Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

October 11, 1999

THE END OF ARMS CONTROL?

William C. Potter and Nikolai Sokov

As debate over ratification the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) intensifies in Washington, one can only hope that there is very limited international coverage of the Senate proceedings. The spectacle, if viewed in Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, and Islamabad would surely convey the impression that the United States regards the main function of arms control treaties as constraining others without restricting itself. It is a message that may play well in Peoria, but will have a decidedly negative resonance in the Russian Duma and the capitals of aspiring nuclear weapons states.

Unfortunately, for the future of arms control and nonproliferation, the end of bipartisan U.S. support for nuclear test-ban treaties coincides with Russian and Chinese reassessments of the value of global arms control regimes more generally. In the wake of unilateral NATO action in Kosovo, tough talk in Washington about abrogation of the ABM Treaty, and a large boost in defense expenditures, U.S. military policy is, at best, viewed with suspicion. For both Russia and China, nuclear weapons are increasingly perceived as the principal guarantor of their countries claims to great power status. Arms control treaties which inhibit the development, maintenance, and deployment of nuclear arms, may no longer be regarded as sustainable if, thanks to U.S. technological superiority, they have an asymmetrical impact. If the U.S. Senate is concerned about the ability of the 4.5 billion dollar/year stockpile stewardship program to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal without nuclear testing, what confidence should the cash-strapped Russian and Chinese governments have in their weapons?

The arms control dilemma is particularly acute in Russia, where tactical nuclear weapons have acquired the central role as a counter-weight to NATOs vastly superior conventional forces. According to the latest Russian doctrinal innovation, tactical nuclear arms--of which Russia has an enormous but very aged stockpile--will have to be used early on in a number of regional conflict scenarios if Moscow is to avoid defeat.

Last April the Russian Security Council debated both the need for nuclear testing and the wisdom of continuing to abide by the parallel, unilateral declarations on tactical nuclear weapons reductions made by Presidents Bush and Gorbachev in the fall of 1991. These declarations, which were not legally binding, called for the dismantlement and destruction of many U.S. and Russian sub-strategic nuclear weapons and the relocation of many others to central storage facilities. This informal regime is now viewed in Moscow as excessively restrictive. Specifically, many advocate a return of nuclear warheads to land-based missiles, a step prohibited by the 1991 declarations. The new tactical missile, Iskander, is a likely delivery system for the next generation of tactical warheads. Development of such a low yield weapon might necessitate resumption of nuclear testing.

The Russian Security Council does not yet appear to have taken a decision with respect to development of a new tactical warhead or the resumption of nuclear testing. There is growing pressure among a broad-based coalition of civilian and military experts, however, to keep Russias nuclear options open, even if that means the demise of arms control. The main impediment to nuclear testing is the international political capital that will be lost if Russia is perceived as responsible for the collapse of the CTBT. From Moscows vantage point, one could not conceive of a more favorable development than U.S. Senate defeat of the test-ban treaty. Should that transpire, the only question will be who will test first, Russia or China.

William C. Potter is Director of the Monterey Institutes Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian arms control negotiator, is a senior research associate at the Center.


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