How America Killed the Dream of Nuclear Peace

A story of treaties broken, diplomacy mocked, and peace betrayed.

Photo: Pixabay by STRIEWA, https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/pdm/

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By Nancy O'Brien Simpson

The world was on the brink.
In the fall of 1962, humanity stood closer to extinction than it ever had. U.S. nuclear missiles sat perched in Turkey, aimed squarely at the Soviet Union. In response, the USSR planted missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, targeting American cities. For thirteen days in October, the Cold War turned hot in the imaginations of terrified citizens and sleepless heads of state. Khrushchev and Kennedy stared each other down while the planet waited. One misstep, one misunderstanding, and it would have all gone up in radioactive ash.

But instead of launching, they blinked.

In a rare and extraordinary moment of shared humanity, President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev stepped back from the precipice. What followed wasn’t merely détente, but a personal correspondence between the two leaders—pen pals, in the shadow of annihilation—who began to imagine something heretical to their generals and hawks: a world without nuclear weapons.

They didn’t get far, but they cracked the door open. The first foray into nuclear disarmament came in the form of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which prohibited nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space. It wasn’t complete disarmament, but it was the first real acknowledgment by both superpowers that nuclear war was not just winnable—it was unthinkable.

Khrushchev reportedly told his son, “We should not simply be stuck in confrontation. We should try to find a way to peace.” Kennedy, too, in his June 1963 address at American University, gave voice to a radical reimagining of American foreign policy: "For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

From that fragile but astonishing moment, momentum built. In 1968, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was signed by the United States, the Soviet Union, and dozens of other nations. Its premise was simple and idealistic: the five nuclear-armed states would work toward complete disarmament, while non-nuclear states agreed never to develop them.

More treaties followed. SALT I (1972) and SALT II (1979) tried to cap the arms race. The INF Treaty (1987) eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. New START (2010) sought to further reduce deployed strategic warheads. Progress was slow, halting, and imperfect—but the trajectory pointed away from annihilation. The nuclear taboo held. The dream remained.

And then came Donald Trump.

In 2019, Trump formally withdrew the United States from the INF Treaty, using the excuse of Russia having violations. He also pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty—a pact that allowed unarmed aerial surveillance over member states to promote military transparency. He threatened to let New START expire. Under his leadership, the U.S. didn’t just stop progressing—it began actively unraveling the delicate architecture of arms control.

Trump's rhetoric around nuclear weapons was often cavalier, even flippant. He once asked, "If we have nuclear weapons, why can't we use them?" He reportedly told aides he wanted to increase the U.S. nuclear arsenal tenfold. His administration sought to modernize the nuclear triad, pouring billions into new warheads, new delivery systems, and a Cold War-style buildup.

Worse than the policy was the ethos. The moral clarity of "we are all mortal" was replaced by a zero-sum nationalism that viewed diplomacy as weakness and cooperation as surrender. Trump described the global order not as something worth preserving, but as a racket that the U.S. was foolish to uphold. The dream of disarmament became just another “bad deal” to tear up.

The unraveling of arms control cannot be pinned on one man. Long before Trump, the Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and others have all added to the instability. But Trump’s years in office marked a violent break—not just from past policies, but from the very ethic of disarmament. He injected a tone of contempt, of derision, toward the very idea of mutual restraint.

Today, the world has more than 12,000 nuclear warheads. Treaties are dissolving. New hypersonic weapons are being developed. AI-guided missile systems are entering arsenals. And the spiritual successors to Kennedy and Khrushchev—those few who still dare to imagine peace—find themselves ignored, or mocked, or exiled from power.

What happened to the dream?

It wasn’t naïve. It wasn’t foolish. It was the only sane path forward. But like all dreams, it requires nurture, patience, and belief. Kennedy and Khrushchev had the courage to see past ideology. We must do the same—or else the world will be on the brink again. And next time, we might not blink.