Clinton Legacy Watch # 36: A Quixotic Crusade for an Unverifiable, Ineffective and Dangerous C.T.B.T.?

(Washington, D.C.): Like a fighter jet dumping flares and chaff to dodge an on-coming Iraqi
missile, this year’s State of the Union message issued more new initiatives per presidential breath
than any in history. Whether Mr. Clinton’s something-for-everybody strategy will prove a
sufficient counter-measure to the ongoing impeachment process to save his presidency remains to
be seen. Something is already clear, though. If, as in the past, most of his proposals come to
naught, it is a safe bet that at least one will benefit from a sustained Administration push: The
President’s sop to the left-wing arms controllers in his constituency — a complete ban on
underground nuclear tests.

I.S.O.: a Foreign Policy ‘Success’

President Clinton’s call for Senate approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty “now”
stood
out in an address that, understandably, did not otherwise dwell on foreign affairs. After all,
it is
generally recognized that his policies — from Russia to China to the Balkans to the Persian
Gulf to North Korea to the Middle East “peace process” — are not working out
satisfactorily. Consequently, he largely confined himself to noting that his
Administration is
trying to secure satisfactory outcomes with regard to each.

But if the President is at a loss for what to do about KGB man Yevgeny Primakov’s interring
of
reform in Russia, Mr. Clinton’s friends in Beijing behaving badly at home and abroad, the
increasingly brazen contempt for the U.S. being exhibited by the likes of Slobodan Milosevic,
Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il and Yasser Arafat, etc., he knows one security policy arena remains
susceptible to the domestic political machinations at which he is unsurpassed: U.S.
nuclear
disarmament.

The Legacy of ‘Denuclearization’

After all, during the six years of his presidency, Mr. Clinton has arguably presided over the
most
massive — and least remarked — act of unilateral disarmament in the Nation’s history. ¹ The
United States today produces no nuclear weapons and has lost the capability to do so
in
quantity. Instead, the facilities associated in the past with fabricating such arms are fully
engaged
in dismantling the existing arsenal.

There are no plans to speak of for modernizing the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
To the contrary,
faced with crushing shortfalls in funds for conventional forces and readiness, the uniformed
military has begun to champion the wholesale and unreciprocated elimination of perfectly
serviceable nuclear submarines and ballistic missiles. Thanks to the huge expenditure of cruise
missiles over Iraq — weapons for which no “hot” production line exists — there may be pressure
as well to make still further reductions by cannibalizing nuclear-armed versions of these weapons
so as to replenish the non-nuclear inventory.

Physicists, engineers and other scientists steeped in the exotic business of designing,
producing
and maintaining over the long-term sophisticated nuclear devices have left the Department of
Energy’s industrial base in droves. This represents a singular danger to the extent that their
successors are being denied the indispensable tool nuclear testing afforded to hone and confirm
the skills of the now-departing generation.

The Clinton Administration seems at best indifferent to, if not delighted with, these
trends.
It remains instead fixated, as the President suggested in his address to the Nation, on cutting
nuclear forces “by 80% from their Cold War height.” This statement reflects the Clinton-Gore
team’s attachment to the tenets of arms control of a by-gone age that are increasingly
anachronistic and out-of-touch with post-Cold War realities.

For example, block obsolescence and economic meltdown are combining to ensure that
Russia
will have to dispose of much of its nuclear arsenal, with or without the START II and III treaties.
It is not self-evident that, in a world in which more and more countries are acquiring nuclear
weapons and the means to delivering them over long distances, the United States should follow
suit. This is particularly true insofar as the Administration persists in deferring the deployment of
anti-missile and other defenses that might lessen our present reliance upon nuclear deterrence.

The Dangers Inherent in the CTBT

President Clinton’s stated intention to press for Senate approval in 1999 of the
Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) represents an even more dangerous prospect: The CTBT is an
accord
that is, by design, intended to make it hard — if not impossible — to acquire and assure the
safety, reliability and effectiveness of the sorts of nuclear forces we might retain.

As a result, no matter how large the U.S. nuclear arsenal winds up being, in the absence of
periodic underground testing, the credibility of the weapons that remain will continue to degrade,
perhaps catastrophically. (In the past, the mere suspicion of a single defect in a weapon has
obliged the Defense Department to “red-line” it — taking it off operational status until the problem
was assessed and corrective action taken and validated with a successful nuclear test. Currently,
no one can say for certain whether the hugely expensive advanced computing and experimental
facilities that are supposed to ensure “stockpile stewardship” for the future will be funded and
brought on-line, let alone whether they will serve as reliable substitutes for nuclear testing.)

Unfortunately, while the CTBT will prove highly deleterious to the U.S. nuclear deterrent,
it will
not preclude other nations from acquiring atomic and perhaps even thermonuclear arms.
If one is indifferent to safety, satisfied with relatively crude but fool-proof designs and/or able to
buy tested weapons from others (notably, the Russians or Chinese), testing is not a precondition
to “going nuclear.” What is more, thanks to the anti-nuclear zealotry of the CTBT’s negotiators,
even tests that cannot be detected are prohibited — a sure-fire formula for low-level, yet militarily
significant, cheating. ²

The Bottom Line

The good news is that the U.S. Senate has already signaled its misgivings about Mr. Clinton’s
bid
to “end nuclear testing forever.” Last September, fully forty-four U.S. Senators — nine
more
than would be needed to prevent ratification of the CTBT — declined to support an
amendment described by its sponsors as a test vote on this treaty. The 1998 elections
have
not appreciably improved the prospects for passage.

Mr. Clinton’s search for a legacy and political redemption — and certainly the Nation’s vital
interests — would be better served were the President to direct his Administration’s
energies
towards assuring the continuing viability and surety of the U.S. deterrent, rather than
pursuing arms control initiatives inimical to these preeminent national security
requirements.

¹ See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Cash-starved Joint Chiefs, Left-Wing Allies Add
Impetus to Clinton’s Unilateral Denuclearization Agenda ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_190″>No. 98-D 190, 23 November 1998),
Sen. Kerrey’s Trial Balloon: Clinton Next to Offer More Denuclearization in
Exchange for
Limited Missile Defense? (No. 98-D 186,
17 November 1998), and U.S. Deterrent
‘Unplugged’: The Denuclearizers’ Already Far- Advanced Agenda Is A Formula For
Unilateral Disarmament (No. 97-D 170, 14
November 1997).

² For more on the CTBT’s intractable problems, see
Third Time’s a Charm? Yet Another
Blue-Ribbon Group Warns Against Clinton’s ‘Denuclearization’ Agenda ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_195″>No. 98-D 195, 4
December 1998), High-Level Roundtable Discussion Warns of Dangers Arising
from Clinton
Denuclearization Policies (No. 97-P 98, 15
July 1997), and U.S. Nuclear Policy in the 21st
Century: A Fresh Look at National Strategy and Requirements, Executive Report, the
Center for
Counter-proliferation Research, National Defense University and the Center for Global Security
Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, July 1998.