President Dwight D. Eisenhower electrified the United Nations (UN) General Assembly with his vision that "the fearful trend of atomic military buildup can be reversed, this greatest destructive force can be developed into a great boon for the benefit of all mankind ... to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind ... [in] electrical energy, agriculture, medicine, and other peaceful activities." He further proposed to "allocate fissionable material [for peaceful uses] from a bank under international atomic energy agency control [and]... provide special safe conditions under which such a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure." Although the "bank" never eventuated, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were instituted to apply the controls associated with a new "bargain": Nations forgoing nuclear weapons development would be given the peaceful benefits of nuclear technology.
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