‘End Game’ On C.T.B.: How Much Will Clinton Pay To Get An Unverifiable, Dangerous Nuclear Test Ban Treaty?

(Washington, D.C.): Next Friday marks the negotiating deadline
for a Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB). Completing an accord that
would effect a complete cessation of underground nuclear
explosions has been an idee fixe for President Clinton,
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Secretary of Energy Hazel
O’Leary and the Clinton Administration’s other
“denuclearizers.”

Consequently, press reports that India (an undeclared nuclear
power) is now balking at becoming a party to this accord —
unless the declared nuclear powers (the United States, Britain,
France, Russia and China) agree to a firm timetable for the
complete elimination of their respective nuclear arsenals — can
only mean one thing: Furious wheeling-and-dealing will occur over
the next few days to try to salvage a CTB.

The irony is that, in its own right, a Comprehensive
Test Ban will be inimical to U.S. interests insofar as a CTB will
deny this country the ability to maintain the safe, reliable and
effective nuclear deterrent it currently has and will preclude it
from making necessary modernization of that arsenal in the
future.⁽¹⁾ As
the attached column by Center for
Security Policy director Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. — which was
published in this week’s Defense News — makes
clear, such a step will significantly accelerate the most
momentous, unilateral decline in U.S. military power in history.

Too High A Price

Worse still is the prospect that the Clinton Administration
will pay dearly to obtain the concurrence of the Russians and
Chinese to a CTB to overcome their present opposition to its
entry into force if the so-called “threshold” nuclear
powers (India, Pakistan and Israel) are not state parties. The
currency in which this payment is contemplated has been signaled
previously by Mr. Gaffney (see the
attached column from the 17 April edition of the Washington
Times) and by recent leaks of intensifying cooperation
with France on nuclear weapons-related research — namely, the
wholesale transfer of the “crown jewels” of
America’s nuclear weapons program.

These crown jewels include sophisticated computer programs
that allow precise modeling of implosion physics and other exotic
phenomena that must be understood to validate existing weapons
designs and to create new ones. The Administration is also
inclined to release test cases that would allow recipient
governments to confirm the performance of these models. Thanks to
earlier, reckless Clinton Administration decisions to ease export
restrictions, many — if not all — such governments may be able
also to acquire the powerful U.S. supercomputers needed to run
such demanding software.

It is even possible that the Indians will be able to
parlay their present obstinacy into access to such
extraordinarily sensitive nuclear secrets. If so, they — like
the Russians and Chinese — are unlikely to use it just to
perform “stockpile stewardship” in a no-testing
environment. Instead, they will exploit the accumulated knowledge
of decades of state-of-the-art U.S. nuclear weapons design,
testing and operational experience thus provided to modernize and
otherwise enhance the lethality of their respective arsenals.
They could also wind up sharing such information with the world’s
rogue “nuclear wannabe” nations.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that were the Clinton
Administration to pay this high price for a CTB, it would
represent the greatest transfer of U.S. nuclear secrets since the
Soviet spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, supplied Joseph Stalin
with information about America’s fledgling program roughly fifty
years ago. It must not be allowed to happen without
careful consideration by the Congress and an informed public
debate. Toward that end, the Center calls upon the Clinton
Administration to refrain from offering to transfer such
sensitive information at this time. Should it refuse to exercise
such restraint, the Center urges the Congress to ensure that no
such transfers occur without express authorization from the
legislative branch. Under no circumstances should a Comprehensive
Test Ban bought at such a staggering price be approved by the
United States Senate.

1. See the following Center for Security
Policy Decision Briefs regarding the C.T.B.: ‘Apres
Moi, Le Deluge’: Chirac Was Right to Conduct Nuclear Tests;
Must Not Be Allowed to Preclude the U.S. Right To Do So
(No. 96-D 10, 31 January 1996) and Vive
la France! French Determination to Perform Necessary Nuclear
Testing Should Be Wake-up Call to U.S. ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_47″>No. 95-D 47, 14 July 1995).