FOREIGN RELATIONS: Network of Alarm

• Share

Next week, before the Disarmament Subcommittee of the U.N., the U.S. will make its first attempt since the Geneva Conference to reach a limitation of arms agreement with the Russians. Once more the U.S. will ask the Russians to accept President Eisenhower's proposal to exchange military secrets and the right to photograph each other's territory from the air. The U.S. is ready to accept a Russian plan to station disarmament inspectors of each country at harbors, rail junctions and airfields of the other country; but the U.S. will also insist that the inspectors visit atomic-weapon plants.

The U.S. objective: to set up "a system of alarm," so that neither power will be able to suddenly concentrate its forces for surprise attack. Should the Russians go along, the U.S. will propose that ground-air controls be applied to the entire world.

This issue of ground-air controls is what one high U.S. official calls "the disarmament logjam," meaning that it blocks the way to agreement on related issues such as the cessation of atomic tests and the limitation of conventional weapons. Last week Secretary of State John Foster Dulles welcomed the Soviet Union's recent announcement that it would soon demobilize 640,000 troops (TIME, Aug. 22), but noted that "the military significance is not easy to judge. No official information has ever been provided as to the size of the Soviet armed forces and reserves . . . Effective inspection to verify the facts are necessary for any meaningful and intelligent approach."