Center For Security Policy Urges Bush To Enunciate New Policy On Nuclear Testing

(Washington, D.C.): With U.S. and Soviet negotiators resuming discussions today at the Nuclear Testing Talks in Geneva, the Center for Security Policy called upon the Bush Administration to pursue a different approach to these negotiations than that adopted by it predecessor.

"The Reagan Administration implicitly acknowledged that its own policy on nuclear testing arms control was incompatible with U.S. national security interests. The question that must be urgently asked is: Will President Bush go down the same benighted path?" said Frank J. Gaffney, director of the Center.

In a paper just released entitled Nuclear Testing Negotiations: What is the Bush Administration’s Agenda?, the Center highlights key findings of a presidential report to Congress dated 8 September 1988 on nuclear testing. This document shows that U.S. security interests are jeopardized by negotiations aimed at imposing new limits on nuclear testing. Major points of the Reagan report are:

• "Nuclear testing [is not] an evil to be curtailed, but …a tool to be employed responsibly in pursuit of national security."

 

• "The U.S. tests neither more often nor at higher yields than is required for our security."

 

• "Under [an agreement providing for] deep reductions in strategic offensive arms the reliability of our remaining U.S. strategic weapons could be even more important and the need for testing even greater."

 

• "There is no direct technical linkage between the size of the nuclear stockpile and the requirements for nuclear testing."

The Center paper calls for the Bush Administration to: reject expressly the idea of further constraints upon nuclear testing; build upon President Reagan’s forthright explanation of the reasons for U.S. nuclear testing; offer decisive leadership to those in Congress willing to resist legislative initiatives that would preclude a flexible test program; and insist on a high standard for verification improvements now being negotiated for the TTBT and PNET.