Almost all technology is dual use to some degree: it has both civilian and military applications. This duality of technology presents a challenge not by its very existence but rather through the ways it alters information constraints on the design of arms control institutions.

Building the bomb was a feat of engineering and physics; controlling it would take politics and cooperation. This was clear to Harry S Truman when he tabled the first international nonproliferation proposal 60 years ago this November.

On November 15, 1945, President Truman joined with Prime Minister Clement Attlee of the United Kingdom and Prime Minister William Mackenzie King of Canada in a proposal for the future of atomic energy. The two-page statement called for careful planning by a new international atomic energy commission to be established by the United Nations. The statement itself also explicitly foreshadows the tension between energy needs and security imperatives that continues unresolved decades later. (Read More)

Decades later, the debate rages on. Should the atomic bomb have been dropped on innocent civilians? Did the devastation of Hiroshima and, sixty years ago today, of Nagasaki save American lives? Robert L. Gallucci, Dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, says no, he would not have used the bomb on cities. "Our targets should be military forces and leadership… President Truman should have looked for targets that were primarily military or genuine war industry… It is unlikely that Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be so described." On the other hand, Thomas Donnelly, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, sees the decision to drop the bomb as necessary for the sake of saving lives. "The use of atomic weapons did not bring a world without war, but it did bring an end to the most lethal conflict in human history … I hope I would have made the same decision to shorten the agony that was WWII in the Pacific."

In a fascinating article, the July issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists asks eight experts and historians to weigh in on the question: "Would you have dropped the bomb?" We provide highlights of two essays on each side – supporting the decision and arguing against it. (Read More)

Today’s nuclear threats come not only from these massive arsenals, but also from the newest and smallest contributors to "nuclear numbers." The emergence of new nuclear states could set off a "cascade of proliferation" and increase the likelihood of terrorists obtaining nuclear capability.

The Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, "Sixty Years Later," will be held on November 7- 8, 2005. Below is the first in a series of analyses on proliferation milestones.

In June of 1945, the Franck Report was ignored, the moral concerns of its scientific authors over the use of nuclear weapons dismissed. Sixty years later, the report seems a prescient warning of proliferation dangers. Still largely overlooked today, it typically shows up as a few paragraphs amidst the hundreds of pages written about the Manhattan Project. Yet interestingly, the report’s warnings of a nuclear arms race and recommendations for the international control of nuclear energy resonate with contemporary concerns. The proliferation challenges of today were clearly foreseen by some of the bomb’s creators. (Read More)

While we focus on the important problems of preventing new states or terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear weapons, we must also take decisive action to lock in these past successes.