It’s a real pleasure to be here today and to begin the panel to discuss the background on “Atoms for Peace.” It’s a particular pleasure for me because I’m sort of a twofer, you could say. I can represent the Eisenhower family in this process, but it’s a treat to address this group as I’ve been involved in nuclear issues myself for a very long time. Only people in this room would understand the thrill of getting inside the third perimeter fence of Chelyabinsk-70 which I did a number of years ago as part of the Baker-Cutler Commission. I was a member of that commission and it gave me, certainly, an opportunity not only to see one of the important places in the Cold War confrontation we had between ourselves and the Soviet Union, but it gave me a real sense and feel to what it is that we try to do at gatherings like this.

Thank you very much for that wonderful introduction about the history of this [speech]. Being involved in contemporary affairs with respect to nuclear weapons, it’s always interesting to go back and look at many of the historical underpinnings for where we find ourselves today, and of course Atoms for Peace was a very big part of the legacy we are dealing with today.

When I came here this morning, I was thinking of how appropriate it was that we were starting at the crack of dawn because C. D. Jackson, who had been tasked with doing the early drafts of this speech, convened his group to discuss what the shape of this speech would look like at the Metropolitan Club, and since they met early in the morning they decided they were going to call it “Operation Wheaties.” It seemed to me that we were having an Operation Wheaties here as well.

In any case, Bob [Pfaltzgraff] outlined a wonderful introduction with respect to how this speech came about.

Churchill had been briefed about the speech in advance and praised it, calling it a “great pronouncement” that will “resound through the anxious and bewildered world.” I think it would be well to take a moment and reconstruct that anxious and bewildered world.

Here we are after the Cold War is over—sometimes it’s easy to assume that it was always going to turn out the way it did. Certainly in 1953, the world looked like a terrifying place indeed. The nuclear terror that was unleashed by the atomic carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only heightened four years later when the Soviets tested an atomic weapon in August of 1949. Great Britain, without help from the United States, followed suit on October 3, 1952. And then, with the Korean War still raging, only a month later in November of 1952, the world entered the age of the hydrogen bomb. The destructive capacity of this weapon was awesome, in the old and biblical sense of the word. On its detonation, it vaporized the test island, Elugelab, and blew open an underwater crater 1,500 yards in diameter.

Less than a year later, the Soviet Union made its own announcement on August 19, 1953, that they had successfully broken the United States’ monopoly on the hydrogen bomb. The country had been all but destroyed during World War II, making it obvious that a nation’s wealth was not a prerequisite for gaining nuclear knowledge and capability. It was clear to the president that if the world took its current path, soon others and possibly all countries would be able to develop and acquire nuclear weapons.

“Eisenhower,” wrote one analyst, “sought to reconcile the ambiguities and contradictions of nuclear politics, offering some hope for the future.” 

On the one hand, the hydrogen bomb had the destructive capacity to bring about a nuclear holocaust. Yet this weapon of unthinkable terror was also ironically the same device that served as a deterrent and was central to our national security calculations. At the same time, advancements in the nuclear field held out the promise of using the atom to provide ideally limitless nuclear power for energy and humanitarian purposes.

I’d like to take this opportunity [to point out] that Eisenhower was knowledgeable about this and deeply impressed by it, in large measure because of the very good relationship he had with the scientific community that dated back not only to his Army years, but also the period when he was president of Columbia University.

Eisenhower felt strongly that this issue needed leadership and management. He had originally intended the Atoms for Peace speech to be the first major foreign policy address of his administration. But Stalin’s death at the outset in March of 1953 prompted the Eisenhower administration to think about articulating some opening to the people of the Soviet Union, which resulted in the “Chance for Peace” speech. Atoms for Peace was indeed the second major foreign policy topic, and some of the things that were going through the president’s mind revolved around a number of questions:

• What could be done that could break the stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union on disarmament talks? Eisenhower thought that this would be one way to do it—to actually bring about some idea that would create an opportunity for cooperation which would then, even if it was “the tiniest of starts,” he said, this could evolve into something broader than just humanitarian efforts.
• How could the tide of nuclear proliferation be stemmed? After all, it was a belief in 1953 that some, and possibly all countries, could acquire nuclear technology. How could we slow down the number of countries that were likely to go nuclear? Eisenhower saw his proposal as a way to involve developing countries, as we’ve heard.
• Could the post-imperial world, increasingly restless with the double standards imposed by developed nations, sit still for long as the nuclear club seized but restricted access that nuclear power promised?
• And how, and I think this is critically important, how can the president enhance public understanding of the issue and garner their support? General Goodpaster will tell you how seriously he took that particular issue.

In the crafting of the concept and in considering countless drafts of the speech, and by the way you would not have wanted to be a speechwriter for Dwight Eisenhower. I’d like to remind you that he was a speechwriter for Douglas MacArthur and he knew a thing or two about drafting a speech. In any case, after seeing many of these drafts, the president was completely fed up and frustrated, and he wrote to a friend, “Every version I read left listeners only with a new sense of terror, so I began to search around for a new kind of idea that could bring the world to look at the atomic problem in a broad and intelligent way and still escape the impasse to action created by Russian intransigence in a matter of mutual and neutral inspection of resources. I wanted additionally to give our people and the world some faint idea of the distance already traveled by this new science—but to do it in a way that would not create new alarm” as well as “certain knowledge” that the taxpayers’ hard-earned tax dollars had not been spent for destructive purposes alone—that there could be economic and social benefits from this pioneering research. 

The atom, Eisenhower would later say, was non-political—neither moral nor immoral. Only man’s choice would determine the purpose for which it would be used.

The speech not only gave presidential legitimacy to the international pursuit of atomic energy, but in the context of the Cold War, let’s not forget, it raised the United States’ standing within the developing world. Did Eisenhower know the historic forces he set into play? I believe he did. When I read accounts that Eisenhower was naïve, I’ll defer to General Goodpaster on this, but I knew him very well myself: I don’t think so. I think he understood that there was probably no other way at this particular time, especially with the belief that all countries could soon acquire this technology if they so chose. We had an obligation to bring these benefits to all of humankind.

• As we look back now, Atoms for Peace has had some success, given the 1953 calculation of the potential of nuclear weapons being available universally. We have to admit that the rate of those countries that have acquired nuclear weapons [is] well below the rate anticipated in 1953. Furthermore, through the NPT and the IAEA, the international community has gained leverage and access to countries that would have otherwise remained off-bounds because of reasons of sovereignty. So that access issue I think is extremely important.
• No nuclear weapon has been used since World War II, and the nations of the world have essentially at this point stopped testing nuclear weapons.
• Nuclear electric power accounts for nearly one-fifth of the world’s electricity.
• Nuclear power has reduced global tensions by replacing oil in many applications, and providing much of the world’s electricity that is generated without the release of greenhouse gases or other destructive emissions.
• Many other nuclear and radiation-related technologies, especially in radiopharmaceuticals and medical advances, have saved millions of lives, through cancer treatments and other applications.

While Atoms for Peace as well as the institutions it created, such as the IAEA and eventually the NPT, have come under fire in recent years, complaints I believe were largely a function of poor implementation, rather that conceptualization. Atoms for Peace, let’s not forget, was a vision, not a blueprint.

It’s hard to imagine a world in which each country might have its own nuclear capability without international oversight and inspection, or that the benefits of nuclear medicine and advancements in agriculture would be available only to a chosen few.

Fifty years later, however, the nuclear dilemma is still with us.

The biggest nuclear problem we have is not the small amounts of material located in research reactors around the world—but we need to secure those urgently—but by the legacy of the arms race that continued unabated well after Eisenhower left office.

• The Soviet Union is gone today. Russia serves as our partner in so many areas, and so quite frankly, in my estimation, we have no excuse. We have the opening that Eisenhower hoped for and prayed for, and in some respects, planned for.
• And so it seems to me that we need to accelerate our agenda on a number of issues despite the work that’s already been done in Russia. For instance, 120 metric tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium have not received security upgrades. This is an urgent task.
• We still have weapons deployed on high alert. President Bush and President Putin could well direct the immediate stand down of all forces scheduled for reduction under the Moscow Treaty.
• Both presidents could agree to increase decision time for nuclear response from minutes to hours.
• And even though the Cold War is over, there remains a potential for catastrophic accident, or for the more remote possibility of unauthorized launch.
• The U.S. and Russia must get a grip on tactical weapons, tactical nuclear weapons as well, and the U.S. in my opinion must think long and hard about the implications of adding others, like earth-penetrating bunker busters. Not only could they prompt other countries to devise a nuclear deterrent again them, I think, just as worrisome, their name and low yield may lull some people into thinking they could really be used.
• Atoms for Peace institutions, including the IAEA and the NPT, have to be properly funded, reformed, augmented, and their mandates need to be broadened.
• We need to look again at nuclear power and step up to the plate. It may be one of the most effective ways of reducing our dependence on Middle East oil, and new reactor technology can reduce the potential for proliferation. We have no alternative with environmental problems facing the international community, and so the sooner we stop worrying about it, and quite frankly whining about it, the better off we’re going to be.
• So let’s look to enhance the security of the atom, but let us not hold the world hostage to the fears that Eisenhower tried to put aside.

While the speech was given 50 years ago, the impulse to reduce the dangers of nuclear war and to extend the life-giving benefits of the atom remains as valid as ever.

And so I’d like to conclude my remarks by quoting Dwight Eisenhower in his December 8th address when he said, “The United States pledges before you—and therefore before the world—its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma—to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death but consecrated to his life.”

Thank you very much.