I heard Jeffrey Sachs say yesterday that he'd just spoken with an Iranian government official who confirmed that they still don't want to build nukes. I've heard this from other sources too. I wish no one had them.
Thanks for this important piece of history, Melissa.
More on Dwight’s ‘Atom’s for Peace’ initiative in the mid-1950’s:
It was a time when the US had been speeding from ~1,000 Nuclear Weapons at the end of the Truman’s Presidency, toward the manufacture of ~20,000 nuclear weapons by the end of the Eisenhower, in the early 1960’s, and JFK’s inauguration address; RUSSIA had only just tested its first Fission Atomic bomb 4 years earlier, after breaking the Nuclear Design Code, and was only then, in 1953, getting ready for its test of its first Thermonuclear Fusion Bomb.
So, Ike’s Atoms for Peace program was both a means as a solution to providing a Nuclear Deterrent(beyond just the US) to Russia in time, but to also demystify the Myth/Facts of how Atomic Energy could also be harvested for Peace.
Lastly, by looking at the later days of the early ColdWar in the late 1950’s, it was no surprise that Eisenhower’s worldview had shifted drastically toward a kind of universal Paranoid World View, as the by the end of that decade, American leadership were not only just dealing with the direct threats of an Bomber-mounted Gravity Delivered Warhead, but rather, with the advent of Russia’s Sputnik’s first circumnavigation, via an orbit of the globe, coupled with the very first set of ICBM Launch trajectories were being developed & tested; Eisenhower’s work ahead would have to envelop the pressing concern of alternate bomb delivery methods—which meant much shorter delivery-times, from the proverbial, seat of his pants—or, that that there was a very quickly emerging new system of Nuclear Warhead Delivery on the near-term side of the horizon of the Western-Hemisphere heading our way which would change the Strategic Initiation of a Nuclear-War Deterrence, and its timetable drastically/immediately.
Interesting to remember, and to note, that in that short period of time, the Eisenhower Administration had to set in motion, a very-highly confidential, accelerated development program for both the unreachable Reconnaissance SR-71 Mach3+ 80,000 ft cruising height to find & accumulate primarily Russian Targets, showing Russian military resource allocation changes; the first Mercury and Pioneer Manned and Unmanned Space Programs, whose targets were presumably acquired in a similar way to the SR-71’s targets, and these Programs were likely being used for more than just surveillance purposes.
So yes, beyond his leadership in WWII, Ike gave a lot of intangible/immeasurable value/effort to the USA, most likely best measured in the shortening, in the years of his remaining life, after leaving office.
Illuminating piece you’ve written. I was aware of how Allen Dulles’ CIA orchestrated the downfall of Mosaddegh in 1953 with the full backing of Winston Churchill. However, Eisenhower’s extravagant expenditure of atomic energy on the Shah appears absurd from the actual perspective. Those idealized Fifties! It’s challenging to rectify all those mistakes now. I believe theocracies are inherently evil, particularly for the courageous women who were brutally assaulted in the streets for refusing to wear the veil. Israel has the right to defend itself from annihilation. With Trump’s gamble, he merely bought time. Nevertheless, the ayatollahs must be eradicated at all costs, just as Gaddafi and Assad were before.
More on IKE and His ‘Atoms for Peace’ Kits and MIT Educational Opportunities:
A Bold Nuclear Initiative
In a celebrated address to the UN General Assembly on December 8, 1953, Eisenhower heralded a new Atoms for Peace campaign designed to “hasten the day when fear of the atom will begin to disappear from the minds of people.” The president began his speech by warning of two impending “atomic realities.” First, he advised that the means to produce nuclear weapons, then possessed by only a few states, would eventually spread to other countries, “possibly all others.” Next, he affirmed that surprise nuclear attack for the foreseeable future would be a serious military threat, one which neither “superiority in numbers of weapons” nor powerful defense systems could prevent.
Ultimately, the president’s message was one of hope. He claimed that atomic energy soon could be channeled to improve the socioeconomic condition of humankind. To redirect nuclear research away from military pursuits and toward “peaceful...efficient and economic usage,” Eisenhower invited “the governments principally involved” to “make joint contributions from their stockpiles of...fissionable materials to an international atomic energy agency...set up under the aegis of the United Nations.”[12] Mandated to collect, store, and distribute fissile materials, the proposed IAEA would not have the ownership and punishment powers that doomed the chance for agreement on Baruch’s International Atomic Development Agency. Rather, the new agency and “uranium bank” were intended as simple steps to establish international trust and draw Moscow into a cooperative arms control dialogue.
U.S. officials realized that the IAEA would take years to establish and thus sought other dramatic proposals to advance the president’s nuclear initiative. In August 1954, the U.S. Atomic Energy Act was revised to allow nuclear technology and material exports if the recipient country committed not to use these items to develop weapons. U.S. companies were now free to sell nuclear technology to “strengthen American world leadership and disprove the Communists’ propaganda charges that the [United States] is concerned solely with the destructive uses of the atom.” Because U.S. power reactor programs were “unlikely to produce economically competitive atomic power for a decade or more,”[13] Washington increased funds for its own reactor programs, reoriented these programs to foreign requirements, and initiated foreign aid and information programs to make potential recipients interested in U.S. technology. It also provided friendly nations nuclear training, technical information, and help in constructing small research reactors.
Nuclear Commerce and Proliferation
In March 1955, Eisenhower intensified his efforts to promote peaceful nuclear uses, directing the Atomic Energy Commission to provide “free world” nations “limited amounts of raw and fissionable materials” as well as generous assistance for building power reactors. These exports were intended to maintain U.S. global leadership, reduce Soviet influence, and assure continued access to foreign uranium and thorium supplies.[14] In retrospect, it appears that these objectives were achieved, but an unintended outcome of Atoms for Peace was the proliferation of worldwide nuclear research and power programs, several of which eventually would be converted to the production of nuclear weapons.
Did U.S. policymakers not realize that sharing nuclear information and promoting peaceful nuclear uses could stimulate the appetite for nuclear weapons and increase the bomb-making capabilities of other nations? They generally understood the risk. In September 1955, Isador Rabi, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission General Advisory Committee, told State Department nuclear affairs adviser Gerard Smith that, without effective international controls to prevent the diversion of commercial nuclear facilities to military uses, “even a country like India, when it had some plutonium production, would go into the weapons business.”[15] As it turned out, the safeguard systems the United States enacted to ameliorate this risk were inadequate.
In particular, U.S. officials did not sufficiently enforce their own rules. In order to curb what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called the “promiscuous spread” of nuclear arms,[16] the new export policy “ordinarily” required recipients of U.S. fissile materials or reactors to send used fuel elements to U.S. facilities for chemical processing; to establish adequate production accounting, inspection, and other control technologies; and eventually to accept IAEA safeguards.[17] In practice, however, U.S. enforcement of these measures was not very strict, other nuclear supplier states adopted even more relaxed controls, and the IAEA safeguards system turned out to be looser than originally envisioned. As a result, foreign nuclear technology recipients such as India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Israel slipped through the cracks of the nascent nonproliferation regime.
U.S. officials also were guilty of wishful thinking. They had too much confidence in their ability to control the nuclear behavior of other countries. To make matters worse, their emphasis on the scientific, commercial, and political benefits of U.S. nuclear exports prevented them from paying adequate attention to the security needs and perceptions of recipient countries, several of which would go on to misuse U.S. assistance. Moreover, many officials at that time believed that they had a responsibility to bring a scientific discovery as revolutionary as that of atomic energy into widespread application, whatever the risks. As the first Atomic Energy Commission chairman, David Lilienthal, recalled: “[T]his prodigious effort was predicated on the belief and hope that this great new source of energy for mankind could produce results as dramatically and decisively beneficial to man as the bomb was dramatically destructive.”[18] Lilienthal’s successor, Lewis Strauss, expressed this hope in a September 1954 speech: “It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy electrical energy too cheap to meter—will know of great periodic regional famines only as a matter of history—will travel effortlessly over the seas and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds—and will experience a life-span far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age. This is the forecast for an age of peace.”[19] Such optimism in the ability of U.S. technology to deliver prosperity and peace to the world did not abate until India’s 1974 nuclear explosive test demonstrated the dangerous potential of “peaceful” nuclear technology.
U.S. Nuclear Assistance
Within a year of Eisenhower’s UN speech, the United States began training foreign scientists at a new School of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Argonne Laboratory; declassified hundreds of nuclear studies and reports; sponsored the first UN Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, where many of the declassified documents were released; and concluded nuclear cooperation agreements with more than two dozen countries. The United States was responsible for whetting appetites for nuclear research and development in many countries, including Argentina, Brazil, and Pakistan, having no prior nuclear program. Even in countries such as India and Israel, where a strong demand for nuclear technology already existed, Washington mounted a major campaign to increase interest in nuclear energy. In late 1955, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development put on a large exhibit at the New Delhi Trade Fair featuring a 30-foot-high reactor diagram, “hot” laboratories, and numerous working models. Nearly two million Indians attended.[20]
I heard Jeffrey Sachs say yesterday that he'd just spoken with an Iranian government official who confirmed that they still don't want to build nukes. I've heard this from other sources too. I wish no one had them.
Thanks for this important piece of history, Melissa.
More on Dwight’s ‘Atom’s for Peace’ initiative in the mid-1950’s:
It was a time when the US had been speeding from ~1,000 Nuclear Weapons at the end of the Truman’s Presidency, toward the manufacture of ~20,000 nuclear weapons by the end of the Eisenhower, in the early 1960’s, and JFK’s inauguration address; RUSSIA had only just tested its first Fission Atomic bomb 4 years earlier, after breaking the Nuclear Design Code, and was only then, in 1953, getting ready for its test of its first Thermonuclear Fusion Bomb.
So, Ike’s Atoms for Peace program was both a means as a solution to providing a Nuclear Deterrent(beyond just the US) to Russia in time, but to also demystify the Myth/Facts of how Atomic Energy could also be harvested for Peace.
Lastly, by looking at the later days of the early ColdWar in the late 1950’s, it was no surprise that Eisenhower’s worldview had shifted drastically toward a kind of universal Paranoid World View, as the by the end of that decade, American leadership were not only just dealing with the direct threats of an Bomber-mounted Gravity Delivered Warhead, but rather, with the advent of Russia’s Sputnik’s first circumnavigation, via an orbit of the globe, coupled with the very first set of ICBM Launch trajectories were being developed & tested; Eisenhower’s work ahead would have to envelop the pressing concern of alternate bomb delivery methods—which meant much shorter delivery-times, from the proverbial, seat of his pants—or, that that there was a very quickly emerging new system of Nuclear Warhead Delivery on the near-term side of the horizon of the Western-Hemisphere heading our way which would change the Strategic Initiation of a Nuclear-War Deterrence, and its timetable drastically/immediately.
Interesting to remember, and to note, that in that short period of time, the Eisenhower Administration had to set in motion, a very-highly confidential, accelerated development program for both the unreachable Reconnaissance SR-71 Mach3+ 80,000 ft cruising height to find & accumulate primarily Russian Targets, showing Russian military resource allocation changes; the first Mercury and Pioneer Manned and Unmanned Space Programs, whose targets were presumably acquired in a similar way to the SR-71’s targets, and these Programs were likely being used for more than just surveillance purposes.
So yes, beyond his leadership in WWII, Ike gave a lot of intangible/immeasurable value/effort to the USA, most likely best measured in the shortening, in the years of his remaining life, after leaving office.
Illuminating piece you’ve written. I was aware of how Allen Dulles’ CIA orchestrated the downfall of Mosaddegh in 1953 with the full backing of Winston Churchill. However, Eisenhower’s extravagant expenditure of atomic energy on the Shah appears absurd from the actual perspective. Those idealized Fifties! It’s challenging to rectify all those mistakes now. I believe theocracies are inherently evil, particularly for the courageous women who were brutally assaulted in the streets for refusing to wear the veil. Israel has the right to defend itself from annihilation. With Trump’s gamble, he merely bought time. Nevertheless, the ayatollahs must be eradicated at all costs, just as Gaddafi and Assad were before.
More on IKE and His ‘Atoms for Peace’ Kits and MIT Educational Opportunities:
A Bold Nuclear Initiative
In a celebrated address to the UN General Assembly on December 8, 1953, Eisenhower heralded a new Atoms for Peace campaign designed to “hasten the day when fear of the atom will begin to disappear from the minds of people.” The president began his speech by warning of two impending “atomic realities.” First, he advised that the means to produce nuclear weapons, then possessed by only a few states, would eventually spread to other countries, “possibly all others.” Next, he affirmed that surprise nuclear attack for the foreseeable future would be a serious military threat, one which neither “superiority in numbers of weapons” nor powerful defense systems could prevent.
Ultimately, the president’s message was one of hope. He claimed that atomic energy soon could be channeled to improve the socioeconomic condition of humankind. To redirect nuclear research away from military pursuits and toward “peaceful...efficient and economic usage,” Eisenhower invited “the governments principally involved” to “make joint contributions from their stockpiles of...fissionable materials to an international atomic energy agency...set up under the aegis of the United Nations.”[12] Mandated to collect, store, and distribute fissile materials, the proposed IAEA would not have the ownership and punishment powers that doomed the chance for agreement on Baruch’s International Atomic Development Agency. Rather, the new agency and “uranium bank” were intended as simple steps to establish international trust and draw Moscow into a cooperative arms control dialogue.
U.S. officials realized that the IAEA would take years to establish and thus sought other dramatic proposals to advance the president’s nuclear initiative. In August 1954, the U.S. Atomic Energy Act was revised to allow nuclear technology and material exports if the recipient country committed not to use these items to develop weapons. U.S. companies were now free to sell nuclear technology to “strengthen American world leadership and disprove the Communists’ propaganda charges that the [United States] is concerned solely with the destructive uses of the atom.” Because U.S. power reactor programs were “unlikely to produce economically competitive atomic power for a decade or more,”[13] Washington increased funds for its own reactor programs, reoriented these programs to foreign requirements, and initiated foreign aid and information programs to make potential recipients interested in U.S. technology. It also provided friendly nations nuclear training, technical information, and help in constructing small research reactors.
Nuclear Commerce and Proliferation
In March 1955, Eisenhower intensified his efforts to promote peaceful nuclear uses, directing the Atomic Energy Commission to provide “free world” nations “limited amounts of raw and fissionable materials” as well as generous assistance for building power reactors. These exports were intended to maintain U.S. global leadership, reduce Soviet influence, and assure continued access to foreign uranium and thorium supplies.[14] In retrospect, it appears that these objectives were achieved, but an unintended outcome of Atoms for Peace was the proliferation of worldwide nuclear research and power programs, several of which eventually would be converted to the production of nuclear weapons.
Did U.S. policymakers not realize that sharing nuclear information and promoting peaceful nuclear uses could stimulate the appetite for nuclear weapons and increase the bomb-making capabilities of other nations? They generally understood the risk. In September 1955, Isador Rabi, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission General Advisory Committee, told State Department nuclear affairs adviser Gerard Smith that, without effective international controls to prevent the diversion of commercial nuclear facilities to military uses, “even a country like India, when it had some plutonium production, would go into the weapons business.”[15] As it turned out, the safeguard systems the United States enacted to ameliorate this risk were inadequate.
In particular, U.S. officials did not sufficiently enforce their own rules. In order to curb what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called the “promiscuous spread” of nuclear arms,[16] the new export policy “ordinarily” required recipients of U.S. fissile materials or reactors to send used fuel elements to U.S. facilities for chemical processing; to establish adequate production accounting, inspection, and other control technologies; and eventually to accept IAEA safeguards.[17] In practice, however, U.S. enforcement of these measures was not very strict, other nuclear supplier states adopted even more relaxed controls, and the IAEA safeguards system turned out to be looser than originally envisioned. As a result, foreign nuclear technology recipients such as India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Israel slipped through the cracks of the nascent nonproliferation regime.
U.S. officials also were guilty of wishful thinking. They had too much confidence in their ability to control the nuclear behavior of other countries. To make matters worse, their emphasis on the scientific, commercial, and political benefits of U.S. nuclear exports prevented them from paying adequate attention to the security needs and perceptions of recipient countries, several of which would go on to misuse U.S. assistance. Moreover, many officials at that time believed that they had a responsibility to bring a scientific discovery as revolutionary as that of atomic energy into widespread application, whatever the risks. As the first Atomic Energy Commission chairman, David Lilienthal, recalled: “[T]his prodigious effort was predicated on the belief and hope that this great new source of energy for mankind could produce results as dramatically and decisively beneficial to man as the bomb was dramatically destructive.”[18] Lilienthal’s successor, Lewis Strauss, expressed this hope in a September 1954 speech: “It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy electrical energy too cheap to meter—will know of great periodic regional famines only as a matter of history—will travel effortlessly over the seas and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds—and will experience a life-span far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age. This is the forecast for an age of peace.”[19] Such optimism in the ability of U.S. technology to deliver prosperity and peace to the world did not abate until India’s 1974 nuclear explosive test demonstrated the dangerous potential of “peaceful” nuclear technology.
U.S. Nuclear Assistance
Within a year of Eisenhower’s UN speech, the United States began training foreign scientists at a new School of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Argonne Laboratory; declassified hundreds of nuclear studies and reports; sponsored the first UN Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, where many of the declassified documents were released; and concluded nuclear cooperation agreements with more than two dozen countries. The United States was responsible for whetting appetites for nuclear research and development in many countries, including Argentina, Brazil, and Pakistan, having no prior nuclear program. Even in countries such as India and Israel, where a strong demand for nuclear technology already existed, Washington mounted a major campaign to increase interest in nuclear energy. In late 1955, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development put on a large exhibit at the New Delhi Trade Fair featuring a 30-foot-high reactor diagram, “hot” laboratories, and numerous working models. Nearly two million Indians attended.[20]
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https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003-12/features/enduring-effects-atoms-peace