The Wretched Atom: America's Global Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology

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Jacob Darwin Hamblin (Professor of History, Professor of History, Oregon State University)

The Wretched Atom

America's Global Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology

Jacob Darwin Hamblin (Professor of History, Professor of History, Oregon State University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
25 November 2021

History; History of the Americas; Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000; The Cold War; History of science; Nuclear issues

"A groundbreaking narrative of how the United States offered the promise of nuclear technology to the developing world and its gamble that other nations would use it for peaceful purposes.

After the Second World War, the United States offered a new kind of atom that differed from the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This atom would cure diseases, produce new foods, make deserts bloom, and provide abundant energy for all. It was an atom destined for the formerly colonized, recently occupied, and mostly non-white parts of the world that were dubbed the ""wretched of the earth"" by Frantz Fanon. The ""peaceful atom"" had so much propaganda potential that President Dwight Eisenhower used it to distract the world from his plan to test even bigger thermonuclear weapons. His scientists said the peaceful atom would quicken the pulse of nature, speeding nations along the path of economic development and helping them to escape the clutches of disease, famine, and energy shortfalls. That promise became one of the most misunderstood political weapons of the twentieth century. It was adopted by every subsequent US president to exert leverage over other nations' weapons programs, to corner world markets of uranium and thorium, and to secure petroleum supplies. Other countries embraced it, building reactors and training experts. Atomic promises were embedded in Japan's postwar recovery, Ghana's pan-Africanism, Israel's quest for survival, Pakistan's brinksmanship with India, and Iran's pursuit of nuclear independence.

As The Wretched Atom shows, promoting civilian atomic energy was an immense gamble, and it was never truly peaceful. American promises ended up exporting violence and peace in equal measure. While the United States promised peace and plenty, it planted the seeds of dependency and set in motion the creation of today's expanded nuclear club."

By: Jacob Darwin Hamblin (Professor of History Professor of History Oregon State University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 157mm, Width: 239mm, Spine: 31mm
Weight: 612g
ISBN: 9780197526903
ISBN 10: 019752690X
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 25 November 2021
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

"""Peaceful nuclear technology...was presented to the world as atonement for the nuclear sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Clean and cheap nuclear power would make deserts bloom and eradicate poverty. These goals were never realized, and, Hamblin argues, they were never meant to be...Hamblin...portrays countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America as abiding by US rules in hopes of receiving potentially liberating technology only to have these hopes dashed by imperialist attitudes and interests...Hamblin's ability to endow this overlooked topic with coherence and meaning is nothing short of brilliant."" -- Paul Rubinson, American Historical Review"

Jacob Darwin Hamblin is Professor of History at Oregon State University. His books include Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age; Oceanographers and the Cold War; and Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism (OUP, 2013), which won the Paul Birdsall Prize of the American Historical Association and the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize of the History of Science Society.

Reviews for The Wretched Atom: America's Global Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology

The Wretched Atom is institutional history that reads like an adventure story. Rather than focusing on the notable failures of Atoms for Peace, Jake Hamblin asks how it was deployed. He finds that the implementation of peaceful energy has rarely been peaceful. Embedding this history in the context of the nuclear arms race, colonialism and decolonization, and geo-political struggles to take control over natural resources such as uranium and oil, Hamblin's study offers a rewarding re-examination of the long game behind the promotion of aspirational nuclear technology. * Kate Brown, author of Manual for Survival * Jacob Darwin Hamblin's The Wretched Atom provocatively tells the story of global Realpolitik and unintended consequences in the pursuit and promotion of peaceful uses of nuclear technology, adding a fresh perspective to thinking about the role of science in the modern Game of Nations. * Timothy Naftali, co-author of Khrushchev's Cold War * Arising from the ashes of World War II, the peaceful atom has been evergreen: bountiful energy, water, crops, and medicines to lift the world to an environmentally sustainable future. Hamblin's The Wretched Atom deftly shows how those perpetual promises were sustained by exploitative geopolitics and oftentimes outright cynicism. A sobering and engaging counternarrative of the dream of a utopian nuclear future. * Michael D. Gordin, Princeton University *