“Atomic Diplomacy and National Security in a New World Order: A 60 Year Perspective.” (original) (raw)

Few events have provoked as many questions as the dropping of the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Did the use of the atomic bomb save the lives of upwards of one million American soldiers destined to launch an invasion of the Japanese home islands in November 1945? If so, was this motive paramount in the minds of those who decided to use this weapon? If not, was Harry S. Truman’s principal motive to intimidate the Soviet Union? Such questions have caused enormous outpourings of emotion over the past few decades.1 The question that I explore is: How did the Truman administration come to have this revolutionary weapon? My research examines the Anglo-American partnership in atomic research from a political and scientific perspective, with emphasis on the political. It analyzes the internal dynamics of the British and American atomic energy programs to demonstrate that for both governments, the decision to devote massive resources to attempt to produce an atomic bomb was principally political. To the United Kingdom, possession of a nuclear weapon meant two things, the first of which was the ability to maintain postwar control of its empire. Secondly, an atomic capability would insure Britain’s security in Europe in the event that the United States retreated into postwar isolation. To the United States, control of a nuclear weapon meant the ability to implement its world-view, the construction of a postwar liberal-capitalist democratic world order. And of course, underlying these motives was the desire to beat Adolph Hitler to the bomb. A study of the politics of the atom sheds light on more than just the Anglo-American wartime alliance. It helps explains the fundamental character of Cold War American political discourse. At the heart of America’s atomic research program was the extension of American military research to American universities on a scale that had never before been seen. This infusion of military dollars into the civilian scientific community in this way laid the foundation of the postwar Military-Industrial Complex. The origins of the Military-Industrial Complex lies in the institutional framework that Vannevar Bush, a former Professor of Engineering at MIT, and James Conant, a chemist and former President of Harvard University, created through the National Defense Research Committee and the Office of Strategic Research and Development. The NDRC and OSRD, which President Franklin Roosevelt established within the White House Office of Emergency Management, was directly controlled by the Executive branch in close concert with the United States Army and Navy. This system not only set a precedent for close ties between the military, universities, and the scientific community; it led to an increase in Executive power. This latter development had a tremendous impact on future American Cold War politics. In an effort to maintain secrecy, the White House never informed Congress about its effort to construct an atomic bomb, even though Congress appropriated over $2 billion for this purpose. The attitude of Franklin Roosevelt’s White House toward Congress set a precedent for recent examples of covert Executive behavior, such as the aiding of Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s and the arming of Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s.