Forum:
Should We Continue to Seek Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty?
Victor W. Sidel, M.D. "I have
come to agree with India’s long-held position that a CTBT without a timebound
framework for abolition may be a step backwards."
Daryl Kimball "The problems
identified by India and by the nuclear abolition movement are not caused by the
CTBT, which was--and still is--particularly inconvenient for India’s nuclear
ambitions."
[Editor's Note: Neither
India nor Pakistan is a party to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, passed by
the United Nations in December 1996, or to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
India has argued vociferously that the CTBT and the nonproliferation regime are
tantamount to a form of nuclear apartheid. Supporters of the treaty, including
many abolitionists, argue that only these two agreements, flawed though they may
be, stand in the way of rampant growth in the number of nuclear weapon states.
M&GS asked two abolition advocatess with differing views--Dr. Victor Sidel of
the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and Daryl Kimball
of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers--to explain the cases for and against
CTBT ratification in light of the South Asian nuclear tests.]
Victor W. Sidel, M.D. Since the nuclear
explosive tests by India in early May it has become clear to me that I can no
longer participate unreservedly in efforts by anti-nuclear-war groups to urge
the US Congress to ratify the CTBT
in its current form. This is a sharp change in my view that requires some careful
explanation. Atmospheric Testing I have personally
been working for a ban on nuclear weapons testing since the early 1950s when I
was an undergraduate physics major at Princeton. Despite assurances by the US
that nuclear fallout from the atmospheric tests in the open air posed no health
risks, those of us who were aware of the local and global fallout of radionuclides
produced by the tests knew the assurances were uninformed or, more likely, purposely
false. Documentation by the National Cancer Institute 40 years later [see “NCI
Study Raises New Concerns about Fallout-Related Thyroid Cancer,” M&GS
1998;5:8-10] confirmed our concerns. Because of the potential health consequences
of the radioactive fallout and because of the role of testing in perpetuating
the nuclear arms race, those of us in the Physicians
for Social Responsibility (PSR), formed in 1961, argued vigorously for a test
ban. The 1963 Limited
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere,
under the oceans and in space, was seen as a major victory. Underground
Testing While the LTBT did nothing to slow the nuclear arms race and permitted
the pollution of the ecosphere by radionuclides through venting or underground
deposit, it at least sharply reduced the accumulation of short-lived iodine-131
in the thyroid glands of children and delayed the ecologic spread of long-lived
isotopes. Efforts then shifted to urging a moratorium on all explosive (fissile)
testing and urging a “comprehensive ban,” not only to stop further despoilment
of the ecosphere but even more because we believed a moratorium and a Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) would block military forces from developing new nuclear
weapons and prevent these forces being secure in the reliability of the nuclear
weapons in their stockpiles. A CTBT, many of us thought, would make reliance on
“nuclear deterrence” more problematic, would slow the nuclear arms race
and would be a step in the direction of nuclear abolition. We thought it a step
forward when a number of nuclear weapon states (NWS) established and respected
a moratorium on testing. Negotiation and Signing of the
CTBT I began to have my doubts, as a member of a delegation to Geneva,
about the value of the CTBT as it was being negotiated by the Conference on Disarmament
(CD). The Indian ambassador to the CD told us that India would refuse to accept
the CTBT then being negotiated because it would allow the nuclear weapon states
to maintain their nuclear weapons stockpiles and even to develop and test new
nuclear weapons. She said that India would only accept a CTBT that called for
a timebound goal of nuclear abolition. We responded that while we respected India’s
principled position, we nonetheless believed that the CTBT then being negotiated
was better than no CTBT at all and that it would lead toward the goal that we
and India were seeking. The CTBT negotiated in Geneva
was approved by the UN General Assembly and was signed by 147 nations at the UN
in September 1996. This treaty bans “any nuclear weapon test explosion or
any other nuclear explosion,” but the US claims that “subcritical”
explosions and inertial confinement fusion explosions as well as computer simulations--central
components of the so-called Stockpile
Stewardship and Maintenance Program (SSMP)--are permitted and is conducting
such tests [1,2]. Without a real move
by the NWS towards the abolition of nuclear weapons, the CTBT in its current form
permits continued “vertical” proliferation by the NWS, helps maintain
the NWS monopoly, is provocative to the nuclear have-nots, and may actually intensify
the nuclear arms race [3,4,5]. The
India and Pakistan Tests The NWS have refused for 3 decades to set up any
timetable for compliance with Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
of 1970, which calls for nuclear as well as general disarmament. Even after the
World Court in a unanimous advisory opinion in 1997 called on the NWS to move
expeditiously toward fulfillment of their obligations under Article 6, the NWS
have refused to make a timebound commitment. At a NPT Preparatory Committee meeting
in Geneva two days before the India tests no progress toward abolition was made.
This refusal to proceed toward abolition alongside a history of some 2,000 US
explosive nuclear tests (and a comparable number of Soviet tests), the continuation
of US non-explosive tests, and the size of the current US nuclear stockpile, make
US complaints about the tests by India and Pakistan and the imposition of economic
sanctions against the poor people of these countries seem cynical and hypocritical.
A group of 73 US Roman Catholic bishops in June 1998 issued a statement commenting
on the India and Pakistan tests and on the SSMP: “Such an investment in a
program to upgrade the ability to design, develop, test and maintain nuclear weapons
signals quite clearly that the United States shows no intention of moving forward
with progressive disarmament, and certainly no commitment to eliminating these
weapons entirely.” I of course believe the action of the new Indian
government and the response by Pakistan in conducting explosive tests was self-destructive
and immoral. But the explosive nuclear tests by India and Pakistan were, as many
have said, a “wake-up” call to the world. I have come to agree with
India’s long-held position that a CTBT without a timebound framework for
abolition may be a step backwards. What
Is To Be Done I will in the future devote my own energies to support a
series of steps that I believe may lead more directly to nuclear abolition [6]:
- Immediate de-alerting of all nuclear weapons. This is relatively simple process
that can be undertaken unilaterally by any of the nuclear weapon states.
- Ratification
by the Russian Duma of START II and its prompt implementation by the US and Russia.
This will almost certainly require that the US pay the costs in both countries.
- Negotiation of START III, with the inclusion of other nuclear weapon states.
- A ban on production and on transfer of all weapons-grade fissile material
with progress toward elimination, and a ban on production of tritium.
- A cessation
or at least a sharp reduction in the SSMP, as called for in House Concurrent Resolution
307, introduced on July 23, 1998 by Representative Markey.
- Most important,
progress toward nuclear abolition requires prompt negotiation of a nuclear weapons
convention that sets forth a schedule for abolition of nuclear weapons. A “Model
Nuclear Weapons Convention,”in the drafting of which I was privileged
to participate, was circulated by the UN in 1997 (A/C.1/52/7) as a work in progress.
Both India and Pakistan have agreed to participate in negotiations for a nuclear
weapons convention, but the US has not. Representative Woolsey has called for
US support for the convention by introducing House Resolution 479 on June 18,
1998.
I continue to work in every way I can to support the abolition of
nuclear weapons. I just can’t bring myself any longer to work unreservedly
for ratification of what I consider to be a hypocritical and dysfunctional formulation
of a so-called CTBT. References
1. McKinzie MG, Cochran TB, Paine CE. Explosive Alliances:
Nuclear Weapons Simulation Research at American Universities. Washington, DC:
Natural Resources Defense Council. 1998. [Return to text]
2. Broad WJ. US plan shows new design work on nuclear arms.
New York Times, August 18, 1997:A1,A14. [Return to text]
3. Lichterman A, Cabasso J. A Faustian Bargain: Why “Stockpile
Stewardship” is Fundamentally Incompatible with the Process of Nuclear Disarmament.
Oakland, California: Western States Legal Foundation. 1998. [Return
to text]
4. Paine CE, McKinzie MG. End Run: The US
Government’s Plan for Designing Nuclear Weapons and Simulating Nuclear Explosions
Under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Washington, DC: Natural Resources Defense
Council. 1998. [Return to text]
5.
The stewardship of conscience. Nature, January 29, 1998. [Return
to text]
6. Forrow L, Sidel VW. Medicine and nuclear
war: From Hiroshima to mutual assured destruction to Abolition 2000. JAMA 1998;280:456-461.
[Return to text]
Daryl Kimball The nuclear weapons test explosions by India and Pakistan
in May 1998 have pushed those nations to the edge of a full-scale nuclear arms
race and have increased the likelihood of a nuclear conflagration involving one-fifth
of the world’s inhabitants. The tests have also rekindled the debate on the
value of the 1996 Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and how to break through the obstacles to the elimination
nuclear weapons worldwide. From the perspective of this nuclear weapons
abolitionist, the troubling events in South Asia underscore three things:
- a need to reassess India’s policies on testing and disarmament, which
now appear to have been designed to preserve India’s nuclear capability;
- the importance of prompt implementation of the CTBT;
- the need
for new leadership and more aggressive action to achieve nuclear weapons abolition.
India,
Pakistan and the CTBT The Indian government’s reckless nuclear blasts,
in addition to raising regional tensions to new levels and provoking Pakistan
to follow suit, have unfortunately undermined India’s credibility and long-standing
leadership for nuclear disarmament. The tests also confirm early suspicions that
India’s CTBT negotiating posture in 1996 was designed in part to avoid Indian
participation in the CTBT and to leave India unconstrained to preserve its nuclear
ambitions, which date back to the time of China’s first nuclear test in 1964.
Since its first nuclear blast in 1974, India has sought to maintain its “nuclear
option.” With the ascendancy of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India has
exercised that “option” and declared itself a nuclear weapon state.
The BJP has thereby repeated many of the mistakes of the nuclear weapon states
(NWS) that India has so steadfastly pointed out over the decades. To be
certain, there are elements of the Indian government’s critique of the original
nuclear weapon states’ policies that are right on the mark--particularly
their failure to take aggressive, tangible steps toward nuclear weapons elimination
since the end of the Cold War and the danger of the development of new nuclear
weapon types through the US’s sophisticated stockpile
stewardship program. Global condemnation of the South Asian tests is warranted,
but becomes hypocritical when expressed by the governments of the original nuclear
weapon states. The problems identified by India and by the nuclear abolition
movement, however, are not caused by the CTBT, which was--and still is--particularly
inconvenient for India’s nuclear ambitions. Nor will the problems of continued
possession of nuclear weapons and the development of new nuclear weapons by the
US and the other NWS be solved by opposing the CTBT in its current form. The current
impasse on nuclear disarmament, as typified by the stagnant START process, cannot
be broken simply by demanding commitments to a disarmament schedule in a test
ban treaty from government leaders of nuclear weapon states who do not accept
the concept of nuclear disarmament and who can just barely tolerate the test ban.
The source of these nuclear dangers is the continued existence of and reliance
on nuclear weapons by the eight nuclear weapon states, as well as by US allies
in Europe and East Asia that operate under the US nuclear umbrella. So long as
nuclear weapons exist, most nuclear weapon states will regrettably try to “steward”
their stockpile of nuclear weapons and maintain a capability to develop and build
more, regardless of whether there is a test moratorium or a CTBT. Beyond ratification
and implementation of the CTBT, which will help prevent new nuclear dangers from
emerging, nuclear abolitionists must focus on changing the continuing reliance
on nuclear weapons and their preservation by building a diverse and effective
opposition to security regimes that involve nuclear weapons. The
CTBT Is Still Valuable From its inception in the 1950s, the nuclear test
ban has been pursued in order to curb nuclear arms races by preventing the field
testing of new and more deadly nuclear bomb types. The CTBT was first proposed
to cap the US-Soviet arms race. (Soviet president Gorbachev declared a unilateral
test moratorium in 1991; at the urging of antinuclear activists, the US Congress
suspended testing in 1992 and President Clinton extended the US moratorium in
1993, initiating at the same time a costly program to enhance the US nuclear laboratory
facilities to “maintain the safety and reliability” of the nuclear stockpile
without test explosions--a program known as “stockpile stewardship.”
Clinton declared a “zero-yield” ban in 1995.) In more recent times,
the CTBT has also been pursued because it might head off “regional”
nuclear arms races. The 1996 CTBT agreement endorsed by the UN and signed by 150
nations aims to “prohibit nuclear weapon test explosions and all other nuclear
explosions” and would significantly help curb new nuclear bomb work.
But in early 1996 India announced that unless the nuclear weapon states agreed
to pursue nuclear disarmament according to a time-bound framework, it would not
support the treaty. India repeated arguments made by US NGOs that the “stockpile
stewardship” program gave the US weapons development capabilities that made
a ban on nuclear explosions “discriminatory.” India therefore sought
further restrictions on weapons experiments as part of the CTBT. When IPPNW
co-president Victor Sidel and I arrived in Geneva in February, 1996, as part of
an IPPNW/PSR delegation to meet with CTBT negotiators, India’s proposals
were threatening to ruin the chance for an agreement. Together we tried to make
the case that the perfect should not become the enemy of the good: that CTBT talks
should be finalized and efforts to achieve nuclear weapons abolition and to end
dangerous stockpile stewardship programs should be redoubled. That prescription
is as valuable today as it was two and one half years ago. As President
Kennedy said of the CTBT 35 years ago: “No treaty ...can provide absolute
security.... But it can ... offer far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled,
unpredictable arms race.” Because the CTBT can still help prevent a renewed
US-Russian arms race and a new South Asian arms race, we should still work hard
to ensure its prompt ratification and entry into force. Falling short of this
goal can only provide aid and comfort to nuclear weapons proponents worldwide
and leave open the possibility that the progress achieved toward a test ban--both
real and symbolic--will be lost. Next Steps in Support of
Abolition To reinforce the CTBT’s effect on constraining qualitative
improvements of nuclear weapons, US activists must develop a more effective campaign
to achieve deep reductions in the scope and cost of the stockpile stewardship
program. We should also press the U. S. and the other nuclear weapon states to
adopt policies that prohibit the design, development, or production of new and/or
modified nuclear warhead types. Simultaneously, we must help revive the
dormant disarmament process. This requires much more than the recitation of lists
of excellent nuclear risk reduction proposals at international conferences. More
than anything it requires the cultivation of new, creative, and courageous political
leadership that can initiate a multilateral discussion and negotiations aimed
towards nuclear weapons elimination. Stronger leadership from the US government
is vital, but US action is unlikely to emerge without sustained pressure from
non-nuclear states from diverse parts of the globe. India, before its 1998
tests might have been capable of such leadership, but has now squandered its moral
authority. New pragmatic leadership must come from groups such as the New Agenda
Coalition [see “Eight Nation Initiative to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, pg. 68].
With sustained work from this core group and with strong support from NGOs around
the world, we can help to build consensus among the nuclear and the non-nuclear
states about a road map toward a nuclear weapon free world that should include:
- speedy implementation of START II and START III reductions (without waiting
for parliamentary approval). including taking nuclear forces off hair-trigger
alert;
- a ban on the production of weapons-usable nuclear materials;
- further
deep reductions in the arsenals of all declared and undeclared nuclear weapon
states;
- more effective barriers to the transfer of sensitive nuclear weapons
technology and materiel, including strengthening the safety and security of Russia’s
nuclear complex.
As many non-nuclear states have proposed, a key
part of this process would be the initiation of discussions and later negotiations
at the Conference on Disarmament (or an equally appropriate forum) on the framework,
political conditions, and verification mechanisms needed for the final elimination
of nuclear weapons. The CTBT has always been--and remains--a vital step
on the road toward this larger goal.
About
the Authors VWS is Distinguished University Professor
of Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
He is Co-President, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
Address correspondence to Victor W. Sidel, M.D., Montefiore Medical Center, 111
East 210th Street, Bronx, New York 10467 USA; e-mail: vsidel@igc.apc.org.
DK is Executive Director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. From 1990
to 1997 he worked on nuclear disarmament campaigns for Physicians for Social Responsibility.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of other members of the Coalition. Address correspondence to: Daryl Kimball, Coalition
To Reduce Nuclear Dangers, 110 Maryland Ave., NE, Suite 201, Washington, DC 20002
USA; e-mail: dkimball@clw.org.
© copyright 1998 Medicine and Global Survival
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