Why Is the US Fighting Nuclear Threats Behind Closed Doors?
Instead of secretly arming against the combined nuclear forces of China, Russia and North Korea, the US must launch a global campaign to restart arms control.
Nukes on his mind.
Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg
“Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness,” the American president told the world, friend and foe alike.
That was John F. Kennedy, speaking to the United Nations in 1961, in one of his many public entreaties to America’s adversaries and all humankind to limit the insanity of atomic warfare. His predecessor had started seizing the high ground in the nuclear age with bold ideas for controlling these diabolical weapons, and other presidents would continue, in time leading to arms-control and test-ban treaties, and helping (so far) to avert nuclear holocaust.