1720 



up to a conclusion as to the desirability of increased Icng-range plan- 

 ning, statements of more explicit and comprehensive diplomatic goals, 

 and the design of a more coherent and constructive course of initiative 

 action toward these goals in which various reactions to external forces 

 can be assessed for long-range consistency. 



CASE one: the baruch plan 



The case chronicles the failure of a technological-diplomatic initia- 

 tive undertaken by the United States immediately following World 

 War II. What was at stake was the long-range security not only of 

 the United States but of the world at large. The alternative ultimately 

 •chosen (by default, not by design) was the expenditure of trillions cf 

 dollars on nuclear arms and delivery systems and an uneasy truce 

 among the ''superpowers," while one by one other nations— China, 

 France, and India, with others in the wings — added themselves to 

 the "Nuclear Club." The effect was an enormously costly and insecure 

 peace which has been styled the "balance cf terror." 



The extreme secrecy in which the Manhattan District carried out 

 its mission left no opportunity for advance study of the need for the 

 postwar options to control the new technology. Those engaged in the 

 project itself were too preoccupied with the technology per se to engage 

 in profound thought about consequences, beyond reaching agreement 

 that the weapon must somehow be kept under control — preferably 

 international. State Department executives charged with formulating 

 U.S. diplomacy remained in total ignorance of the project. 



However, when in the summer of 1945 the secret was out and the 

 war ended, the confusions of postwar demobilization, upheaval in 

 China, restoration in Europe, and Soviet reversion to hostility and 

 aloofness combined to overtax the planning capabilities of U.S. diplo- 

 macy. Insufficient manpower was spared to think through the problem 

 of what to do about the atom. It was treated as just one more problem, 

 rather than as the paramount question of the age. And the Soviet 

 tendency to minimize its importance was also unhelpful. 



Even today it is still not evident exactly what kind of initiative the 

 United States might have taken to obviate the disastrous consequences 

 of the new nuclear capability. The vSoviet motivation to delay while 

 independently developing its own bomb was strong. Still, in view of 

 the predictably enormous costs and hazards of failure, it is hard to 

 comprehend in retrospect why the achievement of nuclear control at 

 this early stage did not motivate a much more vigorous and persistent 

 effort than it did. Perhaps a key to the puzzle may be found in the 

 words of a leading scientist, writing in the late 1940s: ". . .we have 

 done military planning of actual campaigns in time of war exceedingly 

 well, and we have done military planning of broad nature in time of 

 peace exceedingly badly." ^" (His solution, in essence, was the adoption 

 of an interdisciplinary approach in which the Nation's best minds 

 would be brought continuously to bear in the planning process.) 

 Many observers of the American character have commented on the 

 combination of temperamental impatience and ideological distaste 

 which Americans have traditionally exhibited toward the planning 

 process at the national level, except under crisis conditions. 



«25 Vannevar Bush, Modern Arms and Free Men, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1949, p. 252. 



