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4 Steps toward Disarmament A British physicist and World War IT military operations analyst discusses the problems that underlie the present disarmament negotiations he representatives of 17 nations— the two main nuclear powers, seven nations allied with one or the other ef them, and eight uncom- mitted nations—have convened at Gene- we for the third formal, full-dress at- tempt since the end of World War II to negotiate disarmament. It must be con- ceded that the circumstances are not entirely favorable to agreement. During 1961 the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. reversed the trend of nearly a decade and in- ereased their military expenditures by something on the order of 25 per cent. The three-year moratorium on the test- ing of nuclear weapons was terminated by the series of Soviet tests in the fall; on the eve of the Geneva meeting the WC annnn are | infention ¢a0 min Ms eae PPE its BERR EPR EWI Lh Tiove its present series of underground tests into the atmosphere if the U.S.S.R, did not immediately agree to a test ban. On the other hand, both the Soviet and the Western bloc are committed by categorical public statements to the ob- fective of complete and general disarma- ment under strict inspection and control. What fs more, practical military consid- erations, arising from the nature of nuclear weapons, commend substantial reduction in armaments to the great powers as a measure that will increase their security in the first step toward dis- armament. "In considering possible first steps that would lead to increased security for both sides, partisans of each side should try to understand how the present military by P. M. S. Blackett situation must look to the other, A mili- tary commander, in planning a cam- paign or a battle, attempts to do this as a matter of course. He has first to find out all he can about the material facts of his opponent's military deployment and secondly to assess the probable inten- tions of his opponent for its use. This is the process that has been described as “guessing what is happening on the oth- er side of the hill.” A similar obligation rests on those who plan a disarmament negotiation. A military planner, it is true, can much more easily put himself mentally in the position of his military opponent than a statesman can think himself into the position of his opposite number, because a statesman must enter imaginatively inte the political as well as the military thought processes of his opponent. This is hard to do at a time of acute ideological struggle. It is none- theless essential that the military and political leaders of both sides do just this. No small part of the present crisis, concerning armaments in general and nuclear weapons in particular, has been due to a tendency in the West to at- tribute to ideological motives actions by the U.S.S.R. that seem to have been motivated mainly by military considera- tions. Conversely, much of the West's de- fense policy appears to have been influ- enced by political and economic factors. J' may be useful to sturt by describing the most important elements in the military capabilities of the Soviet bloc and the Western alliance. In recent months there have been significant dis- closures about the nuclear weapons and their means of delivery possessed by both sides. On November 12 of last year Robert S$, McNamara, Secretary of De- fense of the U.S., said that the U.S. nuclear-strike force consists of 1,700 in- tercontinental bombers, including 630 B-52's, 55 B-58's and 1,000 B-47's, He said that the U.S. possesses in addition several dozen operational intercontinen- tal ballistic missiles (ICBM’s), some 80 Polaris missiles in nuclear-powered sub- marines, about the same number of Thor and Jupiter intermediate-range missiles, some 300 carrier-bome aircraft armed with megaton war heads and nearly 1,900 haced j with nuclear war heads. According to his deputy, Roswell L. Gilpatric, “the total number of our nuclear delivery vehicles, tactical as well as strategic, is in the tens of thousands, and of course we have more than one war head for each vehi- cle.... We have a second-strike capabil- ity that is at least as extensive as what the Soviets can deliver by striking first, therefore we ean be confident that the Soviets will not provoke a major con- flict.” The U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons is most often estimated as around 30,000 megatons, that is, enough for some 30,000 one-megaton bombs. Naturally no such precise figures for Soviet strength are available. I have seen no reliable estimates of the U.S.S.R.’s nuclear stockpile, nor of its possible nu- lane) seb har hed sru amerennin supersonic ed figh leis