Following for the Minister from Robertson, Begins: During these last weeks in which for the first time I have had something to do with disarmament problems, I hate to feel very strongly that even if east and west could conceivably agree on "principles of disarmament" on which our positions are so widely separated, we would still be confronted with an almost impossible task in attempting to negotiate agreement in a disarmament convention on the detailed powers, functions and methods of operation of "an adequate system of international control". Starting as we must from positions of mutual distrust, we would be compelled to insist on terms that one could not reasonably expect to be accepted by the other side. Politically the pressure to try and plug every hypothetical loophole would be very hard to resist. In the process we should probably find ourselves constructing for safety's sake a totalitarian system of control which in the first place would have little chance of acceptance, and in the second place, if by some political miracle it were accepted, would probably be found to be unendurably cumbrous, complicated and unnecessarily interfering.

2. At the same time from the very nature of the negotiation, any agreement ultimately reached would be impossible to amend because the establishment and the institution of the control system would be linked with what one would like to believe were irreversible decisions about the abolition of nuclear weapons, etc.

3. Against this background I wondered whether there might be something to be said for trying to tackle the problem of inventing a suitable and effective technique of international control from another starting point; i.e., one might begin within a group of countries who prima facie trust each other. The technical problems would still be difficult, but in such a context they could be examined objectively and with some hope of solution. Specific types and methods of control could be developed empirically, amended, improved, or abandoned in the light of practical experience of whether or not they were actually serving the purposes for which they were instituted. Such a proving ground might be provided by NATO. In principle at least the concept of international inspection of the forces, equipment training methods, etc., of allies has been introduced into NATO thinking. It is true that its purpose is to improve military efficiency, but it might be susceptible of a double-edged development inside the alliance. Our principal preoccupation in recent years has been to see that our allies and ourselves reach the military marks we have set for ourselves inside the alliance. We may be moving into a phase in which it will become important to make sure not only that those marks are met, but that they are not exceeded or bypassed (this, I suppose was one of the central problems which E.D.C. was meant to solve).

4. I had begun by thinking about the political and technical problems of establishing an adequate system for disarmament, and wondering whether we could attempt to work out within NATO a prototype control which later might become capable of a wider or a universal application. It now seems to me, with the failure of our disarmament talks and with the rapid deterioration of the position in respect of E.D.C., that there may be certain immediate relevance in this line of thinking. The problem of combining rearmament with effective international control is bound to arise inside NATO if the EDC arrangements fall to the ground, and the only alternative put forward is the admission of Germany to NATO. It may be that events have already overtaken us and it may be too late for what I would have regarded as the most desirable line of advance. Politically the best course might be for the countries of NATO, as at present constituted, to accept inter se and formally an additional obligation to work out and apply as between themselves a NATO system of control of armaments - types, quantities, numbers, etc. - incorporating some at least of the E.D.C. controls on arms production enforced by an international NATO inspection team. Such a development might with luck be found to have within it the beginnings of a world-wide system of armament control.

5. In the meantime it might provide a non-discriminatory framework through which Germany could be received into NATO without setting up grave additional strains inside the alliance. Leaping further ahead one might wonder whether the Soviet Union would have so lightheartedly talked about joining NATO if such an obligation had been one of its component parts. Alternatively it might be a little awkward for them to withdraw their application for membership because membership involved acceptance of an international obligation to accept whatever was found to be the requirements of an adequate international system for the inspection and control of armaments. Ends.