einstein

Arms Control
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ONE-WORLDER
1945–1948
Portrait by Philippe Halsman, 1947
For a few weeks after the dropping of the atom bomb, Einstein was uncharacteristically reticent. He fended off reporters who were knocking at
his door in Saranac Lake, and he even declined to give a quote to his summer neighbor Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times,
when he called. 1
It was only as he was about to leave his summer rental in mid-September, more than a month after the bombs had been dropped, that Einstein
agreed to discuss the issue with a wire service reporter who came calling. The point he stressed was that the bomb reinforced his longtime support
for world federalism. “The only salvation for civilization and the human race lies in the creation of world government,” he said. “As long as sovereign
states continue to have armaments and armaments secrets, new world wars will be inevitable.” 2
As in science, so it was in world politics for Einstein: he sought a unified set of principles that could create order out of anarchy. A system based
on sovereign nations with their own military forces, competing ideologies, and conflicting national interests would inevitably produce more wars. So
he regarded a world authority as realistic rather than idealistic, as practical rather than naïve.
He had been circumspect during the war years. He was a refugee in a nation that was using its military might for noble rather than nationalistic
goals. But the end of the war changed things. So did the dropping of the atom bombs. The increase in the destructive power of offensive weaponry
led to a commensurate increase in the need to find a world structure for security. It was time for him to become politically outspoken again.
For the remaining ten years of his life, his passion for advocating a unified governing structure for the globe would rival that for finding a unified
field theory that could govern all the forces of nature. Although distinct in most ways, both quests reflected his instincts for transcendent order. In
addition, both would display Einstein’s willingness to be a nonconformist, to be serenely secure in challenging prevailing attitudes.
The month after the bombs were dropped, a group of scientists signed a statement urging that a council of nations be created to control atomic
weaponry. Einstein responded with a letter to J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had so successfully led the scientific efforts at Los Alamos. He was
pleased with the sentiments behind the statement, Einstein said, but he criticized the political recommendations as “obviously inadequate”
because they retained sovereign nations as the ultimate powers. “It is unthinkable that we can have peace without a real governmental organization
to create and enforce law on individuals in their international relations.”
Oppenheimer politely pointed out that “the statements you attributed to me are not mine.” They had been written by another group of scientists.
He did, nevertheless, challenge Einstein’s argument for a full-fledged world government: “The history of this nation up through the Civil War shows
how difficult the establishment of a federal authority can be when there are profound differences in the values of the societies it attempts to
integrate.” 3 Oppenheimer thus became the first of many postwar realists to disparage Einstein for being allegedly too idealistic. Of course, one
could flip his argument by noting that the Civil War showed in gruesome terms the danger of not having a secure federal authority instead of state
military sovereignty when there are differences of values among member states.
What Einstein envisioned was a world “government” or “authority” that had a monopoly on military power. He called it a “supranational” entity,
rather than an “international” one, because it would exist above its member nations rather than as a mediator among sovereign nations. 4 The
United Nations, which was founded in October 1945, did not come close to meeting these criteria, Einstein felt.
Over the next few months, Einstein fleshed out his proposals in a series of essays and interviews. The most important arose from an exchange of
fan letters he had with Raymond Gram Swing, a commentator on ABC radio. Einstein invited Swing to visit him in Princeton, and the result was an
article by Einstein, as told to Swing, in the November 1945 issue of the Atlantic called “Atomic War or Peace.” 5
The three great powers—the United States, Britain, and Russia—should jointly establish the new world government, Einstein said in the article,
and then invite other nations to join. Using a somewhat misleading phrase that was part of the popular debate of the time, he said that “the secret of
the bomb” should be given to this new organization by Washington. 6 The only truly effective way to control atomic arms, he believed, was by ceding
the monopoly on military power to a world government.
By then, in late 1945, the cold war was under way. America and Britain had begun to clash with Russia for imposing communist regimes in
Poland and other eastern European areas occupied by the Red Army. For its part, Russia zealously sought a security perimeter and was neuralgic
about any perceived attempt to interfere in its domestic affairs, which made its leaders resist surrendering any sovereignty to a world authority.