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Dimensions transnationales : interdépendances et impératifs d’une présence sur la scène mondiale

The Atoms for Peace program and the Third World

Le programme Des Atomes pour la paix et le tiers monde
Mara Drogan
p. 441-460

Résumés

Le programme Des Atomes pour la paix fut inauguré par le président Eisenhower en 1953. Les États‑Unis proposaient de partager la technologie nucléaire civile, la formation en ce domaine et du matériel avec les autres pays du monde dans le but de gagner les cœurs et les esprits et de dominer le marché nucléaire. L’auteure étudie les accords bilatéraux conclus dans ce cadre et porte son attention sur des études de cas concernant l’Asie et l’Amérique du Sud. Elle montre que si les objectifs états‑uniens s’inscrivaient dans le contexte de la guerre froide, les autres nations avaient des aspirations différentes en ce qui concernait leur situation économique et leur rayonnement international. La politique intérieure, les limites économiques et technologiques et les aspirations politiques de ces nations, tout comme la possibilité grandissante d’obtenir de la technologie et des matériaux fissiles dans d’autres pays que les États‑Unis, remirent en question l’hégémonie des États‑Unis. Si bien que vers la fin des années 1950, le programme Des Atomes pour la paix s’éloigna des accords bilatéraux.

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1Appearing before the United Nations General Assembly on December 8, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most celebrated speeches of his career. After a bleak overview of the nuclear dangers then facing the world, he surprised his audience by proposing that the UN countries create an international bank of fissionable material which member nations could draw upon for peaceful purposes in agriculture, medicine, energy production, and other industrial fields. Eisenhower suggested that this plan would eventually lead to nuclear disarmament by reducing the military supply of uranium and by promoting the so‑called “peaceful atom” over the military one.

  • 1 Press Release, “Atoms for Peace” Speech, 8 December 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

2The press dubbed the speech “Atoms for Peace,” a name that was quickly adopted by the Eisenhower administration. The proposal led to a massive propaganda campaign by the US Information Agency, to the signing of bilateral agreements of cooperation with dozens of countries worldwide beginning in 1955, and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957. Although the IAEA did not create a fuel bank, the United States transferred nuclear technology and fissionable material around the globe under the auspices of the Atoms for Peace program.1 The policy and the propaganda of Atoms for Peace aimed to strike a blow against the Soviet Union in the contest for world supremacy, to cement the United States’ role as the global leader in nuclear technology, and to reinforce or create alliances with other nations that would support the United States in the Cold War.

  • 2 The final volume of the official history of the Atomic Energy Commission, Richard G. Hewlett and Ja (...)
  • 3 Ira Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace (College Station : Texas A&M University Press, 2002) ; Ke (...)
  • 4 Elisabeth Roehrlich, “The Cold War, the Developing World, and the Creation of the International Ato (...)
  • 5 Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “Exorcising Ghosts in the Age of Automation : United Nations Experts and Atom (...)
  • 6 David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb : The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939‑1956 (New Haven : Ya (...)

3There is a growing literature on the “peaceful atom,” referring to non‑military technology and its promotion, and over the past decade or so, the Atoms for Peace program itself has been the subject of increasingly close scrutiny by scholars.2 Ira Chernus offers a fine‑grained analysis of the genesis of the Atoms for Peace speech in his book, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, and Kenneth Osgood gives the best analysis of the propaganda side of the program led by the USIA in Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad.3 A number of books and articles have analyzed different aspects of the founding and operation of the IAEA; notable here is the recent work of Elisabeth Roehrlich.4 Jacob Darwin Hamblin has examined the role of UNESCO in supporting the Atoms for Peace program within the United Nations and John Krige has explored various aspects of Atoms for Peace, including scientific internationalism and the 1955 Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva and the impact of Atoms for Peace on the formation of Euratom.5 The Soviet response to Atoms for Peace is discussed by David Holloway in the final chapter of Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939‑1956 and in more recent articles by Fabian Lüscher and Sonja Schmid.6

  • 7 Two works that provide a close analysis of individual Atoms for Peace bilateral negotiations are Av (...)
  • 8 In addition to research, the smaller reactors are used for materials testing, training, and isotope (...)

4With a handful of exceptions, the bilateral agreements of cooperation signed by the United States and several dozen countries world‑wide have not received the same scrutiny and those are primarily in the form of single country studies.7 This paper is part of a larger research project which analyzes the formation of Atoms for Peace policy by the United States, the bilateral agreements for cooperation signed under the Atoms for Peace program, and the resulting technology exchanges between 1953‑1960. I focus on countries which received either a research or power reactor from the United States. Research reactors are small plants that produce between .10 watts thermal and 20 megawatts thermal, whereas the average commercial reactor produces 3000 megawatts thermal.8 Despite their size, for small and developing countries research reactors represented a significant investment of scarce resources, including money, infrastructure, and trained personnel. They were important indicators of a nation’s commitment to the nuclear project and were often the first point of technology transfer between countries in the nuclear marketplace. These exchanges received a great deal of publicity in the 1950s. How one reads these interactions depends on where one sits. From the American and Soviet point of view, the early export of nuclear reactors was first and foremost a Cold War concern. From a Third World standpoint, it was primarily a story of energy independence and national ambition in the face of American empire.

  • 9 Corbin Allardice and Edward R. Trapnell, The Atomic Energy Commission (New York, NY, 1974), 201.
  • 10 Mara Drogan, “The Nuclear Imperative : Atoms for Peace and the Development of U.S. Policy on Export (...)

5Elsewhere I have shown that Eisenhower gave his Atoms for Peace speech with almost no consideration of its practical outcomes and without any policy in place. In the months that followed, staff members at the US State Department and AEC struggled to attach “bones to the spine of the President’s idea and [put] meat on the ribs.”9 By 1955, US officials were well aware that nuclear power would not be a tool of economic development for years, if not decades, to come, and the remainder of the Eisenhower administration was marked by experimentation in how civilian nuclear technology could be used as a tool of foreign policy.10

  • 11 The nations were Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, (...)

6In this essay I examine two case studies of US efforts to implement Atoms for Peace in the Third World to illuminate two intertwined histories of power in the 1950s, and here I use the word “power” in both its technological and political senses. Growing directly out of US concerns about the role of Third World nations in international debates about nuclear technology, a proposed Asian nuclear research center was expected to serve as a model of US commitment and prestige and tamp down a nascent anti‑nuclear critique. On the other side of the globe, between 1955‑1960 the United States signed fourteen bilateral agreements with nations in the Americas, yet in that same period, only Brazil and Argentina acquired research reactors.11 As the first nation in South America to build a nuclear reactor, Brazil was something of a test case for Atoms for Peace, one that ended in dissatisfaction on both sides. Their experiences in Asia and Brazil (and elsewhere) led US officials to question the efficacy of nuclear technology as a tool of foreign policy and development.

  • 12 Although beyond the scope of this paper, also of interest are those “dogs that did not bark,” in th (...)

7These two case studies are illustrative of the disruptions to the Atoms for Peace agenda caused by Third World nations in the 1950s. They are of particular interest because they seemed initially to augur success for the program but ultimately frustrated the narrative the United States attempted to write through the use of bilateral agreements.12 US officials hoped that the propagandistic potential for Atoms for Peace would strike a crucial blow in the Cold War, but nations in Asia and South America responded to offers of American aid in unexpected ways in an effort to stake out their own claims to techno‑political power, challenging US dominance in the process and ultimately redirecting the Atoms for Peace program.

“A considerable gamble” : American plans for an Asian nuclear research center

  • 13 B.R. Tomlinson, “What Was the Third World ?” Journal of Contemporary History, 38, 2 (2003) : 307‑21 (...)

8The term “Third World” was coined by Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer and economic historian, in a 1952 L’Observateur article, “Trois Mondes, Une Planète,” in which he compared the Third World to the Third Estate in France; it too had “been ignored and despised and it too wants to be something.” Writers and activists in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America adopted the term around that time as they challenged the Cold War framework and adopted the principle of non‑alignment.13

  • 14 The participating countries were Afghanistan, Cambodia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gold Coast, Iran, Iraq, Ja (...)
  • 15 “Asia‑Africa Unity Hailed as Parley Opens in Bandung,” The New York Times, 18 April 1955, 1, 6. The (...)
  • 16 Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb : A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954 (...)
  • 17 By nuclearism, I mean the belief in the symbolic or strategic power of nuclear weapons ; nuclear sc (...)

9One of the significant events marking the emergence of an international Non‑Aligned Movement in the 1950s was the Asian‑African Conference. More commonly known as the Bandung Conference after its location in Indonesia, the meeting was convened by the governments of Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan in April 1955. The conference brought together twenty‑nine newly‑independent nations from Africa and Asia, including the Arab nations of the Middle East, to discuss issues of concern to former colonial areas.14 The agenda distributed before the conference laid out seven areas of discussion: “economic cooperation, cultural cooperation, self‑determination and human rights, peaceful uses of nuclear energy, world peace and cooperation, destructive uses of nuclear weapons, and [the] problems of dependent peoples.” Notably, two of the seven items related to nuclear technology. Likewise, the final communiqué from the conference called for disarmament, the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and the cessation of nuclear testing, but also “emphasized the particular significance of the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes for Asian‑African countries.”15 The Bandung participants offered an important and early critique of nuclearism that would coalesce into an increasingly robust anti‑testing movement by the end of the decade.16 At the same time, they embraced some of the principles of nuclearism, adhering to the ideas promoted by Atoms for Peace.17

10The wartime atomic bombings of Japan, the continued testing of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, fallout from Soviet and American tests – especially the inadvertent exposure of Japanese fishermen to fallout in March 1954 – and American threats to use nuclear weapons in its conflict with China over the Formosa Straits caused special concern about nuclear weapons in Asia. At the same time, as developing and sometimes energy‑poor nations, countries from both Africa and Asia were excited about the possibilities of civilian projects, particularly given the promotion of the so‑called peaceful atom under Atoms for Peace. From observing the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and others, the new nations of Africa and Asia had learned that nuclearism corresponded to nationalism and modernity, and they were eager to lay claim to the benefits of each.

11In the opening speeches at the conference, fifteen out of 27 speakers mentioned nuclear technology, sometimes at length. Most spoke of the dangers of the nuclear age, such Sir John Kotelawala from Ceylon, who criticized nuclear nations for failing to reach agreement on the question of international control of the bomb. He accused them of having an “addiction to the philosophy of fear,” and charged:

  • 18 Asia‑Africa Speaks from Bandung, 52.

This competition in the technology of terror has led to the inevitable breakdown of every concrete suggestion put forward in the West for the limitation of armaments or for the banning of nuclear weapons. The nations on whom the responsibility has hitherto devolved of preserving the world’s present armed truce, or planning its future peace, are at a loss. They are hag‑ridden by the demon of progress, the monsters their scientists have created. Neither their science nor their statesmanship can afford them any protection.18

12Many observed that no Asian or African nation possessed nuclear weapons and yet would be among the victims in a nuclear war. Some argued that because the nations of Asia and Africa did not possess nuclear weapons, they were particularly well‑suited to negotiate lasting peace. Again, Sir John Kotelawala:

  • 19 Ibid., 53.

When the great powers of the West talk peace, their chances of agreement are weakened by the fact that each suspects the others’ strength. We by contrast come to the conference table weak and relatively unarmed. We have no thermonuclear bombs in our pockets, no weapons of chemical or bacteriological warfare up our sleeves, no plans for armament factories or blueprints for ever more deadly methods of genocide in our brief cases.19

  • 20 Barnett, “Report on Bandung,” 29.

13The final communique likewise expressed the delegates’ concern about nuclear weapons. It briefly addressed peaceful uses of nuclear technology, welcoming offers of aid from the nuclear powers, calling for the International Atomic Energy Agency to be created quickly, and urging African and Asian countries to develop civilian programs. But the critique of the nuclear arms race was much more extensive and detailed. One observer at the conference noted that the final communique “reflected real concern about modern weapons of mass destruction which was expressed during the conference by almost all of the 29 participating nations.”20

14Nuclear technology was depicted in the speeches and the written statements as both a weapon of imperialism and a tool of decolonization. The section on disarmament was clearly directed at nuclear weapons and the critique of nuclear weapons policies was closely linked to the critique of colonialism, old and new, in that both were portrayed as a means of imposing one nation’s will on other peoples through the threat of destruction. On the other hand, the nod to peaceful uses reflected the contemporary fascination with nuclear technology as a remedy for multiple problems, most notably in the field of energy production. Energy independence would bolster political independence.

  • 21 Max W. Bishop to Mr. Villard, March 31, 1955, 3. Conferences and Meetings, 3a. Afro‑Asian (Bandung) (...)

15In the months leading up to the conference, US officials worried that the Chinese Communists would dominate the conference, that India or some other regional power would fan the flames of anti‑Western, anti‑white sentiment, or that anti‑nuclear, especially anti‑testing, resolutions would be introduced. An interdepartmental working group proposed to counter these potential problems by getting a “friendly representative” to introduce anti‑communist resolutions. Nelson Rockefeller, Eisenhower’s special advisor on psychological warfare from 1954‑55, and Paul Foster, assistant to AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss, also proposed that “some friend of the United States…take a positive stand on the question of atomic energy.”21

  • 22 “Memorandum by the Executive Secretary (Lay) to the National Security Council,” April 5, 1954, FRUS (...)

16The most obvious candidate was the Filipino delegate. The Philippines were the United States’ most reliable ally in the region; the Filipino government was strongly pro‑American and had recently put down a communist insurgency. The National Security Council (NSC) asserted that the Philippine Republic was important strategically as a “principal link in the Far East defense perimeter,” in terms of propaganda because it provided “concrete evidence of the US attitude toward progress from colonial status to self‑determination,” and as a source of raw materials such as hemp, sugar, and chrome. US officials wanted the Philippines to act as a proxy of sorts in Asia, but always in such a way “that other countries, particularly in Asia, recognize that the Philippines are truly independent.”22

  • 23 Preliminary Observations on Responsibilities for Negotiations under the “Atoms for Peace” Program, (...)

17Since President Eisenhower had first proposed the Atoms for Peace program in 1953, other countries routinely approached the United States seeking cooperation in the nuclear arena. Atypically, it was US officials who first proposed a bilateral agreement between the United States and the Philippines. The idea originated in a meeting between Morehead Patterson, the US ambassador negotiating the IAEA statute, and Lewis Strauss in early March 1955; they decided to promote the Atoms for Peace program by approaching five countries with offers of research reactors. The Philippines was put on that list due to the desire to counter any negative statements that might emerge from Bandung.23

  • 24 “Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Department of State,” March 16, 1956, FRUS 1955‑1957, (...)

18In mid‑April 1955, John Foster Dulles suggested to Philippine representative Carlos Romulo that the United States would provide a research reactor if the Philippines would agree to maintain and operate it. While other countries were eligible for a $ 350,000 grant towards the cost of a research reactor, Romulo was offered $ 500,000 to construct a reactor at the University of the Philippines. As final preparations were underway for Bandung, the United States prepared a statement for Romulo to use at the conference, in which he announced that “even now my country is negotiating with the United States.”24

  • 25 Gerard C. Smith to Mr. Murphy, October 17, 1955, 3.5 Asian Nuclear Center Working Group Meeting, Wa (...)

19As the Bandung Conference grew closer, however, Rockefeller wanted to see a “more aggressive approach.” Rockefeller doubted there would be time to arrange for the sale of a reactor before the conference, especially given current financial problems in the Philippines, so he proposed that the United States give a research reactor to the Philippines “as soon as possible.” He wanted to use that reactor to create a regional research center for Asia, located in Manila. Although his suggestion was not followed up in time for the Bandung Conference and Dulles would dismiss the idea of a building a nuclear research center in Manila “in view of the low level of Philippine scientific competence,” other members of the State Department adopted the idea later in the year.25

  • 26 Mr. Waugh from Philip J. Farley, August 23, 1955, 3.5 Asian Nuclear Center Working Group Meeting, W (...)

20Despite Dulles’ misgivings about locating it in Manila, in August 1955, the State Department began planning for a regional research center. The United States intended to provide facilities including a research reactor and a small power reactor, which would provide electricity for the Center and serve as a training and demonstration facility. The United States was prepared to contribute as much as $ 20 million to the project. For their part, participating Asian nations would be expected to organize “into an association of states with responsibility for determining the site of the Center, supervising and directing its development, as well as contributing funds and personnel.” In effect, US officials envisioned building the Asian equivalent of Euratom.26

  • 27 The team travelled from April 6 to June 15, 1956, going to Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Indi (...)

21The following year, a team travelled throughout Asia to promote the Center and evaluate the Asian nations’ interest in and ability to contribute to it. While the concept of a research center was generally appealing, the team found a “paucity of scientific talent” in every country except India, Japan, and Pakistan. Even in those relatively advanced programs, the expertise was “spread very thinly,” while in other countries, the “nuclear scientific talent was practically zero.” Center staff would have to come primarily from Western nations, because a demand for Asian staff members “would constitute a real sacrifice by these nations in view of the critical shortage of trained people available.” The team therefore anticipated staffing problems for at least the first five years of operation and suggested that unless the United States provided thirty top scientists during that period, “the Center would not have a prayer of succeeding.”27

  • 28 Philip J. Farley to Mr. Bell, February 17, 1959, 19.2 Regional Program, Asian Nuclear Center, Gener (...)

22Over the next three years, American ambition slowly waned. There was lack of support from the State Department Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs and the Atomic Energy Commission, and Asian nations continued to resist American pressure to commit money and resources to the project. It was officially terminated in February 1959. In its final report on the project, the Office of the Special Assistant for Atomic Energy identified three problems that led to the proposal’s failure: “1. a lack of a tradition of cooperation in the region, 2. A lack of resources, and, 3. The more immediate interest of some countries [in developing their national programs and] their preference for receiving assistance from the United States directly on a bilateral basis.”28

23The project failed because the United States tried to impose a program that did not meet the needs and desires of the nations involved. Several officials had compared the Asian Nuclear Research Center to Euratom and the European Organization for Nuclear Research, but those projects were European initiatives that the United States was invited to join. While US support was important, it was not the driving force. Those initiatives also built on existing regional organizations, such as the European Coal and Steel Community. Europe, a geographically smaller and more cohesive region than Asia, also had far more advanced nuclear programs that had developed to the point that European powers thought occasional collaboration could be beneficial.

  • 29 The Philippines, Republic of China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Pakistan signed bilater (...)

24The Asian nations, on the other hand, were just beginning their nuclear projects and saw no advantage in diverting scarce and precious capital and manpower to a regional program that seemed primarily designed to gain prestige and influence for the United States. By the end of the decade, just six nations in the region signed bilateral agreements with the US, others opting to work through the IAEA.29 If the United States built and funded a center in Asia, regional states would take advantage of it, thus the early expressions of interest in the Center, but this was far different than funding the project themselves.

25One of the ironies of the US insistence that the nations of Asia come together to create a regional atomic energy center is that their own reports from Bandung four years earlier had repeatedly noted that one of the main features of the conference was its demonstration of the cultural, political, and economic diversity of the countries of Asia and Africa. Government officials and reporters alike observed that although the Bandung nations had unanimously signed the final communique, they omitted a great number of controversial subjects in order to achieve that unanimity.

26One of the areas they had agreed on, of course, was their criticism of nuclear weapons programs and their desire for civilian nuclear projects. The refusal to sacrifice their national nuclear programs to the American regional project represented another kind of critique of American nuclear power. While they were eager to develop nuclear programs and to take advantage of American aid when offered, they were determined to use those programs to bolster their own national prestige. The desire to follow their own path to nuclear development and resist American nuclear hegemony would only grow stronger in the years to come.

“Promises of technical marvels in the future” : Atoms for peace in Brazil

  • 30 United States Department of State, Economic Implications of Nuclear Power in Foreign Countries, Int (...)

27Negotiations with Brazil also came to an unsatisfactory conclusion for the United States. In the postwar period, Brazil experienced rapid economic growth and by the early 1950s faced growing income inequality, rising urban poverty, steep inflation, and problems with its transportation and power infrastructure. An Intelligence Report prepared by the Department of State in 1953 entitled “Economic Implications of Nuclear Power for Foreign Countries” assessed Brazil’s nuclear future given this troubling context and concluded that nuclear power was “not likely in any case to provide an easy solution [to] Brazil’s problem of maintaining rapid economic growth.”30

28Nonetheless, like other emergent nations worldwide, the Brazilian government was eager to expand its nuclear program. Brazil saw nuclear science as means of shoring up its international prestige, and its control of nuclear raw materials as a means of improving its political, economic, and technological standing. In the early and mid‑1950s, Brazil’s nuclear desires intersected with those of the United States, which sought access to Brazilian raw materials. But these seemingly complementary interests were complicated by Brazil’s equally strong wish to be treated as a special partner in world affairs and as a prime actor in hemispheric power struggles, and by pressures emerging from the domestic political environment within Brazil.

  • 31 Stanley E. Hilton, “The United States, Brazil, and the Cold War, 1945‑1960 : End of the Special Rel (...)

29Brazil and the United States had been allies since the turn of the twentieth century. During World War II, Brazil provided strategic resources, allowed the United States to build air bases in the strategically important northeastern region, and was the only Latin American nation to send troops to Europe. Brazil continued to be a good ally in the postwar period, outlawing the Communist Party and breaking relations with the Soviet Union in 1947. It was the United States’ largest trading partner in South America and the recipient of American aid and technical cooperation.31

  • 32 Jonathan E. Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores : The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition, 1943‑54 (Princet (...)

30During the war, Brazil attracted the attention of the Manhattan Project due to its large quantities of monazite sands, a source of thorium. (While not fissile itself, thorium can be partially converted into uranium‑233 for use as reactor fuel.) Three times more abundant in nature than uranium, thorium was particularly valued during this period when uranium was considered scarce. The United States, which had previously purchased monazite sands for industrial purposes, now wanted a contractual right to all Brazilian monazite. In 1945, President Getúlio Vargas agreed to give the United States and Great Britain almost full control over Brazil’s monazite.32

  • 33 Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores, 162, 238 ; Memorandum for the Files, March 26, 1953, 21.10 Country (...)

31The monazite agreement had been conducted outside of normal channels, and since neither the Foreign Office nor the Brazilian congress participated in its crafting nor ratified it, members of the postwar government declared it illegitimate. Brazilian leaders objected to the fact that the 1945 agreement undermined Brazilian sovereignty by giving the United States and Great Britain the power to determine to whom Brazil could and could not sell monazite. By this time Canadian, Dutch, French, and Portuguese firms were interested in Brazilian monazite as well. Brazil saw that it could increase its profits by extricating itself from the 1945 agreement. Because of Brazilian desires to boost earnings and expand its customer base, negotiations were difficult, but a one‑year procurement contract was signed by the United States, Great Britain, and Brazil in 1952.33

  • 34 Memorandum for the Files, March 26, 1953, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1953‑54, S/AE ; E (...)

32Although Brazil had relatively minor known deposits of uranium, its geology led US agents to suspect that greater deposits could be located with more advanced surveying techniques. The AEC and the State Department wished to sign agreements that would give the United States exclusive rights to prospect for uranium and to acquire any that was found, but Brazil was interested in expanding its nuclear program and planned to use its control of thorium and uranium to gain technological and economic assistance.34

33The United States tried for several years to negotiate an arrangement to jointly search for and mine uranium ore, an agreement that would also give the United States the right to purchase ore not needed by Brazil in exchange for “atomic know‑how.” Brazilian officials repeatedly deferred these negotiations, unhappy with the general level of support they were receiving from the United States and under increasing domestic political pressure to keep US influence on Brazilian resources to a minimum.

  • 35 Memorandum of Conversation, September 16, 1954, 10.24g The President’s A‑Bank Proposal, Sept – Dec (...)

34Atoms for Peace and the passage of the 1954 US Atomic Energy Act markedly impacted negotiations by greatly expanding the Brazilians’ expectations of the kind and quantity of assistance they might get from the United States or from the International Atomic Energy Agency once it was operational. In September 1954 Robert Terrill, the counselor for economic affairs at the US embassy in Rio, urged Edmundo Barbosa da Silva from the Brazilian Foreign Office to consider pushing the uranium procurement agreement through soon. Reflecting both the change in expectations and the increasing influence of Brazilian nationalist sentiment, Barbosa replied that “a bilateral with the US would be much easier to ‘sell’ if it could be viewed as part of a multilateral program,” such as Atoms for Peace. He claimed that some parties within Brazil opposed a bilateral agreement with the United States, suggesting that they were no longer keen on maintaining an alliance that often bordered on domination by the United States.35

  • 36 J. Bruce Hamilton to Gerard C. Smith, October 7, 1954, 10.24g The President’s A‑Bank Proposal, Sept (...)

35Barbosa took a more direct approach the following month at a meeting with AEC representatives. He informed his American counterparts that they were “approaching the problem ‘with pre‑President’s pool thinking,’ [and] that such an approach was now far too limited.” Having carefully studied the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954, Barbosa declared himself “impressed with the latitude now available to the US.” He thought the United States should offer “comprehensive atomic energy assistance” to “a friendly country such as Brazil.” Barbosa added that the new legislation and “the President’s humanitarian proposals regarding peaceful uses…constituted a potent weapon” for the United States, which it could use to improve its relations with other countries. On the other hand, he warned, it was “a weapon which would be used potently against the US if US performance did not live up to announced intentions.”36

  • 37 J. Bruce Hamilton to Gerard C. Smith, January 13, 1955, 10.24a IAEA Policy‑Position‑Proposals, US (...)

36Hoping to reassure Brazil that it was still a favored partner, State Department members were eager to have Brazil be the first South American nation to sign a bilateral agreement, ahead of Colombia and Argentina. The State Department and the AEC hoped to gain assured access to Brazilian uranium and they were well aware that Brazil was unlikely to give them a first option on uranium unless reactor assistance was offered.37

  • 38 Gerard C. Smith to the Under Secretary, May 6, 1955, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 19 (...)

37US and international corporations also proved to be significant players in the political and technological maneuvering surrounding Atoms for Peace in Brazil. As the first signs of the globalization of civilian nuclear technology emerged in the late 1950s, Brazil became an important potential site for market expansion. After the research agreement was signed in August 1955, at least four US companies bid for the construction of the research reactor to be built at the University of São Paulo. In early March 1956 the National Research Council and the Brazilian Embassy announced that Babcock & Wilcox would build the reactor and had applied for a $ 350,000 grant under Atoms for Peace, which was awarded a few months later. Brazilian leaders also announced their intention to expand their program with a bilateral agreement for power reactors.38

  • 39 William J. Hausman and John L. Neufeld, “The Rise and Fall of The American & Foreign Power Company  (...)

38An American corporation, the American & Foreign Power Company, was central to the negotiations for a power bilateral. Since the 1920s, the American & Foreign Power Company had operated electric utilities in Latin America, France, Japan, China, and India. It lost its Chinese business in 1941 and sold its Indian properties in the 1950s, but by 1955 it operated electric utilities in eleven Latin America countries. In late 1955 the American & Foreign Power Company informed the AEC that it was interested in installing three power reactors in Latin America, tentatively identifying Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico as the recipients. American & Foreign Power wanted to deal with three different companies, presumably to experiment with different types of reactors; its executives were “amazed by the keen interest of American companies in bidding for this business.”39

  • 40 These negotiations are covered extensively in 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1955‑56, (...)

39Negotiations between the American & Foreign Power Company, the AEC, the State Department, and Brazilian representatives were intense but friendly over the course of 1956. As American & Foreign Power negotiated contracts, the AEC and State Department worked to write up a power bilateral that met the needs of all parties.40

  • 41 Robert Terrill from J. Robert Schaetzel, June 1, 1956, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, (...)

40J. Robert Schaetzel, a staff member in the office of the Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy Affairs, confided that the State Department was “somewhat concerned that American & Foreign Power, in an effort to remove some of the obvious risks involved in their foreign operations, may attempt to write into the agreement provisions which would open it up to charges of American imperialism.” He wanted to see the “broad spirit of the Atoms for Peace program… a spirit of mutual cooperation” preserved instead of a “suspicious creditor‑debtor relationship.”41

  • 42 J. Leite Lopes, “Atoms in the Developing Nations,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 1978, 3 (...)

41His concerns came in the wake of charges within Brazil that there had been “‘improper’ US influences” during the Café Filho administration (1954‑1956). The ultra‑nationalist opposition party, the National Democratic Union, the Communist Party, and some members of the liberal Social Democratic Party charged that the national government was selling radioactive materials to the United States for “a pittance.” In response, President Juscelino Kubitschek appointed a commission within the Chamber of Deputies in early 1956 to examine Brazil’s nuclear policy. The New York Times reported that opposition leaders “promised ‘shocking’ revelations of allegedly sinister United States designs on Brazil’s mineral wealth.” In closed hearings, the commission considered a bill, which would nationalize its nuclear sources just as Brazil had earlier nationalized its oil companies.42

  • 43 Tad Szulc, “Brazil Cancels US Atom Pact,” The New York Times, September 1, 1956, F19 ; ‘Brazilian R (...)

42On August 31, 1956, Brazil’s National Security Council passed a resolution, which called for the suspension of exports of thorium and uranium to the United States. US officials learned of the move from their morning newspapers. The New York Times reported that this resolution was unlikely to have “any immediate effect on the United States defense program, [but] the action loomed as a serious political blow to the United States and its prestige here.” Although the Brazilian National Security Council called for the thorium and uranium agreements to be abrogated, the research bilateral was expected to stand.43

  • 44 Telegram from the Ambassador in Brazil (Briggs) to the Department of State, September 6, 1956, FRUS (...)

43Brazilian nationalists and communists called the suspension a “historical victory of the people,” but Kubitschek and Foreign Minister José Carlos de Macedo Soares assured Ambassador Ellis Briggs that the resolution did not indicate any change in Brazilian nuclear policy. Kubitschek told him that “it was his intention to continue a policy of close collaboration with the United States in the atomic energy field,” and that he had allowed the resolution in order to “terminate public and Congressional airing of a matter which the executive had concluded had gone far enough.” Macedo Soares stated that “as soon as things quiet down…new negotiations with [the] US will be undertaken,” and urged the US to “think nothing of it.”44

  • 45 Gene Smith, “Sites are Picked for Atom Plants,” The New York Times, January 4, 1957, 66 ; Tad Szulc (...)
  • 46 Memorandum of Conversation, November 19, 1957, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1957‑62, Par (...)

44Despite the intense political infighting in Brazil and the damage this caused to US‑Brazilian relations, plans to build a nuclear power plant seemed to be on the verge of completion. In January 1957 The New York Times reported that American & Foreign Power was ready to build a power plant near Rio. The preliminary engineering studies were finished, and the company was waiting for the final agreement to be signed between the United States and Brazil.45 After some delays, the power bilateral was signed on July 31, 1957. The agreement had to sit before Congress for thirty days as stipulated in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, and to be approved by the Brazilian government, at which point notes would be exchanged bringing the agreement into effect. But by late November the Brazilian government had not acted, and the State Department sent a note to the American Embassy asking that embassy officials “discretely ascertain” the reasons for the delay.46

  • 47 Memorandum for the File, January 20, 1958, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1957‑62, Part 2 (...)

45As the Brazilian government repeatedly deferred action on the agreement, the plan to build a nuclear power plant in Brazil suddenly collapsed. In January 1958 American & Foreign Power informed the AEC that the capital costs and operating expenses of the project would be much higher than projected. It would withdraw from the project unless the US government was willing to take on some of the operating costs or the Brazilian government would agree to increase its electrical rates. A State Department staff member objected to the latter idea as “it would be most unfortunate to have the Atoms for Peace program associated with rate increases for American‑owned utilities in Latin America.” Schaetzel later estimated that the subsidy would be “somewhere in the range of a million dollars a year.” The AEC could not afford to subsidize this project and did not see any way to materially assist the company.47

  • 48 Memorandum of Conversation, January 21, 1958.

46The State Department was unhappy with this development. Roy R. Rubottom, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter‑American Affairs, cautioned that there had been “considerable publicity” about American & Foreign Power’s plans. If Brazil ratified the power agreement, a refusal to build the reactor would “constitute a serious prestige setback to the US Atoms for Peace program in Latin America.” The Soviet Union was also conducting a “serious economic and political offensive” in Latin America and would take advantage of this failure.48

  • 49 Memorandum of Conversation, April 2, 1958 19.15 Regional Program, Latin America, General, 1958, S/A (...)

47American & Foreign Power had already verbally informed Cuñha that the project would be terminated, but its official letter would “indicate that A&FP is postponing rather than abandoning such a project, hoping thereby to lessen the psychological impact in Brazil.”49 Without the promise of a reactor from American & Foreign Power and in the face of continuing conflict over the influence of the United States on the Brazilian nuclear project, the power agreement languished before the Brazilian government. In June 1958 Schaetzel surveyed the Brazilian situation and came to a bleak conclusion:

It is…clearly evident that there is nothing in the nuclear power field that could be quickly done which would at the same time provide a sound basis for advancing nuclear power projects in Brazil.

  • 50 Schaetzel to Farley, June 27, 1958. 1 L.E. Frechtling to John G. Bell, January 20, 1959, 12H Peacef (...)

48Given this situation and that the United States was no longer interested in Brazilian rare earths, thorium, or uranium, he cautioned against any action which might give “an erroneous impression on the Brazilians’ part – that we are able and willing to provide further and extensive atomic energy assistance.”50

  • 51 Mateos and Suárez‑Díaz, “Atoms for Peace in Latin America.”

49Thus, in the 1950s US negotiations with Brazil over nuclear technology produced decidedly mixed results. While the research reactor at São Paulo was the first nuclear plant in Latin America and represented a significant achievement for both Brazil and the United States, the collapse of the plans for a power plant was a notable failure. The dream of a nuclear Brazil in the 1950s foundered on the dismal economic prospects for nuclear power and internal political divisions within Brazil over the appropriate degree of cooperation with the United States. In their essay “Atoms for Peace in Latin America,” Gisela Mateos and Edna Suárez‑Díaz argue that the “Atoms for Peace initiative was successful in shaping and redirecting the national nuclear projects already in place before 1953, as is clear in the cases of Brazil and Argentina.”51 But Brazil was likewise able to redirect Atoms for Peace. Despite the best efforts of US officials to develop a full nuclear power program in Brazil, talks collapsed due to deep resistance within the Brazilian government against becoming an American client in the nuclear field and the burdensome expense of building a plant, which neither private corporations nor the US or Brazilian government was willing or able to fund.

50US nuclear dreams for Brazil could not compete with the economic reality of nuclear power. AEC Commissioner John F. Floberg admitted that “unless A&FP was willing to absorb the capital and operating loss of their proposed reactor,” there was little that could be done. And further negotiations were pointless given the political climate in Brazil. Brazilian ambassadors frequently overstated the degree of support for US‑Brazilian nuclear cooperation, but distaste for US patronage was a significant factor in Brazilian politics. The nationalists and communists in the Brazilian Congress had no interest in ratifying the power agreement with the United States in the 1950s or 60s; nuclear power would not come to Brazil until the 1970s. The US failure in Brazil was felt all the more keenly when the first nuclear power plant in Latin America was built in Argentina with the assistance of Canada and Germany and began operation in 1974.

Conclusion

51Atoms for Peace and the globalization of nuclear technology should be understood in the context of competing visions of postwar nationalism and challenges to the role of the United States in the international context. While the United States aspired to win hearts and minds and dominate the nuclear market in a quasi‑imperial project, other nations had their own plans for nuclear technology. Given that the United States no longer monopolized nuclear secrets – if indeed it ever truly had – it was unable to dictate the shape of the postwar nuclear world. Other nations’ domestic politics, economic needs, technological limitations, and political aspirations challenged US nuclear hegemony, as did the increasing availability of technology and fissionable material from other nations.

  • 52 For more on Brazil’s efforts to achieve energy independence during this period by seeking to obtain (...)

52Foreign policy decisions were made not just in a geopolitical context but in a technological one as well. Limited or inspired by the options available to them, policymakers and those who advised them were bound by a technological and environmental frame. The success of Atoms for Peace negotiations depended on the level of existing economic, industrial, technological, and scientific development in the recipient nations. Atoms for Peace was not an elixir, magically erasing or cutting through political, economic, and technological barriers. If anything, the ambitions of nuclear statesmen often highlighted these differences. When the distance between the current state of technology and industry in these nations and US objectives was small, success was more tangible, especially where US goals aligned closely with the goals of the recipient nation. In other cases, Atoms for Peace negotiations exacerbated and highlighted existing conflicts. For example, negotiations with Belgium were among the most successful because the terms were the most well‑defined. The United States had obligations to Belgium under a wartime agreement and wanted to assure continued access to Belgium’s Congolese uranium, while Belgium was financially and technologically prepared to expand its nuclear program. In the case of the failed Asian Nuclear Research Center, however, Asian nations were just beginning their nuclear projects and refused to be drawn into a regional scheme that would benefit US prestige and influence at the expense of their national ambitions. Brazil likewise spurned US efforts to completely dominate its nuclear program. Over the course of negotiations, American officials repeatedly expressed bafflement over Brazil’s desire for complete energy independence.52

  • 53 James P. Grant to John O. Hall, January 22, 1959, 12H Peaceful Uses Subject File, 2a. Administratio (...)
  • 54 J. Robert Schaetzel to Philip Farley, January 29, 1959, 12H Peaceful Uses Subject File, 2a. Adminis (...)

53By the end of the 1950s, the initial enthusiasm for Atoms for Peace had waned. Many officials in the State Department hoped to move bilateral agreements to the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to support that organization and to shift the burden of administration. When one official argued that it was in the US interest “to continue both the bilateral and multilateral efforts in this field,” because a flexible policy would enable the United States to support both the IAEA and individual countries as it saw fit,”53 another shot back “I completely disagree with the premise that if a little bit of atomic energy assistance is good, a lot of atomic energy assistance is better.” His experience over the past half‑decade had led this particular State Department staff member to become increasingly skeptical, if not cynical, about the role of nuclear technology as a tool of foreign policy.54

  • 55 John A. McCone to Clinton P. Anderson, February 2, 1960, International Negotiations (Peaceful Purpo (...)

54By the end of Eisenhower’s second term, the Atomic Energy Commission and the State Department were rethinking their approach to Atoms for Peace. In 1960 the AEC announced it would terminate the US Foreign Research Reactor Program, which had offered grants for the construction of research reactors. Requests received after July 1, 1960 would “be considered on a competitive basis with all other aid proposals for the particular country concerned.” Rather than a special dispensation highlighting the American nuclear agenda, Atoms for Peace would be folded into the assortment of American aid programs.55 The failed negotiations with countries in the Third World such as Brazil and the emergent nations of Asia were key factors in this new approach to nuclear assistance. By continually challenging the American narrative, they forced the US to rewrite the script.

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Notes

1 Press Release, “Atoms for Peace” Speech, 8 December 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

2 The final volume of the official history of the Atomic Energy Commission, Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl’s Atoms for Peace and War, 1953‑1961, covers all of the AEC’s programs, policies and personnel from 1953 to 1961. Encyclopedic in scope, it gives useful background information on the AEC and the Atoms for Peace program but lacks focus and critical analysis. Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953‑1961 : A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 3 (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1989). On the “peaceful atom” more generally, see Paul S. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light : American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1994, 1985) ; Gerard H. Clarfield and William M. Wiecek, Nuclear America : Military and Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States, 1940‑1980 (New York : Harper & Row, 1984) ; Margot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove’s America : Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1997) ; Scott Kirsch, Proving Grounds : Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving (New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2005) ; John Krige, “The Peaceful Atom as Political Weapon : Euratom and American Foreign Policy in the Late 1950s,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 38, 1 (2008) : 5–44 ; Henry Nielsen and Henrik Knudsen, “The Troublesome Life of Peaceful Atoms in Denmark,” History and Technology, 26 (June 1, 2010) : 91–118 ; Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear : A History of Images (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1988).

3 Ira Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace (College Station : Texas A&M University Press, 2002) ; Kenneth A. Osgood, Total Cold War : Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 2006). Martin Medhurst has also analyzed the Atoms for Peace speech, see Martin J. Medhurst, “Atoms for Peace and Nuclear Hegemony : The Rhetorical Structure of a Cold War Campaign,” Armed Forces and Society 23, 4 (1997) ; Martin J. Medhurst, “Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ Speech : A Case Study in the Strategic Use of Language,” Communication Monographs 54 (1987). See also, Shawn J. Parry‑Giles, The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945‑1955 (Westport : Praeger, 2002).

4 Elisabeth Roehrlich, “The Cold War, the Developing World, and the Creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 1953–1957,” Cold War History, 16, 2 (2016) : 195–212 ; Elisabeth Roehrlich et al., “Policy Roundtable 1‑3 on the International Atomic Energy Agency Statute at Sixty,” H‑Diplo | ISSF, November 19, 2016, https://issforum.org/roundtables/​policy/1‑3‑iaea ; Elisabeth Roehrlich, “Negotiating Verification : International Diplomacy and the Evolution of Nuclear Safeguards, 1945–1972,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 29, 1 (January 2, 2018) : 29–50. See also Gabrielle Hecht, “Negotiating Global Nuclearities : Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War in the Making of the IAEA,” Osiris, 21, 1 (2006) : 25–48 ; David Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the Creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Cold War History, 2016 ; John Krige, “Euratom and the IAEA : The Problem of Self‑Inspection,” Cold War History, 15, 3 (August 2015) : 341–52 ; Stephen Twigge, “The Atomic Marshall Plan : Atoms for Peace, British Diplomacy and Civil Nuclear Power,” Cold War History, 16, 2 (2016) : 213–30 ; Jo‑Ansie van Wyk, “Atoms, Apartheid, and the Agency : South Africa’s Relations with the IAEA, 1957‑1995,” Cold War History, March 28, 2014.

5 Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “Exorcising Ghosts in the Age of Automation : United Nations Experts and Atoms for Peace,” Technology and Culture, 47, 4 (October 2006) : 734–56 ; John Krige, “Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism, and Scientific Intelligence,” Osiris, 21, 1 (2006) : 161–81 ; John Krige, Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe : US Technological Collaboration and Nonproliferation (MIT Press, 2016).

6 David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb : The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939‑1956 (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1996), ch. 16 ; Fabian Lüscher, “The Nuclear Spirit of Geneva Boundary‑Crossing Relationships of Soviet Atomic Scientists after 1955,” Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas, 66, 1 (April 2018) : 20–44 and Sonja Schmid, “Celebrating Tomorrow Today : The Peaceful Atom on Display in the Soviet Union,” Social Studies of Science, 36, 3 (June 2006) : 331–65.

7 Two works that provide a close analysis of individual Atoms for Peace bilateral negotiations are Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York : Columbia University Press, 1998) and Elisabetta Bini, Atoms for Peace (and War) : US Forms of Influence on Italy’s Civilian Nuclear Energy Programs (1945‑1964) (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2017). See also Mara Drogan, “The Nuclear Nation and the German Question : An American Reactor in West Berlin,” Cold War History, 15, 3 (July 3, 2015) : 301–19.

8 In addition to research, the smaller reactors are used for materials testing, training, and isotope production for industrial and medical use. Because of their small size, research reactors are much less dangerous in case of accident. On the other hand, many run on highly enriched uranium, a proliferation risk, and they do produce nuclear waste, though in significantly smaller quantities than power reactors. Over the past seven decades, 856 research reactors have been built worldwide ; as of November 2018, 226 research reactors are operating in 57 countries with 22 more either planned or under construction. Out of a total of 623 power reactors constructed worldwide, 454 are currently operational, with an additional 54 under construction. US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “Backgrounder : Research and Test Reactors,” June 2018, available at nrc.gov [cited November 10, 2018] ; World Nuclear Association, “Research Reactors,” available at world‑nuclear.org [cited November 10, 2018] ; International Atomic Energy Organization, Research Reactors : Purpose and Future, 2016, available online at www.iaea.org [cited November 10, 2018]. See also “Research Reactor Database” and “Latest News Related To PRIS And The Status Of Nuclear Power Plants” at www.iaea.org.

9 Corbin Allardice and Edward R. Trapnell, The Atomic Energy Commission (New York, NY, 1974), 201.

10 Mara Drogan, “The Nuclear Imperative : Atoms for Peace and the Development of U.S. Policy on Exporting Nuclear Power, 1953‑1955,” Diplomatic History, 40, 5 (November 1, 2016) : 948–74.

11 The nations were Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. United States Atomic Energy Commission, Progress in Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy : July‑December 1957 (Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, 1958), 197 ; Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953‑1961, 581. See also, Gisela Mateos and Edna Suárez‑Díaz, “Atoms for Peace in Latin America,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, April 5, 2016.

12 Although beyond the scope of this paper, also of interest are those “dogs that did not bark,” in this case, the countries that discussed but did not sign agreements with the United States. Notable examples include Egypt, Yugoslavia, and India. In June 1955, Egyptian officials stated that they would like to begin negotiating their own agreement, but later that year they reversed course and said they needed “more time to collect information on which to base their atomic energy program.” In February 1956, Egypt signed an agreement with the Soviet Union to construct a nuclear physics lab. They were again to turn to the Soviet Union for a research reactor ; U.S. controls were seen to be “unacceptable to Egypt politically.” These negotiations occurred at the same time that Egypt covertly bargained with the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia for arms, making a deal with the latter in September 1955. For more on the arms negotiations, see Guy Laron, Cutting the Gordian Knot : The Post‑WWII Egyptian Quest for Arms and the 1955 Czechoslovak Arms Deal, Cold War International History Project, Working Paper #55 (Woodrow Wilson Center, 2007). Like Egypt, Yugoslavia initially indicated interest in an agreement and was presented with draft on January 19, 1956 ; just nine days later, it signed an agreement with the Soviet Union for seven tons of heavy water and assistance with a research reactor. There were no further negotiations with the United States though it did receive a Mutual Security Act grant for lab equipment in 1960. Although India purchased heavy water from the United States, it did not sign an agreement of cooperation, reflecting what the AEC described as “heavy emphasis…being put on achieving national self‑sufficiency in terms of both personnel and materials.” Their first reactor was Indian‑designed and built, with fuel from Great Britain, and their second reactor built with considerable input from Canada. Despite not signing an agreement, India received grants through the Mutual Security Act for laboratory equipment. For discussion of US‑Indian negotiations during the 1950s, see Robert S. Anderson, Nucleus and Nation : Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2010) ; George Perkovitch, India’s Nuclear Bomb : The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999), 21‑36. Jayita Sarkar examines an earlier bilateral agreement –between France and India – in Jayita Sarkar, “‘Wean Them Away from French Tutelage’ : Franco‑Indian Nuclear Relations and Anglo‑American Anxieties during the Early Cold War, 1948–1952,” Cold War History, 15, 3 (July 3, 2015) : 375–94. Atoms for Peace negotiations with all three nations are discussed in Memorandum in Response to Joint Committee Letter of June 26, 1956, International Negotiations (Peaceful Purposes) vol. 1, RG 128 : Records of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy : General Correspondence ; Legislative Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter JCAE/LA) ; Statement of Atomic Energy Commission on Status of Foreign Reactor Programs, July 1, 1958, Foreign Reactors, JCAE/LA ; Letter from John A. McCone, Chairman, AEC, to Hon. Clinton P. Anderson, Chairman, JCAE, October 25, 1960, International Negotiations (Mutual Security Program) ; JCAE/LA.

13 B.R. Tomlinson, “What Was the Third World ?” Journal of Contemporary History, 38, 2 (2003) : 307‑21 ; Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line : American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2001), 274, fn 4.

14 The participating countries were Afghanistan, Cambodia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gold Coast, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Nepal, the People’s Republic of China, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, North and South Vietnam, and Yemen.

15 “Asia‑Africa Unity Hailed as Parley Opens in Bandung,” The New York Times, 18 April 1955, 1, 6. The text of the final communique can be found in Asia‑Africa Speaks from Bandung (Djakarta : The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, 1955), 161‑169. For more on Bandung, see Cary Fraser, “An American Dilemma : Race and Realpolitik in the American Response to the Bandung Conference, 1955,” in Brenda Gayle Plummer, ed., Window on Freedom : Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945‑1988, (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 115‑140 ; Matthew Jones, “A ‘Segregated’ Asia ? : Race, the Bandung Conference, and Pan‑Asianist Fears in American Thought and Policy, 1954‑1955,” Diplomatic History, 29, 5 (2005) : 841‑868 ; Jason Parker, “Cold War II : The Eisenhower Administration, the Bandung Conference, and the Reperiodization of the Postwar Era,” Diplomatic History, 30, 5 (2006) : 867‑892.

16 Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb : A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954‑1970. The Struggle Against the Bomb, vol. 2 (Stanford University Press, 1997). Most notable in this regard perhaps is Nehru, who had first put the question of nuclear weapons on the Bandung agenda.

17 By nuclearism, I mean the belief in the symbolic or strategic power of nuclear weapons ; nuclear science and technology are feared or celebrated as the means and the representation of that power. Previous incarnations of this term can be found in Robert Jay Lifton, and Richard A. Falk. Indefensible Weapons : The Political and Psychological Case against Nuclearism. Updated ed. (New York : Basic Books, 1991) and Bruce Larkin. Nuclear Designs : Great Britain, France, and China in the Global Governance of Nuclear Arms : Transaction Publishers, 1996).

18 Asia‑Africa Speaks from Bandung, 52.

19 Ibid., 53.

20 Barnett, “Report on Bandung,” 29.

21 Max W. Bishop to Mr. Villard, March 31, 1955, 3. Conferences and Meetings, 3a. Afro‑Asian (Bandung) Conference, 1960, 1960, Special Assistant to the Secretary for Energy and Outer Space, Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1944‑1963 ; General Records of the State Department, RG 59 ; National Archives at College Park (hereafter S/AE). See also, Draft Resolution on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy for Use at Asian‑African Conference, April 5, 1955, 3. Conferences and Meetings, 3a. Afro‑Asian (Bandung) Conference, S/AE.

22 “Memorandum by the Executive Secretary (Lay) to the National Security Council,” April 5, 1954, FRUS 1952‑1954, XII, 590‑600 ; Cary Fraser, “An American Dilemma : Race and Realpolitik in the American Response to the Bandung Conference, 1955,” in Plummer, ed., Window on Freedom, 129.

23 Preliminary Observations on Responsibilities for Negotiations under the “Atoms for Peace” Program, April 14, 1955, 12H Peaceful Uses Subject File, 2c. Negotiations for Atoms for Peace Program, 1955, S/AE. The other countries proposed by Patterson and Strauss were Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, and Brazil. Nelson A. Rockefeller to Herbert A. Hoover, Jr., March 9, 1955, Folder 635 : Afro‑Asia : Colonialism and Neutralism – Bandung Conference, Box 83, NAR.

24 “Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Department of State,” March 16, 1956, FRUS 1955‑1957, XXIII, 643, fn 4 ; John A. Hall to Lewis L. Strauss, March 23, 1955, 3. Conferences and Meetings, 3a. Afro‑Asian (Bandung) Conference, 1960, S/AE ; Draft Possible Statement by Romulo at Bandung Conference, April 6, 1955, 3. Conferences and Meetings, 3a. Afro‑Asian (Bandung) Conference, 1960, S/AE.

25 Gerard C. Smith to Mr. Murphy, October 17, 1955, 3.5 Asian Nuclear Center Working Group Meeting, Washington, July, 1957, General, 1955, S/AE ; Nelson Rockefeller to Herbert Hoover, Jr., March 31, 1955, 3. Conferences and Meetings, 3a. Afro‑Asian (Bandung) Conference, 1960, S/AE ; Preliminary Observations on Responsibilities for Negotiations under the “Atoms for Peace” Program, April 14, 1955, 12H Peaceful Uses Subject File, 2c. Negotiations for Atoms for Peace Program, 1955, S/AE.

26 Mr. Waugh from Philip J. Farley, August 23, 1955, 3.5 Asian Nuclear Center Working Group Meeting, Washington, July, 1957, General, 1955, S/AE ; Asian Nuclear Energy Center, September 9, 1955, 3.5 Asian Nuclear Center Working Group Meeting, Washington, July, 1957, General, 1955, S/AE.

27 The team travelled from April 6 to June 15, 1956, going to Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Report by Brookhaven Team on Trip, June 22, 1956, 19.2 Regional Program, Asian Nuclear Center, a. Brookhaven Project, Report on, 19[5]6 Part 1 of 2, S/AE ; Report by Brookhaven Team on Trip, July 23, 1956, 19.2 Regional Program, Asian Nuclear Center, a. Brookhaven Project, Report on, 19[5]6 Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

28 Philip J. Farley to Mr. Bell, February 17, 1959, 19.2 Regional Program, Asian Nuclear Center, General 1959, S/AE ; Philip J. Farley to A.A. Wells, March 4, 1959, 19.2 Regional Program, Asian Nuclear Center, General 1959, S/AE ; The Asian Nuclear Center, n.d. [February 1960], 19.2 Regional Program, Asian Nuclear Center, General 1960, S/AE.

29 The Philippines, Republic of China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Thailand, and Pakistan signed bilateral agreements by 1960. United States Atomic Energy Commission, Progress in Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy : July‑December 1957 (Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, 1958), 197 ; Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953‑1961, 581.

30 United States Department of State, Economic Implications of Nuclear Power in Foreign Countries, Intelligence Report No. 6451, January 6, 1954, 10.24 Policy‑Position‑Proposals, e. Nuclear Power, 1953‑1954, Part 2 of 3, S/AE. For more on the Brazilian program in the 1950s, see Carlo Patti, “The Origins of the Brazilian Nuclear Programme, 1951‑1955,” Cold War History, 15, 3 (August 2015) : 353–74.

31 Stanley E. Hilton, “The United States, Brazil, and the Cold War, 1945‑1960 : End of the Special Relationship,” The Journal of American History, 68, 3 (1981), 599‑600 ; Roy R. Rubottom, “Brazil and the United States,” August 1, 1957, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1957‑62, Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

32 Jonathan E. Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores : The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition, 1943‑54 (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1986), 48‑57 ; John S. Friedman, “More Power to Thorium ?,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 1997, 19‑20 ; World Nuclear Association, “Thorium,” online at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html. [cited August 4, 2011].

33 Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores, 162, 238 ; Memorandum for the Files, March 26, 1953, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1953‑54, S/AE.

34 Memorandum for the Files, March 26, 1953, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1953‑54, S/AE ; Etel Solingen, “The Political Economy of Nuclear Restraint,” International Security, 19, 2 (1994), 158‑59.

35 Memorandum of Conversation, September 16, 1954, 10.24g The President’s A‑Bank Proposal, Sept – Dec 1954, Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

36 J. Bruce Hamilton to Gerard C. Smith, October 7, 1954, 10.24g The President’s A‑Bank Proposal, Sept – Dec 1954, Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

37 J. Bruce Hamilton to Gerard C. Smith, January 13, 1955, 10.24a IAEA Policy‑Position‑Proposals, US & Foreign, 1945‑1957, Part 1 of 3, S/AE ; Memorandum of Conversation, January 26, 1955, 21.8 Country Files : [Belgium], a. Agreements, 1953‑55, Part 2 of 4, S/AE.

38 Gerard C. Smith to the Under Secretary, May 6, 1955, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1955‑56, Part 1 of 2, S/AE ; J. Bruce Hamilton to Gerard C. Smith, November 16, 1955, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1955‑56, Part 1 of 2, S/AE ; Memorandum of Conversation, March 1, 1956, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1955‑56, Part 1 of 2, S/AE ; Lewis L. Strauss to Jose Carlos Muniz, May 7, 1956, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1955‑56, Part 1 of 2, S/AE.

39 William J. Hausman and John L. Neufeld, “The Rise and Fall of The American & Foreign Power Company : A Lesson from the Past ?,” The Electricity Journal, January/February 1997, 46‑53 ; Memorandum of Conversation, October 3, 1955, 12H Peaceful Uses Subject File, 14. Nuclear Power (General), Sept‑Dec 1955, S/AE ; Ralph Hilton to Mr. Berding, February 16, 1956, 19.15 Regional Program, Latin America, General, 1956, S/AE.

40 These negotiations are covered extensively in 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1955‑56, Part 1 of 2 and Part 2 of 2, S/AE.

41 Robert Terrill from J. Robert Schaetzel, June 1, 1956, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1955‑56, Part 2 of 2, S/AE.

42 J. Leite Lopes, “Atoms in the Developing Nations,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 1978, 32 ; Solingen, “The Political Economy of Nuclear Restraint,” 159 ; “Brazilians Score Thorium Exports,” The New York Times, April 20, 1956, 9 ; “Brazil Rejects Ban on Thorium for US,” The New York Times, May 5, 1956, 4.

43 Tad Szulc, “Brazil Cancels US Atom Pact,” The New York Times, September 1, 1956, F19 ; ‘Brazilian Reds Hail Voiding of US Pact,” The New York Times, September 2, 1956, 15.

44 Telegram from the Ambassador in Brazil (Briggs) to the Department of State, September 6, 1956, FRUS 1955‑1957, VII, 719‑20 ; Memorandum of Conversation, November 7, 1956, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1955‑56, Part 2 of 2, S/AE.

45 Gene Smith, “Sites are Picked for Atom Plants,” The New York Times, January 4, 1957, 66 ; Tad Szulc, “Brazil Preparing Vast Power Plan,” The New York Times, February 27, 1957, 48 ; Memorandum of Conversation, February 25, 1957, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1957, Part 3 of 3, S/AE ; Memorandum of Conversation, April 8, 1957, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1957, Part 3 of 3, S/AE ; G.C. Spiegel to Siracusa, April 9, 1957, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1957, Part 3 of 3, S/AE.

46 Memorandum of Conversation, November 19, 1957, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1957‑62, Part 1 of 2, S/AE ; John Foster Dulles to the American Embassy, Telegram 590, November 20, 1957, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, a. Agreements, 1957, Part 1 of 3, S/AE.

47 Memorandum for the File, January 20, 1958, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1957‑62, Part 2 of 2, S/AE ; Memorandum of Conversation, January 21, 1958, 21.10 Country File : Brazil, d. General 1957‑62, Part 2 of 2, S/AE.

48 Memorandum of Conversation, January 21, 1958.

49 Memorandum of Conversation, April 2, 1958 19.15 Regional Program, Latin America, General, 1958, S/AE.

50 Schaetzel to Farley, June 27, 1958. 1 L.E. Frechtling to John G. Bell, January 20, 1959, 12H Peaceful Uses Subject File, 2a. Administration of Atoms for Peace Program, 1959, S/AE.

51 Mateos and Suárez‑Díaz, “Atoms for Peace in Latin America.”

52 For more on Brazil’s efforts to achieve energy independence during this period by seeking to obtain various elements of fuel cycle technology, see Carlo Patti, “The Origins of the Brazilian Nuclear Programme, 1951‑1955,” Cold War History, 15, 3 (August 2015) : 353–74.

53 James P. Grant to John O. Hall, January 22, 1959, 12H Peaceful Uses Subject File, 2a. Administration of Atoms for Peace Program, 1959, S/AE.

54 J. Robert Schaetzel to Philip Farley, January 29, 1959, 12H Peaceful Uses Subject File, 2a. Administration of Atoms for Peace Program, 1959, S/AE. Other works that analyze the role of technology as a tool of foreign policy include John Krige and Kai‑Henrik Barth, eds., Global Power Knowledge : Science and Technology in International Affairs, Osiris, vol. 21 (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2006) ; Gabrielle Hecht, ed., Entangled Geopgraphies : Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2011).

55 John A. McCone to Clinton P. Anderson, February 2, 1960, International Negotiations (Peaceful Purposes – Agreements for Cooperation) vol. 2, JCAE.

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Mara Drogan, « The Atoms for Peace program and the Third World »Cahiers du monde russe, 60/2-3 | 2019, 441-460.

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Mara Drogan, « The Atoms for Peace program and the Third World »Cahiers du monde russe [En ligne], 60/2-3 | 2019, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2023, consulté le 29 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/11249 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.11249

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