Nuclear Weapons and the U.S.S.R: The Nuclear Debate

In the almost four decades since the appearance of nuclear weapons, concern over the dangers these weapons raise has varied markedly. A preoccupation with nuclear weapons has characterized only a very few, and even among these few anxiety over the prospects of nuclear war has not been a constant. Beyond the nuclear strategists and a small entourage, the nuclear question has not evoked a steady level of attention, let alone of anxiety. On the contrary, the attention of foreign policy elites, and even more the general public, has swung from one extreme to the other and within a brief period of time.

Thus at the outset of the Kennedy Administration, a preoccupation with the prospect of nuclear war characterized a portion of the foreign policy elites, but hardly the public at large. That preoccupation, in part the product of high and sustained international tension and in part the response to Administration calls for measures of civil defense, quickly dissipated in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis. Within the period of scarcely a year it had virtually disappeared. Yet there had been no significant change in the strategic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Nor had the arms competition between the two powers been significantly altered. Certainly the 1963 partial test ban did not alter this competition, whether by making it less intense or less dangerous than it had been earlier. But the test ban did signal that the political relationship between the two states had changed modestly for the better and might register still further improvement. A substantial and even dramatic change in outlook toward the prospects of nuclear war went hand in hand with a changing political relationship.