News Release: Announcing Declaration on the Nuclear Arms Race

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More than 12,000 scientists, engineers, and other professionals, many of them leaders in their fields, as well as more than 1000 other signatories, called on the United States to take the initiative in halting the nuclear arms race, “a grim feature of modern life.” In a Declaration on the Nuclear Arms Race, the many signers call the continuing competition “increasingly a mortal threat to all mankind.” They urged the administration to halt the testing and deployment of new nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons systems for a period of 2 to 3 years and challenged the Soviet Union to reciprocate. They called also for a rapid move toward a comprehensive nuclear test ban. The declaration emphasized that these bold steps would not jeopardize U.S. security owing to the immense destructive capacity of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. There is no defense against nuclear missiles.