Russia, the u.s., and the Atom

by A FOREIGN OBSERVER

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THERE seems to be some inability in the human I mind to grasp more than a certain degree of 1. horror: no one, for instance, could believe what took place in the German concentration camps until shown on the newsreel. We pretend we fully understand the world we live in by saying it is almost dead; almost we accept the new achievements of science by granting that they are going to destroy us. Yet those who jump to such a hopeless conclusion should realize that if universal destruction is to be the result of atomic warfare, then war becomes purposeless.

At the present moment atomic weapons confront us with new and unprecedented difficulties in the establishment of peace. The conditions of world security have been so greatly altered by this discovery that the problem raised is much more than one of disarmament: it is the problem, first, of knowing how security can bo restored throughout the world; and, second, of finding the very shape of the peace to be established. What is new is that these questions should be raised in connection with one weapon, for so far, armaments have not been the fundamental causes of war. They were merely the means by which political, economic, ideological conflicts were settled.

Since there is no other defense against atomic warfare t han dispersion, the absence of international control (which for the sake of this argument is equivalent to ineffective control) will force all to prepare for defensive warfare. According to the estimates given in Senate hearings, the dispersion of United States industries would cost some 300 billion dollars. Aside from money, the cost can be discussed only theoretically, for the opposition of the American people to being “regimented, uprooted, and forcibly moved” would be insurmountable. They would refuse to accept the inevitable loss of freedom that such a plan would bring about as an intolerable encroachment on t heir sovereignty.

Complete dispersion, cutting to a minimum the losses to be suffered from an atomic attack, would lower America’s standard of living and destroy her economic structure. Most of all, it would be a threat, to the freedom of her institutions. Limited dispersion would avoid these disastrous consequences, but it would involve the acceptance of considerable loss in human lives and wealth.

It is difficult to discuss this problem without putting the emphasis on the American aspect of the question. European nations emerged from the war in such a state of weakness that, for years to come, their main concern will be to put their economy back on it s feet. They cannot even think of taking on the crippling cost of security.

According to the findings of the majority in the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, the dangers to be eliminated, so far as practicable, are those of diversion (that is, of diverting atomic material for war use from a plant ostensibly engaged in a peaceful activity), seizure, and clandestine operations. In its proposals for coping with these dangers, the Commission has adopted much of the U.S. scheme and has elaborated on it greatly. It recommends, first, that the dangers of diversion be obviated by granting to an international agency the exclusive right to keep, handle, process, and use dangerous quantities of uranium and thorium, which would be the property of the agency from the moment they arc separated from the ground. Second, to lessen the dangers of seizure, the Commission recommends that all dangerous facilities and stocks be allocated in such a way as to make it impossible for one nation or group of nations to achieve potential military supremacy. Third, it recognizes that the dangers of clandest ine activity can be met only if no nation can rightly bar any portion of its territory to the agency inspectorate.

The first two principles amount to depriving nations of the right to develop atomic energy according either to their resources or to their needs of power, for freedom in that field is actually freedom to prepare the nuclear fuel which is used in atomic armaments. It means that as soon as power reactors are in existence, one branch of power production in every country would have to be subordinated to a world program and operated by the international agency.

The third principle referring to inspection is just as far-reaching. It stems from the fact that if atomic weapons should be manufactured clandestinely by one nation while others have kept their word, there would be no chance for the latter to make up for lost time. The days are gone when one can wait to be attacked before preparing for defense. The only chance to get nations to agree to bind themselves not to manufacture atomic weapons is to give them as sure a guarantee as possible that no one else is likely to break that pledge. Such a guarantee means that any suspicion must be cleared on the spot, and tends to turn the world into a glass house.

As long as a nation believes that it is in danger of being attacked, there is little hope of any relaxation in the measures it takes for its own protection. That fear in the U.S.S.R. is expressed not only in words but in deeds. The new drive for the economic reconstruction and development of the country was put by Marshal Stalin himself under the heading of preparation for defense when he launched the new five-year plan in his February, 1946, speech. No loosening of the secrecy which prevails over Russian economic and military preparations can be expected until the Russians are certain that their security is no longer threatened, for the disclosure of the location of their main industries would greatly increase their vulnerability in the event of a conflict.

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THERE is something even more fundamental than this problem of Soviet security, which really parallels the problem confronting the United States. Some observers of Russian affairs point out that the whole conception of the control of atomic energy as it has now been evolved by the majority of the Commission is in complete violation of Russia’s traditional attitude towards the outside world, and they wonder whether such a highly centralized state (where everything moves according to orders issued from the infallible central organ of the Party) could tolerate freedom of ingress, egress, and movement of foreign inspectors whose duty it would be to be constantly on the watch for any breach of faith by the government.

Could a branch of Soviet economy from mining to power production be set up under a plan that would not be primarily Russian and could the management of those plants be assumed not by Soviet citizens but by foreigners responsible to an international organization? When the Soviet representative in the United Nations Commission has opposed these measures he has done so by invoking the principle of sovereignty.

If it is true that what is actually at stake is the very structure of the Soviet government, it is easier to understand that government’s attitude. And there are some arguments to back up that opinion. It has been pointed out that the very policy of developing industries on a program of national defense is not compatible with any substantial improvement of the people’s standard of living. Part of the success of such a plan is that the people believe that they are actually threatened and that their condition, poor as it is, is still a better one than that prevailing in the capitalist countries. The Soviet might well fear that those international agents working on their territory would bring along with them the information and evidence which the official propaganda has always shielded away about those countries where men are free and control their own governments.

In his study of “The Sources of Soviet Conduct ” Mr. X analyzes the permanent reasons which have led the Soviet government to maintain the dictatorship character of its regime although all internal opposition has been blotted out. And he points out that “the rulers can no longer dream of parting with these organs of suppression.”

It those assumptions are correct, it means that a plan to control atomic energy to the degree necessary to ensure security to other participating nations places before the Soviet government the greatest challenge that its regime has met in peacetime. Whether or not the Soviet leaders genuinely consider the United States plan simply a part of a political plot against the communist state, the implication of what the Commission considers a necessary set of safeguards is not likely to alleviate their distrust of the Western world.

The foregoing reasoning may appear much too logical to embrace political reality, which is often irrational and rebels at being shut in a dilemma. Yet to rely on the irrational in order to avoid thinking ahead on a problem, because logic throws on it an unpleasant light, is not always a successful way out. With every allowance made for the circumstances that might alter the situation for the better, the picture at the time of this writing looks as follows: the requirements of effective control are a threat to the maintenance of the Soviet regime; the absence of control is a threat to the American way of life and economic structure, as well as to the lives of millions.

Atomic energy brings to a climax the challenge that has confronted men since the Industrial Revolution began. Broadly speaking, this challenge has received two main answers: capitalism and communism. Whether it was inevitable that those two formulas had to be evolved in the two most powerful nations in the world or whether it was just a piece of ill luck, the fact remains that atomic energy, the latest development of the Industrial Revolution, places before the United States and the Soviet Union a security problem in which their interests are no less opposed than are their economic and social conceptions. It forces us all to meet squarely the issue that has been dodged for more than a century, and to find an answer to the problem not only in t he economic and social fields but in that of international politics.

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HOWEVER desirable a prompt solution appears, it seems unlikely that one can be attained in the immediate future, for certain conditions have to be fulfilled first. The United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, which in its Second Report, has said that there will be limitations on the extent to which proposals can be worked out in detail on the other topics which have still to be studied, will be confronted with quite a different set of difficulties from the one it has so far met if and when it tackles the political questions involved in a plan of control.

So far the majority of the Commission has worked on the assumption that technical matters owe no allegiance to international or national politics and that what the world wants to know is to what requirements it must adapt itself to be protected against the misuse of atomic energy. The Soviet Union has opposed that stand and holds that it is atomic energy which has to fit into the present pattern of international relations.

But there is on the agenda of the commission a set of questions which are primarily political and which can probably be solved only in conjunction with other problems of peacemaking. This applies to the geographical location of dangerous facilities, stockpiling, and the transition from the present situation to a system of international control. At that stage of its work the Commission will find itself in the same difficulties as the other organs of the United Nations which deal with the political questions that have so far stalled the work at Lake Success as well as in the Conferences of the Foreign Ministers. It is to be expected, therefore, that a complete settlement on atomic energy can take place only when the ground is laid for building a real peace.

The work of the United Nations Commission so far has been extremely valuable in helping governments and the public to understand what scientists have known for several years: that atomic energy makes obsolete the centuries-old recipe for establishing peace in the world — namely, the maintenance of a balance of power. It is true that, even without atomic weapons, a balance would probably be impossible to strike because there are only two super powers instead of four or five whose interplay could maintain the equilibrium of the system. It is equally true that balance of power has not wholly succeeded in keeping the peace. Efforts to establish some other basis are recorded in the Covenant of the League and in the Charter of the United Nations.

But it is even more true that if it had not been for atomic weapons the world would probably have found peace, if only through the exhaustion of Europe and the mutual invulnerability of the nonEuropean powers. Nuclear fission has shortened the time left to find a settlement. A century hence the world may be as different from what it is now, as it is now from what it was a century ago. But atomic fission will still be there. It will have forced man to make a supreme effort to run the world in a sensible way so that people can live entirely free of fear. We must realize, when we think of war and peace today, that we have to start almost from scratch. There is no return ticket from the atomic age.