The Case for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: Stronger Than Ever
In his April 2009 speech in Prague, President Barack Obama outlined a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and pledged to “immediately and aggressively” pursue approval of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits any nuclear test explosions that produce a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction and creates a robust international verification regime. Now, within days of the second Obama-initiated global Nuclear Security Summit, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has released its much-anticipated report on the technical and security issues related to the CTBT. It provides ample evidence that the case for the test ban has never been better.
In 1996, the United States was the first country to sign the CTBT, but in 1999, the US Senate rejected the treaty. That year, Republicans who opposed the test ban did so largely on the grounds that the US nuclear deterrent cannot be maintained without testing and that the treaty is unverifiable. While the NAS report does not take a position on whether the United States should ratify the CTBT, it does conclude that the “United States is now better able to maintain a safe and effective nuclear stockpile and to monitor clandestine nuclear-explosion testing than at any time in the past.” In other words, in this day and age, concerns about the maintenance of the stockpile and verification of the treaty are no longer compelling arguments. In short, the United States should ratify the CTBT as soon as possible: It has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Authored by an independent panel of nine eminent technical and security experts, the NAS report provides a review and assessment of the changes that have occurred in the decade since the NAS last examined these issues in 2002. In particular, the report evaluates the US ability to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear testing, the status of nuclear-explosion detection, and whether new technical advances would threaten or ensure US security under the treaty.
Nuclear weapons without nuclear testing. “Provided that sufficient resources and a national commitment to stockpile stewardship are in place,” the report states, “the committee judges that the United States has the technical capabilities to maintain a safe, secure, and reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons into the foreseeable future without nuclear-explosion testing.” In fact, the authors go on to say that “[t]he technical capabilities for maintaining the U.S. stockpile absent nuclear-explosion testing are better now than anticipated by the 2002 Report.” The United States knows more about maintaining its nuclear weapons today than ever before.
In addition to a stronger grasp of the technology, the National Nuclear Security Administration has received enormous funding increases in recent years specifically to ensure the long-term health of the stockpile in the absence of testing. For example, the fiscal year 2013 request of $7.6 billion for the security administration’s weapons activities account is an increase of $1.2 billion over the fiscal 2010 level. As Senator Dianne Feinstein noted at an appropriations committee hearing last month, “I believe the fiscal year 2013 budget request provides more than sufficient funding to modernize the nuclear weapons stockpile.” Between America’s advanced understanding of technical measures and sufficient money to maintain those measures, testing nuclear weapons is plainly no longer necessary to ensure US security.
Detection. The United States has gained a more sophisticated understanding of monitoring capabilities in the last 10 years: “The status of U.S. national monitoring and the International Monitoring System (IMS) has improved to levels better than predicted in 1999.” Any state that might consider cheating on the treaty by testing a nuclear weapon would run a very high risk of detection. Approximately 80 percent of the stations planned as part of the International Monitoring System — a global network of detection systems and technologies — are already in place. Though less robust at the time, this same monitoring system detected the North Korean nuclear test explosions in 2006 and 2009.
The CTBT also provides for short-notice, on-site inspections that can be used to confirm violations detected by the verification system. According to the report, “Constraints placed on nuclear-explosion testing by the monitoring capabilities of the IMS and U.S. [National Technical Means] will reduce the likelihood of successful clandestine nuclear-explosion testing.” And, perhaps more significant, the treaty’s prohibition on testing buttressed by the threat of detection will “inhibit the development of new types of strategic nuclear weapons.”
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