By the time disarmament negotiations are resumed this week at Geneva, their success of failure will already have been largely determined. Fifteen years of talks have shown little else but the fact that what is said across the tables is trivial compared to what goes on in the front offices and on the backstairs of government buildings in Washington and Moscow. The conferences are juggled back and forth between the hands of militarists, propaganda-minded diplomats, occasional wild-eyed idealists, and a few realistic advocates of arms control. If there are to be any results from this latest effort, then the balance must already have swung away from the positions that have dominated negotiations to date.

Immediately after World War II, the United States responded to world opinion with an offer to scrap its atom bombs, if the U.N. would maintain security by setting up an agency to direct all nuclear research and to confine it to peaceful purposes. It was a gesture of naive enthusiasm; state department and military officials doubted its feasibility, and had little interest in it except as a possibly useful piece of propaganda. The plan never had a chance; distrustful Russian military leaders certainly would not allow the U.S. to retain possession of the secrets of A-bomb production while stifling Soviet research through the mechanism of a West-dominated U.N.

The Russians could only counter with demands for nuclear disarmament without controls. Both sides soon realized that the negotiations were futile. But both kept up the pretence. As Harold Stassen has pointed out, the diplomats soon developed a standardized technique: either side would submit an extremely complex proposal that would prolong negotiations, but that they knew would be ultimately found unacceptable. Time was gained for military development at home, and the rejection of plans could be trumpeted abroad as a sign of the opponents' bad faith.

But as conditions changed during the early '50's, a possibility of breaking the stalemate began to emerge. With the detonation of an atom bomb in 1949, and of an H-bomb in 1954, Soviet military men began to feel secure of a position of relative strength that would allow the diplomats to start negotiating in earnest. The death of Stalin in 1953 reduced the influence of the army and the hard-core ideologues, and brought in a new generation of leaders who were more sensitive to the dangers and to the economic costs of the arms race.

As the potential striking power of both sides approached a cataclysmic level, American leaders became seriously interested in disarmament, and President Eisenhower announced early in his first term, "There is no longer any alternative to peace."

But secure agreement--total nuclear disarmament--was no longer possible. The small size of nuclear weapons made them easy to conceal; in view of the impossibility of detecting large scale violations, neither would trust the other, as each had already produced crippling quantities.

The new tone of the negotiations did produce agreement on the principles of a less ambitious plan: a ban on test explosions of nuclear devices. Since no nation would go to the expense of producing a new weapon if it could not test it, the ban would limit further innovation. If a strong international controls system could be set up, it could be extended throughout the world, and effectively prevent new nations from joining the "nuclear club." The Russians found this prospect particularly enticing in view of the differences that began to appear between them and Communist Chinese. The plan also fostered hopes of reducing tension and opening the way to further steps of controlled disarmament.

Although there has been substantial agreement in principle since this plan was introduced in 1955, action has bogged down in haggling over technicalities. Since five years should be ample time to iron out any number of minor disagreements, progress has quite obviously been blocked by internal political opposition. With the expansion of the armed forces, military leaders on both sides have taken on additional influence. Soviet officers balk at the idea of inspection within Russia, fearing a loss of their security advantage over the Americans, who publicize most of their military developments in the newspapers.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Admirals Radford of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Strauss of the AEC teamed up with John Foster Dulles to keep Eisenhower's plans mired in day-to-day trivialities. Dulles never expected results from negotiations, and thought of them simply as opportunities for propaganda. He continually undercut Harold Stassen's authority when Stassen showed signs of making progress in the London negotiations of 1957, forcing him to check and recheck with the department on the smallest developments. Stassen charged later that Dulles deliberately wrecked the conference.

Further evidence of hindering influences came to light in reports to the President of James R. Killian of M.I.T., who headed a group of scientists called into government service after the first Sputnik was launched in October, 1957. Killian charged that scientific research into methods of arms control had been carried out half-heartedly, and with a feeling that failure was a foregone conclusion.

Prospects now are as good as they have ever been. Soviet military men have been relaxing their opposition to inspection, since the possibilities of surveillance from satellites in the near future will virtually eliminate their security advantage. Despite the U-2 incident, Khruschchev gives hope that Russian policy is dominated by those elements that sincerely want to disarm. Kennedy promises strong American leadership in attacking the problem. The world will discover tomorrow whether he has had serious scientific work done on the technical problems, and whether he will allow his envoys to negotiate freely. If Kennedy is sincere, there is a good chance for an agreement that may open the way for further arms control measures. But if the usual stalling techniques reappear, the diplomats may very well go on talking for the next fifteen years.