The Test Ban Treaty

As President Kennedy so clearly said last Friday in his excellent television address, the nuclear test ban treaty just negotiated with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom is not the beginning of the millenium. Rather, it is an extremely limited document, providing only for an end to non-underground tests. These explosions, which are relatively easy to detect, poison the atmosphere without necessarily improving the military position of the country making them. The cessation of these explosions, while possibly reducing international antagonism, does not mean the end of rivalry between the great powers, and it does not make future nuclear confrontations impossible.

Still, although the treaty recognizes little more than the fact that the continued refining of already monstrous weapons is an unnecessary occupation, it may prove an enormously significant document. It is the first positive indication from any government that nuclear war is an unprofitable road to victory.

The treaty is also valuable because it deals with a threat to individuals rather than masses of peoples. The President was powerfully persuasive in noting that while the statistical effects of testing are negligible, lukemia or genetic mutation cannot fail to be significant to the victim. Further, the treaty has importance as a first step towards permanently limiting the nuclear club Wide dispersion of nuclear weapons could quickly lead to a world disaster of inconceivable horror; only a growing system of control agreements among the current nuclear powers can prevent such a catastrophe.

Millenia have a way of failing to materialize, but the test ban treaty, if successfully put into operation, offers the first hope, 18 years overdue, that security against atomic vaporization may be obtained.