-Caveat Lector-
>From security-policy.org/papers/1999/99-D119.html
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Publications of the Center for Security Policy
No. 99-D 119
DECISION BRIEF
19 October 1999
The End of Arms Control as We Have Known It
(Washington, D.C.): An extraordinarily important, emerging reality is for the
moment being obscured by the vitriol and frenzied misrepresentations emanating
from the Clinton Administration and its allies in the wake of the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty's crushing rejection by the United States Senate: Unverifiable
and unenforceable multilateral arms control treaties do not advance American
security interests, will not enjoy the support of the necessary two-thirds of
the Senate and must be eschewed by the U.S. executive branch.
Fortunately, three well-credentialed security policy practitioners with considerable
experience in the negotiation and implementation of arms control agreements -- former
Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates, for
mer U.S. Ambassador to Germany and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt and
former acting Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency James Hackett
-- have each recently published essays making this poin
t in the New York Times, Washington Post and Washington Times, respectively (see the
attached). Highlights of each of these op.ed. articles include the following (emphasis
added).
Gates: "Multinational cooperation is absolutely essential to slowing or containing
such threats as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons proliferation and the spread
of ballistic missile technology. But I question whet
her formal, ratified treaties are the most effective way to deal diplomatically with
such threats. Multilateral treaties often offer only a pretense of effective
monitoring. Furthermore, treaties 'in perpetuity' are nearl
y impossible to adjust to today's rapidly changing technological and security
realities. And to ratify a treaty when we can confidently predict that key governments
either will not sign it or, if they sign will not observ
e its terms, undermines the legitimacy and value of the arms control process
itself."
Burt: "...It is unclear how a test ban would curb nuclear proliferation. In the
bipolar international system of the Cold War, nations took their cue on nuclear
matters from the two superpowers. In the increasingly fragmented and
decentralized world of the 21st century, nations such as Iraq and North Korea
refuse to follow Washington's lead. Pakistan and India, which have acquired
nuclear arsenals despite concerted opposition by the United States and others,
are cases in point. Like some earlier accords, such as the 1972 American-Soviet
agreement curbing anti-missile defenses, the test ban treaty represents an
anachronistic approach to arms control. Despite numerous complaints, however,
the Clinton Administration has insisted on pursuing an outmoded agenda unsuited
to a new security environment."
Hackett: "The Senate vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was more
than just the defeat of a flawed agreement, it signaled the coming of age of a
majority of Americans on the futility of trying to defend the country through
arms control....Unverifiable treaties that ban weapons and limit technologies
are dangerous."
The Bottom Line
The time has come for a frank and rigorous reappraisal of the contribution that
arms control as we have known it can make to U.S. security and world peace.
Senators who voted to defeat the CTBT and Messrs. Gates, Burt and Hackett who
have helped underscore the larger importance of that action deserve the
Nation's gratitude and support for setting the stage for such a reappraisal.
- 30 -
NOTE: The Center's publications are intended to invigorate and enrich the
debate on foreign policy and defense issues. The views expressed do not
necessarily reflect those of all members of the Center's Board of Advisors.
Top of Page
� 1988-1999, Center for Security Policy
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~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From www.polyconomics.com
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Memo on the Margin
October 20, 1999
The Test Ban Treaty
Memo To: Adam Clymer, New York Times
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Looking in the Wrong Places
Your Saturday report in the Times about the Senate rejection of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was just fine, as far as it went, but it did not
go very far. The experts you called for their opinions really don�t know enough
to have relevant opinions on these matters. Historians and political science
professors only know what they read in the newspapers, and if all they read is
what other historians and poli sci professors are saying, you will get the same
meaningless feedback. The professor you quoted who compared this to the
rejection of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations because of the
efforts of Republican Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge in opposing the Democratic
President, Woodrow Wilson, was especially sophomoric. There is nothing to be
learned by a recitation of history that says a Republican Senator a long time
ago killed a treaty signed by a Democratic President. You should have asked the
professor what this means?
Was it a good thing that Lodge did? Is it a good thing what Senate Majority
Trent Lott did? I�m sure he would say Lodge was a bad guy, although any
realistic review of history tells us that even President Franklin Roosevelt
thought the Versailles Treaty was a stinkeroo, which helped bring on WWII. Our
schoolteachers and history books still have not caught up with this opinion,
but teach our children, with tears in their eyes, about the awful Republicans
and the wonderful Woodrow and how his peace plans were being rejected by them.
Of course you were taught this when you were a lad, as was I. But you should
spend more time as a grown-up reviewing the past. There is a parallel here, but
it in fact favors the Republican rejection of the CTBT, which might actually
help prevent bad things from happening in the generation ahead. The heart of
the problem, Adam, is that the cream of the press corps is running around
asking the wrong people the wrong questions. "Conservative" reporters are
scarcely any better than "liberal" reporters.
Your colleague at the Times, R.W.Apple, Jr., the senior-most national
correspondent, had a downright silly piece on the front page when the treaty
was voted down, revealing his basic confusion about nuclear non-proliferation
and nuclear disarmament, accompanied by enough flimsy to indicate he didn�t
know much about the topic even as he wrung his hands about the dire
implications of the Senate�s action. The CTBT is not a non-proliferation
treaty, remember. It is a disarmament treaty, with the U.S. going first! It is
aimed at having all its signatores conduct no tests in the future so that
gradually all nuclear weapons have turned to dust and mankind can live in a
nuclear-free world forever, or until the chickens come home to roost, whichever
comes first.
Instead of calling an uninformed historian, I asked Dr. Gordon Prather, a
nuclear physicist who worked in weapons development and also served as an
assistant secretary of the army for science and technology in the Reagan
administration. He also is author of the Prather Report, which shredded the Cox
Commission findings about how the Chinese were stealing all our best secrets. I
asked him to stand back and give me his worst-case scenario about how things
will proceed from this point on, along with an assessment of the CTBT on its
merits:
* * * * *
My worst case scenario is that Clinton-O�Leary-Greenpeace will get away with
it, the U.S. will unilaterally disarm, CTBT ratified or not, which is what I
suspect they have promised the Greenies here and in Europe that their goal has
been from the gitgo. The Clinton-Demogogues have conned the U.S. electorate
into believing that the U.S. is the world leader in all things nuclear --
nuclear weapons development, nuclear power production, disposition of
plutonium, radioactive site cleanup, etc., etc. And the sole purpose of the
CTBT is to "lock-in" our superiority. The truth is quite the opposite. We have
no superiority to "lock-in." We essentially quit the nuclear power field during
the Carter Administration and are now twenty years behind Europe and Russia in
all nuclear-power related matters and may well now be behind the Russians and
the French in nuclear weapon development.
It all goes back to the Carter decision to forgo "reprocessing" of "spent"
nuclear fuel. That decision was based on the Green arguments that separating
Plutonium from spent fuel would be a nuclear-proliferating activity. Nobody
else in the world [except the Greenies] accepted that. And in fact, if we fail
to become an active participant in the New Nuclear Era -- the era of MOX-fuel --
not only will we not be in a position to help the Russians prevent the only
proliferation that really matters [HE URANIUM or weapons grade Plutonium], but
the decision by Carter to forgo reprocessing will rank with the Chinese
decision of about AD 1300 to cease voyages of global exploration.
The bottom-line on CTBT, Jude, is that any nation [U.S. and Russia included]
develops nukes in response to a perceived threat and during the Cold War there
were two major threats for both U.S. and Russia, [1] Strategic: MAD-ICBMs and
[2] Tactical: massed armor in the Fulda Gap. Any future nuke development will
be to address the Post-Cold War Emerging Threat, which [putting aside for the
moment the idiotic NATO eastward expansion] are basically the same for both
U.S. and Russia: namely [1] nuclear terrorism by non-national organizations and
[2] one-zy and two-zy ICBM launches by rogue states.
The nuclear tests that the U.S. and/or Russia might wish to conduct will,
necessarily, be to address the Emerging Threat, and as the Senate and Duma have
demonstrated, it would be idiocy for either of the World's Nuclear Superpowers
to ratify a treaty [CTBT] which would forever prohibit them from conducting
tests of nuclear weapons systems designed to counter that Threat. There are two
classes of nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russia might need to develop
[which would require testing] that come to mind. [1] Deep earth-penetrating
nuclear weapons [to 'take out' deep underground nuclear weapons-related
factories of the type North Korea is suspected of having constructed or
attempted to construct] and [2] spaced based, Star-Wars-like, quick response to
one-zy and two-zy ICBM launches by rogue states.
The principal well-recognized Post-Cold War Emerging Threat to both the U.S.
and Russia is nuclear terrorism by non-national [which means that we can't
deter them with Massive Retaliation] groups. However, working together, we [the
U.S. and Russia, principally] can prevent nuclear terrorism by non-national
groups, by denying them the fissile materials [principally highly enriched
Uranium-HEU] to construct their terrorist devices, and/or safeguarding and
securing the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that we are retiring from our
no longer needed Cold War Threat stockpiles.
Getting that critical cooperation with the Russians will not now be easy since
the Clinton Administration [apparently] disregarded the negative impact on U.S.-
Russian relations in [1] unilateral U.S.-UK [essentially NATO] day-in day-out
bombing of Iraq for the past year or so, [2] aggressive extension of NATO [and
the Fulda Gap Tactical Threat] eastward to the boundaries of the old Soviet
Union [3] unilateral NATO bombing of a sovereign State [Yugoslavia] in support
of an Islamic self-governing insurgency. [Note: the Russians have their own
domestic Islamic self-governing insurgency. Will NATO bomb Russia? Stay tuned,
the wonderful Clinton Admin.. types that wreaked all the above cited havoc with
U.S.-Russian relations will be in power for at least another year.]
Because of the idiotic eastward expansion of NATO, the Russians have concluded
that they not only cannot continue to rid themselves of the tactical nukes they
had developed to use against NATO, but need to develop new classes of tactical
nuclear weapons, which will need to be tested. [I have not seen any report of
the reaction of DUMA leadership to the Senate rejection of the CTBT, but they
certainly must understand why the Senate did what it had to do, and it probably
reinforced their determination to do the same.] But the efforts by the Clinton
Administration -- as reported in the attached Associated Press 10/16/99 piece --
to cooperate with the Russians in addressing the Rogue State one-zy and two-zy
ICBM nuke threat are very encouraging. Now if the Clinton Administration would
either [1] withdraw from NATO or [2] invite Russia to join NATO, then maybe we
could cooperatively begin to address the principal Post Cold War nuke threat:
Namely, terrorist groups getting access to fissile materials or to nuclear
weapons being dismantled.
* * * * *
Now, Adam, I do not mean to suggest that Dr. Prather�s comments constitute the
Truth, only that they should indicate you and your colleagues in the press
corps have barely scratched the surface of this most important sector of the
world political economy. You should make a few more phone calls, and so should
Johnny Apple.
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<<Globalisation as a policy is fine and presumes the 'brotherhood of man'.
Yet, when there are those who are actively pursuing arms development just as
the world was to begin being 'kinder and gentler' (after Sir George HW Bush's
paradigm before he 'Hitlerised' Saddam), it makes one wonder who's a 'brother'
and who's not.
As Mr. Burt points out:
""In the bipolar international system of the Cold War, nations took their cue
on nuclear matters from the two superpowers.""
Needless to say the 'Family of Man' differs yet little from the 'Family of Big
Horn Sheep' who insist on displaying prowess and superiority by butting heads.
Eventually the lesser ones will back down but will remain at the ready for when
the current leader starts to falter. Perpetuation of the finest of the species
... but who decides what the 'finest' is? The fundamentalists of any faith?
The politicians? A government document (Constitution, e.g.)? The 'Man with
the plan' [whoever he is and wherever he comes from]? A<>E<>R >>
A<>E<>R
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