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has a monopoly of the bombs.
The United States has a monopoly today, but trusts
to its reputation for benignity and-—-what is more impressive--its conspicuous
weariness of war to still the perturbations of other powers,
special situation is bound to be short-lived,
In any case, that
The possibility of a recurrence
of monopoly in the future would seem to be restricted to a situation in which
controls for the rigorous suppression of atomic bomb production had been imposed
by international agreement but had been evaded or violated by one power without
the Imowledge of the others.
to aggressive designs,
Evasion or violation, to be sure, need not be due
It might stom simply from a fear that other nations were
doing likewise and a desire to be on the safc side.
concealed
Nevertheless, a situation of
monopoly would be one of the most disastrouspaeiiie from the point
of view of world peace and security,
It is therefore entirely: reasonable to
insist that any system for the international control on“aeoion of bomb production should include safeguards promising practically 100 per cent effectiveness,
The
use of secret agents to plant bombs in all the major cities of an
intended victim was discussed in the previous chapter, where it was concluded that
except in port cities easily acccssible to foreign ships such a mode of attack
could hardly commend itself to an aggressor,
Neverthcless, to the degree that
such planting of bombs is reasonably possible, it suggests that one side might
gain before the opening of hostilitics an enormous advantage in the deployment
of its bombs,
Clearly such an ascendancy would contain no absolute guarantce
against rotaliation, unless the advantage in deployment were associated with a
marked advantage in psychological preparation for resistance,
But it is clear
also that the relative position of two states concerning ability to use the
atomic bomb depends not alone on the number of bombs in the possession of cach
but also on a host of other conditions, including respective positions concerning
deployment of the bombs and psychological preparation against attack,
One of the most important of those conditions concerns the relative position
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