nuclear-news

Time USA ratified Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty as Eisenhower and JFK wanted

let’s finish what Ike and JFK started by ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Republicans and Democrats can finish this journey and help build a more peaceful world for us all.

It’s Time to Finish What Ike and JFK Started and Ban Nuclear Weapons Testing by William Lambers, History News Network, 25 Oct 2015, William Lambers is the author of “Nuclear Weapons On an October day in 1987 people in Las Vegas thought they were having an earthquake. Tremors rattled the city’s buildings. But this was not nature at work. This was an underground nuclear test explosion at the Nevada Test Site.

Residents of Hattiesburg, Mississippi had their own similar experiences from underground nuclear tests.  There have been over 1000 U.S. nuclear tests with severe public health consequences from radiation. And these nuke tests cost many billions of taxpayer dollars. Why would anyone want to relive those chapters of the Cold War?

Instead, how about Senate Democrats and Republicans ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans all nuclear test explosions.

Now these two political parties working together may sound like a fairy tale. But history reveals that Dems and Reps, for the most part, have shared this goal of ending nuke testing.

Since the days of President Dwight Eisenhower (a Republican), the United States has sought a treaty ending nuclear testing. In a letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Eisenhower wrote that a nuclear test ban “would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament.”

Ike and his team worked very hard to achieve a treaty ending nuclear testing. They contributed much research for building an international monitoring system to detect anyone cheating a treaty by setting off a secret nuclear explosion.

Eisenhower got the ball rolling and his successor, Democrat John F. Kennedy, took up the fight.  Achieving a nuclear test ban treaty became a major initiative of JFK’s presidency. This was during the most dangerous period of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

The world was on the brink of a nuclear holocaust in 1962 when the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba. During the Cuban Missile Crisis both the Soviets and Americans tested nuclear weapons.

Just one year after the Crisis, there was a dramatic change. Kennedy was about to achieve a partial ban on nuclear weapons testing with the Soviets. Both sides would stop tests in the atmosphere, underwater and outer space. But Kennedy needed to get the Senate to approve the treaty………

October 26, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, weapons and war