Appendix Seven (Chapter Nine, Note 122)
U.S. Arms Control Policy under Eisenhower
How seriously is the Eisenhower administration's arms control policy to be taken? The Eisenhower defense policy was based on the premise that the United States, in the event of war, might have to strike first with nuclear weapons. For that policy to be viable, the American nuclear attack would have to be so effective that the USSR would not be able to retaliate with a massive nuclear counterattack of her own. The defense policy, in other words, was based on the assumption that the United States had by far the upper hand in strategic terms, and that the country needed to hold on to that position of superiority as long as possible. The Soviets would obviously never accept an arms control arrangement that locked them into a position of inferiority and would insist on parity as a basis for any agreement that would end their military competition with America. This implied that no matter what the president said about the importance of putting an end to the nuclear arms race--and he often did make comments along these lines--meaningful nuclear arms control was never within reach during the Eisenhower period.
The administration, generally speaking, understood all this and thus had very little interest in proposing the kinds of arms control arrangements the Soviets might accept. Two of the administration's most important arms control initiatives, the famous Open Skies proposal of 1955 and the plan for a cut-off in the production of fissionable material, were both admittedly very one-sided. The whole point of "open skies," Eisenhower said, was to propose something "that we can do in our own advantage." Because of the openness of American society, the Soviets had found it easy to gather the target intelligence they needed; the overflights, as Eisenhower put it, "would undoubtedly benefit us more than the Russians because we knew very little about their installations." Because of the one-sidedness of the proposal, it was taken for granted that the Soviets would probably not accept it.(1) The Open Skies plan, moreover, would evidently not even have done much to prevent a surprise attack, its ostensible goal. SAC commander General LeMay, for example, pointed out that "he could mount a surprise attack against Russia no matter how much overflight was going on."(2)
The same general point also applies to the plan for a cut-off in the production of fissionable material, a proposal which American officials realized would, if accepted, lock in American nuclear superiority. This was one reason among many why top U.S. officials did not think that nuclear arms control was a realistic prospect. They nevertheless felt that it was very important to go through with the arms control charade so as not to offend world opinion. For Dulles especially, it is very clear that arms control policy was to be understood essentially as an exercise in public relations.(3)
The tendency to view arms control policy in this way was by no means limited to the Americans. Adenauer, for example, also thought of arms control policy in tactical terms, and especially in terms of domestic politics.(4) But the Adenauer line was not motivated simply by domestic political considerations. Adenauer's position, as Dulles had characterized it a year earlier, was that he could not "foreclose the possibility of eventual German possession of tactical nuclear weapons if an agreement on disarmament is not reached in the next few years."(5) The implication was that the Germans would be entitled to have a nuclear force of their own if, as seemed very likely, an acceptable disarmament agreement could not be worked out. This, of course, was in line with Adenauer's general policy in this area.
The best study of U.S. arms control policy in the 1950s is Charles Appleby's dissertation, "Eisenhower and Arms Control, 1953-1961: A Balance of Risks," completed in 1987. Appleby takes the Eisenhower arms control policy much more seriously than I do, but this is an intelligent and honest piece of work, full of interesting information drawn from extensive research in a wide variety of archival sources.
NOTES
1. Special NSC meeting, February 18, 1960, FRUS 1958-60, 3:840; Anglo-American meeting, July 20, 1955, and meeting between Eisenhower, Dulles et al, July 20, 1957, FRUS 1955-57, 5:401, 427; and especially Dulles-Adenauer meeting, May 28, 1957, FRUS 1955-57, 26:272.
2. Telephone Conversation from Mr. Hoover in Ohio, September 30, 1955, DP/TC/4/DDEL and ML.
3. See, especially, State-Defense-AEC meeting, January 6, 1954, p. 5, and Murphy to Dulles, December 29, 1954, PPS records for 1954 (Lot 65 D 101), box 79, Atomic Energy and Armaments, RG 59, USNA; Dulles meeting with top advisors, December 29, 1954, and State-Defense-AEC meetings, January 4 and February 9, 1955, and related documents, DSP/65/63592-95, 63601-613, 63743-748/ML; Eisenhower-Mollet meeting, February 26, 1957, p. 8, AWF/International/12/Mollet, Guy (2)/DDEL. The published sources also make this abundantly clear. See Dulles-Adenauer-Macmillan- Pinay meeting, June 17, 1955, FRUS 1955-57, 5:237; Dulles-de Gaulle meeting, July 5, 1958, FRUS 1958-60, 7(2):62; Dulles- Adenauer meeting, May 28, 1957, FRUS 1955-57, 26:272, 274-275; Dulles-Gruenther meeting, February 19, 1958, editorial note, and Dulles meeting with disarmament advisors, April 8, 1958, FRUS 1958-60, 3:553, 555 and 591.
4. For a typical Adenauer argument along these lines, see Dulles- Adenauer meeting, May 1, 1957, DSP/225/103294/ML; note also a German foreign office official's comment in April 1958 that Adenauer was emphasizing disarmament at this point for such tactical reasons, cited in Tyler to State Department, April 29, 1958, 762a.00/4-2958, RG 59, USNA.
5. Dulles to Eisenhower, May 24, 1957, AWF/I/14/Adenauer 1957- 58/DDEL.