ABSTRACT
The urgent problem posed by the cessation of Allied–Axis hostilities centered on destruction. It encompassed psychic no less than physical dimension, a result of that hallucinogenic fury rained—in engineering-mathematical deliberation—upon Europe and Asia. The totality of violence, folly, and cruelty surpassed calculation, reconfirming humanity's moral shortcomings, cumulatively a condition to manage but not a puzzle to resolve. The Soviets charged the Americans with coy subterfuge to propagate their atomic hegemony and impose capitalist enslavement over all peoples. After Cuba, the Soviets and Americans took affirmative, albeit tentative, steps: emplacing safeguards to prevent war by accident or miscalculation, monitoring the environmental-health hazards associated with thermonuclear tests, checking the spread of doomsday weapons, capping the size of arsenals. Clear-eyed about Stalin, and mindful of problems that had thwarted arms control since time immemorial, backers of atomic control nevertheless dared to hope. The report distinguished between safe operations and "intrinsically dangerous" ones.
