End-Game for a Defective C.T.B.T.

(Washington, D.C.): On Wednesday, President Clinton, Vice President Gore and a host of
Cabinet officers, military leaders, Nobel Prize winners, scientists and others will gather at the
White House for a pep rally in support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). If, as
expected, a sufficient number of U.S. Senators next week reject this fatally flawed treaty on the
grounds that it is inconsistent with U.S. national security, many of the participants in this
extravaganza who would be expected to recognize that reality are likely to find their authority
seriously diminished in the future.

‘You Can’t Get There From Here’

In the event 34 or more Senators decline to consent to the CTBT’s ratification, one reason
seems
likely to prove overriding: Not one of those participating in the White House pep
rally — not
the Administration’s luminati, not the former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the
directors of the Nation’s nuclear laboratories or other scientists — can honestly say that
the U.S.
nuclear deterrent can be maintained in a safe, reliable and credible condition for the
indefinite future without at least low-yield, periodic underground nuclear testing.

To be sure, there will be a lot of talk tomorrow about how “confident” these assembled
worthies
are that that will be the case. The President and his cheerleaders can be expected to reiterate
some variation on the line Mr. Clinton pronounced on August 14, 1995 — the day he revealed
that he would agree to a treaty banning even undetectable, low-yield nuclear tests: “I consider
the maintenance of a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile to be a supreme national interest of the
United States.” Clinton and Company will assert their confidence that the Nation’s supreme
interest in preserving such a stockpile will in the future (actually ten years or so in the future) be
satisfied by sophisticated computer modeling, not actual testing.

Unfortunately, being “confident” is not the same thing as being certain. And
no one can be
certain that our arsenal of aging nuclear weapons will be viable in the future if we are
unable to use the tool that every President from Truman on — until, that is, Bill Clinton —
understood was necessary for that purpose: realistic nuclear testing.

The Deterrent May Already be in Trouble

Indeed, there is already reason to be less-than-confident that today’s U.S. arsenal meets the
exacting standards for safety and reliability that have heretofore been observed. After all, we
have not tested any nuclear weapons since 1992 — the longest such moratorium since the dawn of
the nuclear age. Importantly, up until the time we suspended testing seven years ago, we were
routinely finding problems with our arsenal.

In fact, according to Dr. Robert Barker, a physicist and thermonuclear
weapons designer who
served as the Pentagon’s top expert on atomic energy matters under three Secretaries of Defense,
he was obliged to recommend taking U.S. nuclear arms off alert (known as “red-lining”)
five
times during the six years before U.S. testing was halted. No weapons have been
red-lined
since then. It strains credulity that this is due to their condition actually being perfect.
More likely, we simply do not know what our weapons’ defects are since, without testing,
they are not apparent.

‘Safeguard F’ is No Safeguard

Some of the military leaders and scientific experts whose authority and credibility the
President
will be shamelessly exploit in the hope of selling the CTBT to the requisite 67 Senators by the
time the vote is held on October 12 may be willing to overlook this natty reality on the basis of
what is known as “Safeguard F.” The Treaty’s proponents want legislators and
the public to
believe that there is an escape hatch in case our “supreme interests” are jeopardized by an
unexpected lack of confidence in our nuclear stockpile: Pursuant to Safeguard F, they aver, we
can always resume nuclear testing.

To appreciate what a fraud this assurance is, one only need read the convoluted,
characteristically
hedged language the President used in describing in August 1995 the nature of his commitment
to resume testing, should the need arise:

“In the event that I were informed by the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy,
advised
by the Nuclear Weapons Council, the directors of the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons labs
and the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command that a high level of confidence in the safety or
reliability of a nuclear weapons type which the two Secretaries considered to be critical to our
nuclear deterrent could no longer be certified, I would be prepared, in consultation with
Congress, to exercise our supreme national interest rights under the CTB in order to conduct
whatever testing might be required.”

Let us count the weasel words: Everybody having anything to do with nuclear weapons has
to
agree that a “high level of confidence” (a most subjective standard) is no longer certifiable
(another subjective judgment) with regard to a weapon that is “critical” to America’s deterrent
posture (a third). If all that happens, the President would “consult” with Congress. Assuming
that goes swimmingly, he would be — what? — “prepared” to conduct whatever testing might be
necessary.

In short, this so-called “safeguard” is pure Clintonian sophistry. Set aside
the fact that the
Administration is allowing the ability to resume testing seriously to erode, making it hard to do
so even if the go-ahead were given. If concerns about the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear
weapons arise, it is far more likely that such weapons will be retired from the arsenal
on the
grounds that the specified, subjective thresholds for resuming testing have not been crossed.
This is especially true since it will surely be argued at the time that the effect of the United States
returning to testing will be to precipitate the wholesale abrogation of the CTBT by others and a
huge upsurge in nuclear proliferation.

The Bottom Line

Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and more than 33 of his colleagues have
broken
the code on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. They understand that, no matter how many
respected former military officers, Nobel Prize winners, Hollywood celebrities and Cabinet
officers endorse this accord, it is a formula for unilateral U.S. nuclear
disarmament. This is
precisely why it has been a prime objective of every anti-nuclear crusade over the past fifty-five
years and the cherished goal of the Administration’s high-ranking “denuclearizers.”

Far from “locking in America’s technological superiority,” this unverifiable agreement will
lock-out the technological tools upon which the United States’ deterrent uniquely relies. We
already
have evidence that other nations (notably, Russia and China) are exploiting the CIA’s
acknowledged inability to monitor low-yield testing — a problem that will be aggravated, not
corrected, by the ambiguous information likely to be generated from the multilateral seismic
system being set up under this treaty. In any event, since the CTBT does not define what
constitutes a prohibited “nuclear test explosion,” we will be unable to hold others to the same
stringent standard of zero tests to which this country will surely adhere.

Defeating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will not be sufficient to ensure the future
safety
and reliability of America’s nuclear deterrent that President Clinton professes to be a supreme
interest of the United States. But it will be an important and indispensable step in the right
direction.