‘Having It Both Ways’: Clinton’s Assault On National Security Would Gut Nuclear Deterrent And Prevent Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.): President Clinton’s announcement Friday that he has decided to overrule the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other defense experts by forswearing all future nuclear testing capped a week of serious damage inflicted by him and his Administration on national security. The cumulative, adverse effect of Clinton actions will represent a "double whammy" for America: an inevitable erosion in the safety, reliability and effectiveness — in other words, the credibility — of the U.S. nuclear arsenal at the very moment that the President is trying to postpone indefinitely the deployment of anti-missile defenses, systems that might lessen somewhat the risks associated with such a step.

Double Whammy, Doublespeak

The convergence of these two developments demonstrates Mr. Clinton’s real disregard for the Nation’s long-term security interests, to say nothing of his utter disingenuousness. After all, the JCS know all too well the important role realistic nuclear testing has played in ensuring that U.S. nuclear weapons work properly when they are supposed to and — will not go off under other circumstances. According to an analysis produced by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, "one third of all the [nuclear] weapon designs placed in the U.S. stockpile between 1958 and 1987 required and received post-deployment nuclear tests to resolve problems." It goes on to say: "In three-quarters of these cases, the problems were identified as a result of nuclear testing."

To be sure, the President has glibly promised to spend "billions of dollars" for something euphemistically known as nuclear "stockpile stewardship." In this connection, significant sums will be expended to develop an array of exotic scientific techniques and facilities. It is hoped that they will, over time, be roughly as useful as nuclear testing, particularly in understanding the changes old nuclear weapons are undergoing. This is a priority since the average age of U.S. nuclear arms is already at a historical high, and going higher.

Still, to get the Joint Chiefs of Staff to drop their opposition to a permanent ban on all nuclear testing, President Clinton had to promise them an out: In essence, he pledged to include an escape clause in the Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) Treaty now under negotiation. Mr. Clinton says, if it once again turns out that we have to conduct nuclear tests because "the safety or reliability of our nuclear deterrent [can] no longer be assured," he would exercise the U.S. right to withdraw from the CTB, citing its "supreme national interests."

Risky Business

This is a stunning pronouncement insofar as it belies the oft-asserted claim by opponents of nuclear testing, namely that the stockpile’s safety and reliability can be assured indefinitely without conducting further tests. At the very least, President Clinton is implicitly acknowledging the truth — to abandon testing is to take real, if hard-to-quantify, risks with the Nation’s deterrent.

Consider, for example, the implications of a test ban for nuclear safety. Today, roughly five thousand weapons in the U.S. stockpile contain an explosive material that is prone to accidental detonation. In the event one of these devices is exposed to fire or dropped, it could go off. Such an event would probably not cause a nuclear explosion, but it could catastrophically disperse radioactive material far and wide.

Thanks to past nuclear testing and developmental efforts, however, approximately one-third of the stockpile has already been equipped with material known as Insensitive High Explosive (IHE) that is far less susceptible to such dangers. For safety’s sake, most — if not all — of the remaining two-thirds of the arsenal should be modified with IHE, as well.

Unfortunately, given the exacting specifications associated with nuclear weapons designs and significant differences between the behavior of IHE and conventional high explosive, the former cannot simply be substituted for the latter. Appreciable design changes are required, the sort of changes whose effects on weapons performance can today only be confidently verified through nuclear tests. As recently as last month, the JASONs — an influential government-sponsored scientific advisory panel — cautioned that "discipline" will be needed in a no-test environment to avoid design changes that could compromise stockpile reliability.

In short, if all nuclear testing is foreclosed, the United States will have to choose between making its aging arsenal as safe as it knows how to or sacrificing confidence in the reliability and performance of its weapons. As the JASONs put it: "…Testing of nuclear weapons at the 500-ton yield level…[conducted on an ongoing basis] can add to long- term stockpile confidence."

Testing and Proliferation

Unfortunately, the JASONs nonetheless conclude in their recent report that the United States can dispense with testing. "…In the last analysis, the technical contribution of such a testing program must be weighed against its costs and its political impact on the non-proliferation goals of the United States." There are, of course, two problems with this conclusion. First of all, the contention that nuclear testing is incompatible with restraining proliferation is a political judgment, not a technical one. Consequently, while the JASONs are entitled to their opinions on this score, those opinions should not be accorded particular weight simply because they are held by individuals with scientific expertise.

Second, such a "grain of salt" approach is all the more necessary given that there has yet to be demonstrated any connection between U.S. nuclear testing and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This is so notwithstanding the mantra-like assertion for decades by anti-nuclear activists that such a correlation exists.

The truth is that Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima fifty years ago last week, had not been tested before its operational use. Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are widely believed to have nuclear weapons, yet they are not known to have conducted tests of their devices. And no one has plausibly demonstrated that the status of the U.S. nuclear test program has been a factor in decisions to "go nuclear" made by these countries — or, for that matter, those taken by Iran, Iraq, Syria, South Africa, Brazil or other once-or-future nuclear wannabes. Instead, local strategic considerations have been the preeminent consideration in each case.

In fact, history suggests that U.S. nuclear testing is not necessarily inconsistent with restraint in nuclear proliferation. After all, as admirers of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are wont to point out, the first three decades after the NPT came into effect saw only a handful of states become nuclear powers, far fewer than President Kennedy and others feared might be the case. Throughout this period, however, the United States engaged in a program of routine testing of its nuclear arsenal.

What ‘Escape Clause’?

President Clinton’s promise to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to withdraw, should the need arise, from a Comprehensive Test Ban is preposterous for one other reason. Even as he was formally announcing that commitment, Mr. Clinton was insisting that the United States could not get out of another arms control accord — the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — despite the fact that it too has a "supreme national interests" clause. Could esoteric (and inevitably debatable) technical arguments about the need for testing to fix suspected problems with U.S. nuclear weapons possibly be more compelling than the present arguments for ending American vulnerability to missile attack in the face of a large and growing proliferation threat? It will take an extraordinarily courageous and principled leader to resist the pressure that will exist then, as now, to give greater weight to the diplomatic and arms control costs entailed than the security benefits made possible by a treaty withdrawal.

Importantly, the Administration has used just this argument to persuade the U.S. Senate to abandon an initiative aimed at defending the American people against missile attack. This initiative was specifically approved by a majority of Senators no fewer than three times within the past ten days. ⁽¹⁾ As a result of negotiations conducted on the Administration’s behalf by Democratic Senators Sam Nunn and Carl Levin with Republican Senators John Warner and William Cohen, though, a "bipartisan compromise" has been developed as a substitute for the Senate-blessed language in S.1026, the FY1996 Defense authorization bill. When reduced to its essence, the compromise satisfies the Clinton objective of assuring the United States’ continued vulnerability to missile strikes for the foreseeable future.

Getting It ‘Both Ways’?

As it happens, on 4 August — the day after the Senate defeated two separate attempts to strike S.1026’s plan for deploying anti-missile defenses — it also debated the issue of nuclear testing. The latter fight was over whether to approve the use of $50 million in funds authorized for the Department of Energy so as to allow preparations for low-yield "hydronuclear" tests. The Senate voted 56-44 to approve such preparations.

This action, however, preceded (and perhaps impelled) the President’s announcement last Friday. His decision to ban all nuclear tests would preclude the U.S. from conducting even extremely low-yield tests (for example, those that produce as little of a blast as the equivalent of four pounds of high explosive) as part of the nuclear stockpile stewardship program. The absurdity of such restraint is evident from the fact that, if such tests are conducted by others, they will be undetectable. Interestingly, one of the Senate’s most rabid CTB enthusiasts, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) told the Senate in 1992 that these low-yield tests "need not be limited under a Comprehensive Test Ban."

In the course of the debate on testing, Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican freshman from Arizona who has already established himself as one of the institution’s most formidable experts on national security matters, made the following trenchant observation:

"…I…find it ironic that some people on the floor [yesterday] were suggesting that the reason we did not need missile defenses is because we could rely upon our Triad, our nuclear Triad. You cannot have it both ways. If you are not going to test [the] reliability and safety of the Triad, then you should be supporting missile defense. If you are not going to support missile defense, then you ought to be supporting the effectiveness of our nuclear Triad."

The Clinton Administration, of course, does want to have it both ways. On the one hand, it wants to continue its self-declared policy of "denuclearization." If left to its own devices, its pursuit of this policy — of which the complete cessation of nuclear testing is but one, small part — will ensure that President Clinton bequeaths to his successor: a nuclear deterrent that is the oldest in our history; an obsolete and non-functioning infrastructure for producing nuclear weapons; and a demoralized and inadequate work-force that may be incapable of ensuring that the Nation’s nuclear arsenal remains safe, reliable and effective. As Senator Richard Bryan, a Democrat from Nevada, told his colleagues on 4 August: "The combination of an aging stockpile and the decaying nuclear weapons expertise at the Nevada test site and at the [national] labs poses a direct threat to the safety and reliability of our stockpile." Were the Senate to reconsider and reverse its 4 August vote on nuclear testing, it would be contributing to such a threat.

On the other hand, the Administration wants to deny this country the sort of insurance policy that missile defenses might offer as a hedge against a precipitous, risky "denuclearization" program. Mr. Clinton does not want to deploy any kind of missile defenses that might protect the American people and homeland. He is intent upon negotiating new agreements with the Russians that will both make such deployments still more problematic and greatly complicate the fielding of effective theater missile defenses. And the President wants no part of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty — or any other arms control accord — despite the threats unilateral U.S. compliance entail to this country’s supreme national interests. Regrettably, the Nunn-Levin-Warner-Cohen "compromise" would provide Clinton and Company political cover for each of these undesirable agendas.

The Bottom Line

Neither the Joint Chiefs of Staff nor the Congress should be under any illusion: The Clinton Administration is intent upon subordinating clear national security requirements to utopian arms control notions. Each failure by the military and/or the legislative branch to resist such efforts makes it that much harder to do down the road.

The Senate should stick by its guns: As long as the United States relies upon nuclear weapons for deterrence, it will have to conduct some periodic tests of those weapons. If one wishes to lessen the need for deterrence based upon nuclear weapons, then one must ensure there is an alternative; active defenses to missile and other attacks can contribute to such an alternative security posture. A policy that provides neither for the nuclear testing necessary to support the first nor the funding and programs necessary for the second is simply irresponsible. That reality is not altered, merely obscured, by defective arms control agreements like an unverifiable Comprehensive Test Ban accord and the obsolete ABM Treaty.

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(1) For more on the Senate’s initial efforts to begin defending America, see the Center for Security Policy’s Decision Brief entitled, Profile in Courage: Dole’s Leadership Keeps Senate on Track to Defend America, Contrasts Sharply With Clinton (No. 95-D 54, 11 August 1995).