SPA Files: Lot 428
Memorandum by Lt. General Lauris Norstad 1 to the Army Chief of Staff (Eisenhower)
confidential
[Washington,] 16 October 1947.
Subject: Mr. Bard’s “Draft Proposal for Regulation of Armaments”.
- 1.
- The following criticism of “The Bard Plan” is submitted as of possible
value in your forthcoming meeting with Messrs. Forrestal, Lovett and
Bard to discuss the plan and the JCS
comments on it contained in JCS
1731/35:2
- a.
- The only argument evinced by Mr. Bard for presenting his plan is to preserve U.S. leadership in the U.N. Commission for Conventional Armaments by introducing an innocuous program which would accord with the ideas of the majority of that Commission.
- b.
- This argument evidences a basic misunderstanding of the
problem and of the present position of the U.S. Government in
respect thereof, which is substantially:
- (1)
- That the regulation of armaments is primarily a corollary to international confidence and security and cannot “per se” contribute to their enhancement,
- (2)
- That it would be absurd—and certainly, not conducive to improved international confidence—to regulate conventional arms unless effective control of atomic and other weapons of massed destruction were first or simultaneously achieved,
- (3)
- That unless and until the major powers are agreed on the principal safeguards and enforcement measures essential to the effectiveness of any disarmament plan, no plan could be more than an empty gesture.
- c.
- The problem, therefore, is not to devise a formula which would appeal to the already sympathetic majority but, rather, to keep trying to gain agreement of the antipathetic Soviet minority on the basic principles essential to any effective regulation.
- d.
- Under existing conditions, it appears impossible to achieve the latter because the U.S.S.R. simply refuses to contemplate the derogation of sovereignty and privacy which effective measures of control would entail.
- e.
- Therefore, the U.S. has two alternate courses: to stand on our basic policy and reject any compromise with reality, or to modify that policy and accept some admittedly less effective plan. It is submitted that the only valid justification or compulsion for the latter course would be for the possible purpose of obtaining Soviet agreement.
- This the Bard Plan cannot hope to do, inasmuch as the Soviet position on disarmament is fixed upon the immediate elimination of atomic weapons and a wholly unacceptable conception [of] international enforcement.
- 2.
- It is also suggested that nothing could subject the U.S. to more scathing Soviet propaganda than for us to propose a plan which, while neither regulating nor reducing armaments would still provide for the hated intrusion on national privacy.
- 3.
- The present and future security interest of the U.S. strongly urges that U.S. leadership in the UN CCA be exercised in holding and emphasizing our anything-but-negative position: i.e. that agreement among the great powers on the fundamental principles of regulation and enforcement must precede any substantive plan for control of armaments.
Lauris Norstad