Needed: Adult Supervision on C.T.B.T.

(Washington, D.C.): One could be forgiven for assuming that the rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by a majority of the U.S. Senate, the election of a President who campaigned on a platform noting his opposition to that accord and his appointment of a Secretary of Defense and a National Security Advisor who had publicly denounced this treaty would convey to even the most dim-witted government bureaucrats that the CTBT was a dead-letter. If so, one would be wrong. As a column published by Center President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. in the American Spectator Online on Monday makes clear, the arms control nomenklatura that the Bush-Cheney team has inherited from its predecessor is aggressively seeking to implement the CTBT as though the Treaty had been ratified by the Senate and endorsed by the new President.

As Mr. Gaffney reports, presumably low-level Defense Department apparatchiks are the ones responsible for circulating a directive that declares, among other things: “The new administration has not issued any specific guidance on the CTBT implementation. Until such guidance is issued, DoD will continue with ongoing implementation programs and projects.” (Emphasis added.)

Clearly, the Bush Administration must provide guidance on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty forthwith. By formally directing the Department of Defense and other agencies to cease and desist with the implementation of an accord that is neither verifiable, equitable nor consistent with U.S. national security interests, official energies and scarce taxpayer resources can be redirected to other, more useful purposes.

In October 1999, the United States Senate did an extraordinary thing. An absolute majority of senators — far more than the 34 needed — voted to reject a major international arms control agreement: the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). In so doing, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” fulfilled its constitutional role as a check-and-balance on the executive branch’s treaty-making power.
At the time and thereafter, candidate George W. Bush endorsed the majority’s view that this Clinton treaty was unverifiable, fatally flawed and incompatible with U.S. national security interests. The man he tapped to serve as his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was one of six former Pentagon chiefs who publicly urged the CTBT’s defeat. And as recently as February 22, the national security advisor to now-President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, confirmed that the President and his administration did not believe the CTBT could be verified or effective in curbing proliferation.
It is hard to believe, therefore, that what either the majority of the Senate or the President intended was for the U.S. government to proceed with the implementation of the CTBT as though it had been ratified. Yet that is precisely what holdovers from the Clinton administration and career arms control apparatchiks evidently have in mind — and will undertake to do if left to their own devices.
Such officials’ brazen contempt of Congress, their manifest disregard for constitutional processes, and their utter indifference to the express desires of the incumbent President is captured in a memorandum currently being circulated in the Department of Defense (DoD). It baldly declares that “the new administration has not issued any specific guidance on the CTBT implementation. Until such guidance is issued, DoD will continue with ongoing implementation programs and projects.”
The acronym-laced memorandum goes on to detail all the expensive ways in which such implementation will proceed. These include the following:
“The U.S. will continue its support of the implementation preparations by the Preparatory Commission (PrepCom)” that was “established on November 19, 1996 for the purpose of carrying out the necessary preparations for the effective implementation of the verification regime of the Treaty.”
“The DoD will continue to participate in all matters associated with the mandate of the PrepCom. The DoD will maintain the necessary representation needed to support ongoing actions during PrepCom Plenary sessions and send experts and advisors as needed to support the U.S. Vienna Delegation, the PrepCom, its Working Groups, and the Provisional Technical Secretariat (PTS).”
“DoD will support relevant aspects of the provisional system of verification and monitoring facilities required by the CTBT (i.e., the provisional International Monitoring System (IMS)) as these systems and facilities add value to U.S. monitoring capabilities. By the end of 4th Quarter FY02, DoD will install the full network of U.S. IMS facilities. Following installation, DoD will operate and maintain all IMS facilities in the U.S. on a continuing basis and will cooperate with the PrepCom on the certification of these facilities and ask the PTS to provide operational funding following station certification.”
“DoD will also continue to operate the prototype International Data Center (IDC) through its transition to the PrepCom in accordance with the approved transition plan. The prototype IDC will serve as an integral part of the development, deployment, and employment of U.S. monitoring capabilities. The DoD will provide a long-term sustainment program to calibrate and maintain a state of the art capability at the IDC.”
“DoD will support those activities and operations necessary to implement, verify, and comply with CTBT requirements, including the necessary long-lead items required in advance of entry into force such as: facilities, logistics; personnel, operational training, on-site inspection procedures and associated workshops, field exercises, and mock inspections.”
The memo even goes so far as to say that “the DoD will work with Congress to address concerns raised during the 1999 Senate hearings. The DoD will consider an enhanced verification regime, including additional and improved sensors and procedures, to supplement or replace the current treaty-required monitoring suite.” In other words, the Bush-Rumsfeld Defense Department will be working to encourage the Senate to view more kindly a treaty that neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Rumsfeld favors.
Obviously, there is an urgent need for adult supervision with respect to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. While the administration may wish to wait until the review of U.S. nuclear forces it has underway is completed before it takes the sorts of steps required to maintain a credible deterrent for the foreseeable future — notably, resuming limited underground nuclear testing — it should act at once to terminate the backdoor implementation of the CTBT.