History, like the lives of human beings, is full of ironies. That makes history interesting, as people can relate historical events to their own experience.
After the World War-II was over, there began a relentless cold war between the USA and the USSR. Both these superpowers went on stashing more and more dangerous nuclear weapons to their arsenals. At one point, it was said that both of them had sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world seven times over. If this was not madness in the clinical sense, one cannot say what the clinical madness is.
On March 1, 1954, Americans exploded a thermonuclear device, popularly called hydrogen bomb, in the Bikini atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The explosion, code-named Castle Bravo, gave rise to a stupendously huge mushroom cloud of fire and smoke, and was seen on TV all over the world. Meteorologists said that the radioactive debris was flown across the ocean over wide areas destroying marine life. The 23-member crew of a Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon seriously affected by the radioactivity of the explosion. One of the crew members died. It created an enormous outrage in the world, particularly in Japan.
The Castle Bravo is talked about as an accident by many people, because of instead of an expected yield of about 8 megatons its actual yield turned out to be in the neighborhood of 15 megatons. It is believed to be the biggest nuclear explosion ever performed by the USA.
The very next year Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell issued an appeal to the leaders of the nuclear powers to stop the nuclear arms race. Einstein died in 1955, but Russell, Norman Cousins and other eminent pacifists all over the world continued to agitate against the dangers posed by the atomic and hydrogen bombs. In 1957, the renowned scientists all over the world initiated the famous Pugwash conferences, thus bringing on a single platform scientists from all over the world to formulate a strategy of total nuclear disarmament. Norman Cousins, who was in those days the editor-in-chief of Saturday Review (SR), powerfully advocated the cause of nuclear disarmament through his weekly. It is no small measure of the popularity of the cause he promoted that the circulation of SR went up from 20,000 to 650,000. People, at large, were getting disgusted by the nuclear arms race.
1957 saw the formation of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) in the USA. It ran a full-page ad in the New York Times on Nov 15, 1957 pointing to Americans: "We are facing a danger unlike any danger that has ever existed." SANE became a formidable vehicle of protest against nuclear madness in the United States.
In 1958, the Nobel Laureate scientist Linus Pauling released a petition signed by more than 11,000 scientists from the world over urging the nuclear powers to stop nuclear tests. Things were moving swiftly much to the embarrassment of the authorities. But they could not halt the avalanche of protest.
The big nuclear daddies were aware that testing of atomic or hydrogen bombs had an embarrassing disadvantage. Deadly radioactive fallout invariably followed in the wake of every nuclear test explosion. Winds would carry the radioactive dust far and wide. If you exploded a bomb in Nevada desert, there was no guarantee that the wind would not carry the dangerous radioactive clouds to Mexico or California.
In the meanwhile, that is, from 1954 to 1961, the USSR was preparing to outdo the explosion of Castle Bravo. They did so by detonating a 50-megaton thermonuclear device code-named Tsar Bomba on October 30, 1961 at Novaya Zemlya, a remote site on an island in the Arctic Ocean. It had an estimated yield of 50 megatons, and it is claimed to be the largest nuclear device ever exploded. It had more than three thousand times explosive power than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The Soviet explosion intensified the public outcry against the atomic test explosions. The big powers found it almost impossible to resist the pressures from their own people. This was at least true in case of the USA and Great Britain.
USA and the Soviet Union set to work out the text of an agreement, but by force of habit went on procrastinating to reach an agreement on one excuse or another. They exchanged various aide-memoires, proposals and counter-proposals under the sponsorship of UN Disarmament Commission. Ultimately, they came round to the view that it would be good enough if they were able to test their nuclear weapons below the ground. It would absolve them of the risk and blame associated with the radioactive fallout, and they would be able to fine tune and upgrade their weapons without anybody tom-toming about it. Once this realization dawned on them they lost no time to ink the treaty.
On August 5, 1963, the USA, Soviet Union and the United Kingdom signed a treaty at Moscow. These three signatory countries pompously named themselves as the Original Parties and decided to keep the treaty open for signatures by other countries. The treaty was ratified by the American Senate on Sept 24, 1963 and it entered into force on October 10, 1963.
France and China did not sign the treaty. The why of it became apparent to everybody when France and China tested their nuclear devices in 1974 and 1980 respectively. Neither of these tests was performed underground and thus these tests would have been in violation of the LTBT, had these two countries signed it.
The treaty has the title "Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water". Generally it is known as Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). In the USA it is known as Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT).
This treaty prohibits nuclear weapons tests "or any other nuclear explosion" in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. While not banning tests underground, the treaty does prohibit nuclear explosions in this environment also, if they cause "radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the State under whose jurisdiction or control" the explosions were conducted. In accepting limitations on testing, the nuclear powers accepted as a common goal "an end to the contamination of man's environment by radioactive substances."
In the treaty preamble and Article I, the LTBT parties pledged to seek "the discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time...."
The LTBT has the record of a fast track movement. The treaty was signed by the USA, the UK, and the USSR on August 5, 1963. By October 10, 1963 it entered into force pursuant to the procedure laid down in the treaty. In contrast, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits all the nuclear tests under all circumstances, has yet not entered into force even after a lapse of more than 12 years from the date it was kept open for signatures.
Total number of nuclear tests by all the nuclear powers has been more than 2000 since the beginning. Most of them have been underground tests permissible under LTBT. It can be argued with justification that but for LTBT the nuclear powers would not have been able to test their atomic weapons for the fear of polluting the global atmosphere and inviting the hostility of the people all over the world. CTBT has so far failed to enter into force, because the nuclear powers did not wish to give up the permissiveness given to them by LTBT.
One can argue convincingly that this treaty promoted rather than discouraged the nuclear weapon environment in the world. Testing a nuclear device anywhere except below the ground is fraught with the danger of radioactive fallout which the winds might carry across the national borders, apart from causing unpredictable disasters at home. Further, a country conducting a test in the open would be branded as the purveyor of nuclear catastrophe. The nuclear powers were averse to test-explode a bomb in a desert or on an island, except when it was unavoidable. It is, therefore, not surprising that about 2000 nuclear test explosions, all underground, took place after the LTBT entered into force. Exceptions were: a test by France on Sept 14, 1974, and test by China on October 1980. Both these countries in their eternal wisdom had not signed the LTBT.
An effective way to stop the nuclear test explosions was to completely ban all nuclear tests. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is such a treaty, which unfortunately has not entered into force, although it has been lying open for signatures since Sept 24, 1996. There are no indications that it will enter into force in any foreseeable future.
There lies the irony of history. With hindsight one can argue that it would have been good for the mankind, if LTBT would never have seen the light of the day. Such a situation might have led to a comprehensive and enforceable treaty completely banning all the test explosions of a nuclear weapon. That would have prevented thousands of underground tests, and the resulting enormous atomic inventories by the super powers, and our planet would have been a less dangerous place to live on.
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