C.T.B.T. Proponents Want Senate to Vote on Treaty, But Hope it Will Ignore the Accord’s Fatal Flaws

(Washington, D.C.): Thus, it
begins. The public relations offensive on behalf of what is,
arguably, the least effective, least verifiable and most counterproductive arms control
treaty
in history — the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) — got underway today with
the
publication of two columns in the Washington Post by authors clearly unfamiliar
with the facts
of the case. Instead, Mary McGrory and Geneva
Overholser are reduced to echoing the
arguments advanced by the Clinton Administration, and other devotees of the “arms control
process,” in the hope of badgering the Senate into hasty action on an unworthy accord.

Cases in Point

The following are among the most egregious of the unfounded claims made by the
Post‘s
columnists on behalf of the CTBT:

• The Effect of a Lack of U.S. Ratification: Repeating a misrepresentation
  advanced last
  week by President Clinton, ¹ Ms. Overholser declares that
  “Until the U.S. Senate ratifies [the
  CTBT]…the test ban treaty cannot go into force for any country.” The implication is that, if
  the Senate does agree to the CTBT’s ratification, it will go into force. This is not
  true.

By its own terms, the test ban cannot enter into force until it is ratified by, among
others, North Korea — a nation now believed to have nuclear weapons that has shown
no willingness to join the treaty regime. A similar, phony argument was used two
years ago to bludgeon the Senate into ratifying another flawed accord, the Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC). ² U.S. ratification of that
accord has not resulted in
world-wide accession to the CWC, let alone compliance with its ban on chemical
weapons even by nations like Russia that have ratified the Convention.

• A Bad Idea, An Unverifiable Treaty: Another claim by Ms. Overholser
  is that the treaty is
  in the U.S. national interest because, “The United States has already stopped testing nuclear
  weapons. Precluding other nations from testing, as this verifiable treaty would do, is
  powerfully in the interests of this and other countries.” Neither of these two claims — first,
  that the U.S. has stopped testing and, by implication, therefore has nothing to lose and second
  that the treaty is “verifiable” — stand up to close scrutiny.

With respect to the first, the fact that the United States has not tested any of its nuclear
arsenal in over 6 years is less a justification for the CTBT’s ratification than a reason
not to make such a ban permanent. After all, historical experience suggests that, in
the absence of performing actual nuclear tests, it is entirely possible — if not
highly likely — that some weapons in the inventory will not work as designed.
This possibility has become of sufficient concern that one nuclear laboratory director
has reportedly indicated recently that, but for Mr. Clinton’s moratorium on nuclear
explosions, a resumption of underground testing would probably be judged to be
desirable at this point. The risks that the CTBT may well make the U.S. nuclear
arsenal unreliable and/or unsafe somehow go unnoted by either Ms. Overholser or Ms.
McGrory.

With respect to the second point, the unverifiability of the CTBT was made
patently clear by President Clinton’s first Director of Central Intelligence, R.
James Woolsey, when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in May. Mr. Woolsey said the following:

I do not believe the zero[-yield] level [test ban] is verifiable. …partially because of the
capability [of a foreign] country…to cheat on such a treaty, [by] decoupling its nuclear tests by
setting them off in caverns or caves and the like. I think I might have felt differently about a
comprehensive test ban that was at a level of a kiloton, or even a few kilotons perhaps; that I
think we had a reasonable chance of verifying. But I think the level of zero is, in my
judgement, not verifiable. And that makes it a treaty that we have to observe
because of
our open society, and the countries like China probably will not. And to my mind, that
makes it worse than a weak reed on which to rely.

• Ms. McGrory, whose assigned role was evidently that of hair shirt for a Clinton
  Administration seen as inadequately pushing for the CTBT, wrote: “Some say that the
  nuclear explosions in Pakistan and India illustrate the futility of the ban now, although
  proponents say it would inhibit deadly progress.”

In fact, it is now indisputable that so-called “non-nuclear” weapons states can make
“deadly progress” in acquiring and improving nuclear weapons without testing them.
India is believed to have tested only once — some 24 years ago. Its nuclear arsenal has
clearly grown over the intervening period in the absence of additional tests. And
Pakistan is not known to have conducted any tests, yet its arsenal has been
assembled
assiduously, thanks in no small measure to technical assistance given Islamabad by
China. Rogue nations like Iran and Iraq can surely count on their similar help from
the PRC, Russia or other quarters as they strive to obtain nuclear weapons capabilities
(if they have not already done so) without necessarily conducting nuclear tests.

The Bottom Line

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman
Jesse Helms are to be commended — not vilified as Mses. McGrory &
Overholser have done —
for their efforts to prevent the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty from being blown through the
“World’s greatest deliberative body.” This is especially true since the only reason for
acting at
this juncture is so that an artificially imposed deadline (i.e., a review conference that
the
Administration convened in September, a year ahead of the CTBT-prescribed schedule)
can be met.

Even if Senators do not resent being shamelessly manipulated in this fashion, they should be
very wary of any effort to foist upon them an accord that has not been realized before now —
not
because it couldn’t be negotiated, but because those responsible for the safety and reliability of
the U.S. nuclear arsenal have consistently, and correctly, judged the CTBT to be incompatible
with these requirements. And they would surely do so to this day, but for the
blackmail to which
they were subjected by President Clinton’s first Secretary of Energy, Hazel
O’Leary, who
compelled them to choose between endorsing this treaty and receiving some $40 billion dollars
for new, experimental facilities or risk possibly terminal cutbacks in funding for the Nation’s
nuclear laboratories. ³

No decision of such gravity should be taken on the basis of this sort of extortion — especially
since it is now clear that neither the Administration nor the CTBT’s champions outside
the
government have any intention of seeing that these funds are forthcoming and the
Stockpile Stewardship program they are supposed to enable is actually realized.

¹ See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Non-Starter: Clinton’s Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty is Unworthy of Senate’s Time — Let Alone Its Consent ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_82″>No. 99-D 82, 21 July 1999).

²For more on the CWC’s defects and the legislative history of the
debate concerning that
accord, see the Center’s Decision Brief entitled C.W.C. Watch
#1: Russia Defers Ratification,
Seeks Payments For Compliance and a ‘Seat At The Table’ Anyway ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_59″>No. 97-D 59, 30 April
1997).

³See The Most Important Justification for Firing
Hazel O’Leary: Her Role in Denuclearizing
the United States (No. 95-D 90, 10
November 1995).