Pieces of the Sky

For the first time, U.S. officials admitted to "guarded optimism" over the possibility of reaching nuclear agreement with the Russians. That there was cause for any optimism at all was surprising.

When President Eisenhower two years ago first proposed "open skies" over Europe and the U.S. so that each great power could keep aerial watch against surprise attack from the other, Pravda denounced the idea as "spying," and Premier Bulganin tried to laugh it down as daft. Since then, the ratio of missile threat has turned against Moscow. The U.S., with NATO and other partners bordering close, can sight in with shorter-range missiles on the Soviet Union while the U.S. still lies beyond the reach of any but intercontinental missiles. Last week, in their first major move of the 1957 London U.N. Subcommittee on Disarmament talks, the Russians put forward a package that appeared to feature partial acceptance of the Eisenhower open-skies idea.

"Approximately Equal." The U.S. gave the Russians the opening for their move earlier this year by intimating that it would settle for one piece of sky at a time. Harold E. Stassen, the President's Disarmament Adviser, informally suggested to Russia's representative, Valerian Zorin, that the powers might begin by trying out aerial inspection in 1) a patch of Europe between Amsterdam and Leningrad, and 2) a North Pacific zone including most of Alaska and a small piece of Siberia. Last week Zorin formally proposed a larger European area, centered farther west so as to include southeast Britain, all France and Germany, all of the satellites--but practically none of Russia itself. On the other side of the world the Russians offered to open up all of Siberia east of but not including the Lake Baikal atomic test area, in return for an unlimited look at "approximately equal" U.S. territories--Alaska and all of the U.S. west of the Mississippi.

Such brazen balancing of vast tracts of Siberian snow against much more densely populated and industrially important areas of the U.S. was promptly pronounced "outrageous" in the Pentagon. There were other items in the Soviet package that proposed even more one-sided disarmament of the West: a reduction in forces that would leave the U.S. with too few men to keep up its NATO commitments, and a scheme for setting up ground control posts that would bring every part of Europe and the U.S. under surveillance--except the Russian heartland.

Have a Hard Look. Nonetheless. U.S. diplomats noted that the Russians were talking in serious detail, omitting sweeping demands and forgoing familiar propaganda tactics. The Russians even handed their proposals to the U.S. delegation for study five days in advance of their publication. The State Department promised to "have a hard look at them." Were the Soviets now thinking more about keeping an eye on possible missile and bomber take-off points than about gathering information on bomber targets in the U.S.? If so, the U.S. delegation in London was prepared to negotiate seriously about geographical limits.

What were the Russians up to? In a series of blustering notes, they had just warned one NATO partner after another that they would make cemeteries of their countries in case of war. Their propaganda around the world was just as relentlessly condemnatory of the U.S. as ever, just as persistent in talking large and loosely about abolishing nuclear weapons. Only inside the Bath stone solemnity of London's Lancaster House were they talking with some precision on the subject. One possibility, though not probability, is that the Russians mean business. But there are other possibilities. They may be interested simply in testing out the subject, to see whether it has more advantages to them than disadvantages. Or finally, they may have no serious intentions at all about nuclear disarmament but only seek profit from negotiating with the Western powers as one more way of regaining the social acceptability before the world that they lost in Budapest.

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