\ | ~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