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terms of the agreement. The research carried on by the international 

 Authority would serve as a beneficial source of consultation for the na- 

 tional efforts; periodic inspections would not be solely investigative, 

 in the sense of arousing suspicions, which would only threaten the 

 entire system of control. Rather, as envisioned by the Board, inspec- 

 tions would provide an opportunity for individual nations to receive 

 guidance in their efforts through the knowledge of the inspectors, and 

 inspections would be less intrusive because of the generally beneficial 

 expertise developed in the inspectors by the Authority. Thus, the pur- 

 poses of security would be served through methods which met the 

 needs of the technology and the less tangible human factors inherent 

 in international control. However, obstacles to agreement were so 

 weighty in relation to the total effort to agree on a system of interna- 

 tional control that this element of the U.S. plan exercised no positive 

 influence on the outcome of the negotiations. 



Underlying Misconceptions in U.S. Policy 



A number of misconceptions and miscalculations during the U.S. 

 policymaking process on matters pertaining to both the technology 

 and the politics of atomic energy control may have influenced the out- 

 come of the negotiations. U.S. policy in the negotiations may possibly 

 have been conditioned by an attitude that possession of the bomb pro- 

 vided great leverage for the United States to press for acceptance of 

 its proposals. 



This attitude rested on a number of technological assumptions, 

 which eventually proved incorrect. First, U.S. estimates regarding the 

 Soviet Union's ability to develop its own atomic weapons ranged any- 

 where from 5 to 25 years, whereas the first Soviet atomic explosion 

 occurred in IUV.), just 3 years following the opening of the UNAEC. 

 This development changed the entire character of the atomic energy 

 control problem. Although negotiations on the Baruch plan continued 

 until the early 1950's. Soviet possession of atomic weapons — some 

 sources reason — necessitated a different approach to arms control, and 

 perhaps even made the Baruch proposals obsolete. 



The length of time during which the United St#es could expect 

 to maintain its supremacy in the field of atomic energy posed a dilemma 

 for U.S. policy. On the one hand, there was the assumption, based on 

 historically valid technological considerations, that the loss of the U.S. 

 monopoly was inevitable. This recognition contributed greatly to the 

 U.S. commitment to seek international control of atomic energy. On 

 the other hand, erroneous technological intelligence estimates which 

 favored the U.S. position appear to have prompted a further — and as 

 it proved, unwarranted — U.S. assumption that it could attain interna- 

 tional control on its own terms, and that it could afford to insist on 

 certain points in its proposals. This attitude was interpreted as "atomic 

 diplomacy" by critics of U.S. proposals, and was justified by propo- 

 nents of U.S. policy as fulfillment of the U.S. responsibility for the 

 "sacred trust" over atomic energy. 



An additional technological misconception which may have played 

 at least a minor role in the outcome of the negotiations concerned the 

 extent to which peaceful uses of atomic energy would be made readily 

 available to benefit a large number of countries. Much of the scientific 

 and technological information which would have contributed sub- 



