Stevenson and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Today

Abstract

During his second campaign for the presidency against Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Governor Adlai Stevenson spoke out strongly and clearly for an end to the testing of thermonuclear H-bomb weapons. His call for such a ban came shortly after the first demonstration of a successful hydrogen bomb, or so-called superbomb, of such great destructive power that it released explosive energy equivalent to millions of tons of TNT, a hundred times more destructive than the primitive atom bombs that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The hydrogen bomb triggered concerns about the very survival of civilization. Stevenson viewed a test ban to prevent their further development to be a small step “for the rescue of man from the elemental fire which we have kindled” (McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival [New York: Random House, 1988], 239).

Dr. Sidney D. Drell is a professor emeritus of physics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at its Hoover Institution. For many years, he has been an advisor to the U.S. government on technical national security and arms control issues, including membership on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1993–2001) and the President’s Science Advisory Committee (1966–71). He has led and participated in a number of studies for the government on nuclear testing and the safety and reliability of those weapons. Honors recognizing his contributions to both physics and national security include the Enrico Fermi Award, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, a MacArthur Fellowship, and election to the National Academy of Sciences.

Ambassador James E. Goodby joined the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1954 and served during the early 1960s as Officer-in-Charge of nuclear test ban negotiations at the U.S. State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. His most recent assignment in the government in 2000–01 was as Deputy to the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He served as Ambassador to Finland in 1980–81. He is the winner of the Honor Award in Public Policy, the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Germany, and the Presidential Distinguished Service Award and the holder of an honorary Doctor of Laws from the Stetson University College of Law.

Dr. Drcll and Ambassador Goodbv co-authored the book. The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons, published by die Hoover Institution in 2003, from which parts of this chapter are drawn.