Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1945-1963 (review)

American nuclear testing in the South Pacific attracted widespread condemnation during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's first term. Hundreds of Marshall Islanders were forcibly removed from test sites, and in 1954 radioactivity from a test showered a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, sickening many of its crew and enraging a nation that had good cause to be sensitive to atomic matters. Reacting to this criticism, Eisenhower often expressed an interest in securing some kind of test-ban agreement with the U.S.S.R. during White House debates in his first term, but, as Benjamin Greene shows, he was dissuaded from pursuing such a goal by right-wing advisers, especially Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and conservative scientists like Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence. Forced to rely upon these advisers for technical advice, particularly on the key question of whether Soviet adherence to a test-ban could be adequately verified, Eisenhower acceded to their demand that testing continue.

Following his reelection in 1956, the President, together with his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, became somewhat more determined to reach a deal with the Soviets. Why? Dulles in particular was worried that the negative publicity associated with atmospheric testing was damaging America's reputation, especially among nonaligned states. Eisenhower was becoming more concerned about an arms race and the spectre of a nuclear World War Three. Perhaps most important, government scientists reported that Strontium-90, a dangerous by-product of nuclear testing, was already appearing in American wheat. Eisenhower began to turn to less hawkish scientific advisers, such as I. I. Rabi and George Kistiakowsky, for advice. No one could assure the president that an inspection regime could detect all Soviet underground testing, however. The U.S.S.R. announced a unilateral moratorium on atmospheric testing in 1958, and the U.S. soon followed; this led to the partial test-ban treaty concluded by the Kennedy administration.

Greene demonstrates thoroughly, in so doing superseding previous scholarship, that Eisenhower personally wanted a test ban. He persuasively shows that a primary reason why the administration was so slow to secure a deal with the Soviet Union was the obstinance of Eisenhower's aides, above all Strauss, who made it their business to suppress technical studies showing how a comprehensive ban might work, highlight the U.S.S.R.'s bad intentions, and equate unlimited testing with the nation's basic security.

However, this may let Eisenhower off the hook a bit too easily. Had he really wanted to pursue a test ban, to make it a dominant priority, he could have done so, especially after his reelection. On the related matter of nuclear strategy, for example, Eisenhower suppressed internal opposition and pursued the policy he wanted. He could have done the same on testing and cooperated with Dulles to strike a deal with the U.S.S.R.

Why Eisenhower chose not to quash Strauss and other opponents of the test ban remains a matter of speculation, but Greene himself hints at a likely explanation in his conclusion. "Eisenhower exercised firm leadership in times of international crises," Greene writes, "but often sought a consensus among his closest advisers on less pressing matters" (pp. 257–58). Eisenhower would have liked to ban nuclear testing, but it was less important to him than resolving international crises. Indeed, it is possible that he declined to make a test ban a national priority so that he could not be accused of "weakness" when it became necessary to compromise during those crises.