The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2020 27 BRIANHUBBLE launched ballistic missiles, there is real concern that its doctrine may be changing. So all of us need to think about the long arc of nuclear arms control—what it has accomplished, where it has failed and what it can do for our future security. In looking at the history, this article pulls the different strands from one period into the next, but does not delve into the details of any particular agreement. Nuclear arms control experts may take exception to this surface skimming, but I think it makes sense as food for thought: to remind us all how we determined the value of nuclear arms control in the first place, and how we have sustained it over time. Now we have to consider what makes sense for the future. From Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis The early history of nuclear arms control was wedded to the closing days of World War II: Hiroshima and Nagasaki had taken place; the United States had won the race to acquire nuclear weapons. To its credit, U.S. leadership immediately grasped that efforts should be made to control this new weapon of mass destruction and, if possible, share the benefits of the atom— nuclear energy—internationally. Secretary of State Dean Acheson joined with David Lilienthal, chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority (responsible for fissile material production), and four other prominent figures to prepare what became the Acheson-Lil- ienthal Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy. Its goal was to ensure that the United Nations would control nuclear resources and ensure that they were only used for peaceful pur- poses. Those countries acquiring nuclear weapons technology would give it up; and once U.N. controls over their programs were in place, the United States would relinquish its arsenal. Bernard Baruch was the U.S. negotiator who presented this proposal to the U.N. Security Council in January 1946. It was already evident that the Soviet Union was unlikely to cooperate, so Baruch modified the plan in several ways, importantly seek- ing to prevent the UNSC veto from being used in this setting. The Soviets presented their own competing Gromyko Plan, which called for the immediate prohibition of nuclear weapons and would have caused the United States to give up its arsenal imme- diately. These competing plans were debated until December 1946, when the Baruch Plan was put to a vote before the Security Council. Ten of the 12 members voted in favor, but the USSR and Poland abstained. The measure was not passed, so the first