ABSTRACT
In the early postwar years, the principal manifestation of US concern about limiting the global spread of nuclear weapons was the Acheson-Lilienthal Plan of 1946, which became the basis of the Baruch Plan presented to the United Nations in the same year. The nuclear proliferation problem thus began to take on a new dimension, which was immediately seized upon by US politicians and intellectuals recently freed from preoccupation with the protracted and embarrassing experiences of Vietnam and Watergate. Two simultaneous developments defined this new dimension: nuclear power had developed to the point where it was expected to serve the growing energy needs of the world, and this was seen as requiring not only reactors but development of the entire fuel cycle; and nonaligned Third World countries had acquired the political clout to challenge the world order dictated by the nuclear superpowers.
