CHAPTER 16— SIX CASES ILLUSTRATING THE INTER- 

 ACTION OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND AMERICAN 

 DIPLOMACY 



In chaptere 1 and 15, reference was made to the original plan 

 to present a number of cases and issues to illustrate the interaction of 

 science, technolo^', and American diplomacy, and in doing so to adopt 

 a conmion format. Despite the widely differing circumstances of the 12 

 separate studies which followed, it did prove possible to achieve sub- 

 stantial structural parallelism in treating them. This parallelism is 

 evident in the fact that virtually all of the studies contribute illustra- 

 tions and insights to each of the 6 major operational issues presented 

 below in chapters 18 through 23 even though the topics of the 12 

 studies were not selected with these operational issues in mind. On 

 the contrary, the operational issues were suggested by the independent 

 analyses of studies as the series progressed., -- - - 



The parallelism "is also evident in the ease with which the com- 

 mentaries on the various studies fit the somewhat arbitrary formats 

 circumscribing all of them — one format for the six cases and a varia- 

 tion of it for the six substantive issues. 



The format for the six cases is given herewith, followed by the 

 commentaries on the cases themselves: 



Statement of the case 



Importance of the case 



How the case developed 



U.S. involvement 



Role of Congress 



Outcome 



Assessment 



Author's reassessment 



Some illustrative questions 



CASE ONE— THE BARUCH PLAN: U.S. DIPLOMACY ENTERS THE 



NUCLEAR AGE « 



Statement of the Case 



The proposal to internationalize the control of atomic energy 

 presented by U.S. negotiator Bernard M. Baruch on June 14, 1946, 

 at the opening session of the United Nations Atomic Energy Com- 

 mission, was the first major postwar step toward coping -w-ith a 

 foremost technological threat to future world security. Despite wide- 

 spread recognition of the dimensions of the threat,^ the negotiations 



8 U. S. Congress. House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, The Baruch Plan: U.S. Diplomacy Enters the Nu- 

 clear Age. Prepared for the Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Developments by Le- 

 neicc N. Wu, Foreign Affairs Division, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Washington, 

 U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972. See vol. I, pp. 53-122. 



» Two Americans whose reaction to the threat when it first became known was essentially optimistic may 

 have been representative of many others. One, a military officer who was present at the Alamagordo test of 

 the first atom bomb, was heard to remark, with pardonable rhetoric: "At last war has devoured itself." 

 The other, the associate director of this study— then a U.S. Navy Japanese Language Officer assigned to 

 military government duties on Tinian, near the airfield from, which the bomb dropped on Hiroshima 

 (August 6, 194,5) was flown— wrote to his wife on August 8, 1945, that the development of "this terrifying new 

 weapon" could be seen as strengthening the prospects for world peace, because of the strong possibiUty that 

 "when a certain point was reached in the degree of devastation that war is capable of causing, that knowledge 

 would act as a deterrent to war and would do so increasingly as modern weapons increased in power. The 

 debut of [the atomic bomb] seems to me to mark that tiuning point." 



To tlie extent that this reaction of characteristic American optimism may have been shared by those mak- 

 ing policv, however, it seems clear in retrospect that it was a hazardous one which took for granted the dif- 

 ficult negotiations, spurred by a supreme sense of urgency, upon which the achievement of a reliable state of 

 deterrence would have to depend. Thirty years later it is by no means certain whether "that turning point" 

 has actually been reached. 



(1521) 



