scholarly journals Secrecy and the Genesis of the 1951 Dutch-Norwegian Nuclear Reactor

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-86
Author(s):  
Machiel Kleemans

Despite the restrictions on knowledge and materials of the Anglo-American nuclear monopoly in the early Cold War, Norway and the Netherlands managed to build and operate a joint nuclear reactor by July 1951. They were the first countries to do so after the Great Powers. Their success was largely due to the combination of the strategic materials of heavy water (Norway) and uranium (the Netherlands). Nonetheless, they had to overcome significant political and technical obstacles. In that process a number of specific nuclear secrets played a central role. This case is used to study how and why knowledge circulation was impeded by secrecy. Specifically, I will explore four different secrets that illustrate how the Netherlands and Norway, being outside the British and American secrecy regimes, chafed against those regimes. Knowledge circulation was enabled through relations within networks that were at the same time scientific, diplomatic, and personal. I will identify three main factors that affected the mobility of information: the availability of strategic nuclear materials, the scientists’ individual interactions, and national interests.

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Alexey Gromyko ◽  

The article is dedicated to the 75-th anniversaries since the end of the Second World War and the creation of the United Nations. The author explores the evolution of key ideas, including the contribution of the Soviet diplomatic strategy, on the post-war world and interaction among the great powers. Special attention is drawn to the phenomenon of the ―Roosevelt course‖ and the atmosphere in the Soviet-American relations during the war. The main approaches of the allies’ diplomacy towards principles of post-war cooperation are analysed. It is shown that the emergence of the Cold War was not inevitable and did not correspond to the national interests of great powers. In the course of the war their vision was based mainly on pragmatism and security interests rather than on antagonistic ideologies. In terms of chronology the start of the Cold War is proposed to attribute not to a concrete year but to a period from 1945 to the end of the decade. The author underlines the outstanding and unique nature of the UN as the most enduring legacy of the Second World War, which has not lost its acute role in 2020. This research will be continued in the next paper by the author.


Author(s):  
Natalia Kraevskaia

The article addresses the needs of educational system in context of rapidly developing globalization and explores internationalization of higher education as one of the main factors which contributes to integration of international dimension to professional training at universities. Different components and strategies of internationalization, such as strong collaboration in teaching, internationalization of the curriculum, cooperation in researches and knowledge production, students and professors’ mobility, and participation in international networks are analyzed in connection to education reform in Russia. The article provides the comparison of internationalization policies in Russian and Vietnamese education systems, argues that innovations in higher education should be adjusted to the national interests, traditions and mentality and finally describes new strategies in collaboration of Russia and Vietnam in the field of education.  


Author(s):  
Timothy Gibbs

This article focuses on M15 organization and Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist and Soviet “Atom Spy” who was arrested in 1950 and served fourteen years for offences related to atomic espionage. It examines how Fuchs was identified as an “Atom Spy” in 1949 and describes the MI5's investigation, which ended in the early 1950 with the successful arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of this highly significant Cold War figure. Key issues discussed in this article include the difficulties encountered by MI5 and the budding British atomic program in the sphere of security. It also discusses the role of Signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the investigation of Fuchs, and the high-risk but ultimately successful approach taken by MI5's key interrogator, William Skardon. This case study highlights both the unparalleled level of international intelligence cooperation between the British agencies and their American counterparts, which made the resolution of this case possible, and some of the frailties in the Anglo-American alliance that were brought to the fore by the exposure of Fuchs as an Atom Spy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Sandrine Sanos

In 1955, Alain Resnais's now canonical documentary, Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) ended with an ominous question, asking “who, among us, is keeping watch from this strange watchtower [of the ruins of Auschwitz] to warn of the arrival of our new executioners” who might bring about the return of the “concentrationary plague?” One man had already made it his mission to do so: the French writer and former political deportee David Rousset. Rousset had shaken the French world of letters and politics with the 1946 publication of L'univers concentrationnaire (The Concentrationary Universe), which warned of the civilizational and moral cesura that the Nazi camps had been. The term quickly became a widely used conceptual framework. Former deportee and Catholic writer Jean Cayrol borrowed from it to write his voice-over to Night and Fog. In 1949, Rousset published another text that created a scandal in Cold War France: an Appeal to “fellow deportees” calling upon them to “investigate the USSR's concentrationary universe” (Kuby, 46). This indictment fiercely divided the French left. In 1950, he brought a libel suit against another former deportee, communist writer Pierre Daix, who had accused him of amnesiac “apoliticism” (Kuby, 65–6; Dean, 61). Just before, in the wake of his Appeal, Rousset had founded an organization against concentrationary regimes with those, like him, who had been political deportees. In 1951, it put the Soviet Union on trial for crimes against humanity. Rousset and his organization were involved in many trials, eager to denounce the “new executioners” who had revived the “scourge of the camps” in the postwar world. For many today, he is an “exceptional” man because, as philosopher and critic Tzvetan Todorov argues, he was not paralyzed by the memory of “this painful experience”; instead, he harnessed it into action against dehumanizing state violence. For Todorov, Rousset had allowed morality to prevail over base political considerations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula W. de Ruijter ◽  
Hester F. Lingsma ◽  
Willem A. Bax ◽  
Johan Legemaate

Abstract Background Healthcare rationing can be defined as withholding beneficial care for cost reasons. One form in particular, hidden bedside rationing, is problematic because it may result in conflicting loyalties for physicians, unfair inequality among patients and illegitimate distribution of resources. Our aim is to establish whether bedside rationing occurs in the Netherlands, whether it qualifies as hidden and what physician characteristics are associated with its practice. Methods Cross-sectional online questionnaire on knowledge of -, experience with -, and opinion on rationing among physicians in internal medicine within the Dutch healthcare system. Multivariable ordinal logistic regression was used to explore relations between hidden bedside rationing and physician characteristics. Results The survey was distributed among 1139 physicians across 11 hospitals with a response rate of 18% (n = 203). Most participants (n = 129; 64%) had experience prescribing a cheaper course of treatment while a more effective but more expensive alternative was available, suggesting bedside rationing. Subsequently, 32 (24%) participants never disclosed this decision to their patient, qualifying it as hidden. The majority of participants (n = 153; 75%) rarely discussed treatment cost. Employment at an academic hospital was independently associated with more bedside rationing (OR = 17 95%CI 6.1–48). Furthermore, residents were more likely to disclose rationing to their patients than internists (OR = 3.2, 95%CI 2.1–4.7), while salaried physicians were less likely to do so than physicians in private practice (OR = 0.5, 95%CI 0.4–0.8). Conclusion Hidden bedside rationing occurs in the Netherlands: patient choice is on occasion limited with costs as rationale and this is not always disclosed. To what extent distribution of healthcare should include bedside rationing in the Netherlands, or any other country, remains up for debate.


2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 45-47
Author(s):  
◽  
J M Mommers ◽  
W I Van Der Meijden

The financing of STD outpatient clinics in The Netherlands is currently undergoing structural changes. Because these changes also have implications for the infrastructure of STD care as a whole, the STD committee of the Dutch Society for Dermatology and Venereology (STD committee NVDV) and the National Society of Municipal Health Services (GGD-Nederland) are currently exploring the possibilities and feasibility of intensified regional collaboration between Municipal Health Services (MHSs) and dermatologists. However, for fruitful collaboration it is essential that a substantial number of dermatologists has an interest in STD care. Therefore, the STD committee NVDV has conducted a structured survey in order to study the support of Dutch dermatologists for such a regional collaboration. In this paper, the results of the survey are presented. It appears that the majority of Dutch dermatologists is (still) interested in STD, and although a minority currently collaborates with local MHSs on a regular basis, a large group is willing to do so in the future. We conclude that the majority of dermatologists in the Netherlands (still) cares for venereology and that there is a sound basis for a fruitful cooperation with MHSs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Stollenwerk

Opened in April 1960, the overseas port at Rostock resulted from a convergence of factors related to geopolitics, geography, economics and the unique needs and challenges of building a socialist port. Local, national and global pressures played on each other in establishing the port, making Rostock a singular product of the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic. The history of decision-making that went into the building of the port demonstrates the importance of politics in the Cold War, as well as its limits. Although informed by geopolitics, economic decisions in Europe’s socialist economies reflected a broad array of factors. This article argues that national and local decision-makers managed competing regional and national interests in order to develop their own economic strategies that functioned on several different levels. Rostock’s history highlights the common problematic of operating within and outside of the boundaries that the Cold War produced.


2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-161
Author(s):  
Hans Blix

International institutions given the task to maintain collective security and to seek disarmament need to build on cooperation between major powers. The authors of the un Charter vested great powers in the Security Council but a consensus between the five permanent great powers was required for use of the powers. This inevitably paralyzed the Council during the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War, the permanent members have remained unable jointly to pursue disarmament, but they have succeeded in several remarkable cases to reach consensus, notably on measures to prevent the further spread of weapons of mass destruction. The quick action to eliminate chemical weapons in Syria was a win-win case led by us-Russian diplomacy, while the comprehensive deal settling the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program was a victory for patient diplomacy involving all permanent members and the eu. These actions show the potentials of the Council.


2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 607-624
Author(s):  
Christine Kim

This article evaluates the US ‘Monuments Men’ operations in Korea, focusing on wartime and postwar efforts undertaken by the government of the USA to preserve and restore artwork seized by Japan. The Asian initiative, conceived a year after the European model was established, likewise drew upon cultural, intellectual, and academic resources. Yet fundamental differences in personnel, perceptions of Korean cultural backwardness, prevailing imperialist attitudes, and Cold War sensibilities rendered a very different kind of project. Ultimately the ‘Monuments Men’ succeeded primarily in preserving the cultural patrimony of Japan, but it failed to recover any plundered objects from Korea, or the rest of Asia for that matter. Focusing on the US deliberations regarding repatriation of Korean looted art, this article lays bare both the US preoccupation with maintaining the national interests of its newest ally, and exposes an understanding of East Asian cultural hierarchy that privileged Japan’s artistic achievement and modern society above all.


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