Center Roundtable Shows Why C.T.B.T. Cannot Be ‘Fixed,’ Nuclear Testing is Required for Safe, Reliable Deterrent

(Washington, D.C.): Five days after Secretary of State Madeline Albright announced that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John M. Shalikashvili, would be spearheading the “Administration’s effort to achieve bipartisan support for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT),” the Center for Security Policy convened its latest High-Level Roundtable Discussion aimed at illuminating the very issues Gen. Shalikashvili will be exploring.

As the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John W. Warner (R-VA) observed in addressing the Roundtable on “Assuring Nuclear Deterrence after the Senate’s Rejection of the CTBT,” the proceedings of this session provide an indispensable record for any future debate about the wisdom of ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the impossibility of ‘fixing’ it. (The Center’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. informed the more than seventy participants, moreover, that Gen. Shalikashvili had requested — and would receive — a forthcoming summary of the Roundtable’s discussion.)

Among the participants were more than seventy experienced national security practitioners including: two legislators who played, along with Sen. Warner, leading roles in the CTBT debate, Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ); former Secretaries of Defense Caspar Weinberger and James Schlesinger (Dr. Schlesinger also brought to the discussion expertise acquired during his service as Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of Energy); President Clinton’s former CIA Director James Woolsey; and myriad other sub-Cabinet-level officials, congressional aides and members of the press. The honorary Chairman of the Center’s Congressional National Security Caucus, former House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Gerald Solomon, and a member of its distinguished Military Committee, General Richard Lawson (USAF Ret.), were also in attendance.

Highlights of the Discussion

Opening remarks were provided by Senator Kyl, one of the Congress’ most astute and influential national security practitioners, who discussed “The Senate’s Action on the C.T.B.T. and the Future of Deterrence.” Senator Kyl explained in detail why the Senate rejected the treaty and briefly described the reasons why the Treaty’s very goals make it uncorrectable. He urged the rejection of the practice of relying first and foremost on negotiating arms control and only then addressing the military capabilities the Nation requires. The Senator recommended instead the time-tested policy of “peace through strength,” complemented where useful with sound, verifiable arms control agreements.

Senator Kyl’s remarks were followed by brief comments by Rep. Solomon concerning the need for opponents of the CTBT and similar treaties to stay vigilant because the Clinton Administration, foreign governments (including some of our allies) and other advocates can be expected to mount a renewed push for the ratification of this Treaty. That warning — and the dire strategic implications of such a course of action — was powerfully underscored by a statement prepared for the Roundtable by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John W. Vessey. Gen. Vessey’s statement said, in part:

It is unlikely that God will permit us to “uninvent” nuclear weapons. Some nation, or power, will be the preeminent nuclear power in the world. I, for one, believe that at least under present and foreseeable conditions, the world will be safer if that power is the United States of America. We jeopardize maintaining that condition by eschewing the development of new nuclear weapons and by ruling out testing if and when it is needed. Consequently, I believe that ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty — an accord that would have imposed a permanent, zero-yield ban on all underground nuclear tests — is not in the security interests of the United States.

The Roundtable next turned to a discussion of “The Status of the CTBT Following its Rejection by the Senate” led by Douglas J. Feith, Esq., former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and internationally recognized expert on multilateral and other arms control agreements, and Robert F. Turner, a specialist in constitutional law who is currently a professor of the University of Virginia School of Law and a former acting Assistant Secretary of State. They eviscerated President Clinton’s assertion that the U.S. is still legally bound by the provisions of the CTBT — despite its rejection by a majority of the Senate — “unless I erase our name,” noting that such a stance is not supported by either international or U.S. domestic law.

The next portion of the Roundtable featured remarks by Secretaries Weinberger and Schlesinger on the question “Can the CTBT be Fixed?” Both of these distinguished civil servants — who, together with former Secretaries of Defense Melvin Laird, Donald Rumsfeld, Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, played a decisive role in the Senate’s deliberations on the CTBT when they wrote an unprecedented joint letter urging its rejection — agreed that the present Treaty is unfixable. They argued, moreover, that a zero-yield, permanent nuclear test ban is manifestly not in the United States’ national interest and noted that, given international support for such a treaty, needed changes to either of those key provisions would be unlikely to be accepted by other parties.

The luncheon address was provided by Senator Thad Cochran, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services and the newly created National Security Working Group. Senator Cochran addressed the preposterous inaccuracy of claims that the Senate’s rejection of the CTBT was animated by “neo-isolationism” and admonished the present Administration for failing to work with Congress while the Treaty was being negotiated. He also drew worrisome parallels between the CTBT and the London and Washington Naval Agreements of the 1920s and ’30s which served to restrain the democracies’ ship-building programs while Germany and Japan flouted their terms, building larger and more powerful navies that had to be dealt with subsequently by the allies at great expense in terms of both in lives and national treasure.

The last two portions of the Roundtable dealt with the technical details of the CTBT and the nuclear deterrent. The first of these addressed the question “Can the Stockpile Stewardship Program Assure the Deterrent Without Testing?” and was led by Dr. Paul Robinson, Director, Sandia National Laboratory, Dr. Steve Younger, Associate Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory for Nuclear Weapons, Dr. Michael R. Anastasio, Associate Director for Defense and Nuclear Technologies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Dr. Troy Wade, former Assistant Secretary of Energy for Defense Programs.

Among the topics discussed in this section were: the increased risk to the safety, reliability and effectiveness of the nuclear stockpile in a no-test environment; the technical challenges and serious funding shortfalls that must be accomplished before the diagnostic tools being prepared as part of the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) can be brought to fruition; the long timeframe — perhaps as long as twenty years — before the SSP will be ready; questions about the utility of the SSP, assuming it ultimately does come on-line, if it cannot be calibrated with future nuclear tests; and the current and worsening difficulties in resuming testing rapidly if the Nation chooses to do thanks to the physical deterioration and lack of a robust readiness program at the Nevada Test Site. Grave concern was expressed by a number of participants about the immense difficulties the nuclear labs, the test facility and what remains of the nuclear weapons production complex (as one participant noted, Pakistan is producing more nuclear weapons today than the U.S.!) are experiencing with respect to retaining and recruiting competent physicists, engineers and other highly skilled employees.

The final section of the Roundtable addressed the question: “Must the Deterrent be Modernized?” The lead discussants were former DCI Woolsey; Dr. Robert Barker, former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy; former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Ambassador Robert Joseph; and Dr. Dominic Monetta, a former Assistant Secretary of Energy responsible for the New Production Reactor program.

They and other participants agreed that world conditions, U.S. national security requirements and the future condition of the Nation’s aging stockpile dictate that modernization of the arsenal will be required. This requirement can only be met with a resumption of at least limited nuclear testing.

The areas in which such modernization seems likely to be most needed include: the requirement for an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon to hold at risk rapidly proliferating and threatening facilities being deeply buried by rogue states and other potential adversaries; assuring the future effectiveness of the Triad of land-, sea- and bomber-based nuclear forces; and enhancing the U.S. theater nuclear forces capacity. An important appeal was also heard for a concerted effort to recruit, train and retain the personnel needed to manage large-scale construction programs that will be essential if the Nation is to meet future plutonium “pit” manufacturing, tritium and other requirements associated with the maintenance of a safe, reliable and effective nuclear deterrent.

Attached is a copy of the of the Roundtable’s proceedings.