Baruch Plan

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The Baruch Plan was a proposal by the United States government, written mainly by Bernard Baruch, to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) in its first meeting in June 1946 to:

a) extend between all nations the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends;

b) implement control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes;

c) eliminate from national armaments atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction; and

d) establish effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying States against the hazards of violations and evasions.

The US agreed to turn over all of its weapons on the condition that all other countries pledge not to produce them and agree to an adequate system of inspection. The Soviets rejected this plan on the grounds that the United Nations was dominated by the United States and its allies in Western Europe, and could therefore not be trusted to exercise authority over atomic weaponry in an evenhanded manner. Although the Soviets showed increased interest in the cause of arms control after they became a nuclear power in 1949, and particularly after the death of Stalin in 1953, the issue of the Soviet Union submitting to international inspection was always a thorny one upon which many attempts at nuclear arms control were stalled.

When the Soviet Union refused to sign onto the Baruch Plan, the U.S. embarked on a massive nuclear weapons testing, development, and deployment program.

Bertrand Russell, in his 1961 book Has Man a Future?, described the Baruch plan as follows:

The United States Government ... did attempt ... to give effect to some of the ideas which the atomic scientists had suggested. In 1946, it presented to the world what is now called "The Baruch Plan", which had very great merits and showed considerable generosity, when it is remembered that America still had an unbroken nuclear monopoly. The Baruch Plan proposed an International Atomic Development Authority which was to have a monopoly of mining uranium and thorium, refining the ores, owning materials, and constructing and operating plants necessary for the use of nuclear power. It was suggested that this Authority should be established by the United Nations and that the United States should give it the information of which, so far, America was the sole possessor. Unfortunately, there were features of the Baruch Proposal which Russia found unacceptable, as, indeed, was to be expected. It was Stalin's Russia, flushed with pride in the victory over the Germans, suspicious (not without reason) of the Western Powers, and aware that in the United Nations it could almost always be outvoted.