March 24, 1977
Page 8964
SENATE RESOLUTION 124 — SUBMISSION OF A RESOLUTION RELATING TO NEGOTIATIONS FOR A COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY ENDING ALL NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
(Referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.)
Mr. KENNEDY (for himself, Mr. MATHIAS, Mr. HUMPHREY, Mr. MUSKIE, Mr. CASE, Mr. CRANSTON, and Mr. PELL)submitted the following resolution: S. Res. 124
Whereas the United States is committed in the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty of 1968 to negotiate a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
Whereas the conclusion of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will reinforce the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty, and will fulfill our pledge in the Limited Test Ban Treaty;
Whereas there has been significant progress in the detection and identification of underground nuclear explosions by seismological and other means; and
Whereas the SALT accords of 1972 and the proposed Threshold Test Ban Treaty established important precedents for arms control verification procedures;
Whereas early cessation of nuclear explosions would have many beneficial consequences, creating a more favorable international arms control climate; imposing further finite limits on the nuclear arms race; releasing resources for domestic needs; protecting our environment from the continuing dangers of nuclear explosions; making more stable existing agreements which place quantitative limits on offensive and defensive strategic weapons; and complementing the post-Vladivostok strategic arms limitation talks;
Whereas a Comprehensive Test Ban would achieve these goals far better than the proposed Threshold Test Ban; and
Whereas President Carter has expressed his support for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that the President of the United States (1) should propose an immediate suspension of underground nuclear explosions to remain in effect so long as the Soviet Union abstains from conducting underground explosions, and (2) should set forth promptly a new proposal to the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other nations for a permanent treaty to ban all nuclear explosions.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am pleased to submit today with Senators MATHIAS, HUMPHREY, MUSKIE, CASE, CRANSTON, and PELL a resolution endorsing the initiation of an immediate mutual moratorium of all nuclear explosions by the United States and the Soviet Union and the negotiation of a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
Essentially, we are supporting initiatives already outlined by President Carter and, at the same time, expressing the continuing support of many Senators for the United States and the Soviet Union to fulfill a 14 year old commitment to put a permanent halt to the testing of nuclear weapons.
Hopefully, this goal will be brought closer as a result of the forthcoming visit of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to the Soviet Union.
In the past three Congresses, I have joined with other Senators to introduce a resolution similar to the one we are presenting today. In the 92d Congress, we introduced Senate Resolution 230, in the 93d Congress, we introduced Senate Resolution 67, and in the 94th Congress,we introduced Senate Resolution 163.
More than 36 Senators ultimately joined these resolutions as cosponsors. The Foreign Relations Committee approved Senate Resolution 67 in June 1973, by a 14 to1 vote. We expect an even greater number to join with us during the course of the current session. The original group of Senators which pressed this effort forward always had included our esteemed colleague, Phil Hart. He was ever in the forefront of the struggle to put a halt to the nuclear arms race. We are saddened again today by his absence.
While we are introducing this measure once more, it is being done with a different administration in office. Already, we have heard President Carter strongly endorse the effort to seek a halt to all nuclear testing. He stated in his inaugural address:
We will move this year a step toward our ultimate goal: the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth. We urge all other people to join us, for success can mean life instead of death.
And again in his first press conference, he stated:
As far as nuclear arms limitations are concerned, I would like to proceed quickly and aggressively with a comprehensive test ban treaty. I am in favor of eliminating the testing of all nuclear devices, instantly and completely.
The resolution we are introducing today has two key provisions. The first provision is based on the experience that led to the achievement of the limited test ban treaty in 1963. Then President Kennedy announced at American University his intention to halt all testing in the atmosphere and his expectation that the Soviet Union would follow suit. Negotiations quickly followed that produced the limited test ban treaty.
The first provision reads:
That it is the sense of the Senate that the President of the United States (1) should propose an immediate suspension on underground nuclear explosions to remain in effect so long as the Soviet Union abstains from such underground explosions.
The second provision urges the President, again as was done 14 years ago, to make a concrete formal proposal for a permanent treaty to ban all nuclear explosions.
The second clause reads:
(2) Should set forth promptly a new proposal to the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other nations for a permanent treaty to ban all nuclear explosions.
The new administration has begun to demonstrate its own intense interest in securing an end to nuclear testing and a beginning in the process of nuclear disarmament. We believe those efforts should be encouraged and can be encouraged while maintaining and ever increasing the security of the United States. We have witnessed the growing insecurity that has resulted from the failure to put a cap on the nuclear arms race. Now we have our Nation's leaders finally cognizant that arms control can be the most reliable path to national security.
Briefly, I would like to outline the arguments for a comprehensive test ban treaty.
First, I believe it is essential to recognize that we have a treaty obligation to continue negotiations seeking "to achieve the discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time."
That solemn commitment is contained within the limited test ban treaty which was signed by President John Kennedy and ratified by the Senate of the United States in 1963.
It is an obligation reaffirmed in the preamble to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968.
It is an obligation that we can fulfill this year.
Second, a CTB would be a strengthening and stabilizing support for quantitative agreements on nuclear arms, such as SALT I and the forthcoming SALT II talks.
It would spell out an end to further refinement of warheads, hopefully thereby adding a restraint to the qualitative contest of nuclear one-up-man-ship. In so doing, we believe that a comprehensive ban is far more desirable than the proposed 150 kiloton threshold test ban agreement, whose ceiling appears just high enough to permit all weapons developers to be assured they can seek the latest warhead refinement far into the future.
Third; we believe that the conclusion of a permanent halt to nuclear testing by the United States and the Soviet Union would add a significant support to the non-proliferation effort. It would be stating to the nations which have not yet entered the nuclear club that the time has come for a halt to the nuclear arms race.
Too many of the nations with the growing capacity to enter the nuclear arena have not yet ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of the arguments they assert time and again is that the major powers are unwilling to even halt the refinement of their own massive stockpiles of nuclear warheads, while they ask others to forego nuclear weapons entirely. Ending nuclear testing would at least remove that argument from the non-proliferation debate.
In fact, the one potentially significant development in warheads that might be produced through continued testing is the creation of a thermonuclear weapon which did not require a fission trigger. Such a development permitting the production of cheap weapons, however, would make the United States less secure, not more secure. It would bring nuclear weapons within reach of every regime around the globe. No more disturbing image can be conceived.
Already, we have seen India demonstrate its nuclear potential and we have heard loud rumors of Israel's capacity and the future potential of Argentina and Brazil.
Fourth, while we cannot expect that the People's Republic of China or France immediately will alter their current posture, a CTB, at least, will place greater pressure on them to halt their own testing and weapons development.
Finally, a comprehensive ban fills the gaps and closes the loopholes that are present in the threshold treaty and its companion treaty on the conduct of peaceful nuclear explosions. The threshold test ban would permit underground nuclear tests below the level of 150 kilotons. The Treaty on Peaceful Nuclear Explosions would permit PNE's below the same level and provide for some onsite inspection.
These companion measures have been engulfed in controversy. Critics have charged that the threshold of 150 kilotons — 10 times the size of the Hiroshima blast — would permit continued weapons tests of considerable range. I share their concerns and view the treaty as one whose benefit is less as an arms control measure in itself, but as an additional webbing in a network of agreements between the superpowers. Similiarly, the companion PNE treaty affords too great an excuse for the conduct of nuclear explosions.
The verification of a comprehensive ban will be far easier and far more sure than one which attempts to define whether a given explosion has passed the precise level of 150 kilotons or whether a peaceful explosion does or does not have military uses.
I far prefer, and this resolution supports, the concepts embodied in the address by President Carter in his speech last year to a conference at the United Nations. There he stated:
The United States and the Soviet Union should conclude an agreement prohibiting all nuclear explosions for a period of five years, whether they be weapons tests or so called peaceful nuclear explosions, and encourage all other nations to join. At the end of the five year period, the agreement can be continued if it serves the interests of the parties.
That statement far more accurately describes the appropriate goal for a halt to all explosions. While a 5 year ban would be a major accomplishment, hopefully, a permanent treaty can be achieved.
I believe that while the Soviet Union has expressed its own concern that other nations, particularly the People's Republic of China, join such a comprehensive test ban treaty, their major emphasis on achieving a CTB has been expressed publicly and privately in the past. As Secretary Brezhnev stated only this past week:
The question of prohibiting all nuclear weapons tests is an extremely important and pressing one.
Much has been achieved over recent years in the verification arena that improves and underscores our capacity to use seismological and satellite means of verifying a complete halt on nuclear testing. The farfetched scenarios for cheating have largely been exposed as unconvincing, and virtually every outside scientist and arms control expert who has examined this issue concludes that no significant gain in weapons technology would accrue to the cheater. A far greater risk exists of being exposed as a treaty violator.
In that vein, it should be noted that under the ABM Treaty, the SALT I agreement and the proposed threshold test ban treaty, significant steps forward have occurred in establishing reporting procedures, monitoring procedures and verification procedures, even including a willingness by the Soviet Union under certain circumstances and conditions to accept some onsite inspections. My own view is that such inspections are merely icing on the cake when our seismological and satellite and other intelligence means of verification are really understood. In fact most experts — even in the absence of onsite inspections — believe that we would be far more secure today with satellite and seismological data andother national means of verification than we would have been in 1963, when the U. S negotiating position merely required an extremely low number of onsite inspections.
The risks from cheating are so great, and the benefits from cheating so minimal, that it would be more than foolhardy for any nation to try and cheat on an agreement.
I believe that we are at a particularly important moment when the realization of the need for arms control is becoming clear. A CTB would demonstrate that the United States and Soviet are both still committed to specific and concrete limits on arms and to the reduction of those nuclear stockpiles. It might be a fitting and apt stimulus to the conclusion of the SALT II talks.
To understand our current strategic situation with regard to warheads, one must recognize that a CTB at this time is clearly in our interest. We have some 8,900 strategic warheads. We have some 22,000 tactical nuclear weapons. We have some 22,000 tactical nuclear weapons. We have warheads for our MIRV's. Each day that testing goes forward, our lead in this area diminishes.
If opponents of a treaty argue that the nuclear stockpile might be further refined by continued testing, it must be obvious to all that any such refinements pale beside the significance of placing a major cap on the qualitative side of the nuclear arms race.
Another argument raised against a CTB is that it might permit unlimited peaceful nuclear explosions which could be used for military purposes. Any CTB clearly must cover all explosions or make extremely tight restrictions over any exception. From previous statements of Soviet leaders, it is possible that the mutual advantage of a permanent treaty to ban all tests may well be sufficient incentive for them to yield on this issue.
The time for restraining the qualitative arms race is now. What we need now is the political initiative on both sides to carry the movement or a halt to all nuclear explosions to its conclusion. This resolution expresses support to Secretary of State Vance and President Carter in their efforts to achieve that goal. We hope that it will be viewed as an encouragement to the administration to direct its aim toward achieving a comprehensive test ban treaty as a goal of the highest priority and significance.
It is time to take this step away from the nuclear brink of destruction.
Mr. President, I send to the desk a resolution and ask that it be appropriately referred.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The resolution will be received and appropriately referred.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's visit to the Soviet Union provides an early opportunity to open talks centered on one of the most vital issues facing our world today: the development and implementation of an agreement to ban nuclear testing by the Soviet Union and the United States.
We took a major step toward that goal in 1963, with the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which bans atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. One hundred and four nations have ratified it. Congress has enacted legislation limiting the transfer of nuclear energy materials to non-signatory nations. And complete agreement to it by all the nations of the world remains a goal to which we are committed.
But it is time to step beyond the limited test ban and work aggressively toward a comprehensive test ban.
The commitment of the President to such a ban is clear. He enunciated it at his inauguration, and he repeated it in his statement before the United Nations General Assembly on March 17. The President specifically said his administration will "explore the possibility of a total cessation of nuclear testing. While our ultimate goal is for all nuclear powers to end testing, we do not regard this as a prerequisite for suspension of tests by the two principal nuclear powers."
Secretary Vance's visit is a splendid opportunity to begin that exploration. Perhaps, as the President has suggested, an informal start toward an agreement can be made through a process of voluntary prenotification of testing, giving ourselves and the Soviets the necessary degree of confidence in each other's intentions.
Technological advances in seismic research have moved us toward an adequate offsite monitoring ability which can provide a firm basis for negotiating such an agreement. And the repeated signs of willingness on the part of the Soviet Union to consider this as one component of wide ranging arms control efforts is an opportunity we cannot afford to ignore.
The need for a complete ban is clear, especially in light of the Chinese atmospheric explosion last September and underground test in October. If we are to prevent the growth of a third major nuclear armaments stockpile which can only add to the instability that nuclear arms create for all mankind, it is imperative that we move now toward a comprehensive and total ban on all weapons testing, and that we use the impetus of that agreement to urge all the nations of the world to join us.
By the terms of both the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, the United States committed itself to making every effort to conclude an agreement ending all nuclear testing. In 1969, President Nixon explicitly committed his administration to work toward the conclusion of a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
Official U.S. policy for many years favored a comprehensive test ban provided it could be adequately verified to protect our security. For verification, the United States has always insisted on onsite inspections to provide assurances that unidentifiable seismic events are not clandestine explosions. The Russians have consistently claimed that such inspections are unnecessary, although they have at times consented to limited onsite inspections.
Mr. President, both in 1971 and 1972, the Arms Control Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, which I chaired, held hearings on a comprehensive test ban treaty. At those hearings, a host of national scientific experts documented the progress made in recent years in the techniques of detection and identification of underground nuclear tests. The fact is that our seismic research during the last decade has paid off handsomely.
Onsite inspections now add very little to our verification capabilities. Discrimination between earthquakes and underground explosions is now possible with high reliability for energy yields of a few kilotons.
Onsite inspections at best now seem useful for only a narrow yield range below this level and above the threshold at which seismic signals are detectable, that is, about one to a few kilotons. It is hard to see how cheating in this yield range could be of great security significance. Strategic weapons have yields 10 times more than these levels.
The time is ripe for a new and bold initiative toward concluding a comprehensive test ban treaty. Such an accord is a natural corollary to SALT II, and the effort being made to break the deadlock in those negotiations. A ban would strengthen the likelihood of acceptance by emerging powers whose nuclear capability is not yet substantial enough to pose a global threat.
Continued lack of action on a comprehensive test ban provides no assurance to the non-nuclear nations that their restraint in not developing a nuclear capacity has served their security interests. In a world dominated by sometimes hostile superpowers with huge stocks of lethal weapons, that sense of insecurity can only be heightened by an apparent deadlock in the superpowers' positions on a comprehensive test ban.
Renewed negotiations for a comprehensive test ban serve to reassure both our allies and nonaligned nations that the lack of their own strategic forces does not inevitably expose them to greater threats. The climate for nonproliferation would be vastly improved, and the efforts of the superpowers in reaching agreements on arms controls would be enhanced.
Thus, we stand to gain much and risk little by taking this step now.
If the United States and the Soviet Union can rededicate themselves to finding a way to end their nuclear testing, the world will have taken a desperately needed step toward controlling the spread of nuclear weapons.
But if they let this opportunity go by, we can only expect a continued acceleration of the development of nuclear arms by other nations.
And that is a consequence with grave implications for the future of humanity.