Policy Planning Staff Files
Minutes of the Fourth Meeting of the Policy Planning Staff on the International Control of Atomic Energy
top secret
[Washington,] October 19, 1949.
Present:
- Robert Hooker
- Gordon Arneson, U
- General Frederick H. Osborn, Deputy Representative on the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission and the Commission for Conventional Armaments
- Carlton Savage
- Joseph Chase, U
During this meeting the following points were developed:
- 1.
- There is almost no hope for an international agreement on the control of atomic energy in the near future. There would be need for change in the regime in Russia or a great softening of that regime before it would agree to any effective international plan for atomic energy control, operation, and inspection. There is no indication that the passage of time or the President’s announcement of the atomic explosion have made any change whatever in Russian views on atomic energy.
- 2.
- The discussions of the six Sponsoring Powers should be continued. This is a logical forum for the discussions as these are the powers primarily concerned and as attitudes can be taken there for purposes of discussion without commitment or solidification. Furthermore, some progress is being made in clarifying questions such as those related to staging. There seems to be no likelihood that the Russians will desire to break off negotiations and there seems no reason that the western powers should. The western powers are unanimously agreed on the main points at issue. The possible addition of a communist representative of China to the Sponsoring Powers would make no difference except the vote would be six to four [?] rather than five to one and the meetings would lose the valuable services of the Chinese Nationalist representative who is an accomplished physicist. The Sponsoring Powers have questions to discuss to keep them going for at least a year. They have in draft form an interim report to be presented to this session of the General Assembly. It will set forth clearly the main points at issue.
- 3.
- An international agreement for the renunciation of atomic warfare, as proposed by the Russians, has little to recommend it from the U.S. point of view. The Russians would lie about what they were doing in producing atomic weapons and we would tell the truth with consequent propaganda advantage for the Russians; even as a party to such an agreement, we would have to continue to manufacture bombs for use in case others did not keep the agreement.
- 4.
- General Osborn thought we should go in for a program of civilian defense but only if this action would not detract from the efficiency of our military establishment.
- 5.
- The propaganda position of the western powers will be helped by a pamphlet just being published by the Secretariat of the United Nations, setting forth for the first time compactly and comprehensively the U.N. plan for the control of atomic energy.1
- AEC, 4th yr., Special Suppl. No. 1.↩