First Blood On C.T. B.: Bush, Schlesinger, Barker Make Compelling Case For Continued Nuclear Testing
(Washington, D.C.): In the opening
salvo of the fight over the Comprehensive
Test Ban (CTB) Treaty, the Senate
yesterday learned that the effect
of such a permanent ban on nuclear
testing would be unacceptably to erode
confidence in the safety, reliability and
effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear
deterrent.
Another Contribution to the
National Interest by the Cochran
Subcommittee
A highlight of the hearing conducted
by the Governmental Affairs Subcommittee
on International Security, Proliferation
and Federal Services chaired by Sen.
Thad Cochran (R-MS) — one
which suggests that the CTB may face fatal
opposition in the Senate —
came when Dr. Robert Barker
read an unclassified passage from a
classified report submitted to the
Congress by President George Bush
on his Administration’s last full day in
office. This report was written to
explain why the Bush Administration found
a statute mandating an end to all U.S.
nuclear testing, following a final series
of underground tests, to be incompatible
with the national security. President
Bush said in part:
“…The Administration has
concluded that it is not possible
to develop a test program within
the constraints of Public Law
102-377 that would be fiscally,
militarily and technically
responsible. The
requirement to maintain and
improve the safety of U.S. forces
necessitates continued nuclear
testing for those purposes,
albeit at a modest level, for the
foreseeable future. The
Administration strongly urges the
Congress to modify this
legislation urgently, in order to
permit the minimum number and
kind of underground nuclear tests
that the United States requires
— regardless of the action
of other states — to retain
safe and reliable, although
dramatically reduced, nuclear
deterrent forces.”
The political significance of such a
categorical — and correct — statement
by President Bush on 19 January 1993 is
that it may portend that
Republican Senators will not be subjected
to the same pressures they experienced in
the course of debate over the Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC) earlier this
year. Since the CWC was
negotiated and signed by the Bush
Administration, individuals who otherwise
would surely have rejected that
unverifiable, unenforceable and
ineffective arms control agreement
responded to appeals by Mr. Bush and his
colleagues not to repudiate their
handiwork.
In this case, the
Comprehensive Test Ban is Bill Clinton’s
treaty, through and through.
Previous Republican Presidents and even
President Carter refused to sign up
to a permanent ban on all
nuclear tests. In particular, the idea at
the core of the Clinton CTB — i.e.,
banning even very low-yield tests that
cannot be monitored, or perhaps even detected,
with confidence — has been understood by
previous administrations of both parties
to be impractical and/or unacceptable.
When Dr. Schlesinger
Speaks, Senators Listen
A man intimately involved in such
previous debates also contributed to the
Cochran Subcommittee’s appreciation of
the serious problems the Clinton CTB
would pose for the U.S. nuclear
deterrent. Dr. James Schlesinger
brings unparalleled expertise to this
subject by dint of his previous service
as Chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy
Commission, Secretary of Defense,
Director of Central Intelligence and
Secretary of Energy. In the latter
capacity, he was personally responsible
for persuading President Carter that the
U.S. nuclear arsenal could not be
maintained at required levels of safety,
reliability and military effectiveness if
subjected to a zero-yield Comprehensive
Test Ban.
Dr. Schlesinger warned about “one
dominant, ineluctable result of [the
CTB’s] ratification: over the decades
ahead, confidence in the
reliability of our nuclear weapons and in
the U.S. deterrent would inevitably
decline….Over the decades, the erosion
of confidence will be substantial.”
Among the highlights of his important
testimony were the following:
“As a nuclear weapon ages,
its individual components are
subject to the effects of aging
— corrosion, deterioration,
unexpected as well as expected
failure. The shelf-life of U.S.
nuclear weapons was expected to
be some twenty years. In the
past, the constant process of
replacement and testing of new
designs gave some assurance that
weapons would not be subjected to
the effects of aging. But in the
future, we shall be
vulnerable to the effects of
aging because we shall not be
able to replace or to test
weapons. In a decade or so, we
will be beyond the expected
shelf-life of the weapons in the
stockpile.“A 1978 report to the
[Senate] Armed Services Committee
stated: ‘The reliability of our
nuclear weapons….has been
assured by the continuous
introduction of recently tested
new designs and by a constant
turnover of the stockpile made
possible by the retirement of
older weapons before they have
begun to deteriorate.’ It may
also be noted that for Soviet —
and now Russian — weapons, the
expected shelf-life has been ten
years. Unlike ourselves, the
Russians continue to produce some
thousands of weapons each year to
replace aging weapons in their
inventory. By contrast, despite
an explicit policy commitment,
the United States at this time
lacks the capability either to
fabricate or certify new
warheads.“I trust that the
[Stockpile] Stewardship Program
will be vigorously pursued and
will be vigorously supported by
the Congress. Nonetheless, it
will be many years before the new
facilities and new capabilities
are put in place. It
will be more years before the
projected experiments can be
completed and assessed. If the
treaty is ratified, the
Stewardship Program would be
subjected to the usual budget
pressures and to the possible
erosion of support by the
Administration or by the
Congress. It will be
many, many years before we can
assess adequately the degree of
success of the Stewardship
Program and the degree to which
it may mitigate the decline of
confidence in the reliability of
the stockpile.“We should bear in mind that
Department of Energy and
laboratory personnel were never
asked: ‘What should we do
to sustain or to maximize
confidence in the reliability of
our weapons? To that question the
answer remains obvious: periodic
testing at least at very
low-yield remains desirable.
Instead they have been asked a
question: given an international
commitment to eliminate nuclear
testing, how can you best seek to
sustain confidence in weapon
reliability? To that rather
different question the system has
responded with a vigorous program
for stewardship.“But no one now has either the
experience or the knowledge to
judge the degree of success of
the Stewardship Program….In
assuring weapon reliability,
there is no substitute for
nuclear testing. How
imperfect a substitute the
Stewardship Program will prove to
be remains to be seen.“For many years, the
Congress has received repeated
and persistent testimony from
officials at the DOE and its
predecessor agencies, from
laboratory directors and
scientists, from the Chiefs, and
from the relevant
Commanders-in-Chief that nuclear
testing was essential. Suddenly
that testimony has changed, and
now we have a somewhat ambiguous
response. Senators will,
no doubt, want to satisfy
themselves to what extent
things have really changed.”
(Emphasis added throughout.)
Dr. Barker’s Damning
Assessment of the CTB
In addition to providing the
Subcommittee with President Bush’s
recommendation that nuclear testing be
continued, Dr. Barker — a nuclear
physicist and weapons designer who held
senior positions in the Department of
Defense (i.e., Assistant to the Secretary
of Defense for Atomic Energy), at the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and
as an arms control negotiator — provided
a detailed summary of the serious risks
associated with a permanent, zero-yield
ban on such testing. These included,
notably, dangers for the
reliability and safety of the U.S.
stockpile arising from “stockpile
defects, accepting less than the best in
nuclear weapon safety, the inability to
respond effectively to new threats and
requirements and betting on the Stockpile
Stewardship Program before it has shown
what it can do.”
Dr. Barker’s conclusion: “I
see no benefits to U.S. ratification of
the CTBT, and terrible costs.
But even with no CTBT we pay the costs
unless we are ready, able and willing to
conduct the nuclear tests that will
maintain the nuclear deterrent component
of our national security posture.”
Small Comfort
Interestingly, the Administration’s
spokesman at the Cochran Subcommittee’s
hearing — Dr. Victor Reis, Assistant
Secretary of Energy for Defense Programs
— made two points that did much to belie
his repeated assertion that the United
States could live with a permanent ban on
nuclear testing and that, in particular,
the reliability and safety of the
stockpile could be retained indefinitely.
First, in response to a question posed
by the Subcommittee’s Ranking Minority
Member, Senator Carl Levin
(D-MI) that he has “as much or more
confidence now [in the stockpile] than he
did in 1993″ when he assumed his
present responsibilities. As one
prominent scientist with long experience
in the nuclear weapons business remarked
in response, the proposition that
one has greater confidence today after
five years without testing than one did
immediately after testing stopped may
simply reflect a diminishing
awareness of the stockpile’s problems.
If so, it seems reasonable to expect that
five years from now — a point still
further removed from the last
indisputable proof of the effects of
aging on the stockpile, proof that comes
from actual testing alone — Dr.
Reis’ confidence (or that of his
successors and counterparts at the
nuclear weapons laboratories) will be higher
yet.
Second, Dr. Reis acknowledged that
“just about all the parts [in the
U.S. nuclear weapons left in the
stockpile] are going to have to be
remade.” It strains
credulity that such a complete
remanufacture of the Nation’s nuclear
arsenal can be achieved without either
nuclear tests to confirm that the newly
built devices work properly or an heroic
degradation in confidence in the
stockpile.
After all, some of the ingredients can
no longer be utilized (e.g., glue used in
manufacturing older nuclear weapons has
subsequently been judged by the
Environmental Protection Agency to be
carcinogenic). Some of the extremely
precise tooling used to fabricate weapons
no longer exists; suppliers have gone out
of business. Personnel familiar with the
creation and validation of the original
design — who may be critical to
troubleshooting a remanufactured version
— no longer are available. These are
non-trivial problems that will go to the
heart of the deterrent value of the
weapons upon which U.S. security
ultimately will rely for the foreseeable
future.
With regard to the “difficulty in
recreating a piece of hardware with the
same performance as the original,”
Dr. Barker offered an illustrative
example from the Navy’s experience with a
piece of equipment that is far less
complex than a modern nuclear
weapon:
“When production was
interrupted on the rocket motor
of the Navy’s Polaris
sea-launched ballistic missile
and then restarted, even with the
same design specifications, it
could not be reproduced. The fix
required redesign and recalling
retired people to provide data on
how the original motors were
made. Missile motor testing was
available to the Navy to help
them understand their problem and
to be confident that they had
found a solution. Nuclear
testing needs to play the same
vital role when nuclear weapons
must be rebuilt.”
The Bottom Line
This first congressional hearing addressing
the Clinton Comprehensive Test Ban sets
the stage for those that will follow. The
important counsel from President Bush,
Secretary Schlesinger and Dr. Barker
received yesterday by the Cochran
Subcommittee makes clear that nothing
less than the future reliability, safety
and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear
deterrent is riding on the outcome of the
Senate’s deliberations on this treaty.
The Center looks forward to playing an
active role in educating legislators and
the public about the unacceptability of
these risks and, indeed, those associated
with the rest of the Clinton
Administration’s self-declared
“denuclearization” agenda.
– 30 –
1. See the
Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled What’s Good For
Silicon Graphics Is Not Necessarily Good
For America: Some Supercomputer Sales
Imperil U.S. Security (
July 1997) and Profile In
Courage: Peter Leitner Blows The Whistle
On Clinton’s Dangerous Export Decontrol
Policies (
June 1997).
2. For more on the
CWC’s serious shortcomings, see the
Chemical Weapons section of the Center’s
Web site.
3. The wisdom of
this rejection has been evident in the
wake of a “seismic event” in
the vicinity of Russia’s Novaya Zemlya
test site. As the Center has pointed out
previously, this event — which may have
been caused by a covert
“decoupled” Russian nuclear
test, a possibility the Clinton
Administration cannot preclude — is a
foretaste of the ambiguities and
uncertainties certain to arise from an
inherently unverifiable
“zero-yield” test ban. See the
Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled Wake-Up Call From
Novaya Zemlya: Zero-Yield Nuclear Test
Ban is Unverifiable, Russians will Cheat,
U.S. will Suffer (
August 1997) and Nuclear Spin
Control: Clinton See-No-Evil Response to
Apparent Russian Test Offers Bitter
Foretaste of C.T.B. (
October 1997).
4. See the
Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled Clinton’s Reckless
Nuclear Agenda Revealed? Study
Co-Authored by Candidate for Top Pentagon
Job is Alarming (
July 1997), The Real Scandal
at the O’Leary Energy Department: The
Secretary’s Shakedown of the Nuclear Labs
Over C.T.B. (
September 1997) and Inviting
Life to Imitate Art: Will A ‘Peacemaker’
Exploit Deficient Security At U.S.
Nuclear Facilities? (
October 1997).
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