Memorandum: The International Control of Atomic Energy

Memorandum: The International Control of Atomic Energy was George F. Kennan’s eighty-page challenge to the idea that the Soviet atomic bomb could be answered by building an even more destructive American weapon. Written in the shadow of the dispute over the thermonuclear bomb, the paper argued that nuclear security could not be achieved by accumulating weapons: a crash program would encourage imitation, weaken diplomacy, and mistake a dangerous instrument for a solution to political problems. Its reasoning substantially reflected views Kennan had developed with J. Robert Oppenheimer, though the document was Kennan’s own.

Origins in the thermonuclear debate

The memorandum grew out of conversations between Kennan and Oppenheimer during the dispute over whether the United States should pursue the Super. The two had established a close friendship based on mutual respect and education. On November 16, 1949, Kennan traveled to Princeton, where they discussed the state of the atomic problem. Oppenheimer found the visit inspiring and Kennan’s views sympathetic and non-doctrinaire. Kennan was considering whether the president could announce a moratorium on building a thermonuclear bomb; Oppenheimer agreed that the proposal seemed reasonable, but warned that Washington’s prevailing assumptions about safeguards had become rigid and that opponents would call the proposal too dangerous.

Kennan then drafted a possible presidential statement announcing that the United States would not build the weapon at that time. The speech was never delivered. Its three arguments, however, became the basis for a larger intervention: the Super could have no purely military use, absolute security was unattainable and the existing atomic arsenal could deter attack, and an American decision to build would not stop others from following. Over the next six weeks, Kennan developed these ideas into the formal memorandum. He showed an early draft to Oppenheimer, who considered it thoroughly admirable.

Argument against the Super

The memorandum challenged the Truman Administration’s view of both the bomb and the Soviet Union. In Kennan’s analysis, the danger lay partly in treating the atomic bomb as a cheap panacea for the Soviet threat. Military leaders had seized on the Super as if it offered decisive results and an easy answer to profound human problems. Kennan warned that this promise could distract officials from the elements of a clear policy and lead them to dissipate national strength.

The paper urged Acheson not to support a new weapon of mass destruction without first trying to negotiate a comprehensive arms-control arrangement with the Soviets. If negotiations failed, the United States should still avoid making atomic weapons the centerpiece of its defense. Kennan proposed describing them instead as weapons the country was compelled to hold against the possibility of their use by an opponent. A small number, he argued, would be sufficient to deter the Soviet Union from using its own atomic bomb against the West.

This reasoning followed the October 1949 recommendations of the General Advisory Committee, whose majority had argued that the Super’s immense destructive power made it unsuitable for legitimate military targets and potentially genocidal. The committee also argued that refusing to build it might leave room to reopen arms-control talks. Kennan’s paper extended that logic: American restraint would not guarantee Soviet restraint, but building the weapon would not deter Soviet development either. Rather than compete for an unlimited arsenal, policy should be directed toward a credible level of deterrence and the political conditions that could reduce reliance on nuclear weapons.

Conventional defense and restraint

Kennan’s proposal did not rest on the expectation that nuclear weapons alone could protect Western Europe. He called for a substantial increase in conventional forces and armaments there, so that the West could deter a Soviet invasion without depending on an expanding atomic stockpile. A stronger conventional defense, in turn, would make a policy of no first use more credible. The United States should move toward removing atomic weapons from national armaments without demanding that the Soviet Union first transform its political system.

The proposal reflected Kennan’s assessment that Stalin’s government, however tyrannical, was not bent on a reckless war of aggression. A war with the West would threaten the Soviet regime itself. Kennan believed that strategic considerations, rather than the American atomic monopoly, had deterred a Soviet invasion of Western Europe in the years after the war. With the Soviet Union now possessing an atomic bomb, he saw no sound reason for the United States to enter a spiraling arms race. He shared Oppenheimer’s view that the bomb was ultimately suicidal: dangerous, and of limited military value as the foundation of national policy.

Reception and significance

Kennan sent the memorandum to Acheson on January 20, 1950, as a personal paper, aware of how controversial it would be. He later called it one of the most important documents he had written in government. Circulated within the State Department, it was quietly and firmly rejected by those who read it. Acheson summoned Kennan and warned that persistence in his position could leave him with no place in the Foreign Service, likening him to a monk carrying a cup and announcing that the end of the world was near. Acheson did not show the paper to President Truman.

The paper’s defeat made visible the narrowing space for the restraint it advocated. Oppenheimer and Kennan both understood its reception as a sign of approaching political storms, while the thermonuclear program’s advocates gained ground. Oppenheimer nevertheless continued to argue against the Super and, at a congressional meeting in Washington, defended the decision to appear before officials who disagreed with him. Kennan’s memorandum did not change policy, but it set out an alternative to the assumption that security required an ever-larger stockpile: negotiate control, strengthen conventional defense, and recognize that nuclear superiority could not abolish the danger of nuclear war.