page_title: Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
section_title: After Castle Bravo: 1954–1958
hierarchical_section_title: Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty / Negotiations / Early efforts / After Castle Bravo: 1954–1958
caption_attribution_description: Description: US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan meet for talks in Bermuda, partly to repair Anglo-American relations after the disastrous Suez Crisis of the previous year. Date: March 1957 Our Catalogue Reference: CO 1069/268 This image is from the collections of The National Archives. Feel free to share it within the spirit of the Commons. For high quality reproductions of any item from our collection please contact our image library.
context_page_description: The Partial Test Ban Treaty is the abbreviated name of the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, which prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground. It is also abbreviated as the Limited Test Ban Treaty and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, though the latter may also refer to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which succeeded the PTBT for ratifying parties.
  Negotiations initially focused on a comprehensive ban, but that was abandoned because of technical questions surrounding the detection of underground tests and Soviet concerns over the intrusiveness of proposed verification methods. The impetus for the test ban was provided by rising public anxiety over the magnitude of nuclear tests, particularly tests of new thermonuclear weapons, and the resulting nuclear fallout. A test ban was also seen as a means of slowing nuclear proliferation and the nuclear arms race. Though the PTBT did not halt proliferation or the arms race, its enactment did coincide with a substantial decline in the concentration of radioactive particles in the atmosphere.
context_section_description: In 1954, just weeks after the Castle Bravo test, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru made the first call for a "standstill agreement" on nuclear testing, who saw a testing moratorium as a stepping stone to more comprehensive arms control agreements. In the same year, the British Labour Party, then led by Clement Attlee, called on the UN to ban testing of thermonuclear weapons. 1955 marks the beginning of test-ban negotiations, as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev first proposed talks on the subject in February 1955. On 10 May 1955, the Soviet Union proposed a test ban before the UN Disarmament Commission's "Committee of Five" (Britain, Canada, France, the Soviet Union, and the US). This proposal, which closely reflected a prior Anglo-French proposal, was initially part of a comprehensive disarmament proposal meant to reduce conventional arms levels and eliminate nuclear weapons. Despite the closeness of the Soviet proposal to earlier Western proposals, the US reversed its position on the provisions and rejected the Soviet offer "in the absence of more general control agreements," including limits on the production of fissionable material and protections against a surprise nuclear strike. The May 1955 proposal is now seen as evidence of Khrushchev's "new approach" to foreign policy, as Khrushchev sought to mend relations with the West. The proposal would serve as the basis of the Soviet negotiating position through 1957.
  Eisenhower had supported nuclear testing after World War II. In 1947, he rejected arguments by Stafford L. Warren, the Manhattan Project's chief physician, concerning the detrimental health effects of atmospheric testing, agreeing instead with James Bryant Conant, a chemist and participant in the Manhattan Project, who was skeptical of Warren's then-theoretical claims. Warren's arguments were lent credence in the scientific community and public by the Castle Bravo test of 1954. Eisenhower, as president, first explicitly expressed interest in a comprehensive test ban that year, arguing before the National Security Council, "We could put [the Russians] on the spot if we accepted a moratorium ... Everybody seems to think that we're skunks, saber-rattlers and warmongers. We ought not miss any chance to make clear our peaceful objectives." Then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had responded skeptically to the limited arms-control suggestion of Nehru, whose proposal for a test ban was discarded by the National Security Council for being "not practical." Harold Stassen, Eisenhower's special assistant for disarmament, argued that the US should prioritize a test ban as a first step towards comprehensive arms control, conditional on the Soviet Union accepting on-site inspections, over full disarmament. Stassen's suggestion was dismissed by others in the administration over fears that the Soviet Union would be able to conduct secret tests. On the advice of Dulles, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss, and Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson, Eisenhower rejected the idea of considering a test ban outside general disarmament efforts. During the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections, Eisenhower fended off challenger Adlai Stevenson, who ran in large part on support for a test ban.
  The British governments of 1954–58 (under Conservatives Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Harold Macmillan) also quietly resisted a test ban, despite the British public favoring a deal, until the US Congress approved expanded nuclear collaboration in 1958 and until after Britain had tested its first hydrogen bombs. In their view, testing was necessary if the UK nuclear program were to continue to develop. This opposition was tempered by concern that resistance to a test ban might lead the US and Soviet Union to pursue an agreement without Britain having any say in the matter.
  Members of the Soviet military–industrial complex also opposed a test ban, though some scientists, including Igor Kurchatov, were supportive of antinuclear efforts. France, which was in the midst of developing its own nuclear weapon, also f
caption: Macmillan (second from left) with Eisenhower in March 1957
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