1860 



planning future negotiations. Nor had he been fully briefed in the 

 highl}^ technical matter of nuclear weaponry before assuming the Presi- 

 denc}^ Planning was left to the Department of State, where knowledge 

 of the bomb had become available (as it had to the world) in August 

 1945, and where technical expertise was at something of a premium. 

 The obstacles to international agreement on a plan for nuclear con- 

 trol appear to have been both technical and political. In short: 



. . . during the negotiations to devise a control system, both the United States 

 and the Soviet Union were faced with certain political and technological absolutes 

 which were directly opposite to certain fundamental features of their respective 

 countries. These features were integral to meeting what each country considered 

 the requirements for maintenance of its national security. The negotiations ne- 

 glected to reconcile these requirements with these dominating technological and 

 political factors of atomic energy in order to attain adequate and acceptable inter- 

 national control."'^ 



Factors that might have entered into the U.S. planning, had it been 

 begun in — 'Say — ^1944, could have included not only the postwar 

 durability of the alliance, the rate of U.S. demobilization, and the level 

 of Soviet nuclear technology, but also such important variables as the 

 U.S. policy toward the postwar occupation and reconstruction of 

 Europe, the achievement of high accuracy in communication between- 

 the scientific/technological and the diplomatic community, the recog- 

 nition of the importance of control of both fissionable materials and 

 radioactive byproducts, and such technology forecasts as: the possible 

 development of intercontinental ballistic delivery vehicles, rate of com- 

 mercial development of nuclear power, and the achievement of fusion 

 (H-Bomb) explosives. Of course, fusion would have been highly con- 

 jectural and IBMs hardly less so at that time, but a decade later the 

 first had been achieved and the second was nearing the point of practi- 

 cality (based on U.S. scientific work performed in the 1920s), 



Clearl}^ the impact of nuclear energy on diplomacy was so massive 

 and opened up so many possibilities in the fields of diplomacy and 

 technology that the existing planning and decisionmaking abilities of 

 the United States — and of the Soviets as well — are scarcely to be 

 faulted for their inability to devise an effective international accom- 

 modation. Even equipped with the retrospective wisdom of 30 years 

 it is virtually impossible to prescribe what ought to have been done 

 and planned for. But perhaps this very dilemma might have been 

 considered as a factor in the decision to use the bomb against the 

 Japanese homeland. Throughout the opening years of the nuclear 

 age, in fact, options were lacking and decisions were reduced to "yes 

 or no" questions, with little heed for the long-range future. 



CASE TV\^0: COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR POWER IN EUROPE 



While the United States and the Soviet Union, continued to expand 

 their nuclear arsenals, other nations elected one by one to join the 

 "nuclear club." France, the People's Republic of China, and then 

 India exploded nuclear devices. At least half a dozen other nations 

 possessed the technical and economic resources to follow suit if they 

 chose. However, the arsenals of the United States and the U.S.S.R. 

 exceeded any force structure within the reach of the others. Thus, at 

 the cost of tens of billions of dollars annually, the two powerful 



515 Wu, The Baruch Plan: U.S. Diplomacy Enters the Nuclear Age, vol. I, p. 120. 



