#91 - The Baruch Plan

What this episode covers

* So here we are in 1946. * The Truman administration has decided on a “containment” policy. * But who is going to contain the containers? * According to the Novikov telegram, the Soviets felt like they had to contain the US. * And the U.S. felt like they had to contain the Soviets. * So the Americans were trying to figure out how they were going to to it, and how much they were willing to spend on it. * In terms of atomic weapons control, the United States Atomic Energy Commission developed a classified plan to achieve international control, which came to be known as the Acheson-Lilienthal report, and submitted it to Secretary of State Byrnes in January 1946. * It was named after Dean Acheson, at the time the Under Secretary of State - we’ve mentioned him briefly before, but he’s going to be a major character during the 1950s - and David E. Lilienthal, Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. * But it was written mostly by the committee’s chief scientific consultant, Robert Oppenheimer, * They recommended that all global fissile material be owned by an international agency to be called the Atomic Development Authority, which would release small amounts to individual nations for the development of peaceful uses of atomic energy. * But there was a twist. * The stockpiles and atomic production plants would be strategically distributed geographically. * Lots of different countries would have some inside their borders. * So everyone would know what each country had. * And the UN would have inspections and access. * If a nation bent on atomic war seized the international plants within its borders, and refused access and inspections, everyone would know immediately what was happening. * Other nations would have atomic plants within their own borders so that they would not be at a disadvantage. * If a nation did seize the Authority's installations that were located within its territory, it would still take at least a year or more to produce bombs. * So the plan would provide a huge measure of security against surprise attacks. * Not a bad plan. * The report also said that the United States would have to abandon its monopoly on atomic weapons, revealing what it knew to the Soviet Union, in exchange for a mutual agreement against the development of additional atomic bombs. * It made no mention of when the United States should destroy its nuclear arsenal, but it did acknowledge that doing so was a necessity. * The background to this report is the Conference of Foreign Ministers held in Moscow between December 16 and 26, 1945. * The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union agreed to create a United Nations commission to advise on the destruction of all existing atomic weapons and to work toward using atomic energy for peaceful purposes. * The resulting body, the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission - UNAEC - was created on January 24, 1946, with six permanent members (the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, China, and Canada) and six rotating members. * That same month, U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes created a special advisory committee headed by Acheson and Lilienthal, to compose a report that the U.S. Government would present to the UNAEC. * And of course, in that great American White House tradition, a great committee of serious and intelligent men was commission to spend many months of their time researching and writing a serious report about a very serious subject, so that, when it was delivered seriously to the President who commission the report, he could just go “nah fuck that” and throw it in the bin. * But By the time they delivered their report, Truman had decided “nope, fuck that, we’re keeping the bomb to ourselves" * But he couldn’t just come out and SAY that, because it would mean reneging on an important pi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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