CONTROL OF THE BOMB
By FRANCIS WILLIAMS
THERE can be little doubt among responsible people anywhere in the world that the atomic bomb must be internationally con- trolled. President Truman has already publicly recognised that necessity in his statements. So has every other authoritative speaker. But through what machinery? No decision on that has yet been announced. It has not yet perhaps been finally made. This week the Executive Committee of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Organisation is meeting in London. The session was arranged long before the announcement of the atomic bomb, but it falls by fortunate chance at the very moment when the effect of this discovery upon the future powers and responsibilities of the United Nations Organisation, and more particularly upon those of the Security Council and its chief instrument, the Military Staff Committee, is a matter of the most urgent concern.
One of the Preparatory Commission's tasks is to convoke the first session of the General Assembly of the world organisation set up at the San Francisco Conference, and to prepare an agenda for the first session of the Security Council and other organs of the Organisation. Clearly international control of the atomic bomb must occupy a high, the first, place on the Security Council's agenda which is to be drawn up this week. It cannot be excluded without turning the Security Council into a complete sham. Discussions of plans for world security which failed to take the atomic bomb into full account could have no oonceivable relevance to things as they are. Moreover, it was contemplated at San Francisco that between the meeting of the Preparatory Commission and those of the General Assembly and the Security Council, the Military Staff Committee would make a preliminary survey of the military problems of world security in order to prepare general recommendations for the Security Council when it meets. Those problems have been vitally affected by the discovery of the atomic bomb. The whole pattern of the strategical plans which it is the business of the Military Staff Com- mittee to prepare have been altered.
In these circumstances, and particularly in view of the present meeting of the Preparatory Commission, a decision as to the extent to which knowledge of the process by which the atomic bomb is made, and of its future potentialities, is to be internationalised, cannot be long delayed. Nor can the decision as-to the place and manner of future production,—whether, for example, it is to be con- fined to an international zone in which the headquarters of the United Nations Organisation is also to be placed. The location of the permanent headquarters of the Organisation is one of the questions before the Preparatory Commission.
At present the atomic bomb secrets rest exclusively in Anglo- American hands, and the only facilities for manufacture are in the United States. It has not been clear from such statements as have, at the time of writing, been made by President Truman and others whether in talking of international control a control vested in America and Britain is envisaged, or whether that control is to rest with, at any rate, the whole of the Big Powers. A decision on this is vitally important to the work of the Security Council and the Military Staff Committee. The five permanent members of the Security Council are Britain, America, the U.S.S.R., China and France. It is the Chiefs of Staff, or their representatives, of these five Powers and they alone who compose the Military Staff Committee. .
If both the letter and spirit of the agreement reached at San Francisco are not to be revoked it would seem clear that America and Britain must be prepared to share their knowledge of the atomic bomb with the other three permanent members of the Security Council, and that plans for the international control of its produc- tion and use (if that should ever again become necessary, which everyone will sincerely hope will never be the case) must be left to the Military Staff Committee to prepare. Here plain speaking is needed If the true interests of international peace are to be con- s;dered. In the past there has been complete exchange of information on all military matters, and on all scientific discoveries of military significance, between Britain and America. There has not been anything like such a complete exchange between these two and Russia—still less between them and the other two members of the Military Staff Committee.
The absence of a complete exchange between Britain, America and Russia has been due to reticences on both sides, and in the past probably even more on Russia's part than on America's or Britain's. Recently, however, since Yalta, there has been a fuller exchange than formerly. So far as China is concerned the need for a pooling of knowledge did not arise during the war to the same extent as with the other three. China is a Great Power in potentiality rather than in hard current fact. France, for obvious reasons, was also on a different footing during the European war.
Moreover, it has to be recognised, for this is a time for frankness, that China's position as a Great Power, and the part she can play in the immediate future as a member of the Military Staff Com- mittee, is affected by doubts not yet resolved as to the internal stability of her regime. Her immediate future as an effective membe.r "of the World Security Organisation must largely depend upon the peaceful solution of internal differences between the Chungking Government and the Administration of the Communist-controlled territories at Yenan. Nor have either China or France at present the industrial and military resources to make them Great Powers of the same status as Britain, Russia and America.
Despite these facts, and despite the suspicions which have in the past prevented a full exchange of information between Britain and America on the one side and Russia on the other, there can, I suggest, be no escaping the desirability and the obligation to lay the full facts of the atomic bomb before all the permanent members of the Security Council and the Military Staff Committee. Failure to do that 'would damage fatally the mutual confidence between the
Big Five upon which the whole structure of the United Nations Security Organisation admittedly rests. In San Francisco discus- sions on the work of the Military Staff Committee it was me abundantly clear that a full exchange not only of military pl. but of scientific discoveries of military significance, was intended. Indeed, without such an exchange the Committee's work could obviously not be done efficiently. If the two Powers who between them hold the secret of the greatest scientific discovery of all time, and one which has almost incalculable consequences to the problems of world security, now withhold it, the whole basis of the security organisation cannot but be affected.
The Military Staff Committee, moreover, has the task of drawing up strategical plans for world and regional defence against potential aggression. It has to advise the Security Council what national bases, sea, land and air, are likely to be required for international pur- poses, and what allocation of land, sea and air forces should be- made by each nation, and be held available, if need be, for international action. Its preliminary plans particularly include proposals that units of national air forces shall be allotted to form part of an international force which can be called into being immediately, there is a threat of aggression in any part of the world. Joint manoeuvres to accustom these units to working together are envisaged. Finally, the Military Staff Committee is specifically required to advise the Security Council on the regulation of armaments.
None of these plans and responsibilities are possible without taking the atomic bomb into full account. If it is to do the work laid down for it at San Francisco, the Military Staff Committee must have full knowledge of this new weapon, and be given the authority to advise where production and supplies should be established. Without such knowledge it would become merely an academic body planning a world strategy of defence in terms of weapons already outdated,
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