41. Ctbt

Emporium Current Essays 175 CTIT^ A f OB ABU-NUCLEAR STATI After two and a half years of complex negotiations, the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD) has produced the text of a Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) Treaty that would permanently end all nuclear testing. Although almost all of the conference's 60 participating states support the text, the CD failed to reach the required consensus on the treaty due to Indian opposition and was unable to forward it to the United Nations. Despite these procedural problems, the overwhelming support for a test ban will almost certainly result in a treaty based on this text in the not too distant future. The CTBT would apply to the five nuclear weapons states (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States), all of whichever now endorsed the text, the existing prohibition on nuclear explosions covering the 177 non-nuclear-weapon states that are members of the nuclear lion-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The test ban would also cover the three nuclear "threshold" states, India, Israel and Pakistan, the only non-NPT member states that have the technical capability to conduct a nuclear explosion -- because as drafted the treaty cannot enter into force without their ratification. Israel has endorsed the present text, but India has rejected the draft treaty and Pakistan will probably not join until India does. The treaty prohibits "any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion," but does not explicitly define a "nuclear explosion," a major stumbling block in previous negotiations. The negotiating history, however, makes clear that his provision establishes the zero-yield criteria proposed by PresidentClinton. The treaty therefore bans very low ? ield "hydronuclear" tests and other "small" yield explosftffts- initially advocated by the nuclear-weapon states. The CD negotiations cap 40 years of effort to achieve a comprehensive test ban. There were serious, but unsuccessful, efforts during the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Carter administrations to negotiate a CTB with the Soviet Union and Britain. The 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty prohibited all nuclear explosions in the178 Emporium Current Essays refabrication of a proven design is not a feasible solution to a reliability problem and the resulting situation really puts the credibility of the US nuclear deterrent in question, the United States could always exercise its right under Article IX to withdraw from a CTB on the grounds that "extraordinary events" pertinent to the treaty have threatened its "supreme interests."

The CTB will establish an elaborate international monitoring system that will be capable of detecting militarily significant nuclear explosions world-wide and conducting on-sitc inspections of suspicious events. This system of seismic, radionuclide, any hydroacoustic facilities will be augmented by the very powerful national technical means (NTM) of unilateral intelligence collection currently operated by the United States and other countries. In the event there is evidence pointing to the possibility that a nuclear explosion has occurred, the treaty allows for on-sitc inspections of area where the suspicious event occurred. Requests for on-site inspections can be based on information collected by the IMS and/or by NTM, which may also provide information that there was evidence of test preparations. Although at least 30 of the 51 members of the treaty's Executive Council members will be 7 required to approve an on-site inspection, this approval should not be difficult to obtain if there is a strong case. Some critics of a test ban have argued that even with these extensive and reinforcing verification systems, a complete ban on nuclear explosions cannot be verified at low yields. While it is true that nuclear explosions at very low yields will be difficult to detect, a potential violator would" run the risk that the activity might be detected, particularly with the aid of NTM information, which would provide the basis for an inspection. More significantly, very small explosions offer such negligible technical benefits and risk much significant political consequences that there would be little incentive to conduct them. Moreover, even if such tests were , undetected, they would not constitute a threat to US or international security because of their limited value in a weapons programme. The CTB still faces a serious obstacle because of the treaty's rigid entry cannot enter, into force until it has been signed and ratified by the five nuclear-weapon states, the three threshold states and 36 other named countries that are both participating embers of the expanded CD and are listed by the International Atomic Energy Agency as possessing nuclear power and research reactors. This stringent requirement was insisted on by China, Russia and Britain, ostensibly to pressure India into joining the treaty. However, in light Emporium Current Essays 179 of India's decision not to sign the CTB, this provision appears to make it highly unlikely that the treaty will enter into force at least for the next several years. If all 44 states have not ratified the treaty within three years of signature, a conference of states that have already deposited their instruments of ratification can be held "to decide by consensus what measures consistent with international law may be undertaken to accelerate the ratification process." This conference, however, docs not have the authority to waive the original entry into force provision requiring ratification by all 44 states. At

this time, its is nuclear what steps the international community may be prepared to take to revise this provision or to bring the treaty provisionally into force despite this explicit procedural barrier. The entry into force problem and India's refusal to sign the treaty should not obscure the historic significance of the fact that the five nuclear-weapon states have endorsed the current draft CTB Treaty and have, for the first time, simultaneously instituted a moratorium on nuclear testing. Israel has also announced its intention to sign the treaty, and Pakistan has indicated its willingness to sign if India does. While India will not sign the CTB in the near future, New Delhi will find it very difficult to test in the face of almost universal support of a global ban. Consequently, even if the CTB does not formally enter into force for several years, the CD has already produced a de facto ban on nuclear testing - which after signature will become de jure for the signatories under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Thus, the CTB will establish a new international norm against nuclear testing, even if India and others choose for the time being not to adhere to the formal agreement.