Nuclear Test Ban

Report Outline
Nuclear Test Ban and Arms Limitation
Progress of Geneva Parley on Testing
Ban on Tests and Ban on Weapons Use

Nuclear Test Ban and Arms Limitation

Possible Summit Discussion of Nuclear Testing

One Question which may be taken up at a summit conference this summer—a question perhaps more likely than other agenda items to be put on the way to settlement by the heads of government—is conclusion of a treaty to ban testing of nuclear weapons. Representatives of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union have been trying to hammer out such an accord at Geneva since the end of last October and have made limited progress on a treaty draft. Although key issues remain in dispute, the feeling persists that this is one area in which a little high-level discussion now may clear the way to a resolution of East-West differences.

U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold on April 2 foresaw the possibility that the heads of government might take a hand in efforts to bring the protracted negotiations on nuclear testing to a successful conclusion. Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev had said the day before that the U.S.S.R. would “continue to strive for an agreement on the discontinuance of atomic and hydrogen weapon tests,” and he had added that the present year might “mark the departure from the road of the arms race.” Many observers think the Russians earnestly desire some relief from the burden of armaments and would welcome a nuclear test ban as a first step toward breaking the long deadlock on comprehensive measures of arms limitation.

Thirteen years have passed since Bernard M. Baruch, speaking for the United States, told his fellow delegates at the opening meeting of the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission on June 14, 1946, that “We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead.” The attempt then initiated to subject atomic energy to the control of a special international authority ran into insurmountable difficulties and was finally abandoned. Further effort to achieve control of nuclear weapons was merged in 1952 with the endeavor to work out a general disarmament agreement. A year ago the subject of nuclear energy control—or rather the single phase of a test ban—was sing-led out again for separate negotiation. Meanwhile, since 1946, the atom bomb has been joined by the vastly more destructive hydrogen bomb and the threat of damaging or deadly radiation has risen over the world.