DISARMAMENT AGENCY TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1961 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, D.C. The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a.m., in room 4221, New Senate Office Building, Senator J. W. Fulbright (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Fulbright, Humphrey, Gore, Lausche, Symington, Aiken, Capehart, and Carlson. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. The Committee on Foreign Relations today is continuing public hearings on S. 2180, a bill to establish a U.S. Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security. Yesterday the committee heard Secretary of State Rusk; the Adviser to the President on Disarmament matters, Mr. John J. McCloy; Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lemnitzer; former Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett; and Atomic Energy Commissioner Haworth. This morning the committee is privileged to have before it its former colleague and, more recently, our U.S. representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. Then we will hear Gen. Alfred M. Gruenther, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and now President of the American National Red Cross; and former Secretary of Defense Mr. Thomas S. Gates. Mr. Ambassador, will you proceed, please, sir. We are very happy to have you here. You look very familiar in these surroundings. STATEMENT OF HENRY CABOT LODGE, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS Mr. LODGE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to have the chance to testify here and, as you can imagine, for many reasons, it is a great pleasure. PAST EXPERIENCE IN HANDLING DISARMAMENT MATTERS Perhaps I can be of greatest use by contributing whatever I can from the time when I was responsible for the handling of the disarmament question in the United Nations Disarmament Commission, and in the United Nations General Assembly for almost 8 years, from January 1953 to September 1960. In fact, I actually handled the question myself personally in all but a very few meetings. I was also the U.S. representative at the five power disarmament meetings in London in 1955, held between the British, the French, the Soviet Union, the United States and Canada. Relevant also to this specific experience on the disarmament question is the general fact that for all these years I sat across the table or across the hall from the representatives of the Soviet Union on a very wide range of other questions. NEED FOR BOLD STROKES IN FIELD OF FOREIGN RELATIONS From this experience has come the conviction that the executive branch of the U.S. Government is not organized as it should be for big, bold strokes in the field of foreign relations. We have often done extremely well, but it is often more in spite of the system than because of it. All too frequently, under the present system, it takes too much time to get a U.S. position on any subject involving more than one department, and on most of the big questions they involve the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Atomic Energy Commission, and there are many others which involve the Treasury. Then, when a U.S. position is finally created, it takes too much time to get a unified position as between ourselves and our allies. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, can move fast, with all of the advantages of secrecy and surprise. For these reasons I have favored, and I still favor, various measures to make possible quick action within the executive branch of the U.S. Government. PROPOSAL FOR FREE WORLD HIGH COMMAND On the interallied front, I favor penetrating and sympathetic study of the creation of a sort of free world high command which could meet the Communist diplomatic offensive at least on equal terms, somewhat as the Allied Joint Chiefs concerned themselves with military operations during World War II. For we should be under no illusions whatever that while the Soviet Union is interested in Cuba and in Laos and in other places, it is, above all, interested in destroying the Western alliance; and much of what it attempts in Berlin or elsewhere is based on this belief in our disunity, in the cumbersomeness of our system, and in our inability to move quickly. To this belief they add a strong determination to make us still more disunited and cumbersome. REASONS FOR SUPPORT OF PENDING BILL I, therefore, welcome the pending bill creating a U.S. Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security, and for these reasons: 1. I welcome it because it is further proof of a serious approach to the disarmament question. It reinforces and enhances and very much expands the ideas embodied in the U.S. Disarmament Administration established by the State Department on September 9, 1960. It provides more personnel than have ever, up to now, been devoted to this subject; and, as a matter of fact, for the first time the Agency would make possible the attraction of senior men of rich experience |