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regulation of armaments. The Security Council would have, in this connection, the assistance of the Military Staff Committee which will be described later. The reason for this provision is given in the opening lines. [Reading:]

In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be responsible for formulating, with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee referred to in article 47, plans to be submitted to the Members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments.

The problem involves how much or how little armaments the nations should agree to maintain, and this should be related to the needs for maintaining international peace and security under the kind of system that is being established. It must also be related to the fact. that if we could get adequate armaments for the purpose of establishing and maintaining international peace and security, with less expenditure of human and economic resources rather than with more expenditure of such resources, that would be all to the good. But the whole question will be handled in the future and it will not be within the power of the Security Council to do more than propose plans for adoption or rejection by the governments concerned.

Senator VANDENBERG. That is a point I want to raise. It speaks of "plans to be submitted to the Members of the United Nations.' It means acceptance as well as submission?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. It means submitted for consideration and for approval or disapproval.

Senator VANDENBERG. That is what I say.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. It means submitted for approval or disapproval and not submitted for information.

Senator VANDENBERG. That is exactly what I said.

The CHAIRMAN. There is no compulsion whatever, no authority to impose disarmament unless the nations affected agree to it and sign a treaty to that effect?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. Exactly.

Senator LUCAS. What would be the situation if the United States submitted recommendations to the Security Council on the question of disarmament, and England did not?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. I should think that after the experience of the interwar period no responsible nation would disarm unilaterally. I should think that disarmament would be on the basis of a mutual agreement mutually concluded, an agreement which would involve all the important nations.

Senator LUCAS. In other words, the larger nations would have to have some sort of gentlemen's agreement in advance before they adopted the suggestion of the Security Council?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. Presumably, in the first place, the large nations would be represented in the Security Council. In a sense they would be making recommendations to themselves.

Senator LUCAS. Yes; but the Security Council has to make recommendations. This Government has to act upon it. The other countries have to do the same thing. I am thinking about an adverse decision of the Government on the recommendations of the Security Council.

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Senator VANDENBERG. Would it not inevitably be a multilateral treaty? It would have to be.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. I should think it would have to be a multilateral treaty.

Senator BARKLEY. That is the question I wanted to ask you, whether these plans which assume to be over-all plans formulated by the Council and submitted to Members of the United Nations, would be submitted for a general over-all agreement or rejection, or submitted to each separate Member of the United Nations for its individual action. I gather from your remark and that of Senator Vandenberg that it would be an over-all recommendation which would involve a multilateral agreement among all the United Nations or as many of them as would be willing to agree to that plan.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. I can say this, Senator, that in all the discussions of this paragraph-and there was considerable discussion of it at Dumbarton Oaks, and a discussion again in San Francisco-the phrase "a system for the regulation of armaments" was always taken to mean that there would be a general arrangement rather than a series of unilateral, independent actions.

Senator BARKLEY. Was there any discussion as to the required number of Members of the United Nations who would have to agree to this system?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. No; there was no discussion of that. All the details were left to the future, for the simple reason that nothing could happen until such an agreement could be reached, and also the discussion of some of the details involved in such an agreement would have been an extremely difficult and complicated matter. There is no commitment here. There is only the duty of the Security Council to prepare plans.

Senator BARKLEY. Assuming that the Security Council should formulate the plans creating a system of regulation, and submit them to all the Members of the United Nations, and assuming that onehalf of them agreed to that submission and the other half did not, what would happen?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That would have to be provided in the arrangement itself.

Senator BARKLEY. Do you think the Security Council would have the authority to determine whether or not a majority of two-thirds or any other proportion of the United Nations should have the right to determine multilaterally whether the system recommended by the Security Council should go into effect?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. I should say that since this is a multilateral agreement among the states, the states themselves would have to determine the conditions under which the instrument would go into effect and the states for which it would go into effect, whether or not it would go into effect for everybody or only for those who wanted it.

Senator VANDENBERG. If this arrangement when it is formulated is not satisfactory to us, it is our own fault, because we got a veto on it. The CHAIRMAN. More than that, though, it was understood in all the discussions-and I participated in them; I was on this committee that the authority of the Council extends only to the formulation of such plans. It is not a function of the Security Council to do more than to formulate plans and to submit them to the governments affected. If we do not want to accept them, all we have to

do is to say no, and they are not effective at all. It is like the Disarmament Conference which was held in 1922. That was a general conference of the powers at which plans were formulated and submitted to the states for final approval. We held another one in Geneva under the League, but the participating nations did not agree and relatively little was done. Here each nation had the option of accepting the results or not, and if they did not accept them, they did not apply.

Senator BARKLEY. In other words, if six of the United Nations accepted this and undertook to abide by it, and none of the others did, it would not apply to any of those that did not accept it, and it might not be very multilateral.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. Unless, Senator, the nations themselves in concluding this agreement were to adopt some such statement as is provided in this Charter, or as is used in other cases, that when certain countries, either specified or simply by number, have ratified an arrangement, it would become effective as to all the signatories.

Senator BARKLEY. This is something to take effect after the required. number have ratified. They formulate a plan and submit it to all the nations?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is right.

Senator BARKLEY. Apparently they do not have any authority here to determine whether if two-thirds of the nations agree to this overall submission it should apply to all, or whether it is left to each state to determine for itself.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. The Council has no such authority.

Senator BARKLEY. It would be left to the individual desire of each state to determine whether or not it would accept the system submitted by the Council.

Mr. PASVOLSKÝ. That is right. And the procedure to be followed is deliberately left open. There may be a conference at which the proposals of the Security Council would be discussed, debated, and signed as a treaty. It may be a treaty negotiated by other means. But whatever it is, no action would be taken except on the basis of an arrangement made among the member states, action would not be taken by imposition of the Organization.

Senator BARKLEY. Of course, it was not contemplated that if any one state accepted this system and nobody else did, that one state would be bound by it and the rest would not. That would be an impossible situation.

Senator LUCAS. In other words, the five big nations would have to agree upon the plan, or it would not be effective as to any member of the five?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. The Security Council would have to have all five of the members participate, or it would not be a plan?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to point out that the obligations under this are not functions of the international organization, except to provide a plan and submit it. When that is done the Organization has no further authority. It is up to the states themselves by independent action with no reference to the Organization whatever.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is right; unless in the arrangement itselfThe CHAIRMAN. Well, if they drew up a new treaty and agreed among themselves that they would all cut down their armaments, when 5 out of 12 or 17 out of 20 agreed to it, that would be different; but that would depend on a new obligation, not this Charter. It would not have anything to do directly with this Charter at all. Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is exactly right.

The CHAIRMAN. It would depend upon an entirely new treaty which would have to be signed and ratified?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is right.

Senator HILL. I thought under section 1 of article 11 the General Assembly is given certain power with reference to principles governing the matter of armament and disarmament. Does that not indicate that there is no conflict between these two sections? This is just an additional step looking toward reaching disarmament and limitation of armament?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is right, Senator. That was written in specifically to make it possible for the General Assembly to debate the question of armaments.

Senator HILL. And then go on further and make recommendations? Mr. PASVOLSKY. Yes; as to the principles which are to be adopted. The recommendations as to the precise methods and the precise system of regulation would be made by the Security Council.

Senator HILL. In other words, the definite specific thing that should be done would be recommended by the Security Council? Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is right.

Senator MILLIKIN. If I may ask a question here. I notice article 11 stresses the word "recommendation" whereas article 26 we are discussing refers to "plans." I would like to ask whether there was an official interpretation of article 26 at San Francisco?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. As regards what?

Senator MILLIKIN. Was there an official interpretation of article 26? Any part of it? Was there anything at San Francisco that we can incorporate in the record here that will help us on this question?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. Could we take a little time to look that up?
Senator MILLIKIN. Yes.

Mr. VANDENBERG. I don't think you need any time to look that up. Senator MILLIKIN. May I ask whether the subject was intensively debated at San Francisco?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. No; this particular paragraph was not debated extensively at San Francisco. It was taken as it stood from the Dumbarton Oaks proposals.

Senator VANDENBERG. I do not see how anything could be clearer than article 26 and its related implications. There can be no plan submitted for disarmament without the approval of the Security Council, to begin with, which requires the vote of the permanent Members, which includes us. Therefore, if there is any plan submitted which is in any degree hazardous to us, it is our fault.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. Our concurring vote is required for the submission of the plan by the Security Council.

Senator VANDENBERG. And when it is submitted, it is up to the states themselves?

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is right.

Senator VANDENBERG. And I could not imagine the United States agreeing to anything except a multilateral engagement, because unilateral disarmament is suicide.

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The CHAIRMAN. Let me supplement that by saying that I was on this committee, and while we may not have discussed it publicly very much, I maintained then as I maintain now, our absolute right to refuse to sign a treaty unless we wanted to. It was perfectly clearly understood by everybody that when these recommendations were submitted, it was up to each individual government as to whether it would accept them or not. If the individual state did not accept them, it could not be bound in any way whatever.

Senator To me this means that there is an attempt to reach a certain place. The Security Council will try to evolve a plan. We have a certain objective we want to reach. When that plan is evolved, we have the right to accept it or refuse it, and we are not bound in any other way.

The CHAIRMAN. That is my conception of it and that was the conception generally held at San Francisco during all of the discussion. Mr. PASVOLSKY. That is my conception of it.

The CHAIRMAN. We have a veto on the plan itself before it is ever accepted.

Now, go ahead, Doctor.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. Article 27 covers voting procedures in the Security Council. It provides that each member in the Security Council shall have one vote, that the decisions of the Security Council would be divided into two categories-decisions on procedural matters which would be made by an affirmative vote of any seven members, and other decisions which would be made also by an affirmative vote of seven members, but among those seven members would have to be included the permanent members of the Council. The exception would be that in any decisions of the Council under chapter VI, which deals with the pacific settlement of disputes, and under paragraph 3, of article 52, which relates to pacific settlement under regional arrangements, the party to the dispute shall abstain from voting irrespective of whether or not the party is a permanent or nonpermanent member of the Council.

The vote here, you will note, is not by a majority but is by a specific number of members.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to interject right there if I may. I apprehend that there may be some question about the proviso in which a member of the Security Council, if it is a party to the dispute, does not vote, and the other clause that there shall be five permanent members vote before positive action can be taken. The construction of that paragraph was that this proviso is an exception to the general rule, and where a party to the dispute is a member of the Security Council, that there are then only four permanent members of the Security Council, excluding the party to the dispute, that vote; in that case the votes of any other three nonpermanent members can be counted to make up the number of seven. In all other cases, however, the votes of five permanent members are required.

I wanted to make that clear before we got involved in a lot of questions on the subject.

Mr. PASVOLSKY. That means that all actions are by a vote of seven -members.

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