The Cold War, the developing world, and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 1953–1957

Abstract

This article argues that the creation of the IAEA (1953–1957) was shaped by the overlapping dynamics of superpower relations, decolonisation, and the growing influence of the ‘global South’ in the United Nations. During the four years of multilateral and international negotiations, many of the developing countries argued that the new organisation should not exacerbate global inequalities, practice discrimination, or institutionalise ‘atomic colonialism’. While American-Soviet understanding during these negotiations was at times strikingly good, the uranium-producing states and the future recipients of IAEA technical assistance often faced each other as rival blocs. The article is based on multi-archival research at the IAEA and the UN, as well as at the National Archives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Francis Gavin, David Holloway, Matthew Jones, Shane Maddock, Anna Weichselbraun, Anna-Mart van Wyk, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.

Funding

Work on this article was supported by a Nuclear Proliferation International History Project fellowship at Monash South Africa, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and a travel grant by the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies.

Notes

¹ A short history of the Conference on the IAEA Statute can be found in: Paul C. Szasz, The Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna: IAEA Legal Series, No. 7, 1970), 34–45. The IAEA Archives in Vienna hold the verbatim records of the Conference: “Conference on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Official Records, CS/OR.1–CS/OR.40.

² Scholarship on the history of the IAEA is still in its infancy. David Fischer, a long-standing IAEA senior official from South Africa, is the author of the Agency’s official history: David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997). Lawrence Scheinman also offers valuable insight into the Agency’s history: Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (Washington DC: Resources for the Future, 1987). A recently published political science contribution also provides some historical background: Robert L. Brown, Nuclear Authority: The IAEA and the Absolute Weapon (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015).

³ For the list of current IAEA member states see the Agency’s official website: http://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/MemberStates/ (accessed November 5, 2015).

⁴ Statement of Mr Errera (Belgium) at the Conference of the Statute, CS/OR.4: Record of the 4th Plenary Meeting, 25 September 1956, 23, IAEA Archives.

⁵ For the complex role that the Suez Crisis played in the development of European nuclear cooperation see Grégoire Mallard, Fallout: Nuclear Diplomacy in an Age of Global Fracture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 117–59.

⁶ I use ‘nuclear question’ as an umbrella term for the impact that the advent of nuclear weapons and the development of civilian nuclear applications had on international political, scientific, and economic relations.

⁷ Spyros Blavoukos and Dimitris Bourantonis, “Calling the Bluff of the Western Powers in the United Nations Disarmament Negotiations, 1954–55,” Cold War History 14, no. 3 (2014): 359–76.

⁸ For the full text of Eisenhower’s speech as well as for an account of the speech’s genesis, see Ira Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); on ‘Atoms for Peace’ also see Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008). On the impact of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ proposal: Joseph F. Pilat, ed., Atoms for Peace: A Future after Fifty Years? (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2007).

⁹ Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 25; also see Mark Philipp Bradley, “Decolonization, the Global South, and the Cold War, 1919–1962,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 1, Origins, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 464–85.

¹⁰ Bernhard G. Bechhoefer, “Negotiating the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” International Organization 13, no. 1 (Winter 1959): 38–59.

¹¹ James J. Wadsworth, “Modern Diplomacy: Atoms for Peace,” in Power and Order: 6 Cases in World Politics, ed. John G. Stoessinger and Alan F. Westin (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 33–65. Significantly, the book editors placed Wadsworth’s chapter directly after the chapter about the Congress of Vienna.

¹² See fn 2 and Szasz, The Law and Practices, 11–69; also see Elisabeth Röhrlich, “Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace: The Speech that Inspired the Creation of the IAEA,” IAEA Bulletin (December 2013): 3–4.

¹³ Gabrielle Hecht, “Negotiating Global Nuclearities: Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War in the Making of the IAEA,” Osiris 21, Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs (2006), 25–48. On South Africa and the IAEA also see Jo-Ansie van Wyk, “Atoms, Apartheid, and the Agency: South Africa’s Relations with the IAEA, 1957–1995,” Cold War History 15, no. 3 (2015): 395–416.

¹⁴ On the UNAEC negotiations and the Baruch Plan: Larry G. Geber, “The Baruch Plan and the Origins of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 6, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 69–95; Joseph Preston Baratta, “Was the Baruch Plan a Proposal of World Government?” The International History Review 7, no. 4 (1985): 592–621. For the early use of the notion of the ‘Cold War’ also see Walter Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1947). The first author who used ‘Cold War’ however was George Orwell: see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 2.

¹⁵ Roland Timerbaev and Susan Welsh, “The IAEA’s Role in Nuclear Arms Control: Its Evolution and Future Prospects,” The Nonproliferation Review (Spring/summer 1995): 18.

¹⁶ For the full text see Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xi–xix.

¹⁷ Shane J. Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Supremacy from World War II to the Present (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 89.

¹⁸ US Ambassador to Moscow, Charles E. Bohlen, met Molotov on 7 December 1953 to inform him that Eisenhower’s UN speech the next day would be devoted to the dangers of the nuclear age: “Charles Bohlen Meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov concerning President Eisenhower’s United Nations Speech on December 8, 1953,” December 7, 1953, accessed through the Digital National Security Archive (hereinafter referred to as DNSA).

¹⁹ The American-Soviet exchange on ‘Atoms for Peace’ was published in the US and the Soviet Union shortly afterwards. For the English version see: “Correspondence with Soviet Union on Atomic Pool Proposal,” Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 797 (October 4, 1954): 478–97; “Correspondence with USSR on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy,” Department of State Bulletin 35, no. 904 (October 22, 1956): 620–31; for the discussion within the State Department see: Files: IAEA Exchange of Notes between the US and USSR 1953–1954, 1–2, RG 59: General Records of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, Box 141, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereinafter referred to as NA).

²⁰ J.E. Holloway to D.D. Forsyth (Secretary of External Affairs, Pretoria), February 4, 1955, BBV 81, 13/1, 2, National Archives South Africa (hereinafter referred to as NARS).

²¹ “President Eisenhower’s proposal for the peaceful development of nuclear energy,” Jan. 1954, FO 371/110692, The National Archives, Kew (hereinafter TNA); ‘Suggested passage for inclusion to H.R. Ambassador in Washington,” January 9, 1954, FO 371/110691, TNA.

²² For the Soviet reaction to the ‘Atoms for Peace’ proposal see David Holloway’s article in this issue of Cold War History.

²³ “Note handed to Secretary Dulles by Ambassador Zaroubin, Washington, January 19, 1954,” Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 797 (October 4, 1954): 479.

²⁴ “Aide Memoire handed to Secretary Dulles by Mr. Molotov, Geneva, April 27, 1954,” Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 797 (October 4, 1954): 483.

²⁵ “Letter from Secretary Dulles to Mr. Molotov, Berlin, February 16,” Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 797 (October 4, 1954): 479.

²⁶ “President Eisenhower’s Proposal for an International Atomic Energy Agency,” 1954, FO 371/110694, TNA.

²⁷ Blavoukos and Bourantonis, “Calling the Bluff,” 365.

²⁸ “President Eisenhower’s Proposals for the Peaceful Developments of Atomic Energy,” 1954, FO 371/110692, TNA.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ CS/OR.7, 39.

³¹ UNGA resolution 995(x): Admission of new Member States to the United Nations. 1955.

³² B.H. Peck, “President Eisenhower’s Atomic Energy Proposals,” February 22, 1954, FO 371/110692, TNA.

³³ J.E. Holloway to D.D. Forsyth (Secretary of External Affairs, Pretoria), February 4, 1955, BBV 81, 13/1, 2, NARS.

³⁴ Bertrand Goldschmidt, “The Origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections, ed. David Fischer (Vienna: IAEA, 1997), 5.

³⁵ For the relation of Euratom and the IAEA see: John Krige, “Euratom and the IAEA: The Problem Of Self-Inspection,” Cold War History 15, no. 3 (2015): 341–52.

³⁶ “Tenth Session of the General Assembly: Special Interim Report on ‘Atoms for Peace’ Debate in First Committee up to 17th October,” BVV 81, 13/1, 3, NARS.

³⁷ “Political and Security Questions: Chapter 1, Measures for Strengthening Peace,” United Nations Yearbook 1954, 3–9.

³⁸ Wadsworth, “Modern Diplomacy,” 34–35.

³⁹ United Nations General Assembly, 9th Session, Official Records, First Committee, 710th Meeting, November 9, 1954, 309–13 (A/C.1/SR.710).

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ See fn 16.

⁴² UN General Assembly Resolution 810 (IX), B, November 4, 1954.

⁴³ For the verbatim records of the meetings see: International Affairs, IAEA: PV documents 1955, RG 326: Records of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Records Relating to the Formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1953–1957, Box 5, NA.

⁴⁴ “Aide Memoire handed to Secretary Dulles by Mr. Molotov, Berlin, February 13, 1954,” Bulletin of the Department of State 31, no. 797: 479.

⁴⁵ See “Editorial Note,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Volume 20, Regulation of Armaments; Atomic Energy, Document 120 (accessed July 13, 2014); Bechhoefer, “Negotiating the Statute.”

⁴⁶ United Nations General Assembly 10th Session, First Committee, 26 October 1955, 73.

⁴⁷ J.E. Holloway to D. Spies, 25 January 1956, BVV 81, 13/1 3, NARS.

⁴⁸ IAEA Statute – 12 nation conference (Washington DC, February–June 1956), Official Records, IAEA Archives.

⁴⁹ James Wadsworth to John Foster Dulles, 26 April 1956, RG 326: Records of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC): Records Relating to the Formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1953–1957, Box 8, NA.

⁵⁰ James P. Nichol, Diplomacy in the Former Soviet Republics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 13.

⁵¹ Wadsworth, “Modern Diplomacy,” 38.

⁵² As Francis J. Gavin argues, nonproliferation only became a major concern of the superpowers during the late 1950s and early 1960s: Francis J. Gavin, “Nuclear Proliferation and Non-proliferation During the Cold War,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War,” vol. 2, Crisis and Détente, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 395–416, 397.

⁵³ Albert Wohlstetter introduced the metaphor of nuclear ‘proliferation’ into the debate, see: Benoît Pelopidas, “The Oracles of Proliferation: How Experts Maintain a Biased Historical Reading that Limits Policy Innovation,” The Nonproliferation Review 18, no. 1: 301–02.

⁵⁴ “Letter recording conversation with Dr. Bhabha on 25 March 1956 about the Board of Governors and the safeguarding of fissile material,” FO 371/123079, TNA.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Howard A. Robinson to Gerard C. Smith, July 25, 1955, File: 10.8 IAEA Control & Inspection, 1955–57, RG 59: General Records of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, Box 137, NA.

⁵⁷ Isidor Rabi at the opening session of the Geneva meetings: “Proposed International Atomic Energy Agency, Meetings of Six Governments, verbatim record of first meeting, held at the Palais de Nations, Geneva, on Monday 22 August 1955 at 10:30 a.m.,” File: International Affairs, IAEA: PV documents 1955, RG 326: Records of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Records Relating to the Formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1953–1957, Box 5, NA.

⁵⁸ “Memorandum of Conference with the President,” May 2, 1957, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, vol. 2, Regulation of Armaments; Atomic Energy, Document 191.

⁵⁹ “Statement by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., United States Representative, in Committee One, on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy,” November 15, 1954, Series 370 (Bunche Files), Box 22, File: 1. IAEA – Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy – Geneva Conference 1955 17/2/1955–18/2/1957, UN Archives.

⁶⁰ Roland Popp, “Introduction: Global Order, Cooperation between the Superpowers, and the Alliance Politics in the Making of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime,” The International History Review 36, no. 2 (2014), 195–209, 196.

⁶¹ Itty Abraham, “The Ambivalence of Nuclear Histories,” Osiris 21, no. 1 (2006): 62.

⁶² Michael R. Adamson, “The Most Important Single Aspect of our Foreign Policy? The Eisenhower Administration, Foreign Aid, and the Developing World,” in The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War, ed. Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew J. Johns (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 47–74.

⁶³ C.D. Jackson to Lewis Strauss, May 26, 1956, accessed through DNSA.

⁶⁴ Wadsworth, “Modern Diplomacy,” 39–40.

⁶⁵ Gladys D. Walser, “The International Atomic Energy Agency, Washington, February 28–April 18, 1956,” File: 5, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – conference on statute 6/7/1955–1959, Series 370 (Bunche Files), Box 20, UN Archives.

⁶⁶ Sonja D. Schmid, “Nuclear Colonization? Soviet Technopolitics in the Second World,” in Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War, ed. Gabrielle Hecht (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 125–54, 135.

⁶⁷ “Memorandum: Composition of Board of Governors of Proposed International Atomic Energy Agency,” File: International Affairs 12–5, Statute, January–June 1955, RG 326: Records of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Records Relating to the Formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1953–1957, Box 1, NA.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, CS.13.

⁷⁰ Goldschmidt, “The Origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” 10; Report of the Embassy in Washington to the Foreign Office, 10 March 1956, FO 371/123078, TNA.

⁷¹ CS/OR.5.

⁷² From the beginning of the meetings, Brazil aimed to include a reference ‘to the needs of under developed areas of the world’ in the statute: 12 nation conference, Doc 2, add 2, IAEA Archives.

⁷³ Saul Dubow, “Smuts, the United Nations and the Rhetoric of Race and Rights,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 1 (2008): 45–74.

⁷⁴ W.C. Du Plessis to the Secretary of External Affairs, January 7, 1955, BVV 81, 13/1, 2, NARS.

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ CS/OR.7.

⁷⁷ Leonard Weiss, “Atoms for Peace,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59, no. 9 (November/December 2003), 34–44, 39.

⁷⁸ J.E. Holloway to D. Spies, January 25, BVV 81, 13/1 3, NARS.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ “Indian Scientist Bhabha as President of the International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy,” Washington, January 19, 1955, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, vol. 2 Regulation of armaments; atomic energy (1955–1957), 9–10, Document 3.

⁸¹ 12 nation conference, doc. 32, IAEA Archives.

⁸² Wadsworth, “Modern Diplomacy,” 48.

⁸³ Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency as of 26 October 1957, Article IV, B.

⁸⁴ Walser, “International Atomic Energy Organization.”

⁸⁵ For an analysis of South Africa’s nuclear programme in a Cold War context see: Martha S. van Wyk, “Ally or Critic? The United States’ Response to South African Nuclear Development, 1949–1980,” Cold War History 7, no. 2 (2007): 195–225.

⁸⁶ “Report from Washington to Foreign Office,” March 17, 1956, FO 371/123079, TNA.

⁸⁷ Statute of the IAEA as of 26 October 1957, Article III, B.4.

⁸⁸ The invitations to the Conference of the Statute had been sent out by the United States on behalf of the 12-nation negotiating group.

⁸⁹ Ralph Bunche to Dag Hammerskjöld, 4 October 1957, Series 370 (Bunche Files), File: 12 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – conferences – 1st session general 24/6/1957–29/10/1957, Box 20, UN Archives.

⁹⁰ CS/OR.7.

⁹¹ Conference on the Statute, CS/OR.37.

⁹² “Memorandum: European Perspectives on Recent American Moves in the Field of Atomic Energy,” October 21, 1954, accessed through DNSA.

⁹³ “Special Interim Report on ‘Atoms for Peace’ Debate in First Committee,” October 17, 1955, BVV 81, 13.1 3, NARS.

⁹⁴ Szasz, The Law and Practices, 21.

⁹⁵ Edmund Jan Ozmańczyk, “Group of 77,” in Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements, 3rd ed., ed. Anthony Mango (New York: Routledge, 2003), 839.

⁹⁶ “Welcoming remarks by the Secretary General of the United Nations,” CS/OR.1, 2–6.

⁹⁷ Odd Arne Westad, “Epilogue: The Cold War and the Third World,” in The Cold War in the Third World, ed. Robert J. McMahon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 208–13.

⁹⁸ Gavin, “Nuclear Proliferation and Non-Proliferation,” 416; also see Campbell Craig, “The Nuclear Revolution: A Product of the Cold War, or Something More?” in The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War, ed. Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 360–76.

⁹⁹ CS/OR.1, 28.

¹⁰⁰ David Fischer, who participated in the IAEA’s First General Conference, remembers that ‘soon after the Conference opened, the Soviet delegate, Professor Vassily Emelyanov, startled the delegates and disconcerted NATO members by announcing the first flight in outer space around the earth – on 4 October 1957 – of a satellite, Sputnik-I’: see Fischer, International Atomic Energy Agency: First Forty Years, 60.