REPORT OF THOMAS E. MURRAY TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON ATOMIC ENERGY REGARDING DISARMAMENT PROPOSAL MADE BEFORE THE INSTITUTE OF WORLD AFFAIRS ON DEC. 9TH, 1959

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R003600130065-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 10, 2002
• Sequence Number: 65
• Publication Date: December 21, 1959
• Content Type: REPORT

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RELEASED for Publication in Newspapers
Monday, Dec. 21st, 1959
REPORT OF THOMAS E. MURRAY
TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON ATOMIC ENERGY
REGARDING DISARMAMENT PROPOSAL MADE BEFORE THE j~eCtt.~~ Re~3;stpH
INSTITUTE OF WORLD AFFAIRS
ON DECEMBER 9th, 1959
In accordance with your request, I am submitting this memorandum in order to present
further details regarding the disarmament proposal which I made on December 9th before the
Institute of World Affairs at Pasadena.
A proposal of this kind, set forth within the limits of a short speech, is bound to raise
questions concerning its implications for national security. As a matter of fact I was prompted
to advance the suggestion for dismantling megaton weapons on a matching basis with the
Soviets only after pondering for a long time the potentially grave security dangers that lurk
in current American disarmament policy--dangers which will become vivid enough if we persist
in our present course. The official nuclear disarmament policy to which the Government is
committed calls eventually for a negotiated agreement: first, to stop all nuclear tests; second,
to halt the flow of fissionable material into weapons and finally to destroy all nuclear stock-
piles. The carrying out of this current policy is made contingent on the establishment of
effective international inspection and control.
The main reason behind my proposal is the urgent need to design a practical alternative
policy which will permit the U.S. to sieze the initiative in the field of disarmament without
impairing national security.
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Our present disarmament policy is mistaken in its basic premise. We should never
have yielded to Communist pressure and put the subordinate issue of tests in the first place
on the disarmament agenda. Moreover, our efforts to negotiate a test ban and to contrive
an inspection system to control its observance, have proved to be a political failure. What
is worse the test moratorium has damaged American military strength. And more crippling
damage would result if our present policy were carried through its further two stages. It
is imperative that this ineffective, mistaken and dangerous policy be discarded and a new
start made.
The real and immediate problem is not to halt future weapons development by stopping
tests, but to banish the present threat of unlimited violence and universal devastation that
is posed by megaton weapons already in American and Soviet stockpiles. Here is the proximate
issue, to be handled without delay. Until we negotiate an agreement to extinguish the threat
of world-wide nuclear holocaust, all other kinds of disarmament negotiations will be certainly
futile and no less certainly dangerous.
Hence I proposed an orderly destruction, on a matching basis, of existent megaton
weapons, under international supervision.
The proposal has a political goal. It aims at terminating a situation that has become
politically absurd, both from the Communist viewpoint and from our own. I mean the situa-
tion in which world peace is ultimately based on a balance of terror. This situation makes
no political sense to anyone concerned in it and all the peoples of the world are concerned
in it.
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Therefore I propose, as the primary and most necessary practical goal, that
we negotiate an agreement with the Soviet Union to stop the perilous and irrational effort
to maintain the balance of terror. An agreement to this effect would be as much in the
Communist interest as in our own. Hence it appears as possible and practical
This goal is limited, as all political goals must be. There would remain, both
for the U. S. and for the U.S.S.R. , the problem of maintaining a balance of power be-
tween the Communist world and the free world. This problem has as many aspects as the
word "power" has meanings. In any case, it is a genuine political problem that can be
rationally and successfully handled. A true balance of power, in, all the many meanings
of power is a necessary contributing element of world peace, whereas the present precarious
balance of terror is nothing but an invitation to catastrophe.
Thus the proximate political goal is clear enough. It is a question, not of upsetting
the balance of terror, which would entail serious risk, but of dissipating the terror itself.
Therefore the process whereby this limited political goal may be achieved is like-
wise clear enough. It is a question of initiating an orderly and controlled process of destroy-
ing the megaton weapons that have created, and still sustain the terror. The final details
of the process are proper matter for negotiation, once the end in view is agreed on.
First of all, I think that any proposal, laid down by the U.S. as the basis of negotia-
tion, should be kept clear, clean and simple, free of the kind of detail that might give rise
to resistance or bickering, whether on political or on scientific grounds.
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For instance, we need not be particular about the composition of the international
commission to supervise the dismantling of Russian and American megaton weapons. It
is sufficient that the scientific staff be competent. It would be advisable to have them
work under a political committee with the widest representation. What is chiefly important
is that the work be done, as it were, under the eyes of all the world. Access to all the
details of the operation should be open to all the media of communications.
The really essential question concerns the method by which this proposal should
be carried out. In the first place, the dismantling process should take place in stages.
The first stage is an important one. Enough megatonage should be destroyed in it to
affirm emphatically and at the outset a mutual seriousness of intent to end the Era of Terror.
What would constitute such a quantity of megatonage? The immediate answer to this
question may be reached by asking another. How many megatons would be sufficient to
create, if exploded, a serious threat to civilization disaster on a scale intolerable both to
ourselves, the legatees of Western civilization, and also to the artisans of the Communist
World .Revolution?
The question is crucial. AlI experts agree that there is a limit to the amount of
fissionable material that may be explosively released without creating this serious threat,
both in terms of immediate destruction of life and property and also in terms of future radio-
active fall-out. Within this basic agreement there will doubtless be differences of opinion
on the sheer arithemetic. However, it will be most important not to let a straight-forward
answer to a straight-forward question get lost amid the endless niceties of scientific argument.
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I once made an estimate myself, when I was a member of the A.E.C. My figure
published in an article in Life (May 7, 1957) was 3500 megatons. The figure was not
challenged either at the time or subsequently. An amount of 3500 megatons might well
serve as the basis of the initial dismantling stage, which, under the agreement I envision,
would cover a period of approximately three (3) years. The U. S. and the U.S.S.R.
would agree to hand over 1750 megatons each to the international agency. It would be
desirable for the U.S. to offer a substantial portion of its total share in the first stage--
let us say 500 megatons--as its first consignment, to be matched by the Soviet Union.
It should be further agreed that the remaining 2500 megatons will be delivered
to the international agency in matching lots at prescribed intervals within the three (3)
year period. By that time it is to be hoped that the international climate will have been
so improved that the negotiations of other disarmament measures will have become possible.
The political effects of carrying through these measures to end the terror that has
brooded over a decade cannot fail to be beneficial to the whole international community.
Of course, the deep reality of the cold war will remain untouched. But the illegitimate
issue of sheer physical survival will no longer dominate the continuing rivalry between
opposed forms of social and political organizations. Hence it should be possible to see
more clearly the real issues--moral, political and economic--and to deal with them more
firmly.
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I know that my proposal has raised misgivings in some minds. "We face an enemy,"
so runs the argument, "who recognizes no moral restraints in his use of force, and who
will stop at nothing to gain his ends. Only terror of intolerable reprisals will deter him
from aggression. Therefore, we should not surrender the weapons of terror." This argument,
if valid at all, would forbid any kind of nuclear disarmament negotiations in good faith.
It would condemn the world to go on living under an unstable balance of terror until the
unlikely event of a Communist conversion to morality. Hence the argument reduces itself
to absurdity. Moreover, it implies an abject admission that human reason is powerless to
cope with evil except by stooping to evil. And it would require that we forever commit
ourselves, in the name of an undefined morality, to the profound lack of moral control and
to the equally profound lack.of political rationality that have characterized our armament
policies for the past decade. I do not recognize the validity of this kind of twisted and
despairful argument. In fact, I do not think that any kind of political or moral or even
military argument can be made, with any plausibility, in favor of a balance of terror as
a basis of peace. Terror, induced by the threat of unlimited violence, has no place in the
moral or political universe. Advocacy of unlimited violence, or consent to it, will make
barbarians of us all. Our first duty as a civilized people is to banish the barbarism of
terror from the place it has usurped in public policy.
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The moral cynicism of Communism is a poor excuse for maintaining a policy of
terror. I readily grant that no moral scruples hinder Communism in the pursuit of its aims.
But it does not follow that Communism recognizes no restraints at all on its use of force
in pursuit of its aims. The supreme restraint is imposed by the very Communist dogma of
world revolution which is supposed to usher in a new era of world organization, the dogma
supposes that there will be a productive world and masses of peoples to organize. Hence
the dogma forbids the use of unlimited nuclear violence that could imperil the sheer
existence of peoples and world alike.
There is, moreover, the Communist assurance that its revolutionary advance is as
inevitable as history itself. But the revolution is to advance as history advances, gradually
and little by little. The capitalist camp is not to be shattered by some sudden overwhelming
release of nuclear violence, let loose with no defined political purpose but only with the
intention of sheer destruction.
This is not the strategy of the revolution. Rather, the revolutionary assurance is
that there will be a continuing series of limited political victories, and an accumulation
of limited economic conquests, and above all a growing conversion of the peoples of the
world to belief in the "truth" of the Communist ideology and in the superior merits of the
Communist system of social organization.
All these gradual advances will be supported at every turn by apt force, when the
use or threat of it is useful or necessary for the limited end in view at the moment. This
is the ever present danger that American political, military and weapons policy must confront
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and overcome. The essential problem is to possess the apt force to meet the limited threat
of the moment, wherever it may arise.
However, the same Communist dogma and the some Communist assurance of inevitable
success that dictate.; the use of apt force, if force is necessary to insure success, also set
limits to the force to be used and forbid the extremes of violence. The Communist purpose is
success, the political success of the revolution. Limited force is an apt means to this success.
Unlimited nuclear violence is an inept means, a useless means, a far too dangerous means.
Therefore is it true to say that Communism "will stop at nothing" in the matter of
the use of nuclear arms? It does recognize its own kinds of restraint. Its own dogma is a
discipline on the use of force. To overlook this fact is to mistake the real peril we face.
Policy designed to meet fanciful dangers is a work of fantasy, not statesmanship.
Finally, in this same connection a serious question must be raised. Is it true to
say that the American policy of nuclear terror has been a success? Has the unlimited nuclear
deterrent, backed by the threat of massive retaliation, achieved any real purpose, military
or political? Has this policy effectively "contained" the Communist revolution? Has it
stopped the Communist regimes from moving towards any of their selected goals?
No serious man may answer these questions with an unhesitating and unqualified
"yes. " At best, the answer can be only conjectural . And there are serious reasons for think-
ing that the answer ought to be "no. " The main reason is that during the past decade the
advance of the Communist revolution has not in fact been halted. Or, where it has suffered
a check, the credit must go either to the altered course of events or to policies other than
"massive retaliation."
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The argument made by the advocates of our present strategy of massive retaliation;
namely, that only a policy of terror will deter the immoral communist enemy, and that
therefore the surrender of our megaton weapons of terror would entail serious risk to American
security, is a purely gratuitous assertion. It cannot be proved. It must be taken on faith,
and hence constitutes a poor basis for a rational policy. Much better arguments than this
would have to be put forward before the categoric rejection of my proposal would be.justi-
fied.
The proposal does involve an element of risk, as all disarmament proposals must.
But on any calculation of relative risks, especially those involved in current American arma-
ment and disarmament policy, I much prefer to accept the risk involved in my proposal. No
other nuclear disarmament plan now before the American public involves a risk as minimal.
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