~160.
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4
The limitation agreement must be in fa $ as wedi
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e
the United States as much as on other interested
o
:
as in form binding on
S.
:
:
There is no way in
which the United States by pressing for international agreement to control the
atomic bomb can hope to preserve its own advantage in this field.
Few states and
certainly none of the great states will be prepared simply to accept American
assurances that our present stockpile will never be used except against an
ageressor.
This will be especially true so long as the United States is the
power which determines whether or not a given act constitutes aggression,
How can this description of the minimum conditions of a successful control ~
scheme be translated into a prescription for statesmen charged with the grave
responsibility of avoiding atomic war?
If the problem of atomic energy control
is indeed inseparable from the problem of Soviet-American relations, then the
principle upon which these good relations are to be preserved must be strengthened
and not scrapped.
Specifically, a control proposal which is to have any chance
of general acceptance must not require the elimination of the voting procedure
developed at Yalta.
A careful comparison of the Agreed Declaration emanating from the Potomac
Conference and the joint communiqué of the three Foreign Ministers after the
Moscow Conference suggests that the Western powers made an abortive attempt to
maximize the role of the General Assembly in atomic energy control.
John Foster
Dulles declared on Nvember 16, 1945, the day after the publication of the Agreed
Declaration :We have set up a General Assembly to be the 'town meeting of the
world.'
Let us invite, and heed, its judgment of what we should do.
I have no
idea what the Assembly would recommend, and it is not of primary imoortance.
¥hat is most important is that we accept a procedure which shows that we really
mean it when we say that we are merely a trustee of atomic power (New York Times,
November 16, 195)."
The Moscow communiqué on the other hand made it abundantly
clear that the functions of the Security Council are in no way being impaired
by the creation of a special atomic energy commission.
Thus, the integrity of