Part I: Setting the Stage

The cautious American foreign policy regarding their Soviet allies during the development of the atomic bomb preemptively set the two nations on a competitive path, which prevented the United States government from gauging Soviet opinions on international control of nuclear materials and developing postwar atomic energy policy. Before the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, policymakers and officials in the United States generally consented that the bomb would be incredibly useful postwar diplomatically. However, opinions varied much more on how the bomb, and more generally, nuclear technology, was to be used. During the development of the bomb, many scientists recommended Roosevelt create an international system of control for all fissile material postwar. Niels Bohr, one of the scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, was convinced that a postwar atomic arms race with the Soviets was inevitable unless Britain and the United States established international control for materials that could be used commercially and militarily. However, both the American president and Prime Minister Winston Churchill preferred Anglo-American dominion over nuclear materials. Indeed, the competitive structure of the Cold War had been constructed well before the end of World War II. In 1944, in one of a series of actions that Churchill and Roosevelt had taken as the more ideologically aligned countries within the Allied nations, the two leaders signed the Agreement and Declaration of Trust, specifying that the countries would cooperate postwar in seeking control of available uranium ore.

Although Roosevelt had always hoped for peace with the Soviets postwar, it is critical to reject the assumption that he was willing to be on equal ground with the Soviet Union. Historians have theorized numerous reasons for Roosevelt’s rejection of international control beyond a preemptive containment of the Soviet Union: he feared German espionage on the bomb, he thought that the United States would only provoke the Soviets more by sharing information on atomic projects but not details, and he was afraid that domestically, congress would never approve of his plans. While all reasonable concerns, historian Martin J. Sherwin argues that these were all secondary issues. Roosevelt was indeed concerned with secrecy, yet most atomic secrets had already been leaked to the Soviets, maintaining the policy of secrecy around nuclear projects would only provoke the Soviets more, and Roosevelt’s atomic energy policies could not only be explained by domestic concerns since he took great risks during World War II despite congressional pushback. Roosevelt saw two postwar options: he could either exclude the Soviets on atomic secrets and strengthen America’s postwar diplomatic position, or he could use the atomic bomb project to boost cooperation and push the Soviet Union to form an international control group of atomic materials. Roosevelt, wanting to maintain a monopoly over nuclear technologies, never truly acted in favor of the international option. Even the considerations over sharing atomic secrets were rooted in preemptive attempts to boost America's postwar standings relative to the Soviet Union’s. For example, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson advised President Roosevelt in December 1944 not to release atomic information to the Soviet Union without a “real quid pro quo,” such as the liberalization of domestic Soviet rule. In June 1945, he continued that the quid pro quo should include a negotiated settlement over the fate of Eastern Europe. However, by the time of the first atomic bomb test in July 1945, Stimson had abandoned the idea of negotiating with the Soviet Union and instead argued that the United States should force Soviet liberalization as a precondition for cooperation on the atomic bomb, thus setting the stage for a bipolar Cold War system through a guarded stance on energy policy.

While Truman may have differed from his predecessor in terms of personality and charisma, the two men approached the atomic problem similarly. While Truman also preferred American monopoly to international control, he had also considered cooperation with the Soviets, writing in 1945 that “further quid pro quos should be established in consideration for our taking of them [the Soviet Union] into [atomic-energy] partnership.” However, due to previous secrecy, as well as Truman’s cancellation of lend-lease to the Soviet Union, Soviet attitudes had begun to harden towards the United States before the end of World War II in the Pacific. As a general trend, United States officials who engaged in diplomacy with the Soviets after the bomb had been successfully tested were more confident in their demands and negotiations. Problematically, the wartime relationship between atomic energy and diplomacy was based on an assumption that the Soviet Union would surrender key geographical, political, and ideological objectives to neutralize the threat of the bomb. However, American objectives suffered due to policies based on this assumption. Both Roosevelt and Truman missed a chance during the war to gauge how the Soviet Union felt about international control of atomic energy, thus contributing to the lack of energy policy development postwar.