198 



the treaty may have enlarged public understanding of these issues, 

 and helped to form a national consensus on the important and difficult 

 task of arms control in a nuclear-armed world. 



The demonstration that formal agreement on an arms control issue 

 is possible between the United States and the Soviet Union may per- 

 haps have communicated to the people in both countries a recognition 

 that conflict and cooperation are not necessarily incompatible, and that 

 additional elements of cooperative behavior may be introduced for 

 mutual benefit. 



Assessment of the frocess of approving a weapons treaty 



The process of gaining domestic acceptance of an accommodation 

 with the Soviet Union on matters of arms control is enormously com- 

 plex, difficult, intellectually exhausting and highly interdisciplinary. 

 It is a process that if repeated too frequently would become an in- 

 tolerable burden on legislators and officials of the Government. But 

 despite the myriad of obstacles and burdens in the process, the outcome 

 also demonstrated that the process was feasible. 



An important result of the treaty's acceptance by the Senate in 

 accordance with the constitutional processes of the United States, is 

 that for the first time since the development of atomic weapons an 

 arms control issue had passed through not only the previously im- 



Eassable hurdle of international negotiation with the Soviet Union, 

 ut also the previously untested gantlet of domestic acceptance. As a 

 result of the latter accomplishment, many important criteria of future 

 arms agreements between the United States and nuclear states in an 

 adversary relationship were identified and established. Precedents 

 and procedures have also been established for the process which future 

 arms agreements must follow, once they have surmounted the hurdle of 

 international negotiation. 



The process of advice and consent in the matter of a treaty involv- 

 ing control of nuclear weaponry was intellectually demanding. Many 

 different academic disciplines were called upon to present testimony 

 regarding them. Doctors, biologists, geneticists, and radiologists were 

 called on for opinions concerning the dangers of radioactive fallout. 

 Professional military people, physicists, nuclear physicists, engineers, 

 and mathematicians were asked to give their views on present and 

 future relationships regarding warheads, delivery vehicles, and com- 

 munications systems. International lawyers and diplomatists were 

 invited to express judgments on questions of historical obligations 

 under treaties or concerning diplomatic recognition. The scope of 

 the treaty extended to electro-magnetic phenomena, seismology, blast 

 mechanics, military intelligence, security classification, systems engi- 

 neering, sensors, ordnance reliability, military intelligence, and prob- 

 ably others. By going into all these matters, the hearings provided an 

 exhaustively educational experience for those who sat in judgment. 

 It is understandable that in the face of an issue of such ranging 

 scope, individual Senators searched for simplifications. Was the treaty 

 beneficial to the United St^^es or was it not? Would it or would it not 

 advance the cause of peace? Was it or was it not true that Communists 

 imderstood only the language of force? Was a treaty with a Com- 

 munist adversary meaningful or not? Was public opinion for or against 

 the treaty? Did or did not, the preservation of U.S. world leadership 

 require acceptance of the treaty? As all Senators were aware, no 



