Anti-Nuclear Activism and Electoral Politics in the 1963 Test Ban Treaty

Abstract

“We used to say that we had four fights on our hands for each new measure of arms control suggested—the Pentagon, Congress, the public and, also, I suppose, the Russians.” Jerome Wiesner, 19701 In the summer of 1961, President John F. Kennedy was sailing his yacht, the Honey Fitz, in the waters off Hyannis Port. His guests on-board that day included Adlai Stevenson and Harlan Cleveland, both of whom were there to discuss the United States’ position on disarmament ahead of the reopening of the United Nations General Assembly. On the campaign trail the previous year, then-Senator Kennedy had repeatedly championed a new, more earnest approach to disarmament. Kennedy attacked President Eisenhower for his “lack of a concrete plan for disarmament,” while telling the annual conference of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) that arms control would be “an obligation of the highest priority in the next administration.”2 Speaking candidly to his guests that summer day, as president rather than candidate, Kennedy shocked both Stevenson and Cleveland by declaring, “Oh this disarmament. Well, that’s really just a propaganda thing, isn’t it?”3