While listening to John F. Kennedy’s July 25, 1963, radio and television address to the American people on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, I couldn’t help but think back on a time when I was only eight years old and both my parents were in their early to mid-40s.
Did his words touch them? Inspire them? Assure them that their leaders had their best interests at heart?
Looking back now, I think my parents crossed their fingers and put their faith in Kennedy’s leadership. After all, who could resist the strength, beauty and visionary commitment when at the end of his 25-minute speech, he says, “There will, of course, be debate in the country and the Senate. The Constitution wisely requires the advice and consent of the Senate to all treaties…It is my hope that all of you will take part in that debate for this treaty is for all of us.
“It is particularly for our children and our grandchildren, and they have no lobby here in Washington. This debate will involve military, scientific and political experts, but it must not be left to them alone. The right and responsibility are yours.
“If we are to open new doorways to peace; if we are to seize this rare opportunity for progress; if we are to be as bold and farsighted in our control of weapons…then let us all now show all the world on this side of The Wall and the other that a strong America also stands for peace.
“There’s no cause for complacency. We have learned in times past that the spirit of one moment or place can be gone in the next…
“But now for the first time in many years the path of peace may be open. No one can be certain what the future will bring. No one can say whether the time has come for the easing of the struggle. But history and our own conscience will judge us harshly if we do not now make every effort to test our hopes by action and this is the place to begin.
“According to the ancient Chinese proverb, the journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. My fellow Americans, let us take that first step. Let us see if we can step back from the shadows of war and seek out the way of peace, and if that journey is a thousand miles or even more let history record that we in this land at this time took the first step.”
Sadly, only four months after his speech, the President who walked us back from the brink of a full-scale nuclear war in October 1962 and who, nine months later, spoke so eloquently of a hope for peace and a place to begin to take that first step, was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.
At that time, America had a little more than 28,000 nuclear weapons. By the time Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, not quite 20 years after Kennedy’s speech, America had around 23,000, better than 28,000; Russia had around 40,000 with China, France and the United Kingdom also having nuclear weapons.
Had it not been for The Day After, a 1983 television movie depicting the devastating consequences of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, Reagan might not have changed his mind about nuclear weapons. Subsequent talks between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led to the Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF), which was signed by both countries in 1987.
From 1982 to 1987, protests erupted worldwide over concerns of the nuclear threat with the largest protest taking place on June 12, 1982, in Manhattan’s Central Park. One million protestors demanded the end of nuclear weapons. That event was part of a movement known as the Nuclear Freeze Campaign that effectively pressured policymakers into an arms control agreement by the late 1980s.
Today, the relatively small stockpiles for the United States and Russia are around 3,700 and 5,400, respectively. For almost four decades, Americans haven’t protested over concerns of nuclear war as in the 1980s, but the threat is back because nuclear weapons are on the rise and there are now nine nuclear-armed states.
Is there a present danger of nuclear war? In a June 16 online article, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported, “Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12,241 warheads in January 2025, about 9,614 were in military stockpiles for potential use.
“An estimated 3,912 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft and the rest were in central storage. Around 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles. Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the USA, but China may now keep some warheads on missiles during peacetime.”
A month before that report, The Nation featured an article by Jimmy Tobias, “The Return of the Nuclear Threat.” Tobias cites Dr. Jill Hurby, under-secretary for nuclear security at the Energy Department, who only a few days before Biden left the White House said on a stage at a Washington, D.C., think tank that Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan and Iran are all working in particular ways to enhance their nuclear capabilities. Not much was said about Israel and India, but “they too are contributing to the disequilibrium.”
Let’s be honest: The world is inundated with nuclear weapons and we’re supposed to believe that not one nuclear armed nation will use them?
A single thermonuclear weapon could destroy any major urban center in minutes. Even a limited exchange in a conflict, for example, between India and Pakistan, could “inject massive quantities of soot into the stratosphere, leading to global famine as temperatures plunge and food systems collapse.”
It seems that today’s leaders are willing to use thermonuclear bombs to resolve conflict. If that happens, complex life on Earth will end. Civilization will be wiped out. Survivors will envy the dead.
What happened to stepping back from the shadows of war? The Constitution wisely guiding the way? The right and responsibility to have an opinion? The debates that involve us all? The path to peace for our children and grandchildren? I disagree with Kennedy on one point, and that is I can see with certainty the future if these weapons are not abolished.
Nuclear weapons do not make us safer. They invite annihilation. They are not an effective deterrent. They are an apocalypse waiting to happen, and if the victims 80 years ago of Nagasaki and Hiroshima could advise us today, they would certainly say these weapons have no place in civilized society.
Those who protested in the 1980s know how critical the need is to nurture and support those now who are unaware because, as Rishi Gurudevan, co-founder and National Steering Committee member of Students for Nuclear Disarmament, says, “Nuclear war is one of humanity’s greatest threats for two reasons: first, the obvious and immense levels of death and destruction that would result from a nuclear war. But second, the fact that many people, particularly in my generation, are unaware that the world could truly end at any moment.” It’s time to end the delusion.
