C.T.B.T. Truth or Consequences #6: Heed Past and Present Military Opposition to a Zero-Yield, Permanent Test Ban

p>(Washington, D.C.): As the prospects for Senate rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty (CTBT) on its merits have grown in recent days, the Treaty’s proponents have become
more reliant than ever on celebrity endorsements — especially those it has received from retired
and serving senior military officers. Indeed, few advocates for the present, zero-yield, permanent
test ban make their case for the CTBT without referring to the support it enjoys from past and
present members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including a number of former JCS Chairmen
(notably, Gen. Colin Powell).

Most recently, President Clinton declared in his Saturday radio address: “So I say to the
Senators who haven’t endorsed [the CTBT], heed the best national security advice of our military
leaders.” The trouble is, the best national security advice of our military
leaders is to reject
this permanent, all-inclusive test ban, not approve it.

Which Advice?

Setting aside the singularly unimpressive job the serving Chairman, Gen. Hugh Shelton, has
done in his advocacy for the CTBT — at his reconfirmation hearing a few weeks ago, his
endorsement was unintelligible; on NBC’s Meet the Press on 10 October, he gave a statement of
support for the Treaty that was more articulate, but wholly inappropriate to the question he was
asked, not once but twice — fans of the CTBT should be careful in relying
too heavily upon
their favorite officers to sell this Treaty.

Consider, for example, statements that three of the most prominent of these officers —
General
Powell, Admiral William Crowe and General David Jones — during their respective stints as
chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

General Colin Powell, 30 September 1991: [In response to a question by
Senator Malcolm
Wallop (R-WY) as to how Gen. Powell would respond to a Soviet proposal to halt testing.] I
would recommend to the Secretary and the President [that] it’s a condition we couldn’t meet.
I would recommend against it. We need nuclear testing to ensure the safety, [and] surety of
our nuclear stockpile. As long as one has nuclear weapons, you have to know what it is they
will do, and so I would recommend continued testing.”

Gen. Powell, 1 December 1992: “With respect to a comprehensive
test ban, that has
always been a fundamental policy goal of ours, but as long as we have nuclear weapons
we
have a responsibility for making sure that our stockpile remains safe. And to keep that
stockpile safe, we have to conduct a limited number of nuclear tests to make sure we know
what a nuclear weapon will actually do and how it is aging and to find out a lot of other
physical characteristics with respect to nuclear phenomenon.

“So I would like ultimately to go to a comprehensive test ban, but I don’t think we’ll get there
safely and reliably until we also get rid of nuclear weapons. As long as we have nuclear
weapons, I think as good stewards of them, we have to conduct testing.”

Admiral William Crowe, 8 May 1986: [According to a contemporary
press report]
“Admiral William Crow, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a comprehensive test ban
— which many members of Congress have urged President Reagan to negotiate with Moscow
— would ‘introduce elements of uncertainty that would be dangerous for all concerned.

“Given the pressure from lawmakers for conventional weapons testing, ‘I frankly do not
understand why Congress would want to suspend testing on one of the most critical and
sophisticated elements of our nuclear deterrent — namely the warhead’ he told the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.”

General David Jones per an Aviation Week article dated 29 May
1978: “General David
Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate Armed Services Committee
meeting last week that he could not recommend an indefinite zero-yield test ban.

“He added that it is not verifiable, and that the U.S. stockpile reliability could not be
assured. Gen. Jones said he is concerned over asymmetries that could develop through an
unverifiable agreement with the USSR. He told Senators he is not convinced by the safeguards
he has seen to date, and that it would not be difficult to overcome them.”

Gen. Jones, according to a 27 May 1978 Washington Post article:
Air Force Gen. David
Jones, selected by [President] Carter to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Senate Armed
Services Committee at his recent confirmation hearing that “I would have difficulty
recommending a zero[-yield] test ban for an extended period.”

It falls to these individuals and those who are interested in their views to establish
which position
— their former ones opposing an open-ended, zero-yield test ban or their present ones endorsing
it — actually reflect their “best national security advice.” Suffice it to say that when they actually
held positions of responsibility, all three went on record in favor of continued
testing. Will
their serving counterpart and his fellow members of the JCS undergo a reverse transformation
after leaving office, in which capacity they have endorsed the CTBT? If so, which view will
represent their best professional military advice (i.e., advice not influenced by political
judgments or considerations)?

Leading Retired Military Officers Oppose the CTBT

Senators would do well to consider the views of other distinguished retired military officers.
For
example, in an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott dated 9 September, ten
retired
four-star combat commanders (Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Louis H.
Wilson and
Assistant Commandants Gens. Raymond G. Davis and Joseph J. Went; Commander-in-Chief
Strategic Air Command Gen. Russell E. Dougherty; Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic Adm.
Wesley McDonald; Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Army, Europe Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen;
Commander of U.S. Air Combat Command Gen. John M. Loh; Air Force Vice Chief of Staff
Gen. Lawrence A. Skantze; Commander-in-Chief, Army Readiness Command Gen. Donn A.
Starry; Commanding General, Army Material Command Gen. Louis C. Wagner, Jr.) joined more
than forty other experienced civilian and retired military policy practitioners in opposition to the
CTBT. They wrote, in part:

We believe the Senate must
reject the permanent ban on testing that this Treaty would impose so long as the
Nation depends upon nuclear deterrence to safeguard its security.”

Importantly, in a 5 October letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John
Warner, one of the most highly regarded JCS Chairman in history, Gen. John
Vessey, forcefully
urged the Senate to reject the present CTBT. Highlights of Gen. Vessey’s letter include the
following:

“Supporters of the CTBT argue that it reduces the chances for nuclear proliferation. I
applaud
efforts to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons but I do not believe that the test
ban will
reduce the ability of rogue states to acquire nuclear weapons in sufficient quantities to
upset regional stability in various parts of the world.”

“If the United States is to remain the preeminent nuclear power and maintain a modern, safe,
secure, reliable and useable nuclear deterrent force, I believe we need to continue to develop new
nuclear weapons designed to incorporate the latest in technology and to meet the changing
security situation in the world….The United States, the one nation most of the world looks to for
securing peace in the world, should not deny itself the opportunity to test the bedrock building
block of its security, its nuclear deterrent force, if conditions require testing.”

“I…believe that the more demonstrably modern and useable is our nuclear deterrent
force,
the less likely are we to need to use it, but we must have modern weapons, and we ought not
deny ourselves the opportunity to test if we deem it necessary.”

The Bottom Line

The case for the Clinton Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty fundamentally comes down to a
question of “confidence” — in the judgments of those who say that they are “confident” in the
future viability of the U.S. deterrent or, alternatively, in the judgment of those who warn that
history suggests such confidence is unwarranted in the absence of periodic, realistic underground
testing.

It should, at a minimum, shake the confidence of Senators whose support for the Treaty rests
substantially upon the endorsement of prominent retired military leaders that those leaders
previously held a far more dire (not to say, realistic) view of the implications of such an accord
for the U.S. deterrent and security.