ABSTRACT
From 1945 to 1954, norms of good global governance of nuclear activities evolved under the influence of transnational networks in the larger context of international relations: the drawing of the Iron Curtain in Europe, the explosion of the Soviet A-bomb, the Korean war, and so on. Even though disagreements between the capitalist and communist blocs extended far beyond the single problem of nuclear proliferation, that topic soon became the topic of prime importance for national security (Bernstein 1974). In 1945 and 1946, the ability of the two blocs to agree on a common solution to the international control of nuclear activities even became a test-case of the desirability to maintain the wartime alliance that had vanquished the Axis (Isaacson and Thomas 1986). The proliferation of discourse on science, security, and sovereignty in the nuclear age was thus filled with hopes of establishing a truly cosmopolitan nuclear scientific community-and with doubts about its sustainability.
