Current
"Mini-Nukes" Debate Echoes Test Ban Failure 40
Years Ago;
Declassified
Documents Mark Anniversary of 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty
Washington D.C., 8 August 2003 - The current Bush administration
debate over possibly restarting long-halted nuclear weapons
tests in order to develop "mini-nuke" "bunker-busters"
may be repeating the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration
experience that killed chances for a comprehensive test ban,
according to declassified documents
posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive
at George Washington University.
The movement for a nuclear weapon test ban treaty emerged
in the late 1950s as a response to world-wide apprehension
over the public health effects of radioactive fallout that
had been produced by hundreds of U.S., Soviet and British
atmospheric nuclear tests. A recent study
by the National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control
suggests that the tests produced an additional 11,000 cancer
deaths in the United States alone.
Starting in 1958, the U.S., British, and Soviet governments
attempted to negotiate a comprehensive test ban treaty, but
protracted arguments over procedures to verify the ban combined
with military and ideological pressures for renewed testing
(similar to those in Washington today) stymied the effort.
Forty years ago this week, London, Moscow, and Washington
settled for a limited treaty that permitted underground nuclear
testing but banned tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and
in outer-space. The National Security Archive today commemorates
the Limited Test Ban Treaty anniversary with an electronic
briefing book of 65 declassified U.S. government documents
on the negotiation of the treaty and its background. The documents
show:
- the massive levels of deadly fallout produced by high-yield
nuclear
tests;
- the conviction of top Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations
officials that the U.S. lead in nuclear weapons technology
made a nuclear test ban advantageous;
- the central part that world public opinion played in shaping
White House support for a test ban in both administrations;
- the important impact that concern over nuclear proliferation
had on support for a test ban treaty;
- the major role of the international inspection issue in
the treaty negotiations;
- the effort by Edward Teller and Air Force scientists to
cast doubt on verification procedures, press for nuclear
weapons tests, and to consider development of massive high
yield weapons (even a 1,000 megaton weapon) as well as low-yield
weapons.
The National Cancer Institute-Centers for Disease Control
study correlating atmospheric testing and U.S. cancer deaths
suggests that the LTBT can be seen as a major global public
health success in so far as it halted atmospheric nuclear
testing by the superpowers. President George H.W. Bush ordered
a moratorium on all U.S. nuclear tests starting in 1992; and
the U.S. together with Russia, China, France, and Britain
signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. But neither
China nor the U.S. has ratified the CTBT to date. Whether
pressures for "mini-nukes" will overturn the U.S.
nuclear test moratorium remains to be seen.
William Burr and Hector L. Montford, editors
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