354 ChaPter^7
Russians and the French were furious and frightened, as the thought of a
revived and militaristic Germany brought back memories of 1914 and 1940-- Still, the Americans connected the rearmament proposal to significant
increases in U.S. military aid, and the Europeans went along, as they needed
American dollars for trade and investment. For the Russians, the U.S. military
buildup–the 1952 defense budget had soared to $60 billion–was threatening,
and German remilitarization was another Cold War defeat, as they now faced
a huge, armed and historically warmaking and recently Nazi country to their
West.
But cooperation between Moscow and Washington was also possible. In
1955, the two powers seemed to be seriously considering proposals for arms
control. In 1954, Eisenhower suggested disarmament talks, but Soviet leaders
continued to reject them because they believed that international inspection
of nuclear facilities, which was included in the plan, was just a pretext for
American spying [which to some degree was probably the case]. But the fol-
lowing May the Soviets put forth a disarmament plan of their own, calling for
the removal of all foreign military bases in Europe and all foreign military
forces from Germany, reductions in conventional ground forces, and a ban on
all nuclear weapons tests, to be supervised by the U.N. The west, however,
would never consent to the elimination of foreign bases and did not want the
U.N., which it controlled but where the Russians possessed a veto, to be judg-
ing violations of arms controls agreements. Realistically, the Soviet proposals
were more comprehensive and genuine than the U.S. offers.
In any event, the Soviet proposal was overshadowed just months later, in
July 1955, when the United States, Russia, Britain and France met in Geneva
to discuss European affairs. Eisenhower there unveiled his Open Skies plan, an
offer for the Americans and Russians to exchange maps and submit military
installations to surveillance. To Eisenhower, inspecting and controlling, not
abolishing, nuclear arms would serve American interests better because of the
huge U.S. advantage in weaponry. Nikita Khrushchev, who had taken control
after Stalin’s death, however called Open Skies “a very transparent espionage
device” which “you could hardly expect us to take... seriously.” He said it
should be “thrown in the garbage” because its only purpose was to avoid
“concrete propositions about the reduction of arms.” Khrushchev’s complaint
made sense from the Russian point-of-view, for his country was far behind in
weapons development, so disarmament was the only solution to the escalating