DATE=10/16/1999
TYPE=ON THE LINE
TITLE=ON THE LINE: COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY
NUMBER=1-00787
EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY - 619-0037
CONTENT=
THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Anncr:  On the Line - a discussion of United 
States policy and contemporary issues.  This week, 
"The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty." Here is your 
host, Robert Reilly.

Host:   Hello and welcome to On the Line. 
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would ban all 
nuclear explosions designed to test, develop, or 
improve nuclear weapons. To come into force, all 
forty-four nations that have the capability to 
build nuclear weapons must ratify it. To date, 
approximately two dozen have done so. The United 
States has observed a unilateral nuclear test ban 
since 1992. But treaty opponents claim that a 
permanent lack of testing would undermine the U.S. 
nuclear deterrent, while doing little to stop 
rogue states and others from continuing to build 
up their nuclear arsenals. Those concerns 
prevailed last week when the U.S. Senate voted not 
to ratify the treaty.

Joining me today to discuss the Comprehensive Test 
Ban Treaty are three experts. Michael Krepon is 
president of the Henry Stimson Center, a public 
policy foundation. Henry Sokolski is executive 
director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education 
Center.  And Gary Milhollin is director of the 
Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. Welcome 
to the program.

Host:  Michael Krepon, what is at stake in the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty?

Krepon:  Two large things are at stake. The role 
of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. How 
important a role will they play? How much of a 
profile will they have? And the second thing that 
is at stake is: how successful will we all be in 
efforts to control proliferation?

Host:  And you think this treaty is important 
enough that it will decide both those matters?

Krepon: No one factor decides these things, but 
the issue of nuclear testing casts a very, very 
long shadow on all of this area.

Host:  Henry Sokolski, what is your reaction to 
that?

Sokolski:  I think resuming testing without cause, 
or just in a pique of desire to get back to the 
Cold War, might prompt some of the concerns that 
Michael has raised. But I don't see the 
ratification of the treaty necessarily being the 
do-or-die issue. With regard to the 
nonproliferation, frankly, I can think of many 
more initiatives that would be more important to 
reduce demand for going nuclear than whether or 
not we ratify this treaty.

Host:  Gary Milhollin, what is the significance of 
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty?

Milhollin:  I think the treaty has very little 
significance. I think the idea behind the treaty 
originated in the Cold War and has been overtaken 
by events. Even if the United States ratifies the 
treaty, that won't cause countries like India and 
Pakistan necessarily to ratify it. If we don't 
ratify it, we will still refrain from testing 
ourselves and so will the other big countries that 
have the bomb. That is, there is a moratorium in 
place now among the United States, Britain, 
France, China, and Russia. That will continue 
regardless of what we do.

Host:  Let's talk a little more specifically, 
Michael Krepon, about the consequences of the U.S. 
Senate's not ratifying the treaty. Play out the 
ripple effect from that because both President 
Clinton and certain leaders in the Senate have 
said that this will have direct consequences.

Krepon:  There will be many ripples. First of all, 
the ability of the United States government, this 
administration, the next administration, to talk 
to other countries to get them to do specific 
steps that we would like them to do to reduce 
nuclear dangers will be much, much diminished. 
That's number one.

Host:  But let me stop you there and ask why, 
because the United States has a rather bipartisan 
agreement that there is no reason for the United 
States to test in the near future, so that we 
would continue with the unilateral freeze on 
testing. Doesn't that give enough moral weight to 
the U.S. position to proceed?

Kropen:  I think the question that other foreign 
governments have when they hear this argument is: 
if you have no reason to test, why don't you 
ratify this treaty? You're asking us to ratify 
this treaty. Why should we ratify this treaty if 
you think the rules do not apply to you?

Host:  Let's ask Henry Sokolski to answer that. 
You've just been asked by a foreign government, 
and you are answering for the United States.

Sokolski:  Well, I think this is the criticism 
critics have of the treaty, that it tries to rush 
to judgment to close certain uncertainties before 
they've been resolved. One of them, for example, 
that we keep getting hit with is: do we need to 
test, and when, to maintain the safety of the 
stockpile? Another question that's raised is: what 
should be the role of nuclear weapons if we don't 
know within thirty percent what in the world the 
Russians have in their stockpile to turn into 
weapons overnight, or in few years? These 
uncertainties are what drive us to hold on to the 
nuclear weapons and to wonder whether or not we 
may need to test in the future. We need to get 
those resolved. That's the reason why ratifying 
this now should not be an imperative.

Host:  Then, what do you think of that argument, 
Gary Milhollin, that the safety and the 
reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile cannot 
be maintained without testing, indefinitely.

Milhollin:  That is a difficult technical issue. 
It seems to me that we know now that our weapons 
are safe. And we know now that they're very likely 
to work. We also, I think, can be confident that 
no country is going to challenge us to a nuclear 
war under the theory that, say, ten percent or 
twenty percent of our warheads are not going to go 
off. But if you project out ten years or twenty 
years, when our current crop of designers has 
died, when our testing data is old, when we've 
remanufactured weapons maybe once or twice without 
testing them with new materials and perhaps new 
components, then I think that it is a legitimate 
scientific question whether you can have the 
requisite degree of confidence.

Host:  What is your answer to that, Michel Krepon?

Krepon:  This concern about the safety and 
reliability of nuclear weapons applies to every 
country that has them. And if the United States is 
in trouble here, then we can only imagine what 
kind of trouble other countries will be in with 
far less capability, far less of infrastructure, 
far less talent, far less money, and far less 
advanced machinery, to answer these questions. My 
view, though, is more basic than that. Nuclear 
weapons create devastating effects. The first 
weapons that were designed were designed without 
the benefit of any of this fancy equipment that we 
are going to provide to our own laboratory 
scientists. They worked. They can kill a city. 
This treaty does not prohibit the development and 
maintenance of that kind of stockpile. What it 
does prohibit pretty effectively is the 
development of advanced weapons designs. And there 
are lots of countries that are interested in 
acquiring them.

Host:  And that brings up to the next big 
question. Opponents of this treaty claim that this 
treaty does not have the verification provisions 
to detect cheating on this treaty by nations that 
are likely to do so, rogue countries like North 
Korea, Iran, Iraq, proliferators like China, 
Russia. And number three, even if they are 
detected in violation of the treaty, that there 
are no enforcement mechanisms for it. Could you 
respond to that?

Sokolski:  I think that this gets back to Gary's 
point, which is this is a ban-the-bomb movement 
effort dating back to the fifties, when we were 
locked in a mortal strategic combat mode with the 
Soviet Union in the Cold War. When you don't have 
that Cold War, the enforcement isn't, well, we're 
going go to war against cheaters in the way that 
it was presumed to be the case with all Cold War 
arms control. If there were a violation, it would 
cause major tension with the Soviet Union that 
might lead to war. So everyone was very careful 
and tried to adhere to these things and verify 
them. That's not the case now. 

Host:  You're saying that verification is not as 
critical?

Sokolski:  No, I am saying that enforcement is 
much less likely now without the discipline of a 
major standoff between two of the major powers 
that gave birth to this idea of a test ban to 
begin with.

Host:  But doesn't that make the treaty less 
relevant, because what we are worried about, as 
you just said, is not a Cold War adversary but 
rogue nations that are developing weapons of mass 
destruction.

Krepon:  It means the enforcement that's inherent 
to Cold War arms control will not be present with 
this treaty. And therefore cheating will pay more 
and be more likely.

Host: Gary Milhollin, what do you think of that?

Milhollin:  I think that if we're looking around 
the world at countries whose behavior we are 
trying to affect by this treaty, we wont find very 
many. I think Iran and Iraq, if they ever get to 
the point where they can test a bomb, will test it 
regardless of what we do or even regardless of 
whether they promise not to test. They will cheat. 
I think it's also quite likely that the Russians 
and the Chinese, if they thought they needed to, 
would cheat because in effect there is no real 
enforcement mechanism. If we detect an ambiguous 
signal from China or Russia, it's not a basis for 
a diplomatic initiative - to have an ambiguous 
signal. And there are ways of muffling tests to 
make them ambiguous. And also, at least today, our 
government has an engagement policy with China. So 
if we detected a Chinese test, it would be a 
counter to our overall diplomatic effort in China 
to raise it. And also we're trying to maintain 
good relations with the Russians under trying 
circumstances. If we accuse them formally of 
cheating on the test moratorium or cheating on the 
treaty, that torpedoes other diplomatic interests. 
So not only there is no practical enforcement, 
there is really not even a strong incentive to 
enforce.

Host:  Which leaves you with what conclusion 
regarding the worth of the comprehensive test ban?

Milhollin: As I said when we began, I think it's a 
treaty that the time has passed by. And I don't 
think it's a solution to proliferation and it's 
not a solution to our strategic problems anymore.

Host:  Michel Krepon?

Krepon:  I'd like to answer three criticisms that 
you've put on the table. Verification, 
enforcement, and a treaty whose time has come and 
gone. On the last point, Gary, we just a year and 
a half ago saw India and Pakistan test nuclear 
weapons. It is still a very relevant factor for 
these countries. We've all discussed the 
possibility of Iran, Iraq, maybe North Korea, 
maybe a few other countries, getting into the 
nuclear weapons business in a very overt way that 
does require testing. If these circumstances come 
to pass, it's easy for all of us to envision other 
countries that would get into the nuclear business 
in a serious way. To me, this means that the 
treaty has great relevance because it is harder 
for countries to test when the entire world is 
lined up against them. There are no guarantees 
here. Let's talk about verification. Under this 
treaty, countries retain their national 
capabilities to detect. And in the case of the 
United States, our capabilities are pretty 
considerable. But in addition to that, we also get 
an international monitoring system with over 
three-hundred sensors of various kinds placed in 
areas of the globe where they will have 
considerable meaning, including in Russia and 
China, to detect extremely low-yield events. If we 
cannot distinguish between a seismic event and a 
low-yield test, the treaty provides for onsight 
inspection provisions - challenge inspection 
provisions. Let's talk about enforcement.

Sokolski: By the way, can we rejoin at any point? 
There are two problems already. First of all, yes, 
the comprehensive test ban sure did have a lot to 
do with India, but it had a lot to do with why it 
tested. They were frightened and they have 
publicly gone on record making this very clear. 
They tested when they did because they do not want 
to be penalized for not testing before the treaty 
came into force. So that one had a reverse 
implication. The treaty was not a big boon for 
preventing testing in India. It egged them on. 
Second of all, the Chinese already are making it 
very clear that they don't want seismic sites 
anywhere near their nuclear testing facilities. In 
fact, they want them as far away from that as 
possible, already raising the headache of what's 
good enough.

Krepon:  The locations of seismic stations and 
other stations in China are already indicated in 
the treaty annexes. With respect to India, it is a 
country that I know something about. There are 
many reasons for India's test.

Sokolski:  I will agree with that, but that was 
one of them.

Krepon:  You've mentioned one of them, but I'm not 
sure that it was the most important one.

Sokolski: It certainly explained the timing.

Krepon: On the question of enforcement, 
enforcement requires cooperation. You cannot 
enforce unilaterally. If the United States stays 
away from this treaty, says goodbye to it, what 
kind of enforcement provisions and what kind of 
enforcement leverage are we going to have.

Host:  What are the enforcement provisions within 
the treaty? Let's say the treaty comes into force. 
Someone violates it. What does the treaty allow?  

Krepon:  The treaty allows for flexible 
enforcement arrangements, a wide variety, 
depending on what the states agree upon. In the 
case of Iraq after the Persian Gulf war, there was 
enforcement because there was a common agreement 
about the dangers of Iraq's behavior and the 
dangers of their continuing programs. 
Circumstances in which you can do collective 
enforcement, outside of treaties, are extremely 
rare. It's much easier to do it inside a treaty 
itself.

Milhollin:  If you assume that somebody is going 
to cheat, how can you assume at the same time you 
are going to have cooperation? Anybody who cheats 
is not going to cooperate. When they decide to 
cheat, they are going to decide that they are 
going to deny that they cheated and they are 
certainly going to prevent anybody from coming in 
to catch them. And this is the problem with all 
treaties. The Iraqis, for example, were members in 
good standing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation 
Treaty before the Gulf war. They cheated on that 
treaty repeatedly and were never caught. I think 
we can expect the Iraqis to continue to cheat. The 
Iranians right now are cheating on the 
Nonproliferation Treaty. And there is no mechanism 
for addressing that. So I think when you look at 
these treaties, you have to see that, as Henry 
said, they really don't address the main problem 
of proliferation. The main problem of 
proliferation is that the Chinese and the Russians 
today are supplying the wherewithal to make the 
bomb to Iran, and probably will supply it to Iraq. 
And we don't really have a strategy for dealing 
with that.

Host:  Let me ask you this question because, in 
order for this treaty to come into force, as I 
mentioned in the introduction of the program, it 
requires ratification by forty-four countries. 
Aside from the action of U.S. Senate this past 
week, we would have to have ratification from 
China, from Russia, from North Korea. What is the 
likelihood, in realistic, political terms, of this 
treaty ever coming into force?

Milhollin:  I think it is very small, but it does 
not matter that much because we have a moratorium 
among the five big countries and anybody else can 
join. That is, if the Indians tomorrow decided 
that they wanted to give up testing, they can join 
the moratorium unilaterally. And then Pakistan 
would join because the political pressure would be 
on them.

Sokolski: They have actually claimed that they 
want to do that. The good news may be that, if 
this controversy is behind us, we can focus on the 
few things where all three of us may agree need 
more attention. There is so much uncertainty about 
how many weapons' worth of material Russia has. It 
would be nice to get some pressure and attention 
on getting that resolved. That would make arms 
control that was substantive more likely, more and 
more constructive arms control than this treaty 
focused on, because if we don't know what the 
Russians have, with enormous uncertainties, how 
can we do arms control at all.

Host:  Last word to Michel Krepon.

Krepon:  There is no guarantee that the current 
moratorium will be extended. Nuclear testing can 
resume. This treaty is very important. It is 
needed. If the U.S. takes the lead, others will 
follow. 

   Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have this 
week. I'd like to thank our guests - Michael 
Krepon from the Henry Stimson Center; Henry 
Sokolski from the Nonproliferation Policy 
Education Center; and Gary Milhollin from the 
Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control- for 
joining me to discuss the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty. This is Robert Reilly for On the Line.



15-Oct-1999 11:03 AM EDT (15-Oct-1999 1503 UTC)
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Source: Voice of America
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