Ill 



of the participants on both sides to appreciate that even as powerful 

 a scientific and technological event as the discovery and decisive mili- 

 tary use of atomic energy could not of itself prompt so radical a re- 

 ordering of diplomacy as to reconcile the overwhelming political 

 stakes at issue between the United States and the Soviet Union. Spe- 

 cifically, this was a failure to reconcile (a) the basic technological 

 fact that any effective international control system would have to cope 

 with the difficulty of separating peaceful from military activities, and 

 (b) the fundamental diplomatic reality that any such system would 

 have to accommodate both the Soviet Union's traditional fear of for- 

 eign intrusion and the U.S. fear of becoming an inferior military 

 power. In retrospect, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the con- 

 cessions necessary on all sides to establish a workable arrangement 

 for international nuclear control were beyond the scope of traditional 

 international behavior. A profound change in concepts of sovereignty 

 and security would have been required to insure the success of the 

 negotiations. Possibly this principle remains as unappreciated today as 

 it was at the time the Baruch plan was being considered. 



LACK OF U.S. ATTENTION TO SOVIET REQUIREMENTS 



Based upon U.S. perceptions of Soviet motives and of Soviet capa- 

 bility for nuclear development, acceptability of the U.S. plan for 

 atomic energy control was secondary to requirements for an effective 

 control system. As early as the U.S. preparations for the Truman- 

 Attlee-King meetings, before the Soviet Union had had an oppor- 

 tunity to participate in any forum on the atomic energy question, the 

 intent of U.S. policy was to devise a workable system of control with- 

 out special regard for acceptability of the plan to any other parties. 14 * 

 Similarly, throughout the deliberations between Achesoivs committee 

 and Lilienthal's group, very little was said regarding the possibility 

 of or the requirements for Soviet acceptance of the plan, although 

 there was some recognition of the prevalent political facts of life, 

 largely mutual suspicion, which would characterize United States- 

 Soviet relations during the early postwar period. But an awareness 

 of these factors did not prompt active consideration of whether the 

 Soviet Union would accept the plan. Rather, it became the goal of 

 U.S. policy to devise the necessary arrangements to prevent violation 

 of a control system, and eventually, with Baruclvs policy on punish- 

 ments and the veto, a guaranteed course of action in the event of viola- 

 tion. To the United States, the most likely target of its policy toward 

 thwarting or punishing violators was the Soviet Union. 



The suspicious and negative attitude in the "West toward the 

 Soviet penchant for secrecy was undoubtedly reinforced by the ex- 

 pansionist actions of the Soviet Union in the East European countries 

 following the war. Yet Soviet expansionism has been explained as 

 an effort to buffer that country from foreign incursions, a traditional 

 fear which had been exacerbated by the devastating Soviet experience 



148 Indeed, Secretary Byrnes approached the negotiations for international control of 

 atomic energy with a negative attitude, which was carried over into a policy paper which 

 Bush prepared for the meeting. In characterizing a conversation with Ryrnes on the issue. 

 Bush commented to Conant that "we were discussing carefully ways and means toward an 

 effective accord [i.e.. one which was without risk to the United States] rather than 

 merely struggling with the question of whether any accord is possible." Bush to Conant. 

 Xov. 8, 1945, in the Bush Papers, as quoted in Liebernian, The Scorpion and the Taran- 

 tula, p. 167. 



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