Sanity under Fire
PROGRESSIVE "YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" Sanity under Fire PRESIDENT Kennedy's declaration of a double-edged position on American resumption of nuclear testing...
...Time may have stumbled onto the truth this time, but we are disinclined to accept its inference of fraud on the part of the President...
...A. Yes, I still feel that way . . . Q. The moratorium with the Russians was on testing but not on production...
...Thus, Dr...
...2) we have many times more nuclear power than any nation on earth...
...Time, which frequently palms off unsupported opinion as verified news, put it this way: "Behind the President's carefully qualified words lay a decision already made: the United States will resume atomic testing in the atmosphere as soon as it can get ready to do so...
...Q. Do you still believe that...
...Given these facts, we fail to see how American security would be significantly advanced by a resumption of tests in the atmosphere...
...The United States today has ample nuclear power to destroy any nation which would unleash thermonuclear war...
...The Kremlin has replied that it will not sign such a treaty unless it is part of a general agreement for complete, universal disarmament...
...Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, in a "Meet the Press" interview in which, among others, these questions were asked and these answers given by Dr...
...Have we been able to improve our weapons during the period of the moratorium...
...nuclear weapons stockpile and the capability of individual weapons and delivery systems are wholly adequate for the defense needs of the United States and the free world...
...The conclusion that we have an undoubted superiority in nuclear weapons is massively confirmed by those in a position to know...
...President Kennedy has said that "We will continue to be ready to sign the nuclear test treaty which provides for adequate inspection and control...
...Additional confirmation came from one of the nation's foremost nuclear scientists, Dr...
...There is no doubt about that...
...Said Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell L. Gilpatrick: 'The fact is that this nation has a nuclear retaliatory force of such lethal power that an enemy move which brought it into play would be an act of self-destruction on his part...
...PROGRESSIVE "YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" Sanity under Fire PRESIDENT Kennedy's declaration of a double-edged position on American resumption of nuclear testing in the atmosphere left us whipsawed by clashing emotions...
...We are not suggesting that a decision in this vastly complicated area can be made by a show of hands...
...The criminal conduct of the Soviets in breaking the three-year test moratorium by polluting the atmosphere with the explosion of more than thirty nuclear weapons generated a frenzied demand for retaliation...
...His decision to refrain from testing—at least until our scientists have had an opportunity to evaluate the results of the recent Soviet test series—kept alive our flickering hope that sanity, so long under fire, may yet prevail...
...Twice in recent months the Kremlin has retreated from proclaimed positions— once when it surrendered its insistence on the troika concept in the United Nations and again when Nikita Khrushchev abandoned his year-end deadline for a German peace treaty...
...Representative Albert Thomas, Texas Democrat and a member of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, reported recently: "We are very, very far ahead of the Russians...
...Do you still feel that despite these twenty-five tests...
...A. . . . we certainly have been improving our weapons during the moratorium, very substantially...
...nuclear arsenal is superior in quantity and quality to that of any other nation...
...Do we feel that it is worthwhile to emulate Soviet brutality in order to be able to tell Congress, the American people, and the rest of the world, that now we can kill people ten times over rather than nine times over...
...On August 31, when the Soviets resumed nuclear testing, the White House issued the following statement: "The President is entirely confident that the size of the U.S...
...But there are moral and political issues of public policy involved that need to be subjected to public scrutiny and debate...
...It is conceivable that if we refrain from testing in the atmosphere and move to mobilize world opinion in support of an enforcible treaty ban, the Soviets may again drop their intransigence and agree to a resumption of negotiations...
...The clamor reached its peak when the Russians exploded a fifty-seven megaton bomb over the Arctic, the greatest man-made explosion in history— some 3,000 times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945...
...A. Yes, I still believe that...
...And again, on November 2, Mr...
...His decision to order preparations for renewal of the tests magnified our fear that a new and more poisonous arms race was in the making...
...President Kennedy has been even more emphatic...
...Q. You were reported as saying that you didn't think the Russians were ahead of us in nuclear development...
...On the contrary, we would lose measurable ground in the moral area of the world struggle if we permit the Soviets to provoke us into emulating their contempt for the opinion of mankind by adopting their terror tactics...
...It may be quite true, as the cynics suggest, that the President's mind is made up, that he stopped short of ordering immediate tests in the atmosphere only because the military scientists need time to prepare for them...
...How long he can stand up to the pressure may depend, in part, on the extent to which a countervailing public opinion can be mobilized and made articulate in opposition to testing...
...Hans Bethe, one of the most renowned of our experts who headed the United States' scientific team at the Geneva test ban negotiations, asserted after the Soviet explosion of the fifty-seven megaton bomb that he still opposed resumption of testing in the atmosphere...
...We have been told by eminent authority, for example, that we now possess the nuclear power to destroy the Soviets...
...Certainly such a course holds out the greatest hope of preventing an intensification of the poison-laden nuclear arms race and thus preserving for ourselves and the world a semblance of the sanity that has been so long under fire...
...We hope that every reader of The Progressive will let the President know how he feels on this critical issue...
...and 3) if the Pentagon feels the need to refine or expand its collection of nuclear monsters, it can satisfy its hunger by testing underground or in space...
...Although he surrendered strategic ground by ordering preparations for testing in case he later deems it necessary, the President refused to be stampeded into announcing an immediate resumption of tests in the atmosphere...
...I think we can do everything we have to do underground and possibly in space," he said...
...Wadsworth, who represented President Eisenhower at the Geneva negotiations to outlaw nuclear tests and later as his ambassador to the U.N...
...wrote: "The Administration and the American people should ask themselves: Do we deliberately wish to flout opinion all over the world in order to gain an advantage which is nebulous to say the least...
...It was this theme that James J. Wadsworth emphasized in a recent issue of Saturday Review...
...But there is no certainty the Soviets will persist in this refusal...
...A. Yes, I believe so...
...Q. What about these tests that they have made so far, can we test in the undeground and still keep up with them despite these tests...
...What moral right do we have to poison the atmosphere and threaten health and heredity simply to "improve" weapons that are already capable of total destruction...
...Seaborg: Q. At one time you said we can go a long way toward keeping pace with the Russians even if they continue testing in the atmosphere, if we continue testing underground, is that correct...
...Kennedy told the country that "we have many times more nuclear power than any other nation on earth" and that "these capabilities are deployed so as to survive any sneak attack and thus enable us to devastate any nation which initiates a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies...
...Kennedy has been subjected to extraordinary pressure from the Pentagon, politicians, and the press to resume testing in the atmosphere...
...Here, from the Americans most qualified to know, is the evidence that 1) we have everything we need not only for defense but also for the devastation of an aggressor...
...On October 26, the White House renewed its assurances: "The existing U.S...
...We are also told by the most highly qualified experts that we can achieve the "refinements" of nuclear weapons demanded by the Pentagon by testing underground or in space, where there is no fallout, rather than in the atmosphere, where explosions produce poisonous radioactive debris...
...A. Yes...
Vol. 25 • December 1961 • No. 12
