Herbert York, as Carter's chief CTBT negotiator (1979-81), attributed resistance to nuclear arms control to 'psychic and spiritual needs' rather than strategy

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As President Carter's chief negotiator for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty talks (1979-81), Herbert York argued that opposition to nuclear disarmament was not, at bottom, a matter of strategic calculation — nor of financial interest, though he granted that most of the people he was describing "did derive some of their income from their involvement with nuclear weapons." Per a named-author obituary in Arms Control Today, York held that "psychic and spiritual needs" motivated what the obituary calls the "proponents of the arms race," because they derived "a very large part of their self-esteem from their participation in what they believe to be an essential — even a holy — cause." The obituary attributes this diagnosis to York's own argument, without citing a specific book or interview by title.

[correction 2026-10-17, scheduled audit] This paragraph originally read that the needs motivated "resistance to arms control, because its proponents derived" that self-esteem, and named only strategy as the motive York ruled out. "Its proponents" was meant as proponents of the resistance but reads as proponents of arms control — the opposite group, and the one the very next paragraph of the obituary calls "the proponents of the CTBT." The source's own antecedent is used instead, and the financial half of what York ruled out is restored.

The talks York led did not produce a ratified treaty. A comprehensive ban on nuclear-weapons testing would not open for signature until 1996, under a different, later diplomatic effort — the treaty whose unratified verification regime this vault's existing CTBTO International Monitoring System cluster already tracks from the sensor side, roughly two decades after York's own negotiation.