Canberra, 16 June 1965
2980. Confidential
Disarmament
Telegram 2901 to you from Washington states that Rusk will provide the Prime Minister with a list of countries which, while pressing strongly for disarmament, were continually seeking themselves to purchase arms abroad.2
- The following comment is offered without knowing the background of Rusk’s offer and hence which of several possible arguments the figures are intended to demonstrate.
- The fact that a country is simultaneously pressing for disarmament and seeking arms is not by itself evidence of hypocrisy or double standard. A government might genuinely want world disarmament and at the same time realize that it cannot itself become disarmed unless there is a world disarmament system with adequate measures for inspection enforcement and control.
- See my talk with R.K. Nehru (formerly Secretary-General of Indian Ministry for External Affairs) on 26th March, 1964 (copy dated 31st March was sent to External Affairs Officer London from New Delhi).3 In para. 14 Nehru and I discussed the problems of countries like Australia and India which in the past had kept their defence expenditure to a minimum and had threatened no-one, but which were now obliged to rearm and which, therefore, could not accept disarmament proposals calling for a uniform percentage cut in defence expenditure as assessed at some unacceptable date.
[NAA: A1209, 1965/6117]
- 1 Not published.
- 2 The list was conveyed to Prime Minister Menzies on behalf of Secretary of State Rusk in a letter from Jack W. Lydman, US Chargé d’Affaires ad interim (on file NAA: A1209, 1965/6117).
- 3 Not published.