Euratom and the IAEA: the problem of self-inspection

Abstract

The IAEA was saddled with one burden at its inception, a burden that dogged it for many years afterwards. It was that Euratom, which had formally come into being in 1958, was authorised to implement its own safeguards, i.e. it was accorded the right of ‘self-inspection’. The first US director of the IAEA, Sterling Cole, fought a bitter battle to have this overturned, insisting that it undermined the core mission of the Agency and that it set an impossible precedent, and would trigger demands for a ‘Latinatom’ etc. This paper describes the circumstances that led the State Department to grant Euratom this privilege (a policy choice that is indicative of the deep investment that both J.F. Dulles and Eisenhower made in supranationality) and discusses the steps that Cole took to overturn it, to no avail.

Notes

¹ Letter from Sterling Cole to Lewis Strauss, 23 January 1961, Special Collections and University Archives, Colgate University Libraries, Hampton NY [SCCUL], Box 1, Folder 9.

² John W. Finney, “A.E.C. Raises Objections to Accord with Euratom”, New York Times, 8 June 1958; “Dispute on Atom Inspection”, New York Times, 9 June 1958.

³ Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Order (Washington DC: Resources for the Future, 1987), 75.

⁴ Quoted in Allan D. McKnight, Nuclear Non-Proliferation: IAEA and Euratom, Occasional Paper 7, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 1970, 32.

⁵A Report to the President by the Committee on Nuclear Proliferation, 21 January 1965, 19–20, at http://www2.gwu.edu/∼ nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB1/docs/doc07.pdf. For more on this committee, which was chaired by Roswell Gilpatric, see Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft. History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age (Cornell University Press, 2012), chapter 4.

⁶ McKnight, Nuclear Non-Proliferation.

⁷ Scheinman, International Atomic Energy Agency, 159, 161.

⁸ Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961. Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), Appendix 6.

⁹ Letter from Cole to Strauss, 12 May 1958, SCCUL, Box 1, Folder 26.

¹⁰ For general accounts of Euratom see Michel Dumoulin, Pierre Guillen, and Maurice Vaïsse, eds, L'Énergie nucléaire en Europe. Des origins à Euratom (Paris: Peter Lang, 1994); Jonathan D. Helmreich, “The United States and the Formation of Euratom”, Diplomatic History, 15, no. 3 (1991), 387–410; Pascaline Winand, Eisenhower, Kennedy and the United States of Europe (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), chapter 4; and most recently, Gunnar Skogmar, The United States and the Nuclear Dimension of European Integration (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2004). See also Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace. The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

¹¹ National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD [NARA], RG59 Box 363 Folder 19.8 Regional Program Euratom General, Jan – Feb 1956, part 1 of 2, memo “State-AEC study of atomic energy and European integration”, 16 January 1956.

¹² What follows summarises a far more detailed argument in John Krige, “The Peaceful Atom as Political Weapon: Euratom and American Foreign Policy in the late 1950s”, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 38, no. 1 (2008), 5–44.

¹³ Letter from Harold Vance, acting chair of the AEC to Eisenhower, 3 November 1959, Historical Archives of the European Union, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, [HAEU], Fonds Jean Monnet Duchêne Sources [JMDS] File 110. A copy of the agreement itself, with covering note dated 25 June 1958, is available in The National Archives, Kew, London [TNA], File CAB21/4950.

¹⁴ Letter from W.E. Knox, president, Westinghouse Co to Strauss, 2 April 1958; Letter from Knox to President Eisenhower, 4 April 1958. In this letter Knox claimed that the UK was subsidising its nuclear reactors and that, if a firm like Westinghouse was to implant itself on the continent it would need a subsidy too. The “prestige” of the US demanded no less. HAEU, Fonds JMDS, File 110.

¹⁵ Note by The Secretary, Atomic Energy Executive, UK – Euratom Agreement, 30 June 1958, TNA, File AB16/3711.

¹⁶ Aide-Memoire on US/Euratom fuel cycle guarantees attached to memo Stirling to the Foreign Office, 28 October 1958, TNA, File AB16/3712,

¹⁷ Memo, P.H. Gore-Booth, 28 October 1958, TNA, File FO371/132743.

¹⁸ John Baylis, “Exchanging Nuclear Secrets: Laying the Foundations of the Anglo-American Nuclear Relationship”, Diplomatic History, 25, no. 1 (2001), 33–61.

¹⁹ Telegram to Belgian Minister, 15 May 1956. NARA, RG59 Box 363 Folder 19.8 Regional Program Euratom General May-Sep, 1956, part 1 of 2.

²⁰ Letter from Strauss to Durham, 23 June 1958, HAEU, Fonds JMDS, File 110.

²¹ These agreements generally “granted the United States full access to ‘maintenance, production, and operating records, and other data necessary to accomplish accountability for all special nuclear materials', and the right to access ‘to all places and data necessary to verify compliance’ with the terms of the agreement. See H.L. Nieburg, ‘Euratom. A study in coalition politics’”, World Politics, 15, no. 4 (July 1963), 597–622, on 599.

²² Record of Meeting between United Kingdom Representatives and Representatives of the Euratom Commission, 17 and 18 June 1958, TNA, File CAB21/4950.

²³ Memo Schaetzel, Safeguards and the Euratom Joint Program, 10 April 1958, NARA, RG59 Box 358, Folder 19.8p Safeguards part 1.

²⁴ Bertrand Goldschmidt, The Atomic Complex. A Worldwide Political History of Atomic Energy (Lagrange: American Nuclear Society, 1982), 137.

²⁵ “Testimony of Governor Herter…”, 9 July 1959, NARA RG59 Box 365, Folder 19.8, Regional Program Euratom General, 1958, part 1 of 2.

²⁶ Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 441.

²⁷ Letter from Herter to Strauss, 17 April 1958, HAEU, Fonds JMDS, File 110.

²⁸ Letters from Cole to Eisenhower, 15 May 1958, and Cole to Strauss, 12 May 1958, NARA, RG59, Box 365, Folder Regional Program Euratom General 1958, Part 2 of 3.

²⁹ Letter from Cole to Strauss, 12 May 1958, SCCUL, Box 1, Folder 26.

³⁰ Memo from Erken to Farley, “Euratom Safeguards”, 24 April 1958, NARA, RG59, Box 158, Folder 19.8p. Safeguards Part 1.

³¹ Telegram from London to US Secretary of State, 12 June 1958, NARA, RG59, Box 165, Folder 19.8. Regional Program Euratom General 1958, Part 1 of 2.

³² Letter from Strauss to Cole, 23 May 1958, SCCUL, Box 5, Folder 324.

³³ Telegram from IAEA (Cole) to Strauss, 29 May 1958, SCCUL, Box 2, Folder 97.

³⁴ Cf. Note 2.

³⁵ Letter from Herter to Strauss, and attached memorandum, 11 June 1958, HAEU, Fonds JMDS, File 110.

³⁶Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Joint Nuclear Power Program Proposed Between the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the United States of America, attached to State Department Release, “United States – Euratom Program”, 23 June 1958, TNA, File CAB21/4950.

³⁷ Letter from Eisenhower to Baruch, 13 June 1958, HAEU, Fonds JMDS, File 110.

³⁸ Baruch had written to the president for reassurances that Euratom was not allowed self-inspection after reading the article in the New York Times on 8 June 1948. Letter from Baruch to Eisenhower, 9 June 1958, HAEU, Fonds JMDS, File 110.

³⁹ Grègoire Mallard, Atomic Confederacy. Europe's Quest for Nuclear Weapons and the New World Order (Princeton University: PhD Thesis, 2008), 379–385.

⁴⁰ Telegram, Sir H. Caccia, UK embassy Washington DC, to the Foreign Office, 13 June 1958, TNA, File AB16/3710

⁴¹ Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 444.

⁴² Klaus Schwabe, “The United States and European Integration”, in Western Europe and Germany. The Beginnings of European Integration. 1945–1960, ed. Clemens Wurm (Oxford: Berg, 1995), 115–135, at 129.

⁴³ Letter from Conant to Merchant, 19 February 1956, NARA, RG59, Box 363, Folder 19.8 Regional Program Euratom General Jan-Feb 1956, Part 2 of 2.

⁴⁴Testimony of Mr Dillon With Respect to the Safeguard Arrangements of the Joint US – Euratom Program, 9 July 1958, NARA RG 59, Box 360, Folder Regional Programs 19.08r4 Fact Sheets, 1953 – 1960 thru […] Joint Program, 1961.

⁴⁵ Shane J. Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid. The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy From World War II to the Present (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Krige

John Krige works on US–West European relations in science and technology in the Cold War. His last monograph was entitled American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (MIT Press, 2006). His next is provisionally entitled Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe. Technological Collaboration and Nonproliferation and is slated to appear in 2015. Email: [email protected]