Relevance for the Present

The eminent American historian Carroll Quigley, Foreign Services School, Georgetown University, Harvard and Princeton, describes the post-war situation leading to the Cold War, stating that the immediate policy of the USA rested on free trade and aid via the Marshall Plan which would have included assistance for economic recovery to the Soviet bloc. However the USSR saw this as a means for the USA to establish its pre-eminence in the post war era. Quigley, a liberal globalist who saw the “hope” of the world being through a world government, wrote:

On the whole, if blame must be allotted, it may be placed at the door of Stalin’s office in the Kremlin. American willingness to co-operate continued until 1947, as is evident from the fact that the Marshall Plan offer of American aid for a co-operative Europe recovery effort was opened to the Soviet Union, but it now seems clear that Stalin had decided to close the door on co-operation and adopted a unilateral policy of limited aggression about February or March of 1946. The beginning of the Cold War may be placed at the date of this inferred decision or may be placed at the later and more obvious date of the Soviet refusal to accept Marshall Aid in July 1947.[14]

Quigley refers to the American initiative for atomic energy “internationalization” and how this arguably very dangerous scenario for world domination was again scotched by Stalin:

The most critical example of the Soviet refusal to co-operate and of its insistence on relapsing into isolation, secrecy, and terrorism is to be found in its refusal to join in American efforts to harness the dangerous powers of nuclear fission.[15]

A State Department committee under Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal, in conjunction with a “second committee of citizens” led by the international banker and perennial presidential adviser Bernard Baruch were convened in 1946 to draft a plan for “some system of international control of nuclear energy.” The plan was presented by Baruch to the UN General Assembly on June 14 1946.[16]

It would own, control, or licence all uranium from the mine through processing and use, with operation of its own nuclear facilities throughout the world, inspection of all other such facilities, absolute prohibition of all nuclear bombs or diversion of nuclear materials to non-peaceful purposes, and punishment for evasion or violation of its regulations free from the Great Power veto which normally operated in the Security Council of the UN.[17]

This was therefore a method of trying to bypass the problem of veto that had been insisted upon by the USSR to ensure its sovereignty, which had from the start rendered the UN impotent as a world authority. Quigley laments that this extraordinarily “generous offer” by the USA, “…was brusquely rejected by Andrei Gromyko on behalf of the Soviet Union within five days…”[18] Quigley points out that one of the main points the USSR raised in rejecting the Baruch Plan[19] was that there must be no tampering with the Great Power veto.

Gromyko recalling his time as Soviet representative on the UN Atomic Energy Commission, states of the Baruch Plan:

The actual intention was to be camouflaged by the creation of an international body to monitor the use of nuclear energy. However, Washington did not even try to hide that it intended to take the leading part in this body, to keep in its own hands everything to do with the production and storage of fissionable material and, under the guise of the need for international inspection, to interfere in the internal affairs of the sovereign nations.[20]

Baruch told Gromyko that all industries dealing with fissionable material would be inspected by experts, Gromyko remarking, “Inevitably at that time they would all be Americans.” Quigley’s moral indignation at the USSR’s rejection notwithstanding, we are now in a position of hindsight, considering recent world events, to understand Soviet suspicions. The moral choice is not as clear-cut as Quigley supposes. Japan had been A-bombed whilst seeking peace terms, the basis of which was the sanctity of the Emperor. America’s position was unconditional, and of course it can be assumed that the Administration knew the Japanese could not accede to anything that would compromise Hirohito or the imperial house. Allen Dulles who became head of the CIA, related in an interview with Clifford Evans in 1963 that he had been in contact with Japanese factions that were in a position to sue for peace[21]; that the sole Japanese concern was that the Emperor as the unifying factor of the Japanese would be left alone. “Just weeks later… Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.”[22]

In an informative article, Bob Fisk comments on the bombing of Japan:

Stalin was finally impressed by the effect of Truman’s new weapon at Hiroshima. He very much wanted the bomb for Russia. When U.S. proposals to limit the bomb to America alone were uncompromising, Stalin’s scientists accelerated their work.[23]

It might be suspected, certainly from Soviet quarters, that the bombing of Japan was intended as a show of US might vis-à-vis the USSR. However, even Britain was concerned at US intentions, Prime Minister Clement Atlee explaining:

We had to hold up our position vis-à-vis the Americans. We couldn’t allow ourselves to be wholly in their hands… We had worked from the start for international control of the bomb… We could not agree that only America should have atomic energy…[24]

Were both the USSR and Britain then being selfish, as implied indignantly by Quigley? Baruch himself stated:

The gains of our scientists, our engineers, our industrialists, produced the supreme weapon of all time — the atomic bomb. That we shall never give away, until and unless security for us, for the world, is established. Until that time comes, the U.S. will remain the guardian of safety. We can be trusted….[25]

The rhetoric by Baruch about the USA being the “trusted guardian” of world peace and freedom is the same mantra the world has heard from Woodrow Wilson to Obama.

Pacifist guru Bertrand Russell wrote in 1946 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, expressing frankly the liberal internationalist attitude towards the USSR, which was anything but benign. Russell, who was to play a key role along with many other eminent liberals and leftists as Stalin-hating Cold Warriors in the CIA founded Congress for Cultural Freedom,[26] makes it plain that the atomic bomb represented the ace card to the forcible establishment of a world state:

The American and British governments… should make it clear that genuine international co-operation is what they most desire. But although peace should be their goal, they should not let it appear that they are for peace at any price. At a certain stage, when their plans for an international government are ripe, they should offer them to the world… If Russia acquiesced willingly, all would be well. If not, it would be necessary to bring pressure to bear, even to the extent of risking war.[27]