Remarks by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) on the CTBT, Cong. Record, Oct. 12, 1999.

Remarks by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) on the CTBT

Congressional Record - 106^th Congress
Pages S12350-53
October 12, 1999

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Delaware for his terrific leadership on this issue over the last few days, and for a long period of time.

Let me quickly address, if I may, one point. The Senator from Delaware a few moments ago referred to the strange dynamic that has set in here in the Senate. I just want to underscore that, if I may, for a moment.

I grew up, as many of us did, looking at the Senate with a sense of great respect and awe for the capacity of the Senate to come together around the most significant national security issues that faced the country. I think all of us always looked at this institution as the place that, hopefully, could break through the emotions and find the most common sense solution that is in the interests of the American people.

Some of the great history of the Senate has been written about those moments where Senators crossed the aisle and found commonality in representing the interests of the Nation. I must say that in the 15 years I have been privileged now to serve here, representing Massachusetts, I have never seen the Senate as personally and ideologically and politically divided and willing to subvert what we most easily can define as the common national interest for those pure ideological or political reasons. And I don't think that is mere rhetoric when I say that.

I noticed when Presidents Reagan and Bush were in office, there was a considerable thirst on the other side of the aisle for adventures in Granada, Panama, and Somalia, and the obvious need to respond to the threat in Iraq and the Middle East. But suddenly, with President Clinton, we saw those very people who were prepared to support those efforts, even in a Granada or in a Panama, suddenly people argued that Kosovo didn't have any meaning, Bosnia didn't have meaning, and even Haiti, where there was an incredible influx of refugees and chaos right off our shore, failed to elicit the same kind of responsible international reaction as we had seen in those prior years. Now, regrettably, this treaty finds itself being tossed around as the same kind of `political football,' to a certain degree. And I think that is unfortunate, and it certainly does not serve the best interests of the Nation.

Mr. President, preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons is one of the most important issues facing the United States today. Since the end of the Cold War, we have made great strides in reducing the danger to the American people of the vast nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union. But the nuclear danger persists, and the job of nuclear arms control is far from finished. Multiple nuclear tests detonated by India and Pakistan emphasize the need for greater U.S. leadership on this critical issue--not less.

In the last week, we have been told by critics of the CTBT that, for a variety of reasons, it will increase, rather than reduce the danger from nuclear proliferation. I believe that a careful examination of the criticism of this treaty will show that, on balance, it will enhance--not undermine--U.S. national security interests.

First, critics argue that, in their desire to conclude a comprehensive test ban, the Clinton administration made key concessions resulting in a flawed Treaty that is worse than no Treaty at all. Let me say at the beginning that I believe the CTBT is far from perfect. I am not going to argue with my colleagues on the other side that you can't find a legitimate point of disagreement about the Treaty. I'm not going to argue with those who don't like the way a particular compromise was arrived at in the treaty, or that think a particular principle might have been fought for harder and the absence of victory on that particular principle somehow weakens the overall implementation of the Treaty.

The negotiating record--which has been subject to great scrutiny in recent days--reflects as many compromises from the original U.S. position as triumphs in achieving our objectives. There are legitimate reasons for concern that we did not achieve all of the original goals of the United States in negotiating this Treaty. I certainly take to heart Secretary Weinberger's admonition that you should not want the end goal so much that you give up certain substance in arriving at that end goal. I think that is a laudable and very important principle around which one ought to negotiate.

But my colleagues in this body understand better than most the necessity of compromise in finding pragmatic solutions to the many difficult problems we face. And the compromises we agreed to in the CTBT will allow us to achieve the nonproliferation goals we seek.

What has often been lost throughout this debate is that the United States enjoys a tremendous technological advantage over the other nuclear powers in both the sophistication of our weapons and our ability to maintain them reliably. The Administration and the Congress initially agreed to seek a test ban that would permit only the lowest-yield nuclear tests, which was soundly rejected by our negotiating partners because it would essentially ensure that only the United States, with the technical capacity the others lack to conduct those low-yield tests, would be permitted to continue testing its nuclear stockpile.

As Ambassador Stephen Ledogar--the head of the U.S. negotiating team--testified before the Foreign Relations Committee last Thursday, the other four nuclear powers argued that they needed a higher threshold in order to gain any useful data. Russia argued that, if a testing threshold were to be established for the five nuclear powers, it should allow for nuclear yields of up to ten tons of TNT equivalent, hardly a level that constituted an effective testing restriction.

Our negotiators quickly rejected that idea, and President Clinton decided the best way to resolve the impasse and protect U.S. interests would be to pursue a policy of zero-yield--a ban should be a ban. The Russians were not happy with this proposal, but eventually were persuaded to accept a total ban on any nuclear test that produced any nuclear yield.

Clearly, the United States would have been better off if we had been able to negotiate a test ban that allowed us to continue testing. But it is ridiculous to argue that, because the CTBT does not protect the U.S. advantage it represents a dangerous capitulation on our part. To implement and verify a zero-yield test ban, we need not be worried about distinguishing between a low-yield test and a medium-yield test to determine if the Treaty has been violated. Any test of any yield is a violation. In this regard, the Treaty's strength is in its simplicity.

Second, critics argue that we shouldn't ratify the CTBT because we can't verify compliance. There has never been an arms control treaty that is 100% verifiable, and the CTBT is no exception. We will not be able to detect nuclear tests down to the most minute level of nuclear yield. But we will be able to verify that the Test Ban is accomplishing what it is meant to accomplish: an end to nuclear testing that advances the sophistication of current nuclear stockpiles or the development of new nuclear stockpiles.

The key to a successful verification system is that a potential violator must believe that the risk of getting caught is greater than the benefit of the violation. The lower the yield of the nuclear test, the smaller the chance of detection by seismic means. But at the same time, the amount of useful information a nation would get by conducting a low-yield clandestine test would be limited. As a result, a potential violator would likely decide that the risk of getting caught is greater than the benefit of conducting the test. In addition, clandestine testing will not allow any developing weapons program to approach current U.S. capabilities.

For those who are concerned about the danger from low-yield nuclear testing, I would also argue that defeating this treaty will make it more difficult, not less, for the United States to detect those tests by denying us the benefits of the International Monitoring System that will verify the CTBT. The International Monitoring System will include 50 primary seismic monitoring stations and an auxiliary network of 120 stations, 80 radionuclide stations for atmospheric measurements, 11 hydroacoustic stations to detect underwater signals, and infrasound monitoring as well. This system will be augmented by the very powerful national intelligence-gathering technologies currently operated by the U.S. and others.

The CTBT also allows any state party to request an on-site inspection of a questionable seismic event. The Treaty calls for on-site inspection requests to be submitted to the Executive Council of the CTBT Organization--the body charged with implementing the Treaty--along with supporting data, collected either from the monitoring and data mechanisms established under the Treaty or from national technical means. The Executive Council will have representatives from every region, and nations within each region will rotate membership on the Executive Council on a set schedule. The United States has reached agreement with the nations in our region that we will always be one of the 10 nations representing our region, so we will always have a vote on the Executive Council.

Thirty of the 50 members of the Executive Council must approve an on-site inspection request. Critics have argued that it will be very difficult for the United States to garner the support of 30 nations to allow for an on-site inspection. They argue that our traditional adversaries will use the Executive Council to block inspections that are necessary to protecting the U.S. national interest.

It is true that countries such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq and their few supporters can be counted on to block U.S. and other requests for on-site inspections. However, most of the nations of the world have no interest either in pursuing nuclear weapons or allowing their neighbors to pursue them unchecked, which is why this Treaty enjoys such strong support throughout the international community.

Rogue nations would have to find support among more than 40 percent of the Executive Council to block our request for an on-site inspection. But it is unlikely that the United States would not be able to persuade at least 30 members of the merits and importance of our inspection request. The CTBT will give us access to tools we otherwise would not have for monitoring nuclear tests, and an option for on-site inspection of seismic events that we do not fully understand. Defeating the treaty would deny our intelligence community the additional benefits of those additional tools.

Third, critics argue that the CTBT will not end nuclear proliferation, because key countries of proliferation concern will not sign or ratify. This is an important argument, because it goes to whether this Treaty can accomplish the fundamental purpose for which it is designed--stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

It is true that countries will halt nuclear testing, or not, based on a calculation of their own national interest. But by creating an international norm against nuclear testing, the CTBT will add a powerful factor in a rogue nation's assessment of whether its national interest will be helped or harmed by the conduct of a nuclear weapon. A nation that chooses to test will face considerable costs to its political, economic and security interests. U.S. ratification of the CTBT will lay the basis for universal enforcement of the Treaty, even against the few nations that may not sign.

The CTBT is a critical component of broader U.S. strategy on nuclear non-proliferation, which has the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at its core. In 1995, states parties to the NPT agreed to extend that Treaty indefinitely, in large part based on the commitment of the declared nuclear weapons states to conclude a CTBT. The failure of the United States to ratify the CTBT will seriously undercut our ability to continue our critical leadership role in the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Formal entry-into-force of the Treaty requires ratification by the 44 countries that have nuclear power reactors or nuclear research reactors and are members of the Conference on Disarmament.

And in my mind, it is altogether appropriate that a treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons requires the participation of all the nuclear-capable states before it can enter into force. Of those 44, 41 have signed the CTBT, and 23 have ratified. All of our allies have signed the Treaty. Russia and China have signed the Treaty. Only India, Pakistan and North Korea have not signed.

Now, some have argued that the United States should be in no hurry to ratify the Treaty, that we should wait until Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea have ratified. They worry that the United States will forfeit its ability to conduct nuclear tests with no guarantee that the countries we are most concerned about will make the same commitment. But the United States has already concluded that we do not need to conduct nuclear tests to maintain our vast nuclear superiority.

No one on the other side of the aisle is arguing we should go out and test tomorrow. Why? Because we don't need to test tomorrow. We don't need to test next year. We don't need to test for the foreseeable future, according to most scientists in this country, because we don't test the nuclear explosion itself for the purpose of safety and for making judgments about the mechanics of both the electrical and mechanical parts of a nuclear warhead.

The CTBT binds us to a decision we have already made, because it is in our national interests to stop testing. And if, at some point down the line, it becomes necessary to resume testing to preserve the reliability of our nuclear deterrent, we can withdraw from the Treaty to do so.

Clearly, we want countries like India and Pakistan to ratify the Treaty and commit themselves to refraining from nuclear testing. Aren't we more likely to convince them to do this if we ourselves have already ratified the Treaty? As Secretary Albright correctly pointed out on Thursday, waiting is not a strategy. During the debates on the Chemical Weapons Convention, there were those who advocated taking this passive approach to protecting our interests. But in fact, after the United States ratified the CWC, Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and Cuba followed our lead. The best chance for achieving the nonproliferation goals of the CTBT is for the United States to lead. If the Senate were to reject the Treaty, international support for the test ban would be gravely undermined, and countries like India and Pakistan would have no reason to refrain from continued testing.

Aren't we better off with a treaty that gives us the capacity to monitor, the capacity to continue to show leadership with India and Pakistan, the capacity to set up a process with China before the Chinese test in a way that gives them the ability to translate the information stolen--referred to in the Cox commission report--into a real threat to the United States?

That seems to me to be a very simple proposition. The Cox Report, and others, all acknowledge that at this point in time China has not created a new weapon or changed its nuclear capacity, using our information. And we know that, in order to do so, using on our information, they have to test. China has signed the treaty, and is prepared to adopt the restraints of this treaty. Those who argue that we are better off allowing China the window to go out and test and now profit from what it has stolen elude all common sense, in my judgment. How would the United States be better off with a China that is allowed to test and translate the stolen information into a better weapons system? That is not answered on the floor of the Senate. But some argue that that is the way they would like to proceed.

U.S. ratification of the CTBT won't end nuclear proliferation, but U.S. rejection of the Treaty undermine the credibility of U.S. leadership on nonproliferation, which will jeopardize U.S. work to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and to block the sale of sensitive technologies that could contribute to proliferation.

Finally, critics argue that the United States will not be able to maintain a reliable nuclear deterrent without nuclear tests. I take very seriously the argument that, without nuclear testing, the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent will be undermined. The security of the American people--and the security of our friends and allies around the world--depends on maintaining the credible perception that an act of aggression against us will be met with an overwhelming and devastating response. If I thought for a minute that U.S. ratification of the CTBT would undermine this deterrent, I would not--I could not--support it. In fact, the United States has today and will continue to have in the future high confidence in the safety, reliability and effectiveness of our nuclear stockpile. This confidence is based on over 50 years of experience and analysis of over 1,000 nuclear tests, the most in the world.

Most of the nuclear tests the United States has conducted have been to develop new nuclear weapons; for the most part, we use non-nuclear tests to ensure the continued reliability of our nuclear arsenal.

This is a key point--even with no test ban, the United States would not rely primarily on detonating nuclear explosions to ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile. Most of the problems associated with aging nuclear weapons will relate to the many mechanical and electrical components of the warhead, and the CTBT does not restrict testing on these non-nuclear components. Moreover, we have already proven that we can make modifications to existing designs without nuclear testing. In 1998, we certified the reliability of the B-61 Mod 11, which replaced an older weapon in the stockpile, without conducting a nuclear test.

Looking to the future, the center of U.S. efforts to maintain our nuclear stockpile is the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship program, initiated by President Clinton in 1992. This 10 year, $45 billion program has four major objectives: to maintain a safe and reliable stockpile as nuclear weapons age; to maintain and enhance capability to replace and certify nuclear weapons components; to train new weapon scientists; and to maintain and further develop an operational manufacturing capability.

And it is already working. Since our last test in 1992, the Secretaries of Defense and Energy and the Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Command have certified 3 times (and are about to certify for the fourth time) that the U.S. nuclear stockpile is safe and reliable. It is only in the distant future--2010 perhaps, but we don't know the answer to this yet--that conceivably the physics package of a nuclear weapon might provide the level of deterioration that might not be able to be replaced with totally new parts and therefore might somehow lessen our nuclear deterrent capacity. To enable us to respond to such a situation, President Clinton has established six Safeguards that define the conditions under which the U.S. will remain a party to the CTBT.

Presidential Safeguards A through F, as they are known, outline the U.S. commitment to maintaining a science-based stockpile stewardship program to insure a high degree of confidence in the reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The final safeguard, Safeguard F, states U.S. policy--as embodied in the official negotiating record of the CTBT--that, if the President is advised that the safety or reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile can no longer be certified, the President, in consultation with the Congress, will withdraw from the CTBT under the `supreme national interests' clause of the Treaty.

Now, critics of this Treaty have suggested that a future President, upon learning from his Secretaries of Defense and Energy that the nuclear stockpile can not be certified, and upon confronting all the scientific data that tells him our nuclear deterrent is eroding, will somehow fail to act--fail to invoke the `supreme national interest' clause--and withdraw the United States from the Treaty. I ask my colleagues, Is there one among us who, when confronted with this information, would hesitate to act? When the Congress is informed of the status of the nuclear arsenal--and those reports are given in full to the Congress--is there anyone who doubts that the Congress would immediately demand that the White House take action to protect our nuclear deterrent?

Surely, the critics of this Treaty who doubt that a President could find the political will to withdraw the United States from the CTBT when our `supreme national interests' are at stake aren't suggesting that there is a confluence of political factors that could possibly place the sanctity of a treaty above the sanctity of the lives of the American people. No one can tell me that any President of the United States is going to diminish the real national security interests of this country against some desire to keep a treaty in effect for the sake of having a treaty if, indeed, doing so will threaten the real interests of this Nation. U.S. ratification of, and adherence to, the CTBT will not jeopardize our nuclear deterrent, because the United States does not today, and will not tomorrow, rely on nuclear explosions to ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile. We have embarked on a high-tech, science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program that will allow the United States to maintain the superiority of its nuclear arsenal. And in the event that we can not certify the reliability of our nuclear deterrent, we have given notice to our negotiating partners that we will not adhere to the CTBT at the expense of our supreme national interests.

So, in effect, we are talking about what we could achieve by passing this treaty and showing leadership on the subject of implementing an international regime of monitoring and of nonproliferation, versus continuing the completely uncontrolled capacity of nations to provide a true threat to the United States.

Mr. President, critics of this Treaty argue that the United States today faces too many uncertainties in the realm of nonproliferation to commit ourselves to a leadership position on the CTBT. I can not speak to those uncertainties, but of the following, I am absolutely certain: if the Senate rejects the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, there will be more nuclear tests conducted around the world, not fewer, and we will be no better equipped than we are today to detect and monitor those tests; the U.S. nuclear arsenal will not be made more reliable--and other nuclear nations will have the freedom to conduct the necessary tests to bring their weapons on a technological par with our own, undermining the strength of our nuclear deterrent; and finally, the American people will be more vulnerable, not less, to the nuclear danger, because we will have undercut more than 30 years of work to build and fortify international norms on nuclear nonproliferation.

The Senate has before it today an opportunity to send a signal to the world that the United States will continue to lead on international efforts to reduce the nuclear danger. We also face the prospect of acting too soon, after too little time for deliberation, and sending a signal that the United States can no longer be counted on to stand against the forces of nuclear proliferation.

It seems to me that when the President of the United States makes a request in the interest of our Nation to the Senate to delay a vote, it is only politics that would drive us to have that vote notwithstanding that request.

My plea would be to my colleagues in the Senate that we find the capacity to cool down a little bit, to have a vote that delays the consideration of this treaty so that we may proceed to answer properly each of the questions raised by those who oppose it, and, if need be, make changes that would not send the message that the United States of America is rejecting outright this opportunity to embrace a policy that from Eisenhower on we have fought to try to adopt.

I hope that the leadership of the Senate on both sides of the aisle can be prevailed upon to prevent a tragic misstep that I fear will have grave consequences for the strategic interests of the United States and our friends and allies.