The United States has just sustained a stunning defeat. Stunning not so much for what we yielded—the Western concession on bomb tests had been in the cards for some time—as for the ease with which the Soviets pried it loose. Let there be no doubt that they have pried it loose: whether or not Moscow accepts the Eisenhower-MacMillan “counter-offer,” the West has agreed to an unpoliced ban on underground nuclear tests. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is probably the ball game.
Let us, for a moment however, postpone predictions about the future and make sure we understand the past. What did the U.S. concede? And why?
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