‘, X Chapter IV EFFECT ON INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION By Percy E, Corbett The preceding chapters show clearly enough that from now on the security of nations will depend on the possibility of dissuading governments from using atomic weapons as instruments of national policy. The dissuasion may come from the establishment of such a balance in the possession of and ability to use these weapons that only the most foolhardy counsellor would advocate their use. Or, eventually, it may come from a supranational agency equipped with legal authority and the actual power to enforce its decisions. trol are studied later. Cuch alternative methods of con- Our point for the moment is simply that in the presence of these new weapons nations cannot achieve security for and by themselves. Even a large superiority in stocks and in methods of reaching targets will provide nothing like a satisfying guarantee against devastating attack or crushing re: taliation, te “4 “nous As the knowledge spreads that there is no * i ger any geographic remoteness which offers immnity, and that no nation in the world can, merely by accumulating offensive and defensive armaments, maintain its way of life and guarantee its physical security, the ancient and rooted obstacles to international organization are pari passu losing their strength. The current attempt to work out through the United Nations a method of eliminating or at least regulating "atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction" has met with no open resistance, In other words, the direct attack on this vast new problen. via international organization has evoked something approaching universal approv— al. The remaining differences of opinion turn on the type and degree of inter- national organization that will be necessary to handle the problem, Even more Significant is the evidence of a growing conviction that all indirect means of -12hJAG