On September 24, 1996, President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would ban any signatory nation from exploding nuclear weapons.

The problem is that 15 years later, the Senate has yet to ratify the treaty. And without the full backing of the United States, the treaty has languished, with progress in other countries stalled as well.

But now, President Obama is testing the waters for a possible push to finally ratify the treaty, and set the stage for a global ban on nuclear explosions. After our recent victory in making the first reductions to the US and Russian nuclear arsenals in decades, momentum is on our side.

On August 7th Mark O. Hatfield, former Senator from Oregon, passed away at the age of 89. Exactly 66 years and 1 day earlier, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Hatfield was stationed in Japan as a young naval officer. About a month later he was among the first American servicemen to arrive in the devastated city:

When I entered Hiroshima, the charred bodies were still being pulled out of the rubble. The horror that I experienced burned a lasting impression in my conscience. To this day, it serves as a philosophical anchor – my beacon of clarity in a political arena that turns a deaf ear to those who do not speak the exotic language of megatons, kill probability ratios and other terms that desensitize us to the true nature of nuclear war.

Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher spoke last week at the Arms Control Association’s Annual Meeting.

This was the most detailed and substantive address to date by a senior Barack Obama administration official about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, according to the Project for the CTBT. Undersecretary Tauscher made it clear that the administration would soon be launching an effort to educate Senators on the CTBT and provide updated answers to some of the concerns that were raised during the 1999 debate on the treaty.

Here is the complete video of the Undersecretary’s remarks:

Indonesia is setting a fine example that the US Senate should follow. At the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, Indonesia announced it plans to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to ban all nuclear test explosions. The Project for the CTBT reports:

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told the Indonesian House of Representatives yesterday that he will officially announce the ratification during the NPT Review Conference next month in New York. “We have been holding off the ratification process since 2002 as we expected the US and other nuclear weapons states to ratify first,” said Natalegawa. “However, we decided there was no point in delaying it. We do not want our policy to be steered by the US’ decisions. We can move it forward with a note that there must be a move to push the US to ratify…The US needs a template it can take as an example when dealing with the [S]enate on ratification.”

The Washington Post has a very moving series of photos today highlighting the human suffering in Kazakhstan as a result of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons tests there from 1949 to 1989. With the Cold War long over, nuclear weapons can sometimes seem like a distant problem; I urge people to take a look at the photos to be reminded of just how dangerous these weapons are to human life and why banning nuclear testing makes sense.

Here are two of the captions for the photos:

The widespread contamination of soil and water prevents the land from being farmed, and most residents face unemployment because of the lack of opportunity….