Baruch Plan

The Baruch Plan was a proposal by the United States government, written largely by Bernard Baruch but based on the Acheson–Lilienthal Report, to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) during its first meeting in June 1946.  The United States, Great Britain and Canada called for an international organization to regulate atomic energy and President Truman responded by asking Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and David E. Lilienthal to draw up a plan. Baruch's version of the proposal was rejected by the Soviet Union, who feared the plan would preserve the American nuclear monopoly. Its collapse led to the beginning of the Cold War arms race.

Text of plan

The plan proposed to:

 extend between all countries the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful conclusions; 
 implement control of nuclear power to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes; 
 eliminate from national armaments atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction; and 
 establish effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying States against the hazards of violations and evasions

Reaction
The US agreed to turn over all of its weapons on the condition that all other countries pledge not to produce them and agree to an adequate system of inspection. The Soviets rejected this plan on the grounds that the United Nations was dominated by the United States and its allies in Western Europe, and could therefore not be trusted to exercise authority over atomic weaponry in an evenhanded manner (Nationalist China, a UN Security Council member with veto privileges, was anti-communist and aligned with the US at this time). The USSR insisted that America eliminate its own nuclear weapons before considering proposals for a system of controls and inspections.

Although the Soviets showed increased interest in the cause of arms control after they became a nuclear power in 1949, and particularly after the death of Stalin in 1953, the issue of the Soviet Union submitting to international inspection was always a thorny one upon which many attempts at nuclear arms control were stalled. Crucially, the Baruch Plan suggested that none of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would be able to veto a decision to punish culprits. In presenting his plan to the United Nations, Baruch stated:

The Baruch Plan was not agreed to by the Soviet Union, and though debate on the matter continued until 1948, it was not seriously advanced later than the end of 1947. The USSR was, at the time of the negotiations, pursuing their own atomic bomb project, and the United States was continuing its own weapons development and production. With the failure of the plan, both nations embarked on programs of weapons development, innovation, production, and testing as part of the overall nuclear arms race of the Cold War.

Bertrand Russell urged control of nuclear weapons in the 1940s and early 1950s to avoid the likelihood of a general nuclear war, and felt hopeful when the Baruch Proposal was made. In late 1948 he suggested that "the remedy might be the threat of immediate war by the United States on Russia for the purpose of forcing nuclear disarmament on her." Later he thought less well of the Baruch Proposal as "Congress insisted upon the insertion of clauses which it was known that the Russians would not accept."

In his 1961 book Has Man a Future?, Russell described the Baruch plan as follows:

The Baruch Plan is often questioned by scholars (such as David S. Painter, Melvyn Leffler, and James Carroll) on whether it was a legitimate effort to achieve global cooperation on nuclear control.

References

External links
Atomic Archive: The Baruch Plan

Category:Deterrence theory during the Cold War
Category:Energy policy
Category:Nuclear proliferation
Category:1946 in the United States
Category:1946 in international relations
Category:Nuclear weapons governance
Category:Nuclear weapons program of the United States
Category:Soviet Union–United States relations