J. Robert Oppenheimer: Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In late 1945, after World War II had ended, the government created a new body to give advice about the development of atomic energy and atomic weapons, the secretary of state's Committee on Atomic Energy. It was headed by the then undersecretary of state Dean Acheson and included many of the same people who had worked on the Manhattan Project, including Oppenheimer's old military partner, General Leslie Groves. In order to garner scientific advice, the General Advisory Committee was created under David Lilienthal. Lilienthal was a bureaucrat who had had a successful tenure at the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had brought electrical power to much of the rural South during the Great Depression and the war. Oppenheimer was chief among the scientists whom Lilienthal appointed to give technical advice. This made Oppenheimer a very influential figure in the future development of nuclear energy. It also involved him in the internal political struggles of the U.S. government.

In order to understand Oppenheimer's views on arms control, one needs to appreciate that, like many veterans of the Manhattan Project, he had been profoundly affected by the destructive power of the weapons he had helped to create. He held a strongly religious outlook on life, although he was not an adherent of one of the common American faith traditions. The greatest influence on his moral philosophy was the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu work of spirituality and poetry. (It was to read this book in its original language that he had learned Sanskrit.) He saw the conversion of matter to energy in a nuclear explosion as the human unshackling of one of the fundamental processes of the universe, a phenomenon to him akin to the revelation of a god. Through his work, he believed, the human race had acquired the ability to exterminate itself. His was a deeply pessimistic reaction to the tasks that, in his view, had fallen to him by fate. He feared that the weapons he had made, and the more powerful ones to follow, would not lead to peace but, through an international arms race, would eventually threaten an even more destructive war than the one he had helped to end.

Oppenheimer took his positions based on his own internal moral compass and his beliefs in what he considered to be necessary. He was probably chosen for the General Advisory Committee because it was known that he supported the internationalist beliefs of Acheson—as did other officials, such as Secretary of War Henry Stimson. The main idea of the portion of the report included here, and a fundamental basis of the report as a whole, is one that Oppenheimer shared with Acheson and Stimson: namely, that nuclear weapons were too terrible to use in future conflicts and that therefore the control of nuclear energy should be internationalized, so that no individual country would ever have the resources necessary to manufacture and use them. Even though this would entail surrendering America's nuclear monopoly (which, since all that was at issue were scientific facts, would be short-lived anyway), the effective elimination of nuclear weapons from any nation's arsenal seemed a better guarantee of security. Other figures, like Secretary of State James Burns, felt that it would be foolish to give up such a military advantage and did not trust the Soviet Union (America's main rival in the developing cold war) to act rationally in its own interest.

In the short term the internationalist view taken by Oppenheimer and embodied in what became known as the Acheson-Lilienthal Report triumphed. In 1946 it became the official policy of the administration of President Harry S. Truman. The section of the report quoted here touches on the essential feature of this policy, although without giving the details. That policy envisioned the creation of a new United Nations Atomic Development Authority (ADA). This international body would own all nuclear resources everywhere in the world, from uranium mines through processed heavy metals. Nuclear power plants would continue in the hands of national governments, but the ADA would give them only enough fissile material to operate, without any surplus for weapons use. Thus no nation in the world would have nuclear weapons. (Those already created by the United States would be handed over to the ADA.)

Oppenheimer and his fellow consultants deal mainly here with the issue of disclosing nuclear information held as secret by the United States. They state at the outset that this technical “knowledge” is “one of the elements of the present monopoly of the United States” in the field of nuclear weapons, and they concede that providing some of this knowledge to others might “provide the basis for an acceleration of a rival effort” to make such weapons. On the other hand, they argue that sharing of some of this information is necessary because without it, the United Nations' nuclear commission “cannot even begin the task that has been assigned to it.”

Oppenheimer's consulting team proposes releasing secret nuclear data in three stages. The first stage would involve the basic knowledge the UN commission's members and their technical advisers need merely to set up the ADA. These personnel “must be in a position to understand what the prospects for constructive applications of atomic energy are,” “to appreciate the nature of the safeguards which the plan we here propose affords,” and “to evaluate alternatives which may arise.” Most important, “they must have a sound enough overall knowledge of the field as a whole to recognize that no relevant or significant matters have been withheld.” The consultants note that “much of the information” needed for these purposes “is already widely known” but that “there are further items now held by us as secret without which the necessary insight will be difficult to obtain.” However, these additional items “are of a theoretical and descriptive nature” and “are largely qualitative,” involving “almost nothing of know-how.” In essence, the consultants recommend that information of this kind be shared, since “the process of reaching common agreement on measures of international control presupposes an adequate community of knowledge of fact.”

A second stage of information sharing would be needed, the team says, once the ADA “is in existence and undertakes operations in a given field,” such as constructing nuclear reactors. At that point, “it must have made available to it all information bearing on that field—practical as well as theoretical.” A third stage might be necessary if “at a late date” the ADA, when fully established as a worldwide regulatory authority, were to engage in “research and development in the field of atomic explosives.” The consultants emphasize that the release of information at each stage must be fixed by international agreement, but they warn that “a too cautious release of information to the Atomic Development Authority might in fact have the effect of preventing it from ever coming to life.” They conclude that “one of the decisive responsibilities of the Authority is the establishment and maintenance of the security of the world against atomic warfare. It must be encouraged to exercise that responsibility, and to obtain for itself the technical mastery that is essential.”

Despite the quick adoption by the Truman administration of the plan outlined in the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, in the longer run the hopes of Oppenheimer and his colleagues were disappointed. When Truman's special ambassador Bernard Baruch presented the plan in the United Nations, the Soviet Union ultimately made its implementation impossible. The USSR, with its own nuclear program under way, did not react well to additional requirements insisted upon by Truman and Baruch. In particular, the Soviets objected to submitting themselves to the authority of the United Nations to impose sanctions for violations of the proposed accord, to allowing unlimited inspection by UN officials, and to the proclamation by the United States that it would keep its own nuclear arsenal until it and it alone decided that sufficient safeguards were in place to justify abandoning it. The failure of the international approach supported by Oppenheimer in the Acheson-Lilienthal Report meant that there would be no curb in the growth of nuclear weapons. This was the start of the arms race as the Soviet Union rushed to design and test its own atomic bomb.