Baruch Plan - Reaction

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. They proposed that America eliminate its 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 neither 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:

We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business. Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work our salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of fear. Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or (elect) world destruction

The Baruch Plan was not agreed upon by the Soviet Union, and though debate on the matter continued until 1948, it was not seriously advanced later than the end of 1947. They were, 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 'forties and early 'fifties 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 better 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 United States Government ... did attempt ... to give effect to some of the ideas which the atomic scientists had suggested. In 1946, it presented to the world what is now called "The Baruch Plan", which had very great merits and showed considerable generosity, when it is remembered that America still had an unbroken nuclear monopoly. The Baruch Plan proposed an International Atomic Development Authority which was to have a monopoly of mining uranium and thorium, refining the ores, owning materials, and constructing and operating plants necessary for the use of nuclear power. It was suggested that this Authority should be established by the United Nations and that the United States should give it the information of which, so far, America was the sole possessor. Unfortunately, there were features of the Baruch Proposal which Russia found unacceptable, as, indeed, was to be expected. It was Stalin's Russia, flushed with pride in the victory over the Germans, suspicious (not without reason) of the Western Powers, and aware that in the United Nations it could almost always be outvoted. The Baruch plan is often questioned on whether it was a legitimate effort to achieve global cooperation on nuclear control.