Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Regulation of Armaments; Atomic Energy, Volume XX

63. Memorandum of a Conversation Among the Secretary of State, the Representative at the United Nations (Lodge), and the Deputy Representative on the United Nations Disarmament Commission (Stassen), Council of Foreign Relations, New York, August 26, 1955, 6:30 p.m.¹

New York, August 26, 1955, 6:30 p.m.

We discussed the matter of presenting the United States position to the United Nations Subcommittee when it meets on Monday, August 29. I said that I felt that the essential thing was to present the United States case simply so that it could go ahead to the General Assembly on simple lines comparable to those of the Soviet Union. It had a simple slogan “Ban the Bomb”. We also needed something simple such as the inspection theme which President Eisenhower had presented. I did not think it useful at this stage to get into complications. In this connection, I referred to the so-called “panel” program² and said that I doubted that it was useful to present this as it would enable the Soviet to bog the matter down in discussion of details while they went ahead with their own simple “Ban the Bomb” program. It was agreed that this panel program would not be presented to the United Nations Subcommittee at this time and that the United States would, in essence, present the President’s Geneva program.

I raised the question as to the use of the phrase “order of battle”,³ which had been used by Defense in the development of the President’s program, and Mr. Stassen said it had been agreed not to use this phrase but rather to use the military explanation of the phrase.

We discussed the question of giving publicity to what occurred at the meeting of the Subcommittee. I reaffirmed that I felt we should not get trapped into the situation that prevailed in London when the Soviets gave the story to their own press and we felt inhibited. Ambassador Lodge pointed out that the rules as regards to privacy had been established by the United Nations itself and that the Subcommittee could not change the rules. However, I said that it was a question of construction of the rules, that lawyers often referred to the “practical construction” of the contract and that I felt that what we could plausibly argue for was for the acceptance on our side of the practical construction which had been given to the United Nations rules by the Soviet Union. It was agreed that we were to proceed along these lines.

JFD

1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Memoranda of Conversation. Secret; Personal and Private. Drafted by Dulles on August 28.
2. Reference is to a U.S. proposal to the U.N. Disarmament Subcommittee to establish a technical exchange panel composed of technically and scientifically qualified individuals from the member nations of the subcommittee who would study the problems involving inspection methods and then report back to the subcommittee. For additional information on this proposal, see Document 65.
3. The phrase “order of battle” appears in the August 19 memorandum from the JCS to Wilson, printed as enclosure 2 to Document 59. It also appears in the outline plan which was attached to that document but is not printed. (Department of State, Disarmament Files: Lot 58 D 133, Inspection—Task Force—Military)