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White House Statement Following the President's Meeting With the National Security Council and Congressional Leaders on the Resumption of Nuclear Tests by the U.S.S.R.

August 31, 1961

THE PRESIDENT met this morning with members of the National Security Council and with Congressional leaders to discuss the resumption of nuclear testing by the Soviet Union. It was recognized that the Soviet announcement was primarily a form of atomic blackmail, designed to substitute terror for reason in the present international scene.

What the Soviet Union is obviously' testing is not only nuclear devices but the will and determination of the free world to resist such tactics and to defend freedom.

The President is entirely confident that the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and the capabilities of individual weapons and delivery systems are wholly adequate for the defense needs of the United States and of the free world.

The President shares the disappointment registered throughout the world that serious and sustained attempts to ban nuclear testing have come to this abrupt end.

Note: On September 1 the White House released the following statement by Ambassador Arthur Dean:

"In recent weeks, Chairman Khrushchev has been boasting about a hundred megaton bomb, a weapon far too large for military objectives. Two days ago the Soviet government announced its intention to resume nuclear tests.

"These events, at a time when the world could have had a workable treaty banning nuclear explosions, show a determined Soviet purpose to rest its future policy on the terrorization of humanity.

"The Soviet policy is the policy of over-kill. But the Soviet government under-estimates the people of the world, if it thinks they will capitulate to a strategy of blackmail and terror."

John F. Kennedy, White House Statement Following the President's Meeting With the National Security Council and Congressional Leaders on the Resumption of Nuclear Tests by the U.S.S.R. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/235533

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