1960s: The Development and Diplomatic Relations of Nuclear Weapons from 1945 to 1990

1960s

With a new decade, came a new nation to the nuclear club; France conducted its first nuclear test in Algeria, on Feb. 13, 1960, and its first Hydrogen Bomb test in 1968. A few months following the first French test, a US U-2 plane is shot down over the USSR. Because of this, Khrushchev canceled the scheduled Paris summit, and thus no additional progress was made in the CTBT negotiations, until they were reconvened in Geneva in 1961. There, the US proposed to the USSR, 20 on-site inspections per year of each other’s testing sites, to ensure no additional testing has been taking place; the USSR wants only 3, and an agreement cannot be reached. Shortly following this dispute, the US and UK propose a draft CTBT, limiting nuclear testing to underground, with explosions measuring sub 4.75 on the Richter scale. Again, the USSR rejects the proposal, and an accord is unable to be attained. The US-USSR moratorium reached in the late 1950s expires, and the USSR resumes testing; Tsar Bomba is detonated with a yield of roughly 50 megatons, the largest explosion of any kind ever in history.

In September of 1961, the US and UK urge the USSR to agree to a ban on atmospheric testing; yet again, the Soviet leader Khrushchev rejects the proposal, an action to which the US responds by resuming underground testing, and atmospheric testing about 7 months later. From July 15 to August 5, 1963, the original three nuclear nations met in Moscow, and signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), which outlawed nuclear testing in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater. In the midst of all this, Elaine Andrews reminds that: “In spite of these efforts at control, however, the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union went on at an alarming rate” (Andrews, Elaine K., Civil Defense in the Nuclear Age, 47). This is supported by the fact that: “The US in 1967 had a peak stockpile of some 33,000 nuclear warheads, and Russia in 1982 had some 45,000” (Garwin, Richard L., “Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century: Prospects and Policy”, http://www.fas.org/rlg/102599nw21.htm). October of 1964 introduced the Chinese to nuclear weapons, with their first test taking place on the 16th, and the adoption of a “no use nuclear weapons first” policy. The Chinese wasted no time in acquiring the materials and knowledge they needed to develop their nuclear arsenal, with the first Chinese thermonuclear test taking place on June 17, 1967. Earlier that year, the major nuclear powers gathered to sign the Outer Space Treaty, prohibiting weapons of mass destruction in outer space or on other celestial bodies.

In the early months of 1967, the Treaty of Tlatelolco was signed by every nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, which forbade the existence of nuclear weapons in Latin America; every nation ratified the treaty, excluding Cuba. 18 months later, 61 countries signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the goal of which was to halt all nuclear testing by any nation, for good. The 1960s brought much change concerning the diplomatic relations of nuclear weapons, and ended with NATO changing its nuclear defense policy to “flexible response”, meaning that NATO would only use nuclear weapons as a last resort of military action, and in doing so, would only use them in small amounts, increasing in size as needed. This shows that even NATO realized the extensively horrid capabilities that nuclear weapons possessed, and that eliminating them was for the good of mankind.

Works Cited
Andrews, Elaine K. Civil Defense in the Nuclear Age. Franklin Watts: New York. 1985.
Brennan, Donald G. Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security. George Braziller: New York. 1961.
“Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States through 2015.” National Intelligence Council. Sep. 1999. 29 Mar 2004 .
Garwin, Richard L. “Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century: Prospects and Policy.” 23 Oct. 1999 – 25 Oct. 1999. 29 Mar. 2004 .
Mendelsohn, Jack, and Grahame, David. Arms Control Chronology. The Center for Defense Information: Washington D.C. 2002.
“Nuclear Weapon.” Wikipedia. Nov. 2000 – 29 Mar. 2004. 29 Mar. 2004 .
“Nuclear Energy.” Harper’s Magazine. April 2004. 29 Mar. 2004 .