Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part V. B. 3. a.djvu/243

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011

 

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the United States must seek to convince them of its desire to reach such settlements. But, in doing so, we must not allow the possibility of such settlements to delay or reduce efforts to develop and maintain adequate free world strength, and thus enable the Soviets to increase their relative strength.

b. It must be recognized, however, that the prospects for acceptable negotiated settlements are not encouraging. There is no evidence that the Soviet leadership is prepared to modify its basic attitudes and accept any permanent settlement with the United States, although it may be prepared for a modus vivendi on certain issues. Atomic and other major weapons can be controlled only by adequate and enforceable safeguards which would involve some form of international inspection and supervision. Acceptance of such serious restrictions by either side would be extremely difficult under existing conditions of suspicion and distrust. The chances for such disarmament would perhaps be improved by agreements on other conflicts either beforehand or at the same time, or by possible realization by the Soviets, in time, that armament limitation will serve their own interests and security.

c. The United States should promptly determine what it would accept as an adequate system of armament control which would effectively remove or reduce the Soviet atomic and military threat, and on what basis the United States would be prepared to negotiate to obtain it.

Present State of the Coalition^[1]

15. a. The effort of the United States, especially since 1950, to build up the strength, cohesion and common determination of the free world has succeeded in increasing its relative strength and may well have prevented overt military aggression since Korea.

 

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1. The term "coalition" refers to those states which are parties to the network of security treaties and regional alliances of which the United States is a member (NATO, OAS, ANZUS, Japan, etc), or are otherwise actively associated in the defense of the free world.