June 21, 1974
Page 20768
NUCLEAR TEST BAN
Mr. MATHIAS. Mr. President, as the President and the Secretary of State prepare to depart for talks in Moscow with the leaders of the Soviet Union, all of us should be thinking about the subject of further nuclear test ban agreements that is certainly going to be on the agenda in Russia.
The Baltimore Sun, on June 22, 1974, published in parallel columns statements by our colleagues, the Senator from Maine, Mr. MUSKIE, and the Senator from New York, Mr. BUCKLEY, which contribute greatly to an objective understanding of the test ban issue. I ask unanimous consent that the articles be printed in full in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
SHOULD ALL NUCLEAR TESTS BE BANNED
NOTE.– Senator Edmund S. Muskie, Democrat of Maine, has long favored a Comprehensive Test Ban to eliminate the underground explosions permitted by the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty. Senator James L. Buckley, Republican-Conservative of New York, has been outspoken in his opposition to such a move. Both senators give their views while arguing against the kind of Threshold Test Ban that might emerge from next week's Nixon-Brezhnev summit.
FOR
(By Edmund S. Muskie)
President Nixon's trip to Moscow Thursday offers an excellent opportunity for this country and the Soviet Union to negotiate a ban on all nuclear testing. Unfortunately, there are disquieting signs that the administration plans to let this opportunity pass by, and to aim instead for a limited agreement to reduce only the size or possibly the number of permissible underground nuclear tests.
In my view, it would be a mistake to abandon efforts to conclude a total test ban treaty at this time. In the judgment of many scientific experts, we now have the technical capability to detect any significant violations of such an agreement without onsite inspection. Moreover, in a June 14 speech in Moscow, Secretary Brezhnev said: "We are ready now to agree with the United States on the limitation of underground nuclear tests up to their full termination, according to an agreed timetable." If Secretary Brezhnev means what he says, we may now have a better opportunity to conclude a total test ban treaty than at any time since the negotiations leading to the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty.
Those negotiations during the Kennedy administration came close to producing an agreement to ban all nuclear tests. That effort failed over the issue of onsite inspections, with the U.S. insisting on at least seven per year, and the Soviets willing to allow no more than three. So a treaty was concluded prohibiting only nuclear testing in the atmosphere, with general language added – and subsequently reaffirmed in the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty – committing all parties to continue to work toward a total nuclear test ban treaty.
As chairman of the Senate subcommittee on arms control, I have held hearings on the prospects for a comprehensive test ban treaty each year for the past three years. On each occasion, administration officials have reiterated their support for a comprehensive test ban agreement, adequately verified – by which they mean at least some provision for limited on-site inspection.
However, in recent years enormous technological advances have been made so that it is now possible, through seismic and satellite means, to monitor underground tests to a degree unknown five years ago. There is still a gray area. But it is at a level where the risk of discovery – and the subsequent embarrassment – becomes a deterrent to testing, especially since the benefits to be gained from cheating in the low yield area are not likely to affect the nuclear arms balance. So I believe we can detect and identify militarily significant tests by national means only, and that any tests which might escape our monitoring would be so small as to be strategically insignificant.
Given this technical capability, I find it disturbing that press reports on preparations for the summit indicate that the Nixon administration, reportedly intent on further testing of tactical nuclear weapons, plans to pursue with the Soviets a "threshold" test ban – a limit only on those tests large enough to produce a seismic signal above a given magnitude. This approach has many risks with few of the advantages of a comprehensive ban.
First, it will not significantly impede further development of nuclear weapons technology. For example, India, the newest nuclear power, has indicated it would ignore a threshold agreement in its nuclear weapons testing program. But it would stop all tests if a comprehensive test ban were agreed to by the two superpowers.
Second, some sources have predicted a threshold agreement which would permit unlimited explosions in the under-100 kiloton range. If this kind of agreement is signed, it will do little to reduce the number of tests, since this is the range within which the large majority of testing takes place anyway.
Third, such an agreement would complicate enforcement. If all tests are banned, any test would be a violation. A limited ban could lead to constant bickering over the actual size of tests which register high on the monitoring devices.
Fourth, a limited ban is likely to slow or stop progress toward a full test ban.
Finally, a threshold ban, especially one with a high threshold, would be perceived around the world as a convenient political agreement which demands no real commitment from either superpower to the goal of ending the spread and continued development of nuclear weaponry.
Neither the U.S. nor the Russians could persuasively argue against nuclear weapons development by other countries in such a climate. In fact, by not going ahead with a CTB, the U.S. and Soviet Union may well be providing other countries with a convenient excuse to initiate a similar testing program of their own. An agreement to end all nuclear testing, on the other hand, would not only limit United States-Soviet nuclear arms competition and save money for both countries, but it would also go a long way toward preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons.
So despite the seeming commitment of both the United States and the Soviet Union to ending all nuclear testing, and despite recent technological advances in test-monitoring capabilities, all the indications are that a comprehensive test ban agreement will not seriously be pursued in Moscow next week. This is unfortunate. We as well as the Soviets must face the fact that if nuclear testing continues, the result may be to reduce, rather than enhance, our mutual security.
AGAINST
(By James L. Buckley)
Since the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, both the United States and the Soviet Union have engaged in an extensive program of underground nuclear weapons testing. It has been argued, with increasing urgency, that the logical conclusion to U.S. efforts to inhibit the development of nuclear weapons would be to seek a comprehensive ban on all nuclear testing including those which take place below ground. It has further been argued that the United States would benefit if a comprehensive nuclear test ban were agreed to with the Soviet Union. I am convinced, however, that the entire issue of a comprehensive test ban – CTB – deserves much more careful scrutiny than it has received thus far.
At the present time, it is desirable for the United States to continue underground nuclear testing. Such testing to date has had a beneficial impact on the strategic arms competition by fulfilling one of the key objectives of arms control, mitigating the consequences of war, should war occur.
Continued testing will permit improvements in the capacity of our forces to be used in a discriminate and controlled manner as opposed to the current indiscriminate character of those forces which focus on massive attacks on civilian targets.
Between 1970 and 1975, the total megatonnage loaded on board U.S. strategic ballistic missile systems – the Minuteman and Poseidon – will decline by 40 per cent. This decline in the aggregate destructive power of U.S. strategic forces has been made possible by improvements in nuclear weapon design technology which has permitted much smaller nuclear weapons to be placed in our strategic forces. It is reasonable to assume that as improvements in missile guidance become available and deployed, even smaller (and therefore, less destructive) nuclear weapons could be used.
The net reduction in force megatonnage vastly reduces the potential destructiveness of a nuclear force. Such a reduction would enable a military planner to avoid using the very large weapons which cause vast numbers of unnecessary civilian casualties as much by the direct effects of the nuclear detonation as by fallout.
Failing to continue to improve our strategic nuclear weapons would freeze deterrence at high levels of destruction. Thus, if deterrence should fail, the ability of each side to mitigate the consequences of nuclear war would be severely limited. Moreover, the sheer magnitude of the potential destruction of U.S. forces tends to reduce the credibility of their being used. Eventually, a force which is not credible will not deter.
As the United States sees its margin of nuclear superiority eroded by the continuing Soviet strategic nuclear buildup, the confidence the President can have in the ability of our stockpiled nuclear weapons to perform reliably becomes increasingly important. For example, if after deployment some potential defect were noted in a Minuteman III warhead, military leaders must be able to give a U.S. President categorical assurance that the weapon can perform as required. If these assurances cannot be given, the President's confidence in the deterrent capability of our forces would erode.
Such a circumstance can be remedied only with continued testing of our nuclear weapons. Only with such testing can we be sure that the weapons which are in our stockpile will perform as required. It is important to understand that U.S. nuclear weapons are more likely to suffer from confidence problems than are Soviet weapons because we have relied upon highly advanced technology to provide extremely compact weapons for our ICBM and submarine-launched ballistic missile force. The inability to test our weapon would require numerically larger and thus more expensive forces to retain the current level of confidence in the credibility of these forces.
There has been considerable discussion concerning the emergence of a derivative of a Comprehensive Test Ban at the impending Moscow summit talks, the so-called Threshold Test Ban (TTB), where underground demonstrations would be limited to explosions less than some specified yield. This approach has many of the deficiencies of a comprehensive test ban with some additional weaknesses of its own. A TTB serves no positive purpose since the development of U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons would continue without any impact on a future decision of other nations such as Germany or Japan to "go nuclear." It simply seeks to constrain the arms competition between the United States and the Soviet Union by slowing the growth of technology.
This approach to arms control has historically been a conspicuous failure; the Washington and London Naval Treaties of the 1920's and 1930's demonstrated that the development of new technology (e.g., the aircraft carrier) could not be stopped by limiting the deployment of battleships and other capital vessels. Experience shows that other means must be found to inhibit strategic arms competition; attempting to "stop" technology will not work. It also appears likely that in practice the TTB would be a retrogressive and counterproductive step to take. Its proponents, by reducing the improvements in technology which would reduce the indiscriminate character of the present stockpile of nuclear weapons in both the United States and the Soviet Union, the present stockpile of high yield weapons would have to be retained in the force.
The only effective way to reduce the competition in strategic arms is to mitigate the circumstances which give rise to international suspicions and work toward reductions in the aggregate size of strategic forces.