WASHINGTON -- A congressionally mandated expert panel yesterday reported that its members were divided over whether the U.S. Senate should ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but it unanimously advised the White House to clarify specific activities banned by the accord (see GSN, April 22).
(May. 7) -
Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry chaired the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which released a report yesterday (Alex Wong/Getty Images).
On Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller told a U.N. gathering in New York that the Obama administration "will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty." Plans are also in the works to "launch a diplomatic effort to bring on board the other states whose ratifications are required for the treaty to enter into force," she said.
However, if the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States is any indication, the White House might anticipate some partisan wrangling over the issue when it hits Capitol Hill.
"About half of our members disagree with ratification of the CTBT and, indeed, I believe some of them will be prepared to testify against the CTBT when it comes to the Senate," William Perry, who chaired the panel, said at a press conference yesterday.
Perry was U.S. defense secretary when President Bill Clinton signed the test ban treaty in September 1996. However, the Senate in 1999 voted against ratification, with a number of lawmakers citing concern that the pact could not be adequately verified.
"I do support ratifying the CTBT," Perry said yesterday. "I think that the national security interests of the United States are best served by ratifying it."
Now a scholar at Stanford University, he offered two main grounds for his support.
First, unless the United States ratifies the agreement, Washington "cannot assume leadership in the world in this very important issue" of stemming nuclear weapons proliferation, Perry said.
Ratification would reflect movement toward eventual nuclear disarmament, as called for by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the former defense secretary said. Such action could be useful in demonstrating U.S. intent to make good on its NPT obligations, even if even if other nations withhold CTBT ratification and the test ban never enters into force, he said.
Second, Perry said, "moving forward with the CTBT will put limits on other countries for testing, which are important limits for our security."
The United States since the early 1990s has maintained a moratorium on explosive underground nuclear testing, which it previously had conducted to determine the continued viability of the arsenal or assess new weapon designs. Perry said he would like to see other nuclear powers -- especially nations with emerging or prospective capabilities -- bound by similar testing constraints on developing atomic weapons.
Yet, James Schlesinger, vice chairman of the 12-member bipartisan panel, cast doubt on the advantages that Washington's treaty ratification might offer.
"My own judgment is that the substantive benefits of the treaty are modest and therefore I think that roughly half of the members of the commission did not endorse ratification," Schlesinger, who served as defense secretary in the Nixon and Ford Cabinets and as energy secretary in the Carter administration, told the House Armed Services Committee in testimony alongside Perry.
Perry countered that after his own "considerable" consultations on the matter abroad, "I'm persuaded that our [ratification would put] substantial pressure on India and Pakistan and China to ratify, and I'd be willing to bet that their ratification would follow ours if we do it in a reasonable time. And that, itself, would be a substantial benefit to U.S. security."
The commission did agree on several major recommendations regarding the U.S. nuclear posture, such as backing President Barack Obama's interest in preserving a safe and reliable arsenal for the foreseeable future and strengthening global nonproliferation mandates.
Still, commissioners encountered some intractable disagreements over selected issues under debate, perhaps chief among them the question of CTBT ratification. The 158-page report includes a section that spells out opposing test-ban arguments advanced by commissioners.
There the group's CTBT ratification detractors noted that the pact could not enter into force unless several other countries signed and ratified it. The list includes North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Indonesia, Israel and Egypt.
With a probability of "near zero" that all those nations would sign on, U.S. ratification would mean Washington "would be bound by restrictions that other key countries could ignore," treaty opponents stated in the report.
At the same time, Perry said that all the commissioners had agreed that the Obama administration should take a number of steps before bringing the test ban pact before the Senate for a vote. Those include conducting a "broad net assessment of the benefits, costs, and risks of ratification and entry into force" and framing a "national and international debate" over the issue.
The most important condition to meet prior to ratification, Perry said, is that "the United States should seek clarification -- and a clear understanding -- on what tests are banned by this treaty, since there seems to be some ambiguity and confusion on that point."
The United States differs with Russia and China about what constitutes "any nuclear weapon test explosion or other nuclear explosion" banned by the treaty, CTBT opponents asserted in the report.
"From the time of the agreement, there has been a dispute about what that means precisely, and there have been differences between ourselves and Russia with respect to it, and even earlier going back to the Soviet Union," Schlesinger told reporters. "President Clinton ... took the position that the United States would have zero nuclear yield, even [banning extremely low-yield] nuclear experiments."
Prohibited activities, according to Clinton's view, would include hydronuclear experiments, highly sophisticated tests that could produce yields measurable in tons -- potentially less than that achievable through conventional high explosives. To assess existing warheads or develop new ones, a nation might interpret the results of hydronuclear experiments in light of data from full-scale nuclear tests in decades past, according to experts.
However, Schlesinger said, the U.S. view that such experiments would be banned "was not agreed to by other participants" in the treaty negotiations.
"Russian participants, in discussions, have stated that their notion of violating the treaty is if [an explosion] can be detected elsewhere," he said. "That is what I will call a broader and more expansive definition than is the definition of zero nuclear yield."
Speaking from the audience, Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball challenged Schlesinger to provide details about the context in which Russian officials have made such remarks.
The former defense secretary responded: "Unfortunately, there is no extended exchange on that particular point." However, he alluded to "clear intelligence information that others are engaged in activities that we ourselves would not engage in, under the existing rules."
"Apparently Russia and possibly China are conducting low-yield tests," according to the report section articulating the view of treaty opponents. "With no agreed definition, U.S. relative understanding of these capabilities would fall further behind over time and undermine our capability to deter tactical threats against allies."
Contacted today for clarification, commission member Fred Ikle said the concern pertains to a potential decline in U.S. understanding of new weapons that Russia or China might develop on the basis of conducting hydronuclear experiments.
"The message is very clear," he said of the report language. "These countries that take advantage of the incomplete definition of what is prohibited ... can test, as we say clearly, and thereby they can develop and find out what can be done with new types of weapons. And we cannot. And so our understanding, relative to what they can find out and actually build, would be relatively behind. It would be not as complete."
Ikle, who served as a senior official in the Defense and State departments during three Republican administrations, would not elaborate further.
The commissioners' unanimous view was that "the administration must be able to assure the Senate and the American public that there is an agreed understanding with the other nuclear-weapon states about the specific testing activities banned and permitted under the treaty," according to their report.
"Putting aside whether it ever comes into force, if the Comprehensive Test Ban is to be anything more than just a feel-good gesture, those conditions matter plenty," Henry Sokolski, who heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said yesterday in a telephone interview. "You don't want everyone using a restriction in an idiosyncratic way that undermines the whole purpose of the ban."
"Many of the members of the commission would strongly support the CTBT if there were clarification of those rules," Schlesinger said.
Interviewed after the event, Kimball insisted the treaty language clearly prohibits testing with any nuclear yield. Moreover, he said, the only publicly known Russian view he could find on the matter supports the U.S. position.
Kimball cited a January 2000 statement made by a Russian Foreign Ministry official before the Duma, prior to the parliament's vote in favor of ratification five months later.
"Qualitative modernization of nuclear weapons is only possible through full-scale and hydronuclear tests with the emission of fissile energy, the carrying out of which directly contradicts the CTBT," said Yuri Kapralov, then director of the ministry's Security and Disarmament Department, according to an unofficial translation provided by Kimball.
Even if treaty parties were to agree on banning all nuclear tests above zero yield, at least some commissioners would continue to oppose ratification because of lingering concerns over the ability to verify any extremely low-yield tests, their report suggests.
Commission member Morton Halperin, speaking at the press conference, voiced an opposing perspective. He noted that only Russia and China have the technical sophistication required to conduct hydronuclear tests.
"The question for us [regarding] those two countries is: Are they likely to do it if there is an agreement?" he said. "And are they more likely to do it if there's not an agreement?"
Halperin is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations.
"Given that the United States has a policy of not testing -- now sustained through several different administrations -- is it not in our interest to get an agreement which prohibits other countries from testing, even if we cannot be absolutely certain that we'll be able to verify at every level?" added Halperin, speaking on behalf of the commission's ratification supporters. "We think the answer to that is 'yes.'"
U.S. policy-makers, Kimball said, should ask "what the United States would do differently in the future if we ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty vs. what we would do ... without having ratified the CTB" treaty. "And the basic answer is 'nothing,' there is no difference," he said.
"Therefore, why not ratify the treaty and accrue the benefits, since we've already taken on all the basic obligations?" Kimball said. "That's a point that I think opponents of the treaty have difficulty acknowledging or answering."