Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 11. August 2010 / Timeline August 11, 2010
Version 3.510. August 2010, 12. August 2010
08/11/2010
National Security Archive Update, August 11, 2010
Government Officials Since Eisenhower Have Seen Comprehensive
Nuclear Test Ban as Vital for Curbing Nuclear Proliferation,
According to Declassified Documents
State Department Memos Shows Consternation Created by Jimmy
Carter's Offer to Deng Xiaoping to Assist Chinese Underground
Testing
Washington, DC, August 11, 2010 - The next nuclear policy challenge
for the Barack Obama
administration, right after Senate action on the New START Treaty,
will be Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(CTBT), which President Obama sees as a condition for a world free
of nuclear weapons. As he declared in his Hradcany Square speech,
"After more than five decades of talks, it is time for the testing
of nuclear weapons to finally be banned." U.S. presidents since
Dwight D. Eisenhower have sought, sometimes only rhetorically, a
comprehensive test ban of nuclear testing in all environments
(underground, atmospheric, underwater and outer space).
While emphases and motives have shifted (fallout danger and
limiting Soviet nuclear advances were initially central goals)
documents published today for the first time by the National
Security Archive show that, from the start, U.S. government
officials saw a ban on nuclear testing as highly relevant to
inhibiting nuclear proliferation. In July 1978, Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance and Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) director
Paul Warnke wrote to President Jimmy Carter that a CTBT is "a
central element of our efforts to prevent the further proliferation
of nuclear weapons," not least because it would strengthen the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and prevent tests by states on the
"threshold" of a nuclear weapons capability.
The documents published today provide new details on how
nonproliferation objectives informed support within the U.S.
government for a test ban:
* Disarmament advisers argued in 1957 that a test ban could benefit
U.S. security interests because of the "hesitancy of potential
fourth countries to develop weapons programs clandestinely."
* During the late 1950s, U.S. government officials believed that
the Soviet Union supported a test ban because it "would be a
relatively cheap way of stopping or at least inhibiting fourth
country nuclear weapons capability."
* According to ACDA officials in 1965, a CTBT could not provide an
"iron-clad assurance"--countries could build and stockpile weapons
without tests--but it would "contribute significantly to the
inhibitions on proliferation world-wide."
* In 1978, Carter administration arms controllers argued that a
test ban would weaken incentives to acquire nuclear weapons,
because to "win the full prestige of possessing nuclear weapons" a
state would "need to demonstrate its capability with a test."
* An example of how changing presidential priorities--playing the
"China card"--could jeopardize nonproliferation goals emerged in
January 1979, when President Jimmy Carter secretly offered Deng
Xiaoping assistance for Beijing's underground nuclear test program,
an offer that State Department officials worried could undermine
support for the test ban.
The nonproliferation arguments supporting the comprehensive test
ban that developed from the 1950s to the 1970s have remained
central to the thinking of recent Democratic administrations and
still resonate today. Thus, concerns about nuclear proliferation
influenced presidential candidate Bill Clinton's advocacy of a test
ban; during the campaign, he asserted that "the biggest threat to
the future" was "the proliferation of nuclear technology" and "to
contain that we ought to ... join the parade working toward a
comprehensive test ban."
Likewise, checking proliferation and curbing the weapons programs
of new nuclear states have been central to the Obama
administration's support for the test ban. According to Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton, the treaty is an "integral part of our
non-proliferation and arms control agenda." She further declared
that "A test ban treaty that has entered into force will permit the
United States and others to challenge states engaged in suspicious
testing activities--including the option of calling on-site
inspections to be sure that no testing occurs on land, underground,
underwater, or in space."
No matter how strong the merits of a test ban treaty, many of the
same political and institutional obstacles that stopped presidents
from Eisenhower to Clinton from achieving a comprehensive test ban
remain today. Arguments and allegations over verification
capabilities, cheating by other nuclear states, the
nonproliferation benefits, and the reliability of the nuclear
stockpile have persisted for decades. And new problems have
emerged, such as entry-into-force; the 44 countries with a nuclear
weapons potential must ratify the treaty before it goes into
effect. Thus, even if the New START Treaty is ratified, the test
ban treaty will face significant political challenges.
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