No Monopoly on Mass Destruction

The Russians weren’t supposed to have atomic weapons. Not yet. Not in 1949.

But there was no denying (President Harry S. Truman did try) that the seismic data the American military collected looked identical to the kind of seismic activity caused by an underground nuclear test. (READ MORE: The World, Israel, and Our Diplomacy of Dunces)

The whole situation left Truman and his advisers in a tough spot. The American people had to know, and if the government didn’t say something, the information would inevitably leak and cause widespread panic. Of course, there was always the possibility that even coming from the government, the information would be met with some panic. The world, after all, was just coming to terms with the fact that it was capable of self-destruction.

So Truman downplayed it. “[T]he eventual development of this new force by other nations was to be expected,” he asserted. After all, the scientific theories and processes needed to create an atomic weapon were “widely known,” and no one wanted to live in a world where atomic power was monopolized by a single superpower.

Truman was right. It was inevitable that Russia would develop its own atomic weapons in time. Russian physicists had been trying to replicate nuclear fission experiments back in 1939, long before any kind of atomic weapon existed. If Germany hadn’t invaded in 1941, it’s possible that Soviet scientists would have figured it out before the Manhattan Project did. As it was, Russia had limited resources for research and development during the war and allocated just 20 physicists to the project. (READ MORE: Staggering Debt and Foreign Threats)

In 1945, the Manhattan Project tested its first successful nuclear weapon. The Soviets knew about it — even before Truman spilled the beans at the Potsdam Conference to Josef Stalin, who pretended like he didn’t care.

But Stalin did care. Back in Moscow, he had already started pouring money, scientists, and resources into the project.

Potsdam ended on Aug. 2, 1945. Just four days later, the U.S. dropped its first atomic weapon on Japan. If Stalin had had any misgivings about the calls he had just made to his top scientists, he didn’t anymore.

Back in the United States, American politicians knew that Russia would develop nuclear weapons. It was the obvious next step. The only question was when, and the predictions were all over the map. Gen. Leslie Groves, banking on exclusive U.S. and UK contracts with global uranium suppliers, gave the Russians a generous 20 years to figure it out. Manhattan Project scientists, on the other hand, were sure it wouldn’t take nearly that long. (READ MORE: Supporting the Hamas Fantasy of Israel’s Destruction)

All that to say, Truman hardly expected seismic recordings on Sept. 3, 1949, to reveal what they did: that the U.S. no longer had a monopoly on mass destruction. From that point on, the Cold War didn’t just threaten delicately achieved global peace; now a war would look like mass atomic destruction on all sides.

And nobody was willing to pull the trigger on that.

This article originally appeared on Aubrey’s Substack, Pilgrim’s Way on Sept. 23, 2024.

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