American Prometheus (75 page)
Upon receiving this warning, Kennan sat down and tried his hand at drafting a possible presidential statement announcing a decision not to build the H-bomb “at this time.” In eloquent language that substantially reflected the GAC’s analysis of the issue, Kennan outlined three succinct reasons not to proceed with a weapon of “almost unlimited destructive power.” First, “this weapon could not conceivably have a purely military employment.” Second, “there is no such thing as absolute security . . . ,” and the country’s current atomic arsenal was more than sufficiently powerful to deter any kind of attack. And third, “for us to embark on such a path would certainly not deter others from doing likewise. . . .” To the contrary, to build the Super would almost certainly inspire others to do the same.
The speech was never given, but over the next six weeks Kennan fleshed out these ideas into an eighty-page formal report reexamining the entire problem of nuclear weapons. He showed an early draft of the paper to Oppenheimer, who thought it “thoroughly admirable.” This prescient paper, though less well known than his famous 1947
Foreign A fairs
essay which proposed a policy of containment, is a seminal document of the early Cold War. Kennan himself later called it “one of the most important, if not the most important, of all the documents I ever wrote in government.” Knowing how controversial it would be, Kennan sent it to Acheson on January 20, 1950, as a “personal paper.”
The document—“Memorandum: The International Control of Atomic Energy”—challenged fundamental assumptions underlying the Truman Administration’s view of both the bomb and the Soviet Union. Adopting Oppenheimer’s perspective, Kennan argued that the atomic bomb was dangerous precisely because it was mistakenly seen as a cheap panacea for the Soviet threat. Echoing Oppie, he wrote that the “military people” had seized upon the Super as the answer to the Russian acquisition of the bomb: “I fear that the atomic bomb, with its vague and highly dangerous promise of ‘decisive’ results . . . of easy solutions to profound human problems, will impede understanding of the things that are important to a clean, clear policy and will carry us toward the misuse and dissipation of our national strength.”
Kennan pleaded with Acheson not to support building an even more terrifying weapon of mass destruction—the Super—without first trying to negotiate a comprehensive arms control regime with the Soviets, as Oppenheimer had suggested earlier. Failing that, Kennan argued that the United States should not make the atomic weapon the centerpiece of its national defense. Instead, American officials should make it clear to the Soviets that they regarded atomic weapons “as something superfluous to our basic military posture—as something which we are compelled to hold against the possibility that they might be used by our opponents.” A small number of such weapons, he wrote, would be sufficient to deter the Soviet Union from using the bomb against the West.
To this point, Kennan’s memo followed the logic of the GAC’s October 30, 1949, recommendations. But Kennan picked up another idea that Oppenheimer had considered recently. Instead of relying on a massive arsenal of atomic bombs, Washington should substantially augment its conventional arms, particularly in Western Europe. The Soviets, he said, must understand that the West was willing to field sufficient troops and conventional armaments in Western Europe to deter any possible invasion. Such a conventional deterrent would then permit Washington to pledge itself to a policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons. America, he argued, should “move as rapidly as possible toward the removal of [atomic weapons] from national armaments without insisting on a deep-seated change in the Soviet system.”
Kennan regarded Stalin’s regime as a reprehensible tyranny—but he did not think Stalin reckless. The Soviet dictator surely was determined to defend his internal empire, but that did not mean that he intended to wage a war of aggression against the Western allies, a war that would have inevitably threatened the stability of his own regime. Stalin understood that a war with the West might well spell the ruin of the Soviet Union. “I was firmly convinced,” Kennan said later, “that they had had absolutely their belly full of war. Stalin never wanted another major war.”
In short, Kennan believed that it had been compelling strategic considerations, rather than the American atomic monopoly, which had deterred a Soviet invasion of Western Europe in the years 1945–49. Now that the Soviets had their own atomic bomb, Kennan argued that it made no sense for the United States to get into a spiraling nuclear arms race. Like Oppenheimer, he believed that the bomb was ultimately a suicidal weapon and therefore both militarily useless and dangerous. Besides, Kennan was confident that the Soviet Union was politically and economically the weaker of the two adversaries, and that in the long run America could wear down the Soviet system by means of diplomacy and the “judicious exploitation of our strength as a deterrent to world conflict. . . .”
Kennan’s eighty-page “personal document” might well have been coauthored with Oppenheimer, reflecting as it did so many of Robert’s views. Indeed, both he and Kennan took its reception as a plunging barometer, indicating the approach of violent political storms. Circulated within the State Department, Kennan’s memo was quietly and firmly rejected by
all
who read it. Acheson called Kennan into his office one day and said, “George, if you persist in your view on this matter, you should resign from the Foreign Service, assume a monk’s habit, carry a tin cup and stand on the street corner and say, ‘The end of the world is nigh.’ ”
Acheson didn’t even bother to show the document to President Truman. By then, Oppenheimer was fully aware of which way the winds were blowing. Edward Teller was winning. But if so, Oppie still hoped that the technical obstacles to designing a thermonuclear device would prove to be insurmountable. “Let Teller and [John] Wheeler go ahead,” he was reported to have said. “Let them fall on their faces.” On January 29, 1950, he ran into Teller at a conference of the American Physical Society in New York and admitted that he thought Truman was going to reject his recommendation against the Super. If so, Teller asked, would he return to Los Alamos to work on the Super? “Certainly not,” Oppie snapped.
A day later, in Washington for a meeting of the GAC, he decided to drop in on a special meeting of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, called by Senator Brien McMahon to discuss the Super. Oppenheimer knew McMahon was vigorously lobbying the president to approve a crash Super program, and he knew his views would be unwelcome. But he turned up anyway, telling McMahon and the other legislators, “I thought it would be cowardly for me not to come up here and let you disagree and raise questions where you thought we had missed the point.” His demeanor was one of polite resignation. Asked what would happen if the Russians got the Super and the United States did not have it, he replied, “If the Russians have the weapon and we don’t, we will be badly off. And if the Russians have the weapon and we do, we will still be badly off.” The whole point, he explained, was that by “going down this path ourselves, we are doing the one thing that will accelerate and insure their [Super bomb] development.” When a congressman asked him if a war fought with hydrogen bombs would make the earth unfit for human habitation, Oppie interjected, “Pestiferous, you mean?” Actually, he said, he was more worried about mankind’s “moral survival.” He explained his position with an air of utter reasonableness, and though no one present questioned his logic, he left knowing that he had not changed anyone’s mind.
The next day, January 31, 1950, Lilienthal, Acheson and Defense Secretary Louis Johnson walked across the street from the old State Department building to the White House for a meeting with the president on the Super. Lilienthal was still ardently opposed to a crash program. Acheson privately agreed with many of Lilienthal’s objections, but believed that domestic political factors would compel Truman to go forward with a crash program: “The American people simply would not tolerate a policy of delaying nuclear research in so vital a matter. . . .” Johnson agreed, telling Lilienthal, “We must protect the president.” It had come to that. The real issues related to national security had been rendered irrelevant by the simplifications imposed by domestic politics.
They agreed, nonetheless, that Lilienthal would be allowed to make his case. Once they were in the Oval Office, however, Lilienthal had hardly begun his presentation when Truman cut him off to ask, “Can the Russians do it?” When everyone nodded, Truman said, “In that case, we have no choice. We’ll go ahead.” Lilienthal noted in his diary that Truman had “clearly set on what he was going to do before we set foot inside the door.” Some months earlier, Lilienthal had warned Truman that demagogues in Congress would attempt to force his hand on the Super. “I don’t blitz easily,” Truman had said. Walking out of the White House, Lilienthal looked at his watch. The president who couldn’t be blitzed had given him exactly seven minutes. It was, Lilienthal noted, like saying “ ‘No’ to a steamroller.”
That evening, in a radio address that had no doubt been in preparation for some time, President Truman announced a program to determine the “technical feasibility of a thermonuclear weapon.” At the same time, he ordered a general reexamination of the country’s strategic plans. This led to a top-secret policy paper, NSC-68, largely produced by Kennan’s successor as director of policy planning in the State Department, Paul Nitze. Nitze, an advocate of a large nuclear arsenal, depicted the Soviet Union as bent on world conquest. He called for “a rapid and sustained build-up of the political, economic and military strength of the free world.” Circulated in April 1950, NSC-68 specifically rejected Kennan’s proposal to proclaim a policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons. To the contrary, a large arsenal of nuclear weapons was to become the foundation of U.S. defense strategy. And to that end, Truman authorized an industrial program to greatly expand the nation’s capacity to build nuclear warheads of all configurations.
By the end of the decade, America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons would leap from some 300 warheads to nearly 18,000 nuclear weapons. Over the next five decades, the United States would produce more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and spend a staggering $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons programs. In retrospect—and even at the time—it was clear that the H-bomb decision was a turning point in the Cold War’s spiraling arms race. Like Oppenheimer, Kennan was thoroughly “disgusted.” I. I. Rabi was outraged. “I never forgave Truman,” he said.
After his abbreviated meeting with Truman, David Lilienthal told Oppenheimer that the president had also demanded that all the scientists involved refrain from discussing the decision publicly: “It was like a funeral party—especially when I said we were all gagged.” Sorely disheartened, Oppenheimer considered resigning his position on the GAC. Acheson, fearful that Oppenheimer and Conant would take their appeal to the American public, made a point of telling Harvard’s president, “For heck’s sake, don’t upset the applecart.”
Conant told Oppenheimer of Acheson’s warning that a public debate would be “contrary to the national interest.” So once again, Oppie played the role of loyal supporter. As he later testified, it did not seem responsible to resign at that time and “promote a debate on a matter which was settled.” Conant wrote a friend that he and Oppenheimer “didn’t [resign] (or at least I didn’t) because I did not want to do anything that seemed to indicate we were not good soldiers. . . .” In retrospect, he regretted this decision—he thought they should both have immediately resigned.
How different and better Oppenheimer’s life would have been had he taken that step. But he didn’t, and like Conant, Oppenheimer again fell into line. Nevertheless, he could not disguise his disdain for those who had pushed through the decision. The very evening of Truman’s announcement, Oppenheimer felt obligated to attend a party at the Shoreham Hotel, celebrating Strauss’s fifty-fourth birthday. Finding Oppenheimer alone in a corner, a reporter walked up to him and said, “You don’t look jubilant.” Oppenheimer muttered in response, “This is the plague of Thebes.” When Strauss tried to introduce his son and daughter-in-law to the famous physicist, Oppenheimer brusquely offered them a hand over his shoulder—and then turned away without a word. Understandably, Strauss was incensed.
THE HYDROGEN BOMB decision had been made in camera, without public debate and, Oppenheimer believed, without an honest evaluation of its consequences. Secrecy had become the handmaiden of ignorant policies, and so Oppenheimer decided to speak out against secrecy. On February 12, 1950, Strauss was angered to see Oppenheimer appear on the first telecast of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Sunday morning talk show and openly challenge the manner in which the hydrogen bomb decision had been made. “These are complex technical things,” Oppenheimer told the television audience, “but they touch the very basis of our morality. It is a grave danger for us that these decisions are taken on the basis of facts held secret.” To Strauss, such comments signaled open defiance of the president—and he made sure the White House saw a transcript of Oppenheimer’s words.
Later that summer, in the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
Oppenheimer repeated “that these decisions have been taken on the basis of facts held secret.” This, he thought, was neither necessary nor wise: “The relevant facts could be of little help to an enemy; yet they are indispensable for an understanding of questions of policy.” No one in the administration agreed; the trend was toward more secrecy.
FOR NEARLY five years, Oppenheimer had tried to use his prestige and status as a celebrity scientist to influence Washington’s growing national security establishment from the inside. His old friends on the left, men like Phil Morrison, Bob Serber and even his own brother had warned him that this was a futile gamble. He had failed in 1946, when the Acheson-Lilienthal plan for international control over atomic bombs was sabotaged by President Truman’s appointment of Bernard Baruch. And now, once again, he had failed to persuade the president and members of his Administration to turn their back on what Conant had described to Acheson as “the whole rotten business.” The Administration now supported a program to build a bomb 1,000 times as lethal as the Hiroshima weapon. Still, Oppenheimer would not “upset the applecart.” He would remain an insider— albeit one who was increasingly outspoken and increasingly suspect.
