New Thoughts on Atomic Control

KIHSS, PETER

NEW THOUGHTS ON ATOMIC CONTROL Mass production of atomic materials I By Peter Kihss THE ATOM is up for United Nations debate again, and this time both the Western powers and the Soviet Union are...

...It should be possible for this Assembly to advance dramatically in promoting peaceful uses of the atom for the benefit of mankind and the world organization...
...Again, only after the organ reports enforcement ability would 50 per cent of the agreed cuts in conventional arms take place...
...This would be established under the Security Council, in which every great power has a veto...
...There had been little opportunity for output...
...NEW THOUGHTS ON ATOMIC CONTROL Mass production of atomic materials I By Peter Kihss THE ATOM is up for United Nations debate again, and this time both the Western powers and the Soviet Union are submitting timetables for a world in which nations would possess conventional arms??cut to agreed levels??and no atomic weapons...
...The Anglo-French proposals of June 11, around which the Soviet Union built its plan, were limited to the "phasing" of disarmament and silent on the methods of atomic control or development...
...National atomic operation, by contrast, would leave suspicions which periodic or special inspection??the old Soviet atomic line??could never overcome...
...At a 7-per-cent error, seventy atomic bombs out of every 1,000 might be hidden away...
...The 1946 UN report cited estimates that an atomic weapon needed between 4.4 and 220 pounds of fissionable material...
...2. The Vishinsky proposal would set "agreed norms'' to which armaments, armed forces and military appropriations in national budgets would be reduced, while the Anglo-French plan talked of "agreed reductions of conventional armaments and armed forces...
...The Assembly might urge the Soviet Union and the United States, as a token of good will, to contribute at least 220 pounds apiece for a first UN reactor, eked out by contributions from others...
...The Soviets have demanded an unconditional declaration against the use of nuclear weapons...
...Vishinsky himself spurned even the idea of quota controls over dangerous national operations...
...At the end of that period, atomic weapons would have been eliminated...
...The problem of "norms" is fateful...
...It could manufacture radio-isotopes for public service...
...For this reason, the UN majority, on the basis of proposals presented by American delegate Bernard M. Baruch in 1946, has hitherto called for atomic controls which would rely primarily on actual UN operation of activities leading to large-scale manufacture of fissionable materials...
...They now have tactical as well as mass-destructive potential...
...If all weapons were removed, the tremendous populations in the Soviet orbit could overbalance their non-Communist neighbors just by hand-to-hand combat...
...PETER KIHSS has been a close observer of developments in the atomic field ever since the first bomb was exploded over Hiroshima...
...The Vishinsky scheme would first set up a temporary control commission, empowered to ask states for "necessary information" and to "observe the implementation" of obligations...
...The Acheson-Lilienthal-Baruch plan envisaged the UN taking over for peaceful uses all existing stocks of fissionable materials...
...weapons are here to stay...
...Neither gave details, although on May 28, 1952 American, British and French delegates to the UN Disarmament Commission suggested limiting overall military manpower to 1-1.5 million each for the United States, Soviet Union and China...
...The Soviet scheme advanced by Andrei Vishinsky in the General Assembly on September 30 would presumably leave it to nations to carry on their own atomic projects for peaceful purposes...
...The real horror is war itself??not the weapon and the degree of slaughter...
...The Soviets have rejected UN operation...
...Since 1946, fissionable material has been manufactured in wholesale quantities, judging by the repeated test explosions of atomic weapons by the United States, the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain...
...For six years, he covered the atomiccontrol...
...The powers of these bodies would include information, field inspection, aerial survey and permanent stationing, while violations would result in calls for immediate action to UN organs and all nations...
...Fifty pounds measures five inches across...
...The timetables differ significantly, but perhaps neither would be to Western benefit...
...Malik rejected suggestions by Britain's Selwyn Lloyd that a UN organ exercise "something akin to managerial control," which would be national operation with UN personnel alongside to be constantly "in on" all decisions and operations...
...The Anglo-French proposal would first set up the control organ and station its members...
...No accounting check-ups could detect all past output??or even future production...
...Nations that have been setting off atomic weapons should be able to spare some fissionable materials...
...Yet the atom is politically two-headed...
...3. Both sides would set up a UN control organ...
...But there is more to the control problem today...
...Such a UN reactor could be used??as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles suggested for an American project??as a training school in peaceful uses of atomic energy...
...The Anglo-French proposals, backed by the United States, call for a declaration at once against "use of nuclear weapons except in defense against aggression...
...Given the scientific doubt about ever checking all past atomic output and the controversy over future operation, it might be soundest to decide that atomic??like conventional...
...The temporary control organ would be set up simultaneously at the start of this period??with no requirement that it first report ability to carry out even its vague and apparently weak powers...
...But these days atomic weapons come in many sizes and varieties...
...From the mining of uranium ores to the production of fissionable materials, the process is identical??up to the point where fissionable materials are either used in atomic furnaces or encased in atomic weapons...
...While the Russians now claim to have switched to "inspection on a continuing basis...
...Recall, for example, the unjustified but vehement uproar in the United States when an insignificant ounce of Uranium-235 was reported lost at Argonne National Laboratory...
...Regrettable years have passed...
...Jacob A. Malik's explanation at talks in London last spring indicated this meant only that a control organ would be permanent...
...The basic need is to deter aggression with the ability to punish the aggressor...
...The prohibition of atomic "and other weapons of mass destruction" has been a UN goal since 1946...
...Conversion into weapons would take less than forty-eight hours, according to 1946 American statements to the UN...
...With a report on enforcement ability once more required, the plan would then carry out the rest of the conventional arms cuts...
...The Vishinsky plan calls for starting cuts in arms and spending at the very outset, allowing six months (or one year) for the first 50-per-cent reduction to agreed norms...
...Apart from past divergence over national atomic operations, the London talks showed the Soviet Union opposed to letting UN inspectors check up at their own discretion on whether "tractor" and "glass" plants might be producing arms...
...Now a new question must be posed, and Western delegates have only fleetingly mentioned it: Is it possible for UN inspectors ever to locate all the fissionable material that has already been manufactured...
...Only a few United States reactors and one Canadian pile had then been operating...
...Congressional reports on the U-235 Argonne incident gave the margin of error in accounting as 7 per cent...
...There are both resemblances and differences: 1. Both would operate within a ceiling of December 31, 1953 armaments and armed forces and a calendar 1953 level of military expenditure...
...700,000 to 800,000 each for Britain and France, and corresponding ceilings for other states??generally less than 1 per cent of population...
...In part, it epitomized the hope, as Baruch put it, that if man once learned to say "A" in international cooperation on disarmament he might go on with the rest of the alphabet...
...Only after the organ reports itself "able effectively to enforce them" would the first disarmament measures be taken??namely, limitations to 1953 ceilings...
...The resolution doesn't say so, but Vishinsky now says that he, too, only refers to conventional weapons at this point...
...The Anglo-French proposal talked simply of enforcing disarmament...
...In the London disarmament talks last June, Malik charged that this was so high that neither Britain nor France could increase military spending, anyway...
...The Vishinsky program would halt manufacture of atomic and hydrogen weapons at the start of a second six-month (or one-year) period, in which the remaining 50-per-cent agreed cuts would be carried out...
...This Assembly might call upon all countries to report on their distribution of such radio-isotopes, the gains they can report for peaceful advances??and what improvements could come through pooling efforts through the UN...
...negotiations at the United Nations as the regular correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune...
...The fissionable material needed for a uranium bomb is only as bulky as a softball...
...Radioactive atoms are already at work in medicine, agriculture and industry, distributed by American, British, Soviet and other atomic projects...
...And yet there remains room for UN good works in atomic energy...
...Then he could proclaim his possession and perhaps terrorize other nations into submission as Hitler did in the cases of Austria and Czechoslovakia...
...After this was completed, it would prohibit and eliminate nuclear and other specified weapons...
...Today, atomic weapons serve the non-Communist nations to balance the teeming populations and central land mass of the Communist powers, whose course has only led to increasing doubts as to their intent...
...On completion of that step, manufacture of nuclear and other specified weapons would cease...
...Lloyd never worked out his idea, and, so far as the public can tell, the scientific arguments for international operation remain as essential as when Baruch advanced them...
...Their purpose thus parallels other weapons...
...Control might be an illusion...
...At the least, the situation calls for a scientific re-examination of the practicability of atomic control even through UN operation of plants...
...President Eisenhower told the General Assembly last December 8 that "atomic weapons have virtually achieved conventional status with our armed services...
...Cooperation might become a habit...
...The Soviets have never detailed a "norm," but have proposed arbitrary uniform one-third cuts from existing levels in conventional armaments and armed forces for the five great powers...
...This would be utterly unrealistic in a world where potential aggressors would still be manufacturing such weapons...
...This would at least spell out their reason for existence...
...And it could bring together international brains to study the ever-recurring promise of atomic power...
...Like the Anglo-French timetable, the Vishinsky proposals cover both conventional and atomic armaments...
...An aggressor could easily hide such lumps until other nations were stripped of atomic weapons...
...A United States proposal last May 25 envisaged an atomic-development division, to fit a plan to be agreed upon, and a disarmament division...
...4. Timetables contrast sharply in their effect...
...In part, this arose from the sheer horror of such weapons...
...Actually, various nations' requirements differ, depending on their state of civilization, acceptance of existing regimes, land or sea geography, and relations with their neighbors...
...Eventually, a permanent control organ would have power of "inspection on a permanent basis, to the extent necessary to insure implementation...

Vol. 37 • October 1954 • No. 43


 
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