âDeclassified documents reveal that more than any other American president, John F. Kennedy was personally engaged with the problem of Israelâs nuclear program; he may also have been more concerned about it than any of his successors. Of all U.S. leaders in the nuclear age, Kennedy was the nonproliferation president. Nuclear proliferation was his âprivate nightmare,â as Glenn Seaborg, his Atomic Energy Commission chairman, once noted. Kennedy came to office with the conviction that the spread of nuclear weapons would make the world a much more dangerous place; he saw proliferation as the path to a global nuclear war. This concern shaped his outlook on the Cold War even before the 1960 presidential campaign â by then he had already opposed the resumption of nuclear testing largely due to proliferation concerns â and his experience in office, especially the Cuban Missile Crisis, solidified it further.â