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~163-
no arms limitation is desirable since disarmament would make the disarmed
nations feel insecure and would also weaken the effectiveness of the retalia~
tory sanction.
Furthermore, a systemwhich required no limitation would require
no inspection, and the insecurities which would arise from doubts about the
feasibility of inspection would be avoided.
There are nevertheless cogent reasons why states should not be content
Simply with the primitive and drastic safeguard of retaliation.
A world in
which two or more states were sitting on powder kegs powerful enough to destroy
every major city on earth would be a world of half-peace at best.
For perhaps a
generation, no state would press any dispute to the point of war because of the
fear of atomic counterattack,2° Im so farcas~this fear is a restraining inan
c
=+
ue
fluence on state behavior, it would exist even if there were no general obligation of automatic retaliation.
Many statess-However, acting with the knowledge
of the reluctance of the other party to be drarm into war, might pursue
policies which their opponents would regard as only slightly less intolerable
than atomic war itself,
In such a situation, there might well be a long-run
gradual rise in the tension level of international politics until some state
came to regard war as less intolerable than the half-peace of unbearable
tension.
sole reliance should be placed upon the retaliatory sanction only during
an interim pericd.
Meanwhile, efforts should be made to bring down the level
of permitted atomic armament to a point at which no single state's action would
reduce the earth to a smoldering ruin.
If no vpombs were to be permitted to exist anywhere, then that nation which
successfully produced bombs in violation of its agreement not to do so would
have the more peace-loving remainder of the world at its mercy,
the sanction of obligatory retaliation would have been destroyed.
Furthermore,
Is there some
level of permitted atomic armament low enough to prevent the first contingency