Will China’s Nuclear Test Precipitate Needed Reexamination Of Clinton, Congressional Policies?

As had been expected for some time, the People’s Republic of China today carried out its latest test of a nuclear weapon. The Clinton Administration has thus been provided — according to the terms of its own declared nuclear testing policy — with an opportunity to abandon the present, ill-advised and potentially dangerous moratorium it is observing on such testing. The Chinese test should also remind the U.S. Senate of the need to maintain a robust and safe nuclear deterrent capability on the eve of its consideration of legislation that would have the opposite effect.

Clinton’s Nuclear Freeze

On 2 July 1993, President Clinton announced his determination to suspend all U.S. nuclear tests through September 1994 — and permanently if all other nations agree. This, he asserted, would be a step that would serve the nation’s non-proliferation goals. In fact, as the Center for Security Policy has repeatedly observed(1), there is no demonstrable connection between the presence or absence of a modest U.S. nuclear test program and decisions by the likes of Kim Il Sung, Saddam Hussein, Hafez Assad or the mullahs of Iran as to whether or how aggressively they will seek nuclear weapons capabilities.

Lest he be accused of unilateral disarmament, Mr. Clinton left himself an out: If another nation conducted a nuclear test during this moratorium period, he would "direct the Department of Energy to prepare to conduct additional tests while seeking approval to do so from Congress." Such consultations would, presumably, be pro forma since the leading congressional advocates of the test moratorium — such as Sens. George Mitchell, Mark Hatfield and Jim Exon — had consistently made clear their view that the United States should not be denied the right to test if other nuclear powers chose to do so.

Of course, these sentiments were expressed by test-ban advocates in the executive and legislative branches before there was evidence that China was preparing to detonate a nuclear device. By late last month, however, that evidence was unmistakable. Suddenly, Administration officials, congressional figures and editorial writers around the nation started arguing that a Chinese test should not justify a resumption of U.S. testing. According to the Washington Post of 25 September 1993, for example:

"Senior Clinton administration officials…agreed not to try to resume U.S. nuclear tests immediately if China soon conducts a nuclear blast….[They] decided instead to consult Congress on the best way of responding….The Energy Department will make only limited preparations for renewing testing while Capitol Hill and foreign governments are consulted…."

 

A Familiar Bait-and-Switch Routine

Unfortunately, reneging on previous commitments is nothing new to opponents of nuclear testing. For example, as part of the "Hatfield amendment" to the FY1993 Department of Energy appropriations act, Congress expressly allowed the executive branch to conduct a total of fifteen tests between July 1993 and the end of Fiscal Year 1996, following a nine-month testing moratorium. The stated rationale was to permit an orderly transition on the part of the nuclear arsenal and its supporting industrial establishment to a permanent no-testing environment. Had the sponsors not made this concession to colleagues’ legitimate concerns about the effect of an immediate suspension of all testing on the long-term viability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent the Hatfield amendment would probably have been defeated.

As the Clinton Administration began to address the possibility of conducting a number of tests for this purpose in the spring of 1993, however, those who had championed the Hatfield amendment lobbied intensively against any resumption of U.S. nuclear testing — even that permitted by their legislation. Ultimately, the President went along with this flip-flop, in the process disregarding strong Pentagon objections on national security grounds. Now, Mr. Clinton is being urged to ignore one other provision of the law — the much-ballyhooed right to test if other nations refuse to observe the moratorium.

New Congressional Agenda: Dismantling Remaining Centers of Nuclear Expertise

Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee took another step toward unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament. The Committee agreed to take to the Senate floor (perhaps as early as tomorrow) a staff initiative which would dismantle the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). The recommendation, authored by an ardent anti-defense professional staff member named Peter Lennon, would distribute DNA’s various activities in the areas of nuclear weapons safety, survivability and operational support to the Army, Navy and Air Force. It would also reduce the research and development funding available for these purposes by 19% and eliminate the agency’s budget for counter-proliferation programs.

Lennon’s rationale, embodied in report language accompanying the FY1994 Defense Appropriations bill, is that "sweeping changes…in the nuclear threat," "the reordering of the national nuclear regime" and "increasing constraints on the defense budget" have made DNA’s "oversight and management responsibilities" irrelevant and unaffordable. There is, however, no substantiation of these claims offered — to say nothing of any evidence that the proposed action will produce either a more effective or less costly means of meeting continuing requirements for support to the U.S. nuclear forces.

In fact, were the Senate and the full Congress to go along with this recommendation, the consequences would likely be directly at odds with congressionally mandated trends toward consolidation, streamlining and — wherever possible — "joint" performance of Defense Department activities. Inevitably, considerable redundancy and additional costs will be entailed as the several services are obliged to perform work heretofore done by a single center. The benefits obtained by operating a common facility in terms of sharing throughout the Defense Department the fruits of research performed may also be severely diminished.

Ironically, the most grievous effect of eliminating the Defense Nuclear Agency as a joint center for highly skilled — and still needed — expertise as well as a locus for corporate memory and archives, may be that felt by U.S. non-nuclear forces. After all, DNA is charged with assuring that the effects of nuclear weapons on conventional military hardware and equipment are properly understood and factored into designs and operational practices. At a time when more and more countries are becoming capable of using nuclear arms against American or friendly forces, it will become ever more important to address potential vulnerabilities to such effects.

Importantly, just last June the Pentagon completed what Secretary of Defense Les Aspin calls "an in-depth review of DNA." According to a staff memo approved by Deputy Secretary William Perry and dated 14 June 1993, the review "found [the Defense Nuclear] Agency to be first rate, and to have shifted emphasis of its technology program toward post-Cold War realities." In a letter signed out to key Members of Congress eleven days later, Secretary Aspin stated:

"To ensure that the Department preserves critical core nuclear competencies, DNA will be retained as the DoD center for nuclear expertise….Our review…underscored the relevancy of DNA’s core nuclear competencies to conventional weapons improvements and force applications….The synergy of [DNA’s work on various conventional] technologies will help sustain DNA’s core nuclear competencies."

 

The Bottom Line

In short, the nation would be well served were both the executive and legislative branches to reject the advice of those who seek to eviscerate capabilities vital to the maintenance of a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent. Toward this end, in the wake of China’s nuclear test, President Clinton should utilize his authority under the law and his own policy to reestablish a modest but necessary underground test program. Doing otherwise will not measurably affect proliferation; it will, however, cause possibly catastrophic damage to the long-run safety, reliability and effectiveness of the U.S. arsenal.

Dr. William Graham, Science Advisor to President Reagan and a distinguished member of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors, described the risk this way:

"Over the past half century, U.S. nuclear weapons have evolved into complex, highly sophisticated systems developed, produced and maintained to meet U.S. national security challenges. These weapons require maintenance, logistical support and testing — both nuclear and non-nuclear — commensurate with their complexity and sophistication if they are to continue to serve as components of U.S. national security. Without nuclear testing, new, safe, secure, reliable and less complex nuclear weapons cannot be developed and produced, and new survivable systems, technologies and processes cannot be validated."

 

For its part, the Senate should reject the harebrained Lennon initiative aimed at dismantling the Defense Nuclear Agency on the grounds that it will neither enhance U.S. security, meet ongoing conventional as well as nuclear force requirements of the Department of Defense or The Senate should give greater weight to the careful analysis of the Defense Department’s needs in this area recently performed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff than to a congressional staffer’s transparently ideological, anti-nuclear agenda. save money.

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1. See for example the Center’s recent Decision Brief entitled New Democrat Watch #8: Clinton Bungee-Jumping on Nuclear Testing Endangers National Security, (No. 93-D 58, 6 July 1993).