Closer to Reality

When the five-nation U.N. Subcommittee on Disarmament opened its latest series of talks in London on March 19, about all it had to show for two years of work was a slag pile of rejected plans. Last week as the subcommittee wound up its second week in London it was, thanks to the U.S., closer to a realistic consideration of disarmament problems than ever before.

Small but Practical. The chief proposal before the subcommittee when the talks began was a sweeping Anglo-French plan that called for disarmament in three easy stages:

Stage 1: Renunciation of offensive use of nuclear weapons, freezing of size of conventional arms and forces, aerial and ground inspection systems.

Stage 2: Limitation of nuclear tests and substantial reduction of size of conventional arms and forces.

Stage 3: Further reduction of conventional forces plus a total ban on the manufacture, testing or use of nuclear weapons.

To U.S. Delegate Harold Stassen and his government the Anglo-French scheme appeared to overlook the fact that it would be far more useful to start even a limited measure of actual disarmament than to get general agreement on a Utopian overall blueprint. Emphasizing this, Stassen a fortnight ago proposed that the subcommittee agree at once on a series of small but eminently practical "confidence-building" steps toward disarmament, including the opening by both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. of experimental disarmament inspection zones (TIME, April 2). Last week he made another specific proposal: international control centers to which all major powers would submit advance information on major movements of their military forces.

Hazy but Hopeful. Confronted with these limited proposals, the U.S.S.R. could not sit idle without suffering a considerable propaganda defeat. The day after Stassen made his call for an exchange of troop movement data. Soviet Delegate Andrei Gromyko unveiled a brand-new Soviet disarmament plan. Its main features:

P: Acceptance ''in principle" of the aerial survey plan proposed last July by President Eisenhower at Geneva. P: Gradual reduction of conventional military forces to a maximum of 1,500,000 men each for the U.S., U.S.S.R. and Red China and 650,000 men each for Britain and France.

P: Demilitarization of Germany--reinforced by an international agreement that no power would keep nuclear weapons in German territory. P:Abandonment of nuclear weapon tests.

The Soviet proposals marked a significant step forward. For the first time the Russians had not insisted that an absolute ban on nuclear weapons precede any other kind of disarmament. For the first time too the U.S.S.R. had given some indications, hazy though they were, of the kind of international controls it would accept. Perhaps most important of all, however, was the new tone adopted by the Soviets. Said a U.S. official: "Our preliminary reaction is that this is not propaganda but a solid proposal aimed at solving the problem before us."

Nuclear weapons have made war suicidal a Western representative pointed out. "What we are trying to do here is to establish some common ground with the Russians ... In this nuclear age if you can devise a sure guard against surprise attack, there will be no attack. And if there is no attack, there will be no war."

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