Long Nuclear Shadow Could Revive Calls for Abolition
The 70-year-old Baruch Plan to eliminate nuclear weapons could prevent another arms race
Led by Russia and the United States, the world reduced the nuclear stockpile from 60,000 weapons to about 16,000 held by nine nations. The total still poses a grave global threat. Any nuclear attack or accident would kill many, devastating an entire region, which in turn would revive demands for abolition, explains Bennett Ramberg, author and a former policy analyst in the U.S. Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs during the George H.W. administration. No country has used the bomb since World War II, he explains, and “A presumption emerged that a nuclear-use taboo overwhelms any inclination toward nuclear use.” The potential for nuclear catastrophe runs high in an era of terrorism and chaos emerging out of failed states, but prevention is possible, too. Global agreement is required, notes Ramberg, and he points to the 1946 Baruch Plan as a foundation. The plan calls for an international authority to manage atomic energy and an end to manufacturing nuclear weapons.
A man looks over the expanse of ruins left by the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. Some 140,000 people died here immediately. AP Photo
LOS ANGELES—Seventy years ago this month the United States placed on the global agenda a proposal that would have eliminated nuclear weapons for all time. Drawing on the U.S. State Department’s Acheson-Lilienthal scientific advisory study, the Truman administration turned to the long-time confidant of presidents, Bernard Baruch, to craft a proposal for global action.
U.S. financier Bernard M. Baruch, of Camden, S.C., in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 1943. Baruch was chairman of War Industries Board in 1918 and was asked to draw up a plan for nuclear disarmament. AP Photo/William J. Smith
