The Initiative and Setback of the “Asian Nuclear Center”: An Aspect of the Eisenhower Administration's East Asian Diplomacy

Abstract

The Eisenhower Administration developed the concept of the Asian Nuclear Center in 1955 as an economic aid program under the Colombo Plan for preventing infiltration of communism into Asia. The center was given the role of ensuring, improving and strengthening the welfare in the Asian countries and countering the communists' allegiance that the U.S. was only interested in the military use of atomic power. However, this maneuver was abandoned in 1959.
Tracing the history of the Asian Nuclear Center indicates the cause of the failed attempt reflecting the various differences between American and British perceptions as well as the complex images of how to create a favorable Asian international order as perceived by the Eisenhower Administration.
Initially, there was almost a consensus among the administration that the center would be established in Ceylon. The State Department once sounded out the site for construction with Commonwealth of Nations. Yet the group backing the Philippines for the site—with a sense of rivalry against the Commonwealth in the light of peaceful use of nuclear power, and due to the believed strategic importance of the Philippines within SEATO for the U.S.—tactically changed this policy within a very short period of time.
The British and Canadian governments were stunned to know that change and showed their discontent. The Colombo Plan was designed for the Asian region including non-allied nations in order to block the communism. The U.K. possessed bigger fear than did the U.S. regarding the possibility that the projects of the Colombo Plan would be merely regarded as anti-communist campaign by the non-allied states and lose its appeal. Establishing the nuclear center in a country such as the Philippines holding the memberships of both the Colombo Plan and of the SEATO could realize such fear.
Interestingly enough, no small number of officials of the Eisenhower Administration kept holding serious concerns about the selection of the Philippines, attaching importance to the cooperation with the Commonwealth. However, their worries were proved to be true by the consequences that the Commonwealth no longer agreed with the concept and that Asian nations also showed their hesitations to support the concept. Most of these countries were disappointed by the lack of consultation from the U.S. The Eisenhower Administration, now, could not expect the other states to share the burden of the operating cost for the center. Besides, the advent of the Soviet's ICBM and the mutual deterrence diluted the necessity of the American refutation to the communists' criticism focused on the U.S.'s preoccupation with the nuclear power only for military use. The lack of clear feasibility and necessity of the nuclear center erased the impetus of the proposal.