BALANCE OF TERROR

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29772, 15 March 1962, Page 8

BALANCE OF TERROR

Prospects For

1960 s

(NJZ. Press Assn. —Copyright) MELBOURNE. March 13.

The present arms race between America and Russia did not mean that war was inevitable, British defence and disarmament authority, Mr Alaistir Buchan said tonight. “The mere technical complexity of the strategic balances of power induces great caution on the leaders of both sides," he said.

“But what it does mean is that if this curious technological arms race continues throughout the sixties with the present amount of resources behind it, it will have produced a world so complex and so dangerous that organised international relations, even of the acrimonious kind to which we have become accustomed, might be nearly impossible to conduct," he said. Mr Buchan, who Is director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, was giving a Dayson memorial lecture on “The Balance of Terror." He said that general disarmament was too distant an object to solve the urgent problem which confronted the world. But there was still need to stabilise the level of major weapons. And there were signs that Russia, caught between rising Chinese hostility and growing American strategic capability, was having second thoughts on arms control.