India’s Nuclear Tests Show Folly of Clinton’s C.T.B.

(Washington, D.C.): The United States Senate is expected shortly to be asked to adopt a
Sense
of the Senate resolution offered by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) that urges prompt action on the
Clinton Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) Treaty. The proposed Specter amendment to
the
FY99 Defense authorization bill exemplifies the lemming phenomenon that has come to
supplant real deliberation in what was once “The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.”
After all, far from justifying hasty consideration of this seriously flawed accord — as the Senator
from Pennsylvania and the Clinton Administration suggest — India’s underground detonations
actually demonstrate the CTB’s utter irrelevance to the effort to thwart proliferation and
underscore the fact that the only practical effect of this treaty will be to undermine
U.S.
security.

Lessons Learned?

Consider the following lessons that should be drawn from the Indian tests:

• India did not become a nuclear weapon state last week. It has had an
  active program
  aimed at developing a variety of nuclear devices and delivery systems for at least twenty-four
  years. It would be more accurate to think of the Indian explosions as a sort of “coming-out”
  party, a public display of technological prowess aimed at making political points at home and
  strategic points abroad. These events put to an end Delhi’s decades of denials of its covert
  nuclear programs and — it is to be earnestly hoped — its sanctimonious denunciations of those
  who have such military capabilities.
• India’s nuclear program, like its decision to test five weapons, is the product of
  regional
  as well as domestic calculations. Neither its acquisition of nuclear arms nor its tests of
  them
  are a function of the status of the U.S. nuclear deterrent or the Clinton Administration’s
  determination to forego future nuclear testing.
• India’s nuclear program will not stop if it now accedes to American pressure to
  eschew
  future nuclear tests. To the extent that the United States and other nations in South
  Asia,
  and beyond, have concerns about an India capable of engaging in nuclear attacks, those
  concerns should in no way be allayed by the absence of further underground explosions in the
  Indian desert.
• Pakistan will have a nuclear weapons program, whether it decides to test its own
  nuclear
  device or not. Goaded on by the perceived threat from India’s conventional and nuclear
  capabilities and abetted by China (notwithstanding Beijing’s repeated promises to refrain from
  proliferating relevant technologies), Islamabad is determined to be a nuclear weapon state.
  Here again, however, that determination is unrelated to American nuclear testing or the
  absence thereof.
• It has now been established that, if India (or other nations) wish to conduct nuclear
  tests
  in the future — even after pledging not to do so, they can be reasonably sure of getting
  away with it. Four of the five Indian nuclear tests were not detected by seismic stations
  that
  are to be used to monitor compliance with the Comprehensive Test Ban. As of this writing,
  two of the tests have yet to be independently confirmed. Had the Indians wished to do so, they
  may have been able to conceal all five; at the very least, through well-understood “de-coupling”
  techniques, the evidence of even a relatively large test could have been made
  sufficiently ambiguous as to defuse charges of violating the CTB.

Worse than Useless

In light of these lessons, one conclusion is inescapable: The Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty
will not prevent nations determined to have nuclear weapons from achieving their goal. It
cannot even be relied upon to prevent them from conducting covert nuclear tests.

The only thing this treaty will surely do is deny the United States the one
tried-and-true
technique available to us to assure the safety, reliability and effectiveness of the American
nuclear deterrent. By permanently precluding the sort of periodic, safe, underground
testing
used to find and fix defects in the Nation’s thermonuclear arsenal — and to minimize the
susceptibility of that arsenal to accidents or functional obsolescence — the CTB would be worse
than useless. It would actually be detrimental to U.S. security.

The Bottom Line

The United States would be far better off abandoning the false security promised by the
Comprehensive Test Ban and similar arms control delusions that cannot prevent — and may not
even slow — proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It should, instead, adopt an
approach that assures the continued viability of America’s nuclear deterrent through
routine underground testing and the deployment of effective defenses against such
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, whether delivered by ballistic missiles or other
means.

Senators who understand that reason, not herd mentality, should still govern
Senate deliberations
should reject the Specter resolution and support Majority Leader Trent Lott
(R-MS) and
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC), who have wisely declared
that
there will not be sufficient time in the remainder of this legislative session to permit the sort of
rigorous, informed debate the CTB Treaty demands. India’s nuclear tests have only added
to that
requirement, not reduced it.

– 30 –