Against Nuclear Testing!
H ., I.
We propose • that the United States announce to the world that it will not follow the lead of the Soviet Union in resuming tests of nuclear weapons; • that, after setting this example of...
...Such a policy could be decisive on political grounds...
...The attitude in Washington seems to have been mainly one of trying to squeeze some momentary political advantage out of the Russian move (though even this was not done with much skill), rather than coping with a grave moral challenge to all mankind...
...To be sure, a decision by the Kennedy administration to refrain from nuclear testing would mean a bitter attack from the Republicans, from every conservative and reactionary force in the country—and this at a time when, partly because of the ad ministration's shrewd pusillanimity, the political right is alert and combative while the liberals are scattered and silent...
...Well, now there is one...
...Each side now has sion of one 100-megaton bomb would enough weapons to destroy the other, produce 60 per cent as much radioac-and from a military point of view there is small profit in developing still larger and more destructive nuclear weapons...
...haps continents—this can no longer be Glenn Seaborg, chairman of the regarded as "defense," a part of the Atomic Energy Commission, "told cold war, an assault upon the nerves Congress today that a Soviet explo-of the enemy...
...insanity...
...Kennedy has followed a policy of personal contacts with Congressmen and leaned heavily on the devices of quiet political infighting...
...Domestically, it has led to the killing of the school bill and an evasion of major problems...
...Will anything be heard from the Harvard contingent in the Kennedy administration...
...The dispatch United States announced several days continues: "Meanwhile, some persons later that it would start underground in the nuclear weapons field were retesting— it is not yet clear, at the time liably reported to be campaigning for of writing, whether atmospheric tests the United States to develop a 1000will also be undertaken—the catastro-megaton bomb, thus topping Premier phe was compounded...
...In this instance, as in regard to a good many domestic problems, the Kennedy administration has behaved in a style that makes liberalism indistinguishable from caution and caution indistinguishable from conservatism...
...the bomb that ravaged Hiroshima, and All previous wars affected mainly then retaliating with weapons 50,000 those alive, but the "war of the test-times as powerful, weapons that can ers" is an act of terror directed against kill and overkill cities, countries, per the men and women of tomorrow...
...Will the liberals speak out...
...9, 1961...
...There is still time for a change in American policy...
...New York catastrophe for mankind...
...and even before the Russians answered, it announced that the United States would itself resume underground testing, thereby sadly weakening its case against the Russians and raising doubts as to the sincerity of its original protest...
...Will the labor movement have anything to say...
...We propose • that the United States announce to the world that it will not follow the lead of the Soviet Union in resuming tests of nuclear weapons...
...It quite properly asked Khrushchev to rescind the decision of the Soviet Union to pursue atmospheric testing...
...A POLICY of not testing nuclear weapons would involve dangers: it would be silly to deny that...
...it would surely have dealt grave damage to the claims and prestige of the Soviet bloc...
...Such a step would have had incalculable moral and political repercussions throughout the world...
...But the announcement that America would begin underground testing was hardly a step calculated to strengthen or dramatize the case against the Russian decision...
...that, after setting this example of conscience, the United States then conduct a world-wide campaign (through the UN, diplomatic channels and agencies of popular expression) to bring moral and political pressure to bear upon the Soviet Union and France to cease their testing...
...People can be killed only once...
...The new arms race will be more diabolical than ever, because it will come after the breakdown of the moratorium upon tests and after the failure of the Geneva negotiations...
...Unless one is a pacifist, one must at least consider the military consequences...
...When the Times, Sept...
...Such a policy, as all our experience suggests, yields neither a satisfactory program of liberal legislation nor a public educated and aroused to an awareness of issues...
...Russell Baker, a New York Times Washington correspondent, writes in regard to domestic issues: "Instead of going to the country to build popular support for his programs, Mr...
...WHEN THE SOVIET UNION resumed its tive debris as did all the atomic tests testing of nuclear weapons, it was a from 1945 through 1958...
...In foreign policy it has led to the loss—though not yet an irremediable loss—of a great opportunity to win the leadership of everyone who is appalled by the idea of further nuclear testing...
...closer to total annihilation...
...Here the United States could not merely take advantage of a profoundly important issue, it could contribute positively, through deeds and not merely public "images," to the very survival of mankind...
...and it is here, not in the maniacal multiplication of terror weapons, that the issue will be decided...
...It has been fashionable, though often mistaken, for some time now to say that there are no longer clear-cut issues...
...FOR A FEW DAYS after the Russian announcement, it appeared that the Kennedy administration might be prepared to take the radical and courageous step of a principled refusal to proceed with further testing...
...For here the United States could recoup many of the losses suffered because of a reactionary or muddled foreign policy...
...that the United States declare that it will refrain from nuclear testing no matter what any of the other powers may do...
...but its request was compromised by its previous failure to protest with equal vehemence against French nuclear testing...
...This is sheer madness...
...Perfecting closer to the maiming and destruction weapons 5,000 times as powerful as of generations unborn...
...The new arms race will expose the world to the enormous danger that several additional countries, and in time perhaps a dozen or fifteen, will test and hold nuclear weapons...
...Now underground testing is of course to be preferred to atmospheric testing, if only to diminish the terrifying dangers of radioactive fallout...
...But it would have been— it could still be—an issue worthy of battle...
...But alas, the Kennedy administration, on this issue as on so many others, has lacked the courage of its imagination...
...But given the massed capacities of both sides for mutual annihilation, the policy of not testing would serve to strengthen all those throughout the world who wish to oppose Communist authoritarianism in behalf of democratic values...
...Not only is the resumption of nuclear testing an outrage against the generations to come, it is also a major step in the drift toward atomic war...
...Will those young people who have recently been stirred to social action on the segregation problem now respond to this one...
...The world Khrushchev's threat to test a 100-megthereby moves closer to rationalized aton 'super-bomb...
Vol. 8 • September 1961 • No. 4
