North Korea seems to be finally coming to its senses on its nuclear program. Which makes it a better time than ever for Congress to start, at long last, working on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty once again.
The treaty has been languishing in the Foreign Relations Committee for almost a decade. But the Hill is supposed to take up the issue any day -- Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) seems to be looking to renew talks by adding an amendment to the next defense authorization bill, expressing support for the treaty and calling for its ratification. He's got the right idea.
Test explosions are one of the crucial tools required to develop new nuclear weapons. Advanced warhead designs – like those made to fit on missiles, for example
– will almost always require testing, even though very basic designs may not. A total ban on nuclear tests, then, could make the pursuit of nuclear weapons much more difficult – especially for countries that lack the sophisticated technical ability to maintain an arsenal without testing. (Iran, that means you.) And to make a good situation even better, the CTBT would also prevent the ejection of more dangerous radioactive materials into the atmosphere, soil, and groundwater.
Critics of the CTBT say that we must retain the right to test, in order to make sure our nuclear deterrent remains robust and reliable. This argument holds little weight.
As of 2005 the Stockpile Stewardship Program – charged with maintaining the reliability of our nuclear weapons – had completed *nine *
certifications of the stockpile since its inception, without any need for testing. And even if U.S. officials decided we had to test for some reason, we could simply withdraw from the treaty after giving six months’
notice.
Other critics focus on verifying compliance with the treaty – they ask how we can be certain that countries will not secretly test and move ahead in nuclear technology, while we forego testing and potentially fall behind.
The answer lies in a system that will combine seismic, infrasound, hydroacoustic and radionuclide data from a network of over 300 monitoring stations worldwide. According to a 2002 National Academy of Sciences report, the completed network will be able to reliably detect nuclear tests as small as one kiloton anywhere on the globe (the Hiroshima bomb, considered small by today’s standards, was around 15 kilotons). In certain circumstances, the network could even detect tests as small as 0.l kiloton. While certain evasive techniques could be applied to make detection more difficult, countries’ first nuclear tests have historically been nine kilotons or higher; the detection ability of the planned network is likely more than sufficient to fulfill its verification role. For instance, the North Korea test of October 2006 seems to have been an exception for a first test, at around 0.5
kilotons, but it was nevertheless detected handily.
Despite critics’ assertions, the CTBT will make life much more difficult for states looking to develop new nuclear weapons and it will not, for the foreseeable future, endanger the reliability of the U.S. deterrent. And there is another, broader argument for ratifying the treaty – it may help alleviate a perceived crisis surrounding the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The NPT contains a “grand bargain”: non-nuclear weapons states forego weapons, in exchange for help with peaceful nuclear technology and a promise of total nuclear disarmament by the nuclear weapons states. As the years have gone by, more and more states are beginning to sense that that promise may have been hollow. U.S. ratification of the treaty could encourage other holdouts to ratify the CTBT (9 others must sign and ratify it before it can enter into force), revitalize the NPT and the nonproliferation regime, and lessen the danger of future proliferation.
-- Eric Hundman
