EDITORIAL Danger remains without Test Ban
Treaty
In a radio address to the American
people from the deck of the battleship Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, Gen. Douglas
MacArthur warned, in the wake of victory over Japan, that in the modern era the
utter destructiveness of war was the greatest argument against the
use of war to settle differences.
We have had our last chance, he said, less than a
month after the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
If we do not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon
will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a
spiritual recrudescence
MacArthur was concerned for nothing less than the survival
of civilization.
We have survived until now, sometimes narrowly, and with
increasing awareness of the enormity of the destruction awaiting us should the
nuclear option ever be used again. Yet, as we near centurys end, it
appears our politics have become so cramped and venal that Congress cannot
imagine a way to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The United States
was the first of 152 nations to sign the treaty, which has been ratified by 41
others, including nuclear weapons states France and England.
The United States is the only country ever to use nuclear weapons
and certainly it is the one country whose approval would give the kind of
credibility essential to the global effort envisioned by the treaty. However,
any possibility for ratification, which requires a two-thirds majority vote in
the Senate, has been mired in petty partisan wrangling.
MacArthurs warning came in the infancy of the nuclear age.
There had been others before him, those of the scientists who developed the
first generation of weapons, not widely heard.
More warnings have been issued since, not only from the religious
and peace communities, but also from military authorities and presidents,
almost always at the end of a career or the end of a term in office.
Now comes a new warning, this time from 32 Nobel laureates in
physics, urging the United States to ratify the treaty. The plea comes via the
American Physical Society, an organization of the worlds top physicists,
a discipline that dominates the development of nuclear weapons. The unanimity
among the signers, some of whom have helped design nuclear weapons, was called
unprecedented by Dr. Robert L. Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland
and director of the groups Washington office.
The scientists petitioning for ratification of the treaty
represent the full range from hawks to doves, agreeing on the essential point:
The treaty, they say, is central to future efforts to halt the spread of
nuclear weapons.
Opponents claim the treaty would tie the hands of the United
States while allowing non-compliant nations to go on developing weapons in
secret, even though the treaty outlines elaborate verification procedures.
Without a widely ratified treaty, however, the world would certainly be in
grave danger of both clandestine and open development of newer weapons, a
scenario that would perpetuate and expand the nuclear club and place the globe
in greater jeopardy.
It is clear, given nuclear weapons developments in places like
India and Pakistan, not to mention Chinas progress thanks to stolen U.S.
secrets, that we have not moved very far back from the brink.
To fail now to muster a simple show of will would send a dangerous
message to the rest of the world and mark an inexcusable failure to come to
terms with one of the greatest evils confronting the human race at the end of
the 20th century.
National Catholic Reporter, October 15,
1999
|