Margarita V. Alario
University of Wisconsin, USA
Title: Atoms for Peace, Atoms for War in a Post Inter-mediate Range Missile Treaty
Biography
Biography: Margarita V. Alario
Abstract
The “Atoms for Peace” program launched by president D. Eisenhower in his speech at the UN General Assembly of December 8, 1953, marked a turning point in the uses of nuclear technology. It promised to establish civilian uses of nuclear technology, no doubt one of the central scientific and technological achievements of modernity. The “Atoms for Peace” became the economic and foreign policy benchmark of the Eisenhower Administration, intended on promoting civic and industrial uses of nuclear technology. The results are a bit more complex than that. The recent announcement of USA and Russia to withdraw from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty only exacerbate the complexity. Using the mid-range, structurally informed social theories of risk, this research explores the “Atoms for Peace” program and the broader legacy of ongoing technological and environmental risks. I purport to do so in three steps: 1) I examine the peaceful uses of nuclear technology, and its promises. 2) I examine the legacy of the “Atoms for Peace” program, which paradoxically, may have been the turning point in the history of nuclear proliferation. 3) I explore the implications of the “Atoms for Peace” program with an eye on geopolitical events, as they are currently unraveling.