Vive La France! French Determination To Perform Necessary Nuclear Testing Should Be Wake-Up Call To US

(Washington, D.C.): On Bastille Day, it is appropriate to salute an instance of courage and principled pursuit of sound national security policy all too rare among Western leaders today. In the face of nearly universal condemnation, the new French government of Jacques Chirac has decided to resume limited underground nuclear testing. The backdrop for this decision is an unavoidable reality: To maintain an effective, safe and reliable — and therefore credible — nuclear deterrent, it is necessary to perform periodic detonations of actual weapons.

Those responsible for U.S. deterrent policy have a duty to follow the French lead. The new Congress should join them in rejecting the current anti-testing policy which is, together other Clinton "denuclearization" measures, leading inexorably to unilateral American nuclear disarmament.

An Incomprehensible Test Ban

Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration remains wedded to the approach largely forged by Mr. Chirac’s predecessor, Socialist Francois Mitterand. It seeks a permanent Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB). The Chirac government announced its intention to conduct a series of eight underground detonations at its Pacific test site, so as to perform reliability- and modernization-related experiments that would be essential if France were to become party to a CTB. The Clinton team is determined to ignore the compelling arguments being made by the current French government that higher yield nuclear testing is necessary at the very least to prepare a nation’s arsenal for the sort of environment in which all such testing is prohibited.

The Law Permits U.S. Testing

Ironically, such a series of American underground tests is specifically authorized by statute. In 1992, legislation was adopted by the then-Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by President Bush endorsing a Comprehensive Test Ban. This law also directed a moratorium on U.S. testing after up to fifteen tests were conducted to help prepare the American nuclear arsenal for a permanent cessation of underground detonations. The legislation also expressly provided for a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing in the event that other nuclear powers conducted tests.

Upon coming into office, the anti-nuclear zealots put into senior Administration posts in the Department of Energy, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, State and Defense Departments, Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Security Council saw to it that the United States would forego any further testing. They also ensured that the continuation of nuclear testing by communist China would not be reciprocated by renewed U.S. testing.

The Clinton team has argued that such steps are justified since an end to U.S. underground testing is an essential factor in dissuading would-be nuclear powers to give up their ambitions. It repeated this dubious contention with mantra-like regularity in the course of its campaign to achieve a permanent extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). And now, with the successful conclusion of that campaign, the Administration’s denuclearizers are citing commitments made in the course of it to prevent even a revisiting of the no-testing decision — to say nothing of conducting any U.S. tests.

Whether such a policy materially advances the cause of non-proliferation appears, frankly, to be a secondary consideration. The real reason for the Clinton insistence on no American nuclear tests appears to be more straightforward: Without periodic, realistic underground tests, the U.S. arsenal will over time inevitably become unreliable. At that point, it will be problematic to resist implementation of even the most radical, unilateral disarmament agendas.

Back to First Principles

The Center for Security Policy believes that the fiftieth anniversary on Sunday 16 July of the world’s first nuclear test — the "Trinity" experiment in Alamogordo, New Mexico is an appropriate moment to reflect upon the reasons why the Clinton Administration’s no-test policy is irresponsible. Toward this end, it is instructive to review the findings of one of the most comprehensive official U.S. government studies done on the subject of nuclear testing, a report submitted to Congress in September 1988 by the Reagan Administration. This report, entitled The Relationship Between Progress in Other Areas of Arms Control and More Stringent Limitations on Nuclear Testing, concluded that:

"Nuclear testing is indispensable to maintaining the credible nuclear deterrent which has kept the peace for over 40 years. Thus we do not regard nuclear testing as an evil to be curtailed, but as a tool to be employed responsibly in pursuit of national security." (Emphasis added.)

The fundamental reasons for nuclear testing are matters of thermonuclear physics and other relevant facts that have not changed since this report was sent to Congress:

• "First, we do so to ensure the reliability of our nuclear deterrent."

 

• "Second, we conduct nuclear tests in order to improve the safety, security, survivability, and effectiveness of our nuclear arsenal. Testing has allowed the introduction of modern safety and security features on our weapons. It has permitted a reduction by nearly one-third in the total number of weapons in the stockpile since 1960, as well as a reduction in the total megatonnage in that stockpile to approximately one-quarter of its 1960 value."

 

• "Third, the U.S. tests to ensure we understand the effects of a nuclear environment on military systems."

 

• "Finally, by continuing to advance our understanding of nuclear weapons design, nuclear testing serves to avoid technological surprise and to allow us to respond to the evolving threat."

The Bottom Line

Advocates of a Comprehensive Test Ban blithely assert that advances in computer simulation technology can reliably substitute for "live" tests. However, the current U.S. nuclear stockpile was created on the assumption that actual weapons testing would continue to be available. Although technological advances may theoretically permit other effective means of testing the reliability and safety of our stockpile, the demonstration of such capability is still years down the road. If a structured program of nuclear tests does not resume, the Nation’s nuclear deterrent — something that the American people and their allies continue to depend upon for their security — will undoubtedly degrade.

It is past time for Congress to take a hard look at the debatable premises of the Clinton nuclear testing policy and its dire implications should the United States fail, at a minimum, to follow France’s lead by conducting tests aimed at making the Nation’s nuclear arsenal less susceptible to the pernicious effects of a nuclear test ban. Hearings should be convened at once by sober-minded legislators like Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Strom Thurmond (R-SC) and Representatives Floyd Spence (R-SC) and Ben Gilman (R-NY), who have supported in the past a robust nuclear deterrent. These hearings should explore the evident irrelevance of U.S. testing policies to the programs of nuclear minipowers or wannabes like India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, etc. Such hearings should also investigate the sorted history of how this country came to abandon nuclear testing, the only reliable means of insuring the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons.

At the very least, the relevant congressional committees must reckon with this unhappy reality: A continued U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing will result in a sharp erosion in the Nation’s deterrent posture. Under present and foreseeable circumstances, such a degradation would be intolerable and irresponsible.