It has been my great privilege to participate in work of the United Nations since its beginning. I am happy today to continue that association by taking part in the general debate of this, the twelfth, session of the General Assembly.
17. The last year has seen the creation of an important new international agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency. I recall, as will all of us who were here on 8 December 1953, the inspiring address of Mr. Eisenhower, the President of the United States. We must, he said, find the way “by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life” [470th meeting, para. 125]. To that end he proposed the creation of an international atomic energy agency. To realize that vision has not been easy. There were serious initial obstructions. It has taken four years of patience, firmness and diplomacy to achieve our goal. But now at last that goal is achieved.
18. Other major activities of the United Nations during the past year have been in relation to Egypt and Hungary. I do not review these at this time, as they are fresh in the minds of all of us. I would, however, recall that when I discussed these matters at the first emergency special session of the General Assembly [ 561st meeting], I referred to Article 1 of our Charter, which calls for peaceful settlements "In conformity with the principles of justice and international law”. I then expressed the hope here that we might in the future do more to give vitality to that principle. Unhappily, there is today much injustice in the world. The forcible partition of Germany is one injustice that comes instantly to mind. There also seems to be reluctance on the part of many Members to conform to Article 36, which says that "legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties to the International Court of Justice". If there is any one thing which history demonstrates, it is that it is impossible to preserve peace indefinitely unless that peace is based upon justice and upon law.
19. I speak now of limitation of armaments. It is one of the essential tasks which the Charter lays upon the United Nations. To limit armaments is at best a difficult task. The inherent difficulties are today intensified by acute distrust. To make matters still more difficult, there are now in existence new weapons the control of which cannot be assured by any scientific means. The Soviet Union, in its proposal of 10 May 1955, pointed out that it was impossible to preclude "the clandestine manufacture of atomic and hydrogen weapons". Therefore, it concluded: "Until an atmosphere of trust has been created in relations between States, any agreement on the institution of international control can only serve to lull the vigilance of the peoples. It will create a false sense of security, while, in reality, there will be ... the threat of surprise attack...." [DC/71, annex 15, p. 24.] So speaks the Soviet Union.
20. We agree on the need for "an atmosphere of trust". But how shall we create it? One way is for the great military Powers to demonstrate, by their conduct, that they live up to their pledges expressed in our Charter. Unhappily, that basis for trust is lacking. I need only recall the Assembly's recent resolution [1133 (XI)] dealing with the tragic fate of Hungary.
21. There is, however, another way to establish confidence, and that is for the great military Powers to accept such reciprocal inspection as will in fact make it unlikely that there could be the "surprise attack" of which the Soviet proposal spoke. Then we shall not have to trust each other’s word, or each other's intentions. Bad faith would be so vulnerable to detection that it would not become a profitable tactic even for those so inclined. That is the concept which underlay President Eisenhower's "open-skies" proposal [DC/ 71, annex 17] made at the Conference of the Heads of Government of the four great Powers held at Geneva in 1955. That concept instantly won world-wide acclaim and it has been endorsed by the Assembly [resolution 914 (X)]. It is the heart of the joint proposals JDC/113, annex 5] upon which four of the five members of the Sub-Committee of the Disarmament Commission agreed last month.
22. I shall describe briefly these joint proposals, for they will, no doubt, figure largely in the deliberations at this twelfth session of the Assembly.
23. First, the joint proposals would provide reciprocal inspection to safeguard against surprise attack. President Eisenhower had proposed to do this by aerial inspection. Mr. Bulganin and Mr. Khrushchev had proposed land inspection. The joint proposals combine the two types of inspection,
24. With respect to initial zones of inspection, the Joint proposals give the Soviet Union a wide choice. If it will permit inspection of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, it can inspect all areas from which it professes to fear attack: that is, Western Europe, the United States and Canada. There are a few United States bases in other areas, and, as I said at the Geneva Conference in 1955, the United States would not object to their being opened also to inspection. If the Soviet Union prefers to start only on a modest and experimental basis, Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States unite in offering such an area in the north. Willingness is also expressed to have a small initial zone in Europe. Thus, the joint proposals deal with what all recognize to be the threshold difficulty, lack of trust and the danger of surprise attack.
25. Secondly, the joint proposals tackle the problem of nuclear weapons. They provide that, once an adequate control system is established, no fissionable material shall ever again be produced for weapons purposes, and that existing fissionable material available for weapons will be regularly reduced by transfers to non-weapons purposes. Most experts, including those of the Soviet Union, agree that there is no dependable way to control existing stocks of fissionable material and to exclude their clandestine use. But we believe that it is possible to assure that no fissionable material hereafter produced shall be used for weapons purposes. That we propose to assure, and surely that is worth doing.
26. In the third place, the joint proposals call for suspending the testing of nuclear weapons for two years and thereafter if other aspects of the programme are moving forward as agreed.
27. Fourthly, the joint proposals would establish a study of outer space to the end that it shall be used only for peaceful, and not for military purposes. The Soviet Union has announced that it has discovered ways to use outer space to wreak vast destruction anywhere. That is no new discovery. The United States, too, knows how that can be done. Our task is to see that it is not done.
28. Finally, the joint proposals also contemplate beginning to reduce the number of armed forces and putting a part of the present stock of armaments into internationally supervised depots.
29. Let me say here a few words about the much debated matter of testing. We seek, by experiments now carefully controlled, to find out how to eliminate the hazardous radio-active material now incident to the explosion of thermo-nuclear weapons. Also, we seek to make nuclear weapons into discriminating weapons, suitable for defence against attacking troops, submarines and bombers, and for the interception of intercontinental missiles.
30. The Soviet Union seems not to want the character of nuclear weapons thus to be refined and changed. It seems to like it that nuclear weapons can be stigmatized as "horror" weapons. Does it calculate that, under these conditions, Governments subject to moral and religious influences will not be apt to use them, and that the Soviet Union, not itself subject to moral or religious restraints, would thereby gain a special freedom of action and initiative as regards such weapons? And does the Soviet Union not want nuclear weapons to be refined into effective defensive weapons which could repel an aggressive attack by those who control the most manpower?
31. We want to reduce, to the maximum extent possible, the danger of surprise attack and thus the danger of war itself. We want, to the maximum extent possible, to stop the future use of fissionable material for weapons purposes. We want existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons to start on their way downwards. We want to end the risk that nuclear weapons will spread promiscuously throughout the world, giving irresponsible persons a power for evil that is appalling even to contemplate.
32. But if the Soviet Union rejects inspection against surprise attack, if it rejects a world-wide system to end the production of fissionable material for weapons purposes, if it rejects co-operation to prevent the promiscuous spreading of nuclear weapons throughout the world, if it refuses to start a reciprocal reduction of existing stockpiles of such weapons, then we doubt that it is prudent to forgo efforts to make nuclear weapons into discriminating defensive weapons substantially free of radio-active fall-out.
33. It is, of course, essential that experimentation with nuclear weapons should not itself carry a threat to human life. The United States has a concern second to none in this matter. We shall invite the United Nations to send observers to one of our next tests so that they can see how these tests are conducted.
34. Last March, the United States and the United Kingdom declared their intention to conduct nuclear tests only in such a manner as would keep world radiation from rising to more than a small fraction of what might be hazardous. Indeed, because each year a percentage of radio-activity dies away, we have reason to hope that, in the future, any needed testing can be accomplished without any material raising whatsoever of the levels of radio-activity in the world.
35. The joint proposals which I described derive from months, even years, of effort and discussion. They were submitted formally on 29 August 1957. The Soviet Union representative instantly rejected them. He declared them a "sham”. He went on to insist that the work of the Sub-Committee on Disarmament should be recessed, and he refused to agree on a date for the resumption of its task. We cannot believe that that sweeping, almost contemptuous, Soviet rejection is final. Never before have so many nations, of such great military power, joined to make proposals so far-reaching. Any Government that summarily rejects them would accept a frightful responsibility before all the world.
36. Humanity faces a tragic future if the threat of war is not brought under control, for that would mean that men, in order to survive, must learn to live as burrowers in the earth to find protection against death. It would mean that man would be a slave to the rapidly mounting costs of an arms race. It would mean that individual freedom would give way to the requirements of survival.
37. The free-world members of the Sub-Committee on Disarmament reject that future. They accept what, to some of them, seem sacrifices and to others risks, in order to chart a course which will reduce the danger of war — not just nuclear war, but all war. Whether or not the Soviet Union today refuses to follow in that course, we can be confident that the enlightened efforts that produced these proposals will not have been in vain. Even if the Soviet Union now rejects the joint proposals, those proposals should not, on that account, be regarded as dead. Their principles are valid and will live on.
38. The search for limitation of armaments cannot be held in a state of suspense. Economic considerations alone require efforts to relieve the peoples of the terrible burden of armaments. Also, there is need better to assure that the vast power which now resides in armaments shall serve only for security and never as an instrument of purely nationalistic policies.
39. There are today about fifty nations which have made collective defence pacts as authorized by Article 51 of our Charter. Such a framework is conducive to the development and application of these principles. For the very purpose of collective security is to enable each party to get more security with less armament. Already, for example, in Western Europe, there is on the one hand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO], which calls for contributions to a common defence and on the other hand the 1954 NATO treaty for Western European Union, which provides for limitations upon national armaments.
40. If we cannot advance on a universal front, let the nations, wherever possible, draw closer together, so that, within the limits of safety, we may relieve the burden, and reduce the risks, of armament.
41. But let us not fatalistically assume that the Soviet response of last month is its last word. At first, in its aide-mémoire of 27 April 1954, the Soviet Union rejected the proposal for an International Atomic Energy Agency, calling it a scheme which would serve only "aggressive forces". We persisted then; let us persist now. if this Organization will put the weight of its influence behind the principles of the joint proposals, it is not impossible that those principles will yet obtain universal acceptance. Since the stakes are so high, no chance, however slight, should be left untried.
42. I turn now to the Middle East, speaking first of a past we would all prefer to forget. But we dare not forget because, unhappily, the past lives in the present.
43. Russia’s rulers have long sought domination in the Middle East. In 1949, when the Soviet leaders were seeking a division of the world with Hitler, they stipulated "that the area south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf is recognized as the centre of the aspirations of the Soviet Union" [Molotov communication to the German Ambassador. 25 November 1940]. In the immediate post-war period the Soviet Union prolonged its military occupation of Iran; it sought trusteeship over Libya, and it fomented subversion against Greece.
44. Between 1945 and 1949, however, Central Europe became the principal theatre of Soviet activities. In 1949, after the adoption of the Marshall Plan and the conclusion of the North Atlantic Treaty, the Soviet Union shifted its principal effort to the Far East. There it supported the Communist revolution in China, the war in Korea and the war in Indo-China.
45. In 1955, after the successful defence of Korea by the United Nations and the conclusion of the South-East Asia Collective Defence Treaty and other defensive pacts, the Soviet rulers again made the Middle East the centre of their external efforts. This time they tried to use, in Arab countries, the technique that Stalin and Lenin had prescribed for bringing about the "amalgamation” — that is their word — of the so-called "colonial and dependent peoples" into the Soviet orbit. This technique, as Lenin specified, involves inciting nationalism to break all ties with the West and thus create so total a dependence upon the Soviet Union that it can take full control.
46. So, in 1955, the Soviet rulers began intensive propaganda designed to incite the Arab nations to believe that with Soviet arms, Soviet technicians and Soviet political backing, they could accomplish extreme nationalistic ambitions. This Soviet Communist effort has made progress in Syria. There Soviet-bloc arms were exultantly received and there political power has increasingly been taken over by those who depend upon Moscow. True patriots have been driven from positions of power by arrests or intimidation. One consequence of this is that Turkey now faces growing military danger from the major build-up of Soviet arms in Syria on its southern border, a build-up concerted with Soviet military power on Turkey's northern border. Last week the Soviet Union sought by intimidation to prevent Turkey from making internal dispositions of its own security forces.
47. I turn now to recall the position of this Organization with respect to so-called indirect aggression. In 1949, the General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled "Essentials of peace". The resolution calls upon every nation "to refrain from any threats or acts, direct or indirect, aimed at impairing the freedom, independence or integrity of any State ..." [resolution 290 (IV)]. When this resolution was voted upon, the only nations voting against it were the five Soviet-bloc States.
48. The United States has consistently supported the "Essentials of peace" resolution, and has done so specifically in relation to the Middle East. In 1947, when international communism was seeking to take over Greece and threatening Turkey, President Truman said in a speech made on 12 March of that year, "totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace". When the Soviet threat to the Middle East was recently resumed, the Congress of the United States, by a joint resolution adopted on 9 March 1957, declared that "the United States regards as vital to the national interest and world peace the preservation of the independence and integrity of the nations of the Middle East". It authorized the President to give economic and military assistance to help the nations of the Middle East to remain independent. It also says, "the United States is prepared to use armed forces to assist any such nation or group of such nations requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism". On 7 September 1957, President Eisenhower called attention to the danger in Syria and reaffirmed his intention to "exercise as needed", the authority given him by that congressional resolution.
49. The Soviet Communists appear to be engaging in "acts, direct or indirect, aimed at impairing the freedom, independence or integrity" of certain nations of the Middle East in violation of the United Nations "Essentials of peace" resolution. Also, we believe that these Soviet acts may lead the recipients of Soviet arms, perhaps unwittingly, into acts of direct aggression. Those who feel an abnormal sense of power, as a result of the recent putting into their hands of large amounts of Soviet-bloc arms, are being incited against their neighbours by violent propaganda. And that, I say, is risky business.
50. Of course, in this situation the primary responsibility rests upon the Member States themselves. It is they who should abstain from acts of aggression, direct or indirect. It is they who have an inherent right of individual and collective self-defence. Nothing that the United Nations can do should lead to the relaxation for one moment of the vigilance and the efforts of each free nation to maintain its own genuine integrity and independence and that of every other free nation. Nevertheless, when there is such a situation as that which now exists in the Middle East, the General Assembly ought at least to consider it and to discuss it. Discussion, as our Charter suggests in Article 11, paragraph 2, may itself be salutary. The United States reserves the right, in the light of that discussion, to introduce concrete proposals.
51. It is a tragedy that the Middle East, so rich in culture and tradition and contributing so greatly to the material and spiritual welfare of all the world, should be distraught, as it is today. The United States stands ready to contribute generously to the economic development of the area under conditions which will promote and strengthen the freedom and independence of the nations. This prospect of enlarged freedom and well-being will never be realized, however, so long as the area is looked upon as a subject of conquest and as a potential base for the domination of Europe, Asia and Africa.
52. The United Nations may not be able, by any material power that it can muster, to tranquilize the scene. But we can exert our influence. May we at least do that, and thereby once again serve the cause of peace, hope and happiness.