Gaffney on the CTBT

Broadcast on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”
3 June 1998

The problem is that this Comprehensive Test Ban, or CTB, is utterly irrelevant to whether nations like India and Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons — or, for that matter, whether Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea and other wannabe states follow suit. Indeed, both India and Pakistan have been judged for some time to be nuclear powers, albeit undeclared ones. This has been true even though India had not tested a nuclear device since 1974 and Pakistan is believed never to have done so.

Just as testing is not needed to acquire nuclear arms, it is not necessary if a nation is willing to maintain an arsenal of relatively crude, but lethal, weapons. The idea of rewarding India and Pakistan, if they are willing now to sign onto the Comprehensive Test Ban, may make the so-called “international community” feel better. But it will certainly not denuclearize either country.

The only certain effect of a Comprehensive Test Ban is that it will make it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the effectiveness of the U.S. deterrent. Periodic, safe, underground testing has proven essential to the assuring the reliability, safety and credibility of America’s nuclear stockpile. There are no proven alternatives to such testing to maintain the exceedingly sophisticated weapons in our arsenal.

To be sure, the Clinton Administration claims that, by spending over $4 billion a year for ten years, it will come up with ways to perform responsible stewardship of the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the absence of testing. The long-term and expensive steps required to confirm this risky assertion would be problematic under the best of circumstances. There is no reason to believe they will be implemented by an Administration that, as part of its present campaign for the CTB, decries the illegitimacy of nuclear weapons.

In the wake of the South Asian nuclear tests, such sentiments only serve to encourage even more radical disarmament notions than the Comprehensive Test Ban. For example, fresh calls are now being heard for enormous cuts in U.S. strategic forces, the “de-alerting” of those that remain and, ultimately, the world-wide abolition of all nuclear weapons.

Does anyone really believe that disarming the United States will actually “devalue” nuclear weapons and lead nations like India and Pakistan — to say nothing of North Korea, China or Russia — to give theirs up?

What the U.S. needs to do now is not to redouble its pursuit of useless — and probably counterproductive — arms control initiatives. Instead, it should: work to revitalize and enforce export controls designed to slow the pace of proliferation; preserve the legitimacy and credibility of its nuclear deterrent as an important contributor to international stability; and deploy effective, global missile defenses based on Navy ships to minimize the danger that others’ weapons of mass destruction will ever be used.