February 2, 2019
America's Other Big Plan for Nuclear Weapons (And It Has Nothing to Do with War or Russia)
Washington had all sorts of plans to use nuclear weapons for lots of things. But they never happened—for very obvious reasons.
by Steve Weintz
The year 1953 was a busy one. A world still emerging from the destruction of World War II experienced success—Jonas Salk’s pill vaccine, Edmund Hillary and Tenzeng Norgay, summiting of Mount Everest. But it also experienced stalemate such as the armistice in Korea and the Soviet H-bomb. On December 9, 1953, at the end of his first year in office, Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech to the United Nations that defined his presidency. The speech became known as the “ Atoms For Peace †speech.
The future of humanity, the president noted, depended upon checking the nuclear arms race. Peaceful uses of nuclear energy could transform human life. The United States, already leading in weapons research, would share with the world its work on nuclear power and would back an international authority to supervise civilian nuclear research. Thus, two key elements of the current nuclear environment—civilian nuclear power stations and the International Atomic Energy Agency—were announced at once.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/americas-other-big-plan-nuclear-weapons-and-it-has-nothing-do-war-or-russia-43037
