The United States and Nuclear Proliferation

As was noted in the Introduction, the fear that the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons would spread dogged American policy-makers from the day the United States successfully tested the first atomic bomb. They quickly recognised that prevention of the dissemination of that knowledge was likely to prove impossible because of the technological overlap between the requirements of peaceful and military nuclear programmes.

In the face of this dilemma the administration of President Harry Truman determined that, rather than make a futile attempt to keep the nuclear secret to itself, the United States should seek to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons by offering the world a deal. The United States would share its knowledge and assist other states in the production of peaceful nuclear energy in return for their acceptance of international controls designed to prevent them from developing weapons. That was the essence of the proposal that the American representative, Bernard Baruch, put to the recently established United Nations Atomic Energy Committee (UNAEC) in June 1946. Baruch proposed the creation of a United Nations (UN) Atomic Development Authority (ADA) which would control all nuclear installations with the ability to produce nuclear weapons-related material and have the right to inspect all other nuclear facilities. Once the authority was operating successfully the USA would then destroy its own nuclear weapons. In order to ensure effective punishment of any state which violated the system he further proposed that on nuclear matters no state should have a veto in the UN Security Council. In the context of the emerging Cold War, however, the Soviet Union was not prepared to surrender its veto and open its facilities to international inspection in return for a promise that the United States would, at some point in the future, surrender its nuclear monopoly. Moscow therefore counter-proposed that the USA destroy its nuclear weapons before negotiations on a suitable system of international control began. With neither side willing to compromise, the first American attempt to control nuclear proliferation failed.

For the remainder of the Truman administration Washington reverted to a policy of nuclear secrecy. By 1953, however, with both the Soviets and the British having developed atom bombs, it was clear that the fears underpinning the Baruch Plan had been justified.