A Bang in Asia

(See Cover)

Moscow's millions knew something was afoot even as they awoke and dressed for work one morning last week. The radio was droning out the full text of a long government communique. First came the strident buildup: "The United States and its allies are fanning up the arms race . . . preparing a new world holocaust while the Soviet government strives for peace. The Soviet Union considers it its duty to take all necessary measures...'' Slowly, as the high-charge prose unwound, the reason for all the excitement began to dawn on the Muscovites: the Kremlin had decided to start testing its nuclear weapons again. Just 49 hours later, a brilliant flash lit the bleak plains of Central Asia, and a mighty bang echoed for miles.

Moscow's bang sent shudders down millions of spines. For months Nikita Khrushchev had vowed not to resume unilateral nuclear testing, paying lip service to scientists and humanitarians who feared pollution of the earth's atmosphere, assuring the nervous neutrals that only the warmongering West wanted to resume testing, feigning loyalty to the long, tedious test-ban negotiations in Geneva, where the painful quest for the first step toward effective world arms control droned on.

Last week, with callous contempt for the opinion of the neutralists he had assiduously wooed, Khrushchev tossed aside the mask of the smiling conciliator and spoke in the bullying accents of raw power.

Heavy Heart. In the characteristic doublespeak of totalitarianism, Khrushchev blamed the tension that he himself had cranked up. "The Soviet government has been compelled to take this step under the pressure of the policy of leading NATO powers," insisted the Russian statement. "This aggressive bloc leaves the Soviet Union no other choice."

Chief culprits, according to the Russians, were France and its Sahara atomic-bomb blasts (four scrawny shots, two of which were near fizzles), as well as "Adenauer and the forces that pursue a course of turning West Germany into a militarist state, armed to the teeth."

With hypocritical unction, Moscow added, "it was with a heavy heart that the Soviet government has decided to carry out nuclear tests,7'" for it knew that any such experiments "instill alarm in people, make their hearts ache." But "every effort is being taken to minimize" the harmful effects of fallout on living organisms.

A few sentences later, Moscow showed that it was more interested in terrorizing the world's citizens than in preserving their health. Bluntly, the government declared that Russian scientists were working on "superpowerful" bombs in the 100-megaton range (the equivalent of 100 million tons of TNT), made to fit rockets "similar to those used by Major Y. A. Gagarin and Major G. S. Titov for their unrivaled cosmic flights." In case somebody missed the point, Russia's army newspaper Red Star explained that nuclear weapons of such power could wipe out anyone anywhere: "No super-deep shelter can save them from an all-shattering blow from this weapon."

On the Curbstone. Across the world, the reaction was violent--reflected in even a partial listing of New York Times headlines: NETHERLANDS DISMAYED, NORWEGIANS UPSET, SOVIET PLAN ALARMS ITALY, DANISH WORKERS PROTEST, ISRAELIS CONDEMN MOSCOW TEST PLAN. Even the professional ban-the-bomb groups, whom the Communists have busily encouraged and who normally save their ire for the U.S., were up in arms against Russia. In Tokyo, the Institute Against Nuclear War fired off an angry cable to Khrushchev; in London, Bertrand Russell's atom-bomb "Committee for 100" organized a sit-down protest strike on the curbstone near the Soviet embassy, made plans for a mass demonstration over the weekend.

Many Africans and Asians were plainly in a state of shock. Typical was Lawrence Borha, secretary-general of Nigeria's Trade Union Congress. Said Borha: "Russia professed solidarity with us when we were campaigning against French atomic tests in the Sahara. But what of her decision to resume her own tests? It makes nonsense of her claim to be working for world peace."

Voice of the Non-Bloc. At the United Nations in Manhattan, Soviet Delegate Platon Morozov spent four hours in the lobbies buttonholing fellow delegates in search of support. Several spoke frankly when he sauntered up. "This is shocking news," said one Arab neutralist. "Very, very, very grave," added another.

Moscow's announcement had an especially brutal impact in Belgrade, where neutralists from 24 nations had gathered to contemplate the problems of the non-bloc. Until Moscow made its announcement, they had hoped to catch the ear of the world with fiery anticolonial speeches, were all set to denounce nuclear tests.

Although stunned, one neutralist speaker after another bravely kept the fight going against "colonialism" and "imperialism." But even the most cautious fence walkers had some sharp words for Moscow (see below).

Plainly, Nikita Khrushchev had anticipated the criticism, decided that for his purposes fear was better than love, and did not care who knew it.

Poor Omen. Fact was, for the leaders of many small nations far out on the fringes of world power, the issues involved in nuclear testing were not easy to comprehend; few were familiar with the long, tortured history of efforts toward a controlled and inspected nuclear test ban. It all began as a concession, on both sides, to world alarm over the increasing contamination of the earth's atmosphere by atomic explosions. On Oct. 31, 1958, a group of U.S. and British diplomats gathered with the Russians around an oblong table in Geneva's Palais des Nations. The West had stopped its testing when the talks began, but the Soviets cynically touched off two more nuclear blasts in the very first week, hardly a favorable omen for the success of the conference.

But for many months, the West believed that the Russians sincerely wanted a worldwide test-ban agreement. Perhaps they did. They were aware, after all, that nuclear fallout--even from their own weapons--could kill Communists as well as nonCommunists. Moscow also seemed as sensitive as the West to the deep opposition among the Afro-Asian neutrals to further test explosions. The Russians also seemed to view the test ban as a device to close the membership of the "nuclear club.'' At the Geneva conference, Russian delegates hinted privately that they had no desire to see nuclear bombs in the hands of the Communist Chinese.

Squawks from Scratchy. But progress was slow and the sessions dreary in the Palais' Birch-paneled Room VIII. From the start, the U.S. and Britain demanded a careful system of inspection and control to prevent any cheating after a test ban went into effect. With monotonous regularity, Moscow's delegate, craggy, high-domed Semyon ("Scratchy") Tsarapkin said nyet, demanding an immediate test ban and leaving the inspection to be discussed later. The talks got hideously complicated with endless debate on technical details. At one stage, the West, discovering to its dismay that underground tests could be concealed from seismographs by exploding the bombs in caves, reversed itself and refused to include small subterranean explosions in the treaty until better detection systems were developed.

But after months of talk, the conferees finally hammered out agreement on 17 clauses, got down to the bedrock details of inspection and control, e.g., how many foreign inspection teams could be stationed on Russian soil, how freely could they move in their investigations? The West demanded 20 inspections a year to check on suspicious earth movements, but Russia insisted three were enough. "You cannot sneak spies into our bedroom,'' cried Nikita Khrushchev. In one compromise after another, the U.S. agreed to 17, then twelve, in hope of reaching agreement. The U.S. even consented to let Soviet scientists examine early, Hiroshima-type U.S. bombs in one projected plan for joint scientific research. In any case, Moscow's delegate needed no treaty at all if Moscow could prevent Western testing simply by staying at the conference table, for both the U.S. and Britain had agreed to a year's moratorium on tests and clearly were willing to continue the moratorium as long as there was a chance of agreement.*

Don't Peek. New President John F. Kennedy talked hopefully of the test-ban talks as one area where "a new initiative" might actually achieve results and provide a first step toward real disarmament.

The hope was short-lived. When Kennedy's new delegate, ruddy, patient Arthur H. Dean, showed up at Geneva with a new set of concessions, Scratchy Tsarapkin bluntly shot them down before Dean had even had a chance to present them formally. Calling a press conference, Tsarapkin damned Kennedy's concessions as "unrealistic, impractical, and not conducive to agreement." Then he announced that Russia would no longer agree to a single neutral administrator to supervise inspections, demanded instead the now famous "troika"--or three-man--control over all aspects of a test ban. This would give the Communists a veto any time the Western member at a lonely inspection post deep in Russia decided a suspicious cloud of dust or a distant rumble needed checking out as a possible illicit nuclear explosion.

Troika was clearly unacceptable. But Kennedy was still determined to show the world that the U.S. was willing to talk at Geneva as long as there was anything to talk about, despite the growing clamor from U.S. generals and scientists who feared that the substantial nuclear lead the U.S. enjoyed over Russia in October 1958 might now be greatly reduced unless testing was resumed. Back to Geneva went Arthur H. Dean with a new set of compromise proposals. He presented them one day last week at the 337th weary session in Room VIII of the Palais. Scratchy showed no signs of interest, for he was just back from an informative weekend in Moscow. He knew that even as Dean spoke preparations had begun for the Russian nuclear explosion that would not only rip a large hole out of Central Asia, but blast the Geneva talks into oblivion as well.

A Breakthrough? Why did Khrushchev do it? All the evidence now indicates that the Kremlin's boss decided at least six months ago against the whole idea of joining a test-ban treaty. In all probability, Khrushchev has been under heavy pressure from his own generals who demand an armory of refined, small nuclear weapons to match the superior variety of tactical weapons already developed by the U.S. for such tactical missiles as Minuteman and Polaris.

Conceivably, the Russians may have made a major technological breakthrough on some new nuclear device that is so important that testing outweighs all other factors; some American scientists feel that with luck, hard work and unlimited testing, the U.S. could develop within five years the first crude version of a neutron bomb, which would kill by neutrons but leave buildings more or less unharmed. Khrushchev recently warned U.S.'s John McCloy, President Kennedy's adviser on disarmament, that the Russians were working on the neutron-bomb idea themselves.

What kind of a bomb did Moscow explode last week? There were few clues. In fact, Moscow was not even admitting that an explosion had occurred. It was Washington that detected the test, on its secret worldwide network of nuclear observation posts. From the White House came a terse statement of the bare known facts:

"The Soviet Union today has conducted a nuclear test in the general area of Semipalatinsk in Central Asia. The device tested had a substantial yield in the intermediate range. It was detonated in the atmosphere."

Seeking a Scare. This meant a device of at least 100 kilotons (five times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), exploded neither underground nor in outer space, but probably mounted on a testing tower or dropped from a plane. It may have been a new, compact warhead for an ICBM missile like the U.S.

Minuteman. Or, U.S. scientists guessed, perhaps it was the "small" trigger device for the huge 100-megaton monster that Khrushchev boasted was being designed.

As a weapon, the 100-megaton bomb would be sheer waste, for there is no major city in the world that cannot be wiped out with one well-directed 20-meg-aton bomb. But for scare value, such a bomb has its own impact. And Nikita Khrushchev was seeking scare value with a vengeance last week. Even as he rattled his H-bombs, the Red army was announcing extended tours of service for Russian soldiers due to be discharged in coming months.

Whatever the military reasons for Khrushchev's decision, its timing and tone were clearly designed with the primary and primitive object of creating an aura of terror. The immediate object was 1) to divide and cow the Western powers themselves in the approach to the negotiation table, 2) to frighten the neutrals into clamoring for Western concessions in Berlin at any cost. In fact, he tacitly admitted as much last week to two visiting left-wing British politicians. He told them frankly that he had resumed nuclear testing to shock the West into negotiations on Germany. And, having just torpedoed the Geneva conference, Nikita added ludicrously that his purpose was also to force the West into disarmament talks.

Proposing Paralysis. The West's leaders were unintimidated. In response to

Khrushchev's talk of a loo-megaton bomb, West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer said grimly: "We know that the Soviet Union's stocks of nuclear weapons already suffice to destroy our whole country, to destroy all Europe . . . This is the way the world is, and I ask you all to see the world as it is. The Soviet Union also knows full well that if it should in fact come to nuclear war, Soviet Russia will also be eradicated.

Khrushchev intended to paralyze the German people with this announcement, but we will not allow ourselves to be paralyzed." But many a common citizen was less determined, e.g., in a recent poll, the French Institute of Public Opinion found that 90% of French voters did not think the Allies should risk a world war to defend the present status of West Berlin.

The kind of thing Khrushchev could hope for from the neutrals, once they got over their initial indignation, was already manifesting itself in Belgrade, where a chorus of neutralist voices urged a summit meeting between Russia and the West to negotiate their differences--with the implied notion that the West should negotiate something, anything, that would appease the terrible wrath of Nikita Khrushchev.

There is little inherent danger in renewed testing itself, particularly if the tests are kept underground. The risk of atomic war still depends, as it has for years, on the simple decision of the man in the Kremlin. What is alarming is Khrushchev's new willingness to flirt with terror. Conceivably, he could misjudge the resolution of the West, and bring on himself and the world a war he never expected. In the weeks and years ahead, the West must steel itself for another kind of test--a test of nerve.

-They did. Since the day the conference started, nearly three years ago, neither the U.S. nor Britain has exploded a bomb.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.