an hour agoNuclear crisis: The Fearful Forecast of 1962
Periskopi(9 years ago)
(9 years ago)Does the World Risk a Nuclear War? That is the concern the world shares today when North Korea has accelerated preparations for the nuclear program. But a letter from 1962 seemed to predict this frightening scenario. Former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan wrote to the American president at the time, the JFK. The conservative prime minister, in [...]
Does the World Risk a Nuclear War?
That is the concern the world shares today when North Korea has accelerated preparations for the nuclear program.
But a letter from 1962 seemed to predict this frightening scenario.
Former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan wrote to the American president at the time, the JFK.
The conservative prime minister, in a nine-page letter dated January 5, 1962, expressed his concern over nuclear trials.
The American president asked Britain to give permission to conduct nuclear trials on Christmas Island.
Macmillan agreed to give permission, since it was the time when the Soviet Union had conducted 57 nuclear trials in 1961, including a 50-megaton explosion.
In this climate, Macmillan says he feels morally obliged to give permission.
But he says that at this rate of nuclear testing, Britain will soon find itself at the mercy of the Soviets.
He says he does not believe an anti-missile system will be developed to protect Britain from Soviet shocks.
There would be eight or nine missiles and almost nothing left on our tiny islands,” he wrote.
In a letter published by the National Archives, Britain's prime minister's greatest fear remained that nuclear weapons would fall into the hands of irresponsible people.
By the time only four countries -- Britain, the US, France and Russia had nuclear weapons, his concern was the N country that would become nuclear power.
By the time North Korea has become nuclear power and threatens to strike the United States, the British prime minister's warning seems frightening.
If this pace continues, there is no hope of how the N country's problem will be addressed. Nothing will stop Great Powers from having nuclear weapons. But other countries are going to create trouble systems -- they're even going to be really scary trouble”.
If all this destruction capacity will spread and fall into the hands of different characters- dictators, reactions, revolutionaries, crazy- sooner or later, and I certainly think at the end of the century, perhaps by some mistake, or by folly, there will be a major crime”.
