following an agreement
to reduce armaments one-third within a year, should
furnish within a month complete information on their
arms and armed forces, such data to be checked by a
special U. N. control body. Thus, the Soviet Government
tied in the arms census and inspection with a going dis-
armament plan.
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? COEXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOXV
It is obvious to everyone that the American counter-
proposal would delay actual disarmament for years and
years. Commenting from Paris on the Western plan,
James Reston of The New York Times said: "As an ins-
trument for ending the 'cold war' it was, to use an old
diplomatic term, a bust. " Mr. Vishinsky, he continued,
"accused the Western Allies of hypocrisy, and if the truth
is to be reported there are a lot of people around here
who believe there is some justification for the charge. "33
On April 22, 1952, the U. S. Government gave an-
other answer to the Soviet Union by exploding in the
Nevada desert an atom bomb releasing energy equal to
over 20,000 tons of TNT and far more powerful than
the two wartime missiles dropped on Japan. This test,
the fifteenth of the kind made in continental United
States, was carried out with much fanfare and as part of
a complicated military maneuver in which more than
2,000 troops participated. Television cameras relayed
. images of the explosion to TV stations from coast to coast.
Typical of the publicity build-up was the message sent
out in advance by Hugh Baillie, president of the United
Press: "A demonstration of the atom bomb as a humane
weapon was scheduled today at Yucca Flat. Atom bomb-
ing as a mercy stroke is based on the theory that it will
kill troops quickly and in large numbers, and enable the
capture of positions with a minimum of loss and a maxi-
mum speed and thus shorten wars. "34 Dictionaries, at
least those published in America, should at once under-
take to revise their definitions of "humane" and "mercy"!
In discussions of atomic energy it is essential to re-
member that it was not the Soviet Government, but the
American Government which manufactured the first
atom bombs and assumed the terrible moral responsibil-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
ity of dropping them on two densely populated Japanese
industrial centers, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the
purpose of causing economic havoc and undermining
enemy morale by mass killings. In the two gigantic ex-
plosions approximately 120,000 persons lost their lives;
about 110,000 more were injured. Throwing light on the
wisdom and morality of the American move is an official
government report, the United States Strategic Bombing
Survey, issued in 1946, which came to the conclusion
that Japan had been so weakened by the spring of 1945
that it was highly probable she would have surrendered
during the summer or autumn, even without the added
disaster of the A-bombs and the Soviet offensive in Man-
churia. The Survey revealed that as early as May the
Japanese were tendering peace feelers through the
U. S. S. R. In 1950 Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, war-
time Deputy Director of U. S. Naval Intelligence, pub-
lished an article in Look entitled, "We Did Not Have
to Drop the A-Bomb," in which he asserted that Japan
had been ready to surrender anyway in August of 1945.
It is possible, however, that an unexpressed motive
may have entered into the calculations of U. S. military
leaders and of President Truman, who personally gave
the order for the dropping of the atomic bomb: That was
the potential advantage from an American viewpoint of
winning the war against Japan before the Soviet Union
could enter the conflict and take a substantial share of
the credit for victory. Since Stalin had agreed at Yalta
that the Soviets would attack the Japanese army on the
Asiatic mainland three months after V-E Day, it was
well known in highest governmental circles in England
and the United States that the expected date of the Soviet
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
war declaration would be August 8, 1945. * And there
is weighty opinion to the effect that U. S. Army officials
moved heaven and earth in their eminently successful
effort to have the first atomic missiles ready before that
particular day.
Mr. Thomas K. Finletter, now U. S. Secretary of the
Air Force, in a joint article with Mr. Norman Cousins,
Editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, stated in
June, 1946: "Assuming that the use of the bomb was
justified, why did we not demonstrate its power in a test
under the auspices of the U. N. on the basis of which an
ultimatum would be issued to Japan -- transferring the
burden of responsibility to the Japanese themselves? t . . .
Whatever the answer, one thing seems likely: There
was not enough time between July 16, when we knew at
New Mexico that the bomb would work, and August 8,
the Russian deadline date, for us to have set up the very
complicated machinery of a test atomic bombing. . . .
"No; any test would have been impossible if the pur-
pose was to knock Japan out before Russia came in -- or at
least before Russia could make anything other than a
token of participation prior to a Japanese collapse. "35
This plan, according to Messrs. Finletter and Cousins, was
supposed to prevent a "struggle for authority" between
the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R. in the defeated country.
Professor P. M. S. Blackett of Manchester University, a
Nobel prize-winner in physics, agrees with the Finletter-
Cousins interpretation in his devastating book, Fear,
? See p. 272.
? f Dr. Alexander Sachs, a personal, non-official adviser to President
Roosevelt on atomic energy, has revealed (Look, March 14, 1950) that Mr.
Roosevelt favored a similar plan for a great warning demonstration of the
atom bomb's destructive power.
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? SOVIET CIVILI7LATIOH
War, and the Bomb. "We may conclude," he writes,
"that the dropping of the atomic bombs was not so much
the last military act of the Second World War, as the
first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with
Russia. "36
Included in the general disarmament program of the
Soviet Union has been its insistent appeal that all states
which have not yet done so should ratify the Geneva
Protocol of 1925 prohibiting bacteriological warfare and
the use of poison gas in international conflict. The Amer-
ican Government originally took the leading part in
drawing up this agreement and later signed it. But the
U. S. Senate never ratified the Protocol, and in 1947
President Truman withdrew it from that body's con-
sideration.
In June, 1952, the Soviet U. N. delegate, Jacob Malik,
brought the matter to the attention of the U. N. Security
Council, pointing out that the United States was the only
major Power which had not ratified the Protocol. Ernest
A. Gross, U. S. representative on the Council, answered
that the convention did not set up adequate means of en-
forcing the merely "paper" prohibitions. This excuse
hardly seemed sufficient, especially in view of the exis-
tence of an official U. S. Biological Warfare Committee
and the expenditure of millions of dollars a year by the
U. S. Army Chemical Corps on the development of bac-
teriological weapons. The New York Times U. N. cor-
respondent, Thomas J. Hamilton, commented: "One
of the most important parts of Mr. Gross' speech, in fact,
was the omission of even an implied pledge that the
United States, in keeping with the spirit of the Protocol,
would not use bacteriological warfare unless the enemy
used it first. "37
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? COEXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOH?
The ninth Soviet peace move was made independently
of the United Nations and centered upon the question
of Germany. On March 10, 1952, the U. S. S. R. sent notes
to the Governments of France, Great Britain and the
United States proposing that a peace treaty be concluded
with an all-German Government, that Germany be re-
established as a unified state and that full democratic
rights be guaranteed to the German people. In the treaty
envisioned by the Soviet Union, "Germany obligates
itself not to enter into any kind of coalition or military
alliance directed against any power which took part with
its armed forces in the war against Germany. "38 On the
Soviet interpretation this would prevent the new Ger-
many from becoming a member of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, which Soviet Russia regards as an
alliance directed against itself. Thus Germany would be
neutral as between the two Great Power blocs and could
serve the cause of peace well by being a buffer state.
Surprising and disturbing to many devoted to the
cause of peace was the Soviet position on German rearma-
ment: "Germany will be permitted to have its own
national armed forces (land, air and sea) which are neces-
sary for the defense of the country. Germany is permitted
to produce war materials and equipment, the quantity
and type of which must not exceed the limitations re-
quired for the armed forces established for Germany by
the peace treaty. "39 While this means definite limita-
tions on German arms, it represents a reversal of policy
on the part of the U. S. S. R. For the Soviet Government
had stood firmly behind the Potsdam directive for "the
complete disarmament and demilitarization of Ger-
many"; and had refused to sanction rearmament of the
eastern zone of occupation under its control, even after
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? SOVIET CrVILIZATIOH
the American bloc had started rearmament of the west-
ern zone.
In its second note of April 10 to the three Western
Powers, the Soviet Union explained that the suggestion
regarding German armed forces "is in accord with the
principle of national sovereignty and equal rights be-
tween governments. It is impossible to imagine such a
position whereby Japan would have the right of its
national armed forces designed for the defense of the
country, but Germany would be deprived of this right
and placed in a worse position. "40 The key to Soviet Rus-
sia's view lies perhaps in its statement that "it will be
much better to create such armed forces than to create
in West Germany hireling troops of revengers headed by
Fascist-Hitlerite generals ready to engulf Europe in a
Third World War. ""
This same Soviet note of April 10 agreed that there
should be "free, all-German elections," but insisted that
a Four-Power commission of the occupying states should
supervise them. The Soviet Government also held pat
on its claim that the Potsdam Conference established the
eastern borders of Germany. This is certainly correct re-
garding the Koenigsberg area, which went outright to
the U. S. S. R. with only the reservation that the ultimate
transfer would be "subject to expert examination of the
actual frontier. " In reference to the Polish-German
border, the Potsdam Declaration said that its final delim-
itation "should await the peace settlement," but did not
make clear whether this delimitation was meant to apply
merely to details or to substantive considerations.
The U. S. State Department was greatly embarrassed
by the Soviet proposals on Germany, fearing that they
would weaken Chancellor Adenauer's regime in Western
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? CO-EXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTION?
Germany and interfere with Secretary Acheson's policy
of building "situations of strength" vis-a-vis the U. S. S. R. ,
particularly through the rearmament of Western Ger-
many. In a dispatch to The New York Times from Bonn,
Drew Middleton suggested that Washington really views
reunification as undesirable because it could mean "that
the present fairly tractable Government of Chancellor
Adenauer would be replaced by one much more difficult
to handle. It might be a Socialist Government or a com-
bination of Socialists and right-wing nationalists. But at
the head of the nation of 70,000,000 Germans, a people
not noted for calm or restraint, any Government of a
United Germany would be independent and self-cen-
tered. "42
While the Soviet Union and the Western Powers pro-
ceeded to exchange bitter notes on the German question,
the United States and its European allies went straight
ahead to forge an armed alliance with Western Germany
and make German unification impossible for a long time
to come. During the last week of May, 1952, the Western
Powers signed a Contractual Agreement, in effect a reg-
ular treaty, with the Adenauer Government officially free-
ing Western Germany from military occupation, though
maintaining Allied troops there for its defense. The West
Germans agreed to raise a substantial army, with America
paying a large share of the bill, as part of the so-called
European Defense Community (E. D. C. ) and to forego
temporarily the manufacture of atomic, germ and chem-
ical weapons. Whether the fifteen national parliaments
concerned would ratify the various agreements with
Western Germany was by no means assured.
The tenth Soviet effort in the direction of peace has
revolved around the U. S. S. R. 's attempts to lessen world
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
trade barriers, with special emphasis upon the Interna-
tional Economic Conference held in Moscow during
April, 1952. More than 450 businessmen from countries
in every part of the globe attended the meetings. Not-
withstanding the publicly announced hostility of the
Western governments, a French delegation of thirty part-
icipated in the Conference and a British delegation of
twenty-four, including Lord Boyd Orr, former head of
the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.
A handful of Americans were present, in spite of Secre-
tary Acheson's denunciation of the Conference as an-
other malevolent Soviet stratagem, and severe U. S. State
Department pressures to discourage American business-
men from attending.
The U. S. Government was so agitated over the fact
that a few Americans had the hardihood to go to the
Conference that shortly afterwards, on. May 1, 1952, it
announced a sweeping ban against American citizens
traveling to the Soviet Union and other countries in the
Communist bloc. According to The New York Times,
these drastic restrictions "seemed necessary after a num-
ber of United States citizens already abroad attended the
recent Moscow Economic Conference without notifying
the State Department. "43 Under the new regulations
American passports will not be valid for any Communist
nation unless the applicant can prove to the U. S. State
Department that he has "compelling reasons" for his
visit. The State Department asserted that its action was
essential "to warn American citizens of the risks of travel
in Iron Curtain countries. " What this really means, so
far as Soviet Russia is concerned, is that the U. S. Govern-
ment believes it cannot take the risk of having Americans
who dissent from its foreign policy go to the U. S. S. R. and
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUC7IOW
possibly bring back reports about Soviet affairs which run
counter to the totally black picture painted by the State
Department propagandists.
The delegates at the International Conference dis-
cussed at length the possibilities of increasing East-West
trade and of setting up a permanent international organi-
zation for the expansion of world commerce. Total busi-
ness transactions arranged at the Conference were esti-
mated at over $250,000,000, with American, British,
French and Italian firms making deals with the Soviet
Union, China or countries in Eastern Europe. Lord Boyd
Orr stated that a "very substantial dent" had been made
in East-West trade barriers. According to Marcus Duf-
field of the New York Herald Tribune, "Russian and
Chinese offers to purchase large orders of British goods,
especially textiles . . . sounded very enticing indeed to
the British textile industry, which is suffering from a
slump, with 75,000 workers unemployed in Manches-
ter. "44 What Mr. Duffield failed to mention was that
American textile manufacturers, who were also in the
throes of a slump, could likewise profit from Communist
orders.
In general the foreign businessmen at the Interna-
tional Economic Conference were convinced that the
Soviet Russians would be reliable in any business ar-
rangements they agreed upon. The truth is that in the
pre-war period the Soviet Government and the trade
organizations under its control made an enviable record
for business reliability and a strict carrying out of con-
tracts. In a planned socialist economy, business enter-
prises do not go bankrupt, since they can depend, if
necessary, on the financial backing of the government.
So, in international trade the resources of the entire
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
U. S. S. R. stand, in the last analysis, behind every obliga-
tion.
Intelligent analyses of international affairs have in-
variably come to the conclusion that flourishing and
mutually advantageous trade among countries helps sub-
stantially in the advancement of world peace. Economic
self-interest and well-being weigh so heavily in the moti-
vation of men and of nations that when peoples are active-
ly trading with one another, they are less likely to become
embroiled in military hostilities against one another.
And insofar as normal trade stimulates prosperity, it
reduces national tensions of a domestic nature that may
lead towards war. For these reasons I feel justified in
saying that Soviet Russia's encouragement of good busi-
ness relations on a global scale is a genuine contribution
to the cause of international amity.
Surely the cooperative Communist attitude at the
International Economic Conference made more sense
than the many captious endeavors in the West to show
sinister intent. America's Dean Acheson, sallying forth
once more to slay the Soviet dragon with bitter words,
charged that "The true purposes of the organizers of this
Conference are to confuse and weaken our unity of pur-
pose"; and "to discourage us from carrying forward our
program of creating strength.