On This Day: U.S. set to export 25 tons of highly enriched uranium to 30 countries - Dec. 8, 1953

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(edited from Wikipedia)
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Atoms for Peace

"Atoms for Peace" was the title of a speech delivered by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in New York City on December 8, 1953.

I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new—one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.

The United States then launched an "Atoms for Peace" program that supplied equipment and information to schools, hospitals, and research institutions within the U.S. and throughout the world. The first nuclear reactors in Israel and Islamabad in Pakistan were built under the program by American Machine and Foundry, a company more commonly known as a major manufacturer of bowling equipment.

Under Atoms for Peace related programs the U.S. exported over 25 tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to 30 countries, mostly to fuel research reactors, which is now regarded as a proliferation and terrorism risk. Under a similar program, the Soviet Union exported over 11 tons of HEU.

Philosophy

The speech was part of a carefully orchestrated media campaign, called "Operation Candor", to enlighten the American public on the risks and hopes of a nuclear future. Both Operation Candor and Atoms for Peace were influenced by the January 1953 report of the State Department Panel of Consultants on Disarmament, which urged that the United States government practice less secrecy and more honesty toward the American people about the realities of the nuclear balance and the dangers of nuclear warfare, which triggered in Eisenhower a desire to seek a new and different approach to the threat of nuclear war in international relations.

"Atoms for Peace" was a propaganda component of the Cold War strategy of containment. Eisenhower's speech opened a media campaign that would last for years and that aimed at "emotion management", balancing fears of continuing nuclear armament with promises of peaceful use of uranium in future nuclear reactors. The speech was a tipping point for international focus on peaceful uses of atomic energy, even during the early stages of the Cold War. Eisenhower, with some influence from J. Robert Oppenheimer, may have been attempting to convey a spirit of comfort to a terrified world after the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of the nuclear tests of the early 1950s.

Eisenhower's invoking of "those same great concepts of universal peace and human dignity which are so clearly etched in" the UN Charter placed new emphasis upon the U.S. responsibility for its nuclear actions—past, present, and future.

This address laid down the rules of engagement for the new kind of warfare: the cold war.

Two quotations from the speech follow:

It is with the book of history, and not with isolated pages, that the United States will ever wish to be identified. My country wants to be constructive, not destructive. It wants agreement, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom, and in the confidence that the people of every other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

To the making of these fateful decisions, 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.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Effects of the speech

Prior to Eisenhower's speech, the state of atomic development in the world was under strict secrecy. The information and expertise needed for atomic development was bound by the secret Quebec Agreement of 1943 and thus not devoted to peaceful processes, but instead as a weapon to defend against other countries which were developing and using the same weaponry. With atomic development thus far under wraps, there were no safety protocols and no standards developed.

Eisenhower's speech was an important moment in political history as it brought the atomic issue which had been kept quiet for "national security" into the public eye, asking the world to support his solution. However, Eisenhower was not completely effective in his repurposing; Eisenhower himself approved the National Security Council (NSC) document which stated that only a massive atomic weapon base would deter violence from the Soviet Union. The belief that to avoid a nuclear war, the United States must stay on the offensive, ready to strike at any time, is the same reason that the Soviet Union would not give up its atomic weapons either. During Eisenhower's time in office the nuclear holdings of the US rose from 1,005 to 20,000 weapons.

Atoms for Peace created the ideological background for the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, but also gave political cover for the U.S. nuclear weapons build-up, and the backdrop to the Cold War arms race.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace

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