Infernal Circle
By transferring the emphasis of the Geneva discussions to the word 'verification' from that of `inspection' Lord Home may seem simply to have achieved a distinction without a differ- ence. The idea of verification does involve the
right of teams of inspectors to visit the scene • of any explosion detected by seismographs and,
therefore, comes under Mr. Gromyko's ban as, potential espionage within the territory of the Soviet Union. However, the Foreign Secretary,' combined this insistence on the principle of veri- fication with flexibility about the way in which. tt should be carried out. In particular, he took up Mr. Krishna Menon's suggestion that teams from the 'uncommitted' countries might be able to per- form this function, and it will not be easy for the Russians to refuse this offer on the grounds that such teams would be composed of Western spies. Here there might be grounds for agreement or, at any rate, for a striking demonstration to neutral countries of Soviet unreasonableness.
In all of this the British attitude towards testing is a little in advance of that taken up by,. the US. Mr. Dean Rusk has his difficulties with. Congress, and American military opinion would certainly be unwilling to sacrifice the coming, series of tests for the sake of apparent agreement at Geneva. In fact, there would be nothing to pre-, vent a ban on atmospheric tests which arc the.. only ones to create fallout, and could be val.,. lied from outside the Soviet Union, but Western,. willingness to accept such an arrangement has • been considerably modified by Mr. Khrushchev's- disregard of the testing moratorium last autumn. Now there is the fear that Russia would use a • Western cessation of testing to prepare further experiments and then cynically break its word in order to put itself well ahead in the nuclear race. Such fears show to what extent even such a rela- tively simple measure of disarmament as a ban, on nuclear testing depends on confidence. Until
such confidence exists between the great powers,, all plans for disarmament will be bedevilled by, the secret calculations of general staffs, which not, statesman can entirely disregard. But, as the' nuclear potential grows, the risks involved both in not reaching and in reaching agreement be- come greater, and it is hard to say which are the more formidable.
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