‘TOP. SECRET
UNCLASoIr ib:
essentially a matter of protecting ourselves by refusing to provide
an enemy with items which are potentially useful and helpful, especially items involving advanced technology. He then added that he
had four main points which he wished to make.
In the first place, it seemed to Secretary Williams that
it was not necessary, as the OFEP paper suggested, to make 4 choice
between maintaining an effective multilateral control system or
achieving a unified allied position with respect to control levels.
We don't want merely either one or the other of these desiderata;
we want both. Our negotiating approach should be to sift the list
of items carefully, make up our minds which items should be controlled,
and then do a job of selling our U. K. associates on our list.
Secondly, Secretary Williams wanted to ask whether our past
efforts to maintain controls on trade with the Soviet bloc had been
effective. Secretary Williams miintained that these efforts would
seem to have been effective, because of the evidence of Soviet procurement through clandestine trade and activity. So eager had been
the Soviet Union to obtain certain scarce items which had been controlled, that there was evidence that they had paid five times the
original price of the items they desired. Secretary Williams cited
certain instances--Soviet deficiencies in copper have been and remain very serious; so also was their deficiency in hydranlic industrial presses, where the United States was far ahead of them. Do
we really want to make our technology and Imow-how in such areas
avallable to the Sino-Soviet bloc?
At this point the President interrupted to ask what the
argument was about. We were all agreed that items such as those
mentioned by Secretary Williams should be embargoed to the bloc.
The President emphasized that he had never argued that we would
simply accept the British list of items to be decontrolled.
On the same subject, Secretary Dulles stated that of
course he was not competent to judge the particular items that
Secretary Williams had cited. It was, however, foolish to delude
ourselves that the Soviets, on their part, do not have some very
fine machines; the launching of the Sputniks had clearly proved
this. Our previous idea of our innate industrial and technological superiority has been blasted, and properly so. If the United
States and the Free World possess a real know-how and a superior
technology, we should by all means restrict the export of this
know-how or technology to the Soviet bloc. But we must check carefully to be sure that we do possess these advantages. Secretary
Dulles also stated that he too did not propose simply adopting the
British list of items to be detontrolled. He was, rather, proposing a different approach, and he did not think it very productive
to battle to keep every item that we thought should be controlled
on the control list.
5.
rane m" {SOMEBypecr
er