ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (12/10/85)
Arms-Discussion Digest Monday, December 9, 1985 10:20PM
Volume 5, Issue 50
Today's Topics:
Top Secret Classifications
Baruch Plan
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Date: Sun, 8 Dec 85 21:10:56 est
From: David Rogers <drogers%farg.umich.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Top Secret Classifications
From: JMiller@APG-1
[T]he press generally agrees with the point that the services keep
too many things secret. Along come the Walkers and other neat spy
scandals, and the same press demands to know why we don't
protect secrets better! So the resulting rush to slash clearances
and upgrade protection will undoubtedly result in more criticism
of overclassification. It really is a no-win situation.
I have to defend the response of the press, and the government, here:
from news reports, it seems that both Congress and the press understood
that the best way to upgrade protection was to classify @i(less):
both because the less the top-secret stamp is used, the more faith people
have that it's not being used to conver up cost-overruns or whatever, and
because stricter classification rules will allow fewer top-secret clearances
to be issued, and more heavily checked. This is not by any means a no-win
situation.
Regards,
David Rogers
DRogers@MIT-MC
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Date: Sun, 8 Dec 85 23:14:06 EST
From: Michael_Joseph_Edelman%Wayne-MTS%UMich-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
> From: Charlie Crummer <dual!scgvaxd!aero!crummer@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: Motherhood about Bargaining
>
> I have been having a hard time with one of the two commandments of bargaining.
> As I understand them they are:
>
> 1) Don't give something away if you can bargain with it. (no problem with this)
>
> 2) Don't let the other guy know at the outset of the bargaining session what
> your "bargaining chips" are.
>
Actually, I said that one doesn't reveal one's *strategy*. But carrying
the poker metaphor forward, you don't tell the other players how much
cash you're carrying with you, either.
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Date: Mon, 9 Dec 85 13:01:13 pst
From: Gary Chapman <PARC-CSLI!chapman@glacier>
Subject: Baruch Plan
This is in response to the long message by Mr. Stephen Walton. I actually agree
with nearly everything that Mr. Walton had to say about the Soviet Union's
totalitarian nature. However, I think there needs to be some clarification
about the history of the Baruch Plan.
The Truman administration produced two plans for the use of nuclear power in the
post-war world, the Acheson-Lilienthal Report and the Baruch Plan, prepared
chronologically in that order. The difference that developed between the advo-
cates of each plan was on whether there would be the retention of the Soviet
veto. The Acheson-Lilenthal committee (on which Baruch did not serve) believed
that the Soviet Union would never agree to any plan in which its veto was
removed, because (as Herb Lin pointed out) the majority of other Security Co
Council members were American allies. The Baruch Plan explicitly ruled out any
vetoes, and it included on-site inspections for verifications, another policy
that was held to be intentionally provocative to the Soviet Union. At the time,
in the American press, the Baruch Plan came to be associated with a conservative
faction who wanted to "open up" the Soviet Union to democratic influence.
The supporters of the Baruch Plan considered the supporters of the Acheson-
Lilienthal Report to be too comfortable with the presence of the Soviet Union
within the United Nations, and they were usually labelled "One Worlders." (The
most influential supporter of the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, and critic of
the Baruch Plan was columnist Walter Lippman, arguably at that time one of the
most powerful men in America--and ironically enough, given the context of
Mr. Walton's comments, founder of the New Republic.)
Daniel Yergin in his book Shattered Peace masterfully discusses the split within
the Truman administration over how to deal with the Soviet Union. Just as in
the Reagan administration, there were "hard-liners" and then there were people
who were willing to work pragmatically with the Soviet leaders. It was a
particularly confusing time, since the Soviet Union had so recently been our
ally, and many of the people in the State Department had worked closely with
the Soviet government to defeat the Nazis. Undersecretary of State Acheson
and David Lilienthal were considered pragmatists who felt that a deal could be
cut with the Soviet Union only if we recognized how far they were willing to
go. (Lilienthal was later nominated as head of the Atomic Energy Commission
and underwent a severe Red-baiting lashing from Senator Robert Taft during the
confirmation hearings. The charge was that Lilienthal was "soft on communism"
because of the debate within the Truman administration over the two plans, in
which Lilienthal had been highly critical of the Baruch Plan.)
None of this was lost on the Soviets. They became as convinced as the opponents
in the United States that the Baruch Plan was the vehicle for dominating the
Soviet government. And remember, this was in 1946, when the Soviets had grave
misgivings about the role of the U.N. in general. They were not about to be
railroaded into an agreement that would demonstrate the power of the Western
alliance in the U.N.
There were also some substantive objections to the Baruch Plan on the part of
the Soviets. The Baruch Plan's proposed Atomic Development Authority would
control nuclear proliferation at the level of fissionable material, so it
implicitly involved the development of nuclear power as well as nuclear weap-
ons. The Soviets would not think of letting a Western-dominated agency direct
their access to the benefits of nuclear power, so this point was also unlikely
to produce any agreement.
So Truman was persuaded by Baruch and others to adopt the Baruch Plan, and
Baruch, as the American representative to the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission,
outlined its details in a speech to the General Assembly in June, 1946. The
Soviets responded, not with an outright rejection, but with a counter-offer.
The counter-offer's main points were destruction of all nuclear weapons,
cessation of the production of nuclear weapons, agreement by all powers to
ban their use, and then negotiation on controls and verification. Baruch
responded to this counter-offer by saying that it was his plan or nothing.
The Soviets demurred, hoping for some pressure within the Truman administration
and the American public to force the United States to bargain. But Truman
decided to hang tough, and in the fall session of Congress the Atomic Energy
Act of 1946 was passed, which included the first of many legislative mandates
on the relationship between nuclear technology and "national security." The
door was slammed shut.
My point in reviewing this story is that it is all too common for the Soviet
rejection of the Baruch Plan to be used as an example of a historic opportunity
to limit nuclear weapons being sabotaged by the Soviet leadership. The story
is much more complicated than that, as I've tried to show.
--Gary Chapman
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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