Atoms for peace, scientific internationalism, and scientific intelligence

Osiris

Volumn 21, Issue , 2006, Pages 161-181

  Krige, John ^a  

^a GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33747376313     PISSN: 03697827     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/507140     Document Type: Article

References (116)

1. Available online at http://www.eisenhower.utexas.edu/atoms.htm. It is also reproduced in full in Joseph F. Pilat, Robert E. Pendley, and Charles K. Ebinger, eds., Atoms for Peace: An Analysis after Thirty Years (Boulder, Colo., 1985), appendix C.
2. Richard M. Holl, "The Peaceful Atom: Lore and Myth," in Pilat et al., Atoms for Peace (cit. n. 1), 149-59, on 149.
3. Robert J. Watson, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, vol. 4, Into the Missile Age, 1956-1960 (Washington, D.C., 1997), 457, table 6. From 1952 to 1954, military spending was 70 percent of federal government spending, reflecting the demands of the Korean War. By the end of Eisenhower's term, it had dropped to 50 percent. For comparison, with demobilization after World War II, the figure from 1948 to 1950 hovered just above 30 percent, far less in both relative and absolute terms.
4. Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Address by Dwight D. Eisenhower on Psychological Warfare, October 8, 1952,"
5. cited by Martin J. Medhurst, "Atoms for Peace and Nuclear Hegemony: The Rhetorical Structure of a Cold War Campaign," Armed Forces and Society 23 (1997): 571-93, on 572.
6. Medhurst's paper provides a fine account of the place of "atoms for peace" in Eisenhower's domestic and foreign policy thinking. See also Ira Chemus, Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace (College Station, Texas, 2002).
7. For Jackson and the quote, see Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear. A History ofImages (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 156. The remark is in a letter of Nov. 10, 1953.
8. Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War 1953-1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley, 1989), 172 ff.
9. Peter Galison and Barton Bernstein, "In Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Superbomb, 1952-1954," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 19 (1989): 267-347, on 331.
10. Ibid., 331.
11. Ibid., 331.
12. The U.S. administration's attempted use of technological sharing in the space sector to divert resources away from national, military missile programs into international, civilian rocket programs is described in John Krige, "Technology, Foreign Policy, and International Cooperation in Space," in Critical Issues in Space History, ed. Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius (Washington, D.C., forthcoming).
13. Weart, Nuclear Fear (cit. n. 5), 158.
14. see James R. Schlesinger, "Atoms for Peace Revisited,"
15. Robert R. Bowie, "Eisenhower, Atomic Weapons and Atoms for Peace,"
16. Richard G. Hewlett, "From Proposal to Program",
17. and Henry Sokolski, "The Arms Control Connection," in Pilat et al., Atoms for Peace (cit. n. 1), 5-15, 17-23, 25-33, and 35-50, respectively.
18. Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War (cit. n. 6), chap. 7.
19. Brian Balogh, Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945-1975 (Cambridge, 1991), chap. 3.
20. Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War (cit. n. 6), 11.
21. Murray is quoted and U.S. News and World Report is cited in ibid., 194-5.
22. Ibid., 119 ff.
23. Ibid., 252.
24. Ibid, 232.
25. Ibid., 233.
26. Ibid., 233-234.
27. Jean Weigle to Max Delbrück, Aug. 30, 1955, cited in Bruno J. Strasser, Les Sciences de la Vie a l'Age Atomique: Identités, pratiques, et alliances dans la construction de la biologie molículaire á Genève (1945-1970) (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Geneva, Univ. of Paris, 2002), chap. 1, n. 92.
28. Geminus, "It Seems to Me," New Scientist, Sept. 4, 1955, 742.
29. Quoted in Strasser, Les Sciences de la Vie a l'Age Atomique (cit. n. 22), chap. 1, n. 92.
30. Vladimir Veksler, USSR International Service, press statement, Sept. 8, 1955, "Atom Conference Tremendous Success,'" Folder 7, Box 55, Rabi papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Rabi LoC).
31. International Science Policy Survey Group, Science and Foreign Relations: International Flow of Scientific and Technological Information (U.S. Dept. of State Publication 3860, General Foreign Policy Series 30, released May 1950), 3.
32. For a description of the history of the report, see Allan A. Needell, Science, Cold War and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals (Amsterdam, 2000), especially 141-4.
33. Needell, Science, Cold War, and the American State (cit. n. 26), 145-9, describes this document at some length. I should like to thank him for making a copy available to me. For a general discussion of science and foreign policy, see Ronald E. Doel, "Scientists as Policymakers, Advisors, and Intelligence Agents: Linking Contemporary Diplomatic History with the History of Contemporary Science," in The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, ed. Thomas Söderqvist (Amsterdam, 1997), 215-44.
34. see Ronald E. Doel, "Scientists as Policymakers, Advisors, and Intelligence Agents: Linking Contemporary Diplomatic History with the History of Contemporary Science," in The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, ed. Thomas Söderqvist (Amsterdam, 1997), 215-44.
35. For a general discussion of science and foreign policy, see Ronald E. Doel, "Scientists as Policymakers, Advisors, and Intelligence Agents: Linking Contemporary Diplomatic History with the History of Contemporary Science," in The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, ed. Thomas Söderqvist (Amsterdam, 1997), 215-44.
36. Doel, "Scientists as Policymakers" (cit. n. 27), 5.
37. Wilton Lexow, "The Science Attache Program," Studies in Intelligence, published 4/1/1966, released 7/30/2001, http://www.foia.cia.gov/.
38. International Science Policy Survey Group, Science and Foreign Relations (cit. n. 26), classified appendix, "Scientific Intelligence," 10.
39. Informal intelligence gathering was common in the cold war before sophisticated technologies such as reconnaissance satellites could peer behind the iron curtain. In the late 1950s, the CIA ran a program code named REDSKIN, in which it recruited nonofficial travelers from the United States, Europe, and "Third World nations," including "tourists, businessmen, journalists, scientists, academics, athletes, chess players, and church leaders." These visitors provided important information about Soviet infrastructure and industrial capabilities (e.g., by buying Soviet merchandise). See Jeffrey Richelson, American Espionage and the Soviet Target (New York, 1987), 53-4.
40. "Information for the Press and Radio;" Feb. 1, 1950, Folder 3, Box 46, RG 326, E67A, AEC Records, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as AEC NARA). This was also an invitation to press, radio, and periodical representatives to visit the site,
41. For details of this program, see Angela N. H. Creager, "Tracing the Politics of Changing Postwar Research Practices: The Export of 'American' Radioisotopes to European Biologists;" Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2002): 367-88;
42. see also idem, "The Industrialization of Radioisotopes by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission;" in The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications, ed. Karl Grandin, Nina Wormbs, and Sven Widmalm (Canton, Mass., 2004), 141-67;
43. and John Krige, "The Politics of Phosphorus-32: A Cold War Fable Based on Fact," Hist. Stud. Phys. Biol. Sci. 36 (2005): 71-91.
44. Creager, "Tracing the Politics" (cit. n. 33), 375.
45. Majority submission to the State Department, "Foreign Distribution of Radioisotopes," undated, but following on the meeting of the Commissioners on Aug. 19, 1947, 1-2, Folder 3, Box 46, RG 326, E67A, AEC NARA.
46. "Foreign Distribution of Radioisotopes" (cit. n. 35), 2.
47. On Clinton laboratory's biomedical activities, and those of the AEC in general, see Peter J. Westwick, The National Laboratories: Science in an American System, 1947-1974 (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), chap. 7.
48. On the medical aspect, see C. P. Rhoads, "The Medical Uses of Atomic Energy," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Oct. 1, 1946, 22-4.
49. Atomic Energy Commission, Minutes of Meeting No. 95 at Bohemian Grove, Aug. 19, 1947, Folder 3, Box 46, RG 326, E67A, AEC NARA.
50. For Strauss's views here, see Minutes of Meeting No. 95 at Bohemian Grove (cit. n. 37);
51. and Lewis L. Strauss to Carroll L. Wilson, "Foreign Distribution of Isotopes," Aug. 25, 1947, in ibid.
52. Quoted in Creager, "Tracing the Politics" (cit. n. 33), 374;
53. Albert Stone to U.S. Naval Research Attaché, July 1, 1947, copy in AEC Records, RG326, E67A, Box 46, Folder 3, Foreign Distribution of Radioisotopes, vol. 1 (italics in original).
54. Weart, Nuclear Fear (cit. n. 5), 172; Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War (cit. n. 6), appendix 2, gives financial data for the AEC for 1952 to 1961 inclusive.
55. Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War (cit. n. 6), appendix 2, gives financial data for the AEC for 1952 to 1961 inclusive.
56. For the following, see, notably, Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge, Mass., 1998); David Pace, "Old Wine - New Bottles: Atomic Energy and the Ideology of Science in Postwar France," French Historical Studies 17 (Spring 1991): 38-61;
57. David Pace, "Old Wine - New Bottles: Atomic Energy and the Ideology of Science in Postwar France," French Historical Studies 17 (Spring 1991): 38-61;
58. Strasser, Les Sciences de la Vie a l'Age Atomique (cit. n. 22), chap. 1. Strasser insists that "the social, political and intellectual history of the Atom in America...cannot be transplanted to Europe, whatever many historians seem to think" (33, my translation).
59. Quoted in Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 2, Atomic Shield, 1947-1952 (Berkeley, 1990), 97.
60. This is discussed at length in Jessica Wang, American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War (Charlotte, N.C., 1999).
61. For these sentiments, see Creager, "Tracing the Politics" (cit. n. 33), 376, 373. The last two quotations are by scientists Paul Aebersold and Lorin Mullins in letters written early in August 1947.
62. Richard Lovett to David E. Lilenthial, letter, Aug. 28, 1947, Folder 3, Box 46, RG326, E67A, AEC NARA.
63. J. Robert Oppenheimer, testimony, "Investigation into the United States Atomic Energy Project," Hearings before the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 81st Cong., part 7, June 13, 1949, 283.
64. Cited by Creager, "Tracing the Politics" (cit. n. 33), 376.
65. Radioisotopes for International Distribution. Catalog and Price List. September 1947. (Isotopes Branch, United States Atomic Energy Commission, P.O. Box E, Oak Ridge, Tennessee), 15, Folder 3, Box 46, RG 326, E67A, AEC NARA.
66. These arguments are found in Majority submission to the State Department, "Foreign Distribution of Radioisotopes," (cit. n. 35); and Atomic Energy Commission, Minutes of Meeting No. 95 (cit. n. 37).
67. and Atomic Energy Commission, Minutes of Meeting No. 95 (cit. n. 37).
68. Atomic Energy Commission, Minutes of Meeting No. 95 (cit. n. 37).
69. Art Molella, "Exhibiting Atomic Culture: The View from Oak Ridge," History and Technology 19 (2003): 211-26. There is a photograph of the museum on 215. One of its main attractions seems to have been irradiated dimes people could keep; the gift shop sold small pieces of uranium ore. One could also buy an American Museum of Nuclear Energy ashtray. The net effect was surely to familiarize and banalize the nuclear, making it seem less threatening and dangerous by reducing it to the familiar and everyday. There are Internet sites now that discuss the likelihood that these materials were in fact radioactive.
70. Krige, "The Politics of Phosphorus-32" (cit. n. 33), is an extended essay on what capturing hearts and minds with the isotope program might mean.
71. Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Washington, D.C., 2001).
72. NSC 5507/2, Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, approved by Eisenhower on March 12, 1955, cited by Medhurst, "Atoms for Peace and Nuclear Hegemony" (cit. n. 4), 588.
73. Medhurst, "Atoms for Peace and Nuclear Hegemony" (cit. n. 4), 588.
74. Ibid., 581-6, stresses this point and notes that, immediately after the passage of the relaxed Atomic Energy Act of 1954, a new series of treaties for mutual defense was signed with NATO countries, loosening restrictions on armaments and nuclear facilities and allowing West Germany to engage in atomic energy plans. Eisenhower saw these measures as essential to help NATO "evolve more effective defense plans concerning the use of atomic weapons than have heretofore been achieved" (586-7).
75. For a discussion of the Spanish case, see Javier Ordonez and José M. Sánchez Ron, "Nuclear Energy in Spain: From Hiroshima to the Sixties," in National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology, ed. Paul Forman and José M. Sánchez Ron (Amsterdam, 1996), 185-213.
76. There is a list in Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War (cit. n. 6), 581, appendix 6.
77. For an analysis of Bhabha's opening speech, see Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy, and the Postcolonial State (London, 1998), 98-102.
78. "Eisenhower's Message to Nuclear Parley," New York Times, Aug. 9, 1955.
79. Laura Fermi, Atoms for the World: United States Participation in the Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (Chicago, 1957). Notwithstanding its uncritical admiration and its irritating sexism (the heroic achievements of individual, identified men are described alongside the service activities [e.g., guides, translators] of countless "pretty girls"), Fermi's book gives one a good idea of the planning, organization, and evolution of the conference from the U.S. point of view.
80. Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (New York, 2000), 174.
81. Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War (cit. n. 6), 250.
82. This Atom Fair provided a forum for firms in ten countries to exhibit and sell their nuclear wares. The British were the stars. No fewer than fifty companies from Britain (compared with sixteen from the United States) aggressively promoted nuclear technology. They reputedly received serious inquiries from thirty-three countries within days of the conference's opening. "Britain Exploits Atomic Market," New York Times, Aug. 8, 1955.
83. Report, undated and unsigned, "Background of the Geneva Conference," 6-7, Folder 7, Box 55, Rabi LoC. On the sale, see "Achat d'un réacteur nucléaire américain," May 31, 1955, Documents Diplomatiques Suisses, (Swiss) Département Politique Fédéral, Berne, http://www.dodis.ch/, DoDiS 10835.
84. IACF papers, Regenstein Library, Chicago, Box 259, Series II, Folder 4, Memo, "Background Data: The United States Exhibit Reactor," prepared by the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation, undated; Fermi, Atoms for the World (cit. n. 61), 94.
85. Fermi, Atoms for the World (cit. n. 61), 94.
86. Fermi, Atoms for the World (cit. n. 61), 33-4.
87. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C., RU7091, Box 402, Folder 62, '8/6/55 CBS Geneva Atomic Conference', "Adventures in Science, Saturday, August 6, 1955," CBS Radio Network, 5:00-5:15 p.m. EDT. I thank Teasel Muir-Harmony for finding this document for me.
88. "Ford Sets Award for Peace Atom," New York Times, Aug. 9, 1955.
89. William L. Laurence, "Parley in Geneva Unveils Advance in Atomic Plants," New York Times, Aug. 14, 1955.
90. "Limitless Supply of Energy Seen by Experts," New York Times, Aug. 15, 1955.
91. Josephson, Red Atom (cit. n. 62), 3.
92. Ibid., 174.
93. The Soviet Union built the world's first power reactor, which produced 5,000k W for the national grid in 1954. Paul R. Josephson, "Atomic-Powered Communism: Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR," Slavic Review 55 (1996): 297-324, 305.
94. Anon., "The Atomic Energy Conference at Moscow," Science and Culture (Calcutta) 21(2) (1955): 76-83. A translation of the proceedings of the Conference of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, July 1-5, 1955, was published by the U.S. AEC in 1956, Report AEC-TR-2435.
95. See also Fermi, Atoms for the World (cit. n. 61), 21, 39-40;
96. and Abraham, Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb (cit. n. 59), 88.
97. "It was not an unusual sight to see small groups having spirited conversations as they walked along the Rhone River at dusk." Report, "Background of the Geneva Conference" (cit. n. 65), 7.
98. Press statement by Veksler, "Atom Conference 'Tremendous Success'" (cit. n. 25). The Four Power conference (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States) opened in Geneva on July 18 and ended on July 23, 1955. The final communiqué encouraged the hope of international détente. Within weeks, and in the midst of the Atoms for Peace meeting, the Soviet Union announced that it would reduce its armed forces by 640,000 by the end of the year.
99. Report, "Background of the Geneva Conference" (cit. n. 65), 7.
100. Report, "Background of the Geneva Conference" (cit. n. 65), 6-7;
101. press statement by Veksler "Atom Conference 'Tremendous Success'" (cit. n. 25).
102. Nikolai Kremenstov, Stalinist Science (Princeton, 1997).
103. The scientific consequences ensuing on Soviet secrecy and the mistrust of their work in the West are nicely described by Ronald E. Doel, "Evaluating Soviet Lunar Science in Cold War America," Osiris, 2nd ser., 7 (1992): 44-70.
104. See also Jacob Darwin Hamblin, "Science in Isolation: American Marine Geophysics Research, 1950-1968," Physics in Perspective 2 (2000): 293-312.
105. See David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (New Haven, 1994), 222-3.
106. Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War (cit. n. 6), 250.
107. Quoted in Clarence Lasby, Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War (New York, 1971), 6.
108. Press Statement by Veksler, "Atom Conference 'Tremendous Success'" (cit. n. 25).
109. Melvyn Price to Henry Barton, March 29, 1956, letter, Folder 8, Box 58, Barton files, American Institute of Physics, Center for History of Physics, College Park, Md.
110. "Proposal for Department of Defense Program in High Energy Physics," Oct. 31, 1955, memo attached to letter from George D. Lukes to I. I. Rabi, April 6, 1955, Folder 8, Box 25, Rabi LoC (italics in the original).
111. Paul Forman, "Scientific Internationalism and the Weimar Physicists: The Ideology and Its Manipulation in Germany after World War I," Isis 64 (1973): 151-80.
112. See also Daniel J. Kevles, "'Into Hostile Political Camps': The Reorganization of International Science in World War I," Isis 62 (1971): 47-60.
113. The United States authorities explained to European scientists in December 1954 that, as far they were concerned, in nuclear matters a distinction had to be drawn between developed countries, like those in Western Europe, less developed countries like Turkey and Iran, and what a Swiss report called "des territoires primitifs." As far as the United States was concerned, it was the second-tier countries that would benefit from U.S. economic aid and nuclear reactors using fuel made available through the IAEA: "Note pour le Chef du Département. Entretien avec le prof. Scherrer sur l'énergie atomique," Jan. 27, 1955, Documents Diplomatiques Suisses, http://www.dodis.ch/, DoDiS-9598.
114. Gabrielle Hecht, "Negotiating Global Nuclearities: Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War in the making of the IAEA" (this volume).
115. Thus regarding "the Spanish case and the matter of American control: every significant element of choice" in the Spanish nuclear energy program between 1955 and 1958 "was preempted by the Americans' requirement that the fissionable material loaned could be used only as fuel in a 'swimming pool' type reactor," such as the one shown at Geneva: Ordonez and Sánchez Ron, "Nuclear Energy in Spain" (cit. n. 57), 200. For a discussion of the dilemmas and contradictions faced by a "self-reliant" India offered U.S. reactor technology,
116. see Abraham, Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb (cit. n. 59), 91-8.