The Immediate Steps Toward Disarmament

Abstract

Last month the Bulletin published an article by the Soviet scientist Dr. Yuri Sheinin, which posed the thesis that general and complete disarmament is a “yes” or “no” proposition, that it is—in contrast to arms control—”not a modification of a trivial concept of military strategy, aims not at adjusting disarmament to the needs of the military establishment, but at destroying this establishment once and for all.” This month Dr. Franklin Long, until recently chief scientist of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, presents the view, widely held in America, that complete and general disarmament is a desirable end goal, but that it may perhaps be best approached by means more modest and indirect than frontal assault. The cynic will possibly conclude that both the sophisticated and the simplistic views amount to a basic rejection of disarmament, but he would be only partially right. I think it was Bernard Shaw who said of Christianity that it might be all right but that it was hard to tell, si...