The CTBT and the US

This week, the CTBTO is holding a weeklong conference on the CTBTO and the progress being made to ratify the CTBT.  Simultaneously, there is an education program being held both in Geneva and online.  I am one of the participants, and already I have learned so much about the CTBTO and the delegation processes. Part of the course is a simulation of the Executive Council Deliberations over an On-site Inspection Request.  I was selected to be a part of the representative team for Columbia. 

The CTBT is the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on September 10, 1996, but it has not entered into force because eight Annex-2 states have not ratified the treaty.  They are the United States, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, North Korea, China, and Iran.

Once the CTBT is ratified and becomes part of international law, the UN will be able to monitor the world.  If a state violates the CTBT the executive council has been set up for a democratic process to order on site inspections. 

It is the interest of the United States to ratify the CTBT because the United States has already ceased nuclear testing.  The US now uses computers to run calculations and virtual tests that are just as effective as actual tests.  If the US took a leading role in getting the rest of the other states to ratify the treaty, the risk of other states gaining nuclear weapons would be eliminated almost entirely.  The United States also has even more reason to ratify the CTBT since Russia has already done so.  Russia has the second most nuclear weapons in the world.  Russia tested the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated called the Tsar Bomba in 1961. 

This is the most supported nuclear treaty in the world.  The US and others continue to obstruct it.  The US needs to begin working with the international community instead of opposing it.  For the rest of the week, I will be learning more about how the CTBT is practically carried out.  I will also be taking part in the Executive Council simulation.  I hope to learn a lot this week.  Around a hundred other participants from around the world will be joining me.  Perhaps through education and awareness, support can spread for this important treaty.

President Obama in Berlin: "So long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”

President Barack Obama at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate

Today, in front of the historic Brandenburg Gate, US President Barack Obama stood where Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy before him also stood.  He uttered the words now made famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” to a cheering crowd waving German and American flags together.  President Obama addressed the issue of nuclear weapons and proliferation in his speech.  Perhaps more importantly, Obama said, “We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”  While most likely rhetoric, Mr. Obama was correct when he said this; for as long as weapons exist that can take out entire cities and regions, no country or people are safe if war breaks out. 

President Obama championed the New START Treaty in his speech saying, “I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.”  However, unless Mr. Obama has had some great change of heart, his actions during his Presidency regarding nuclear weapons have yet to meet the expectations laid out in his grandiose speeches.  The New START Treaty is made to sound ambitious and groundbreaking, it is however very conservative in its changes and unimaginative.  The new treaty sets the deployed weapon limit at 1550 warheads for each country.  The estimate of the US stockpile is estimated at 4,650 warheads, of which around 2,150 are deployed.  Russian nuclear stockpile is estimated at 4,500 weapons.  Only 1,800 of those warheads are deployed.  So the limit of 1550 really isn’t that drastic of a change.

Why Can't We Say Sorry?

In Senate Resolution 330, the U.S. Senate has designated January 27, 2012 as "a national day of remembrance for Americans who, during the Cold War, worked and lived downwind from nuclear testing sites and were adversely affected by the radiation exposure generated by the above ground nuclear weapons testing."

The first nuclear test explosion at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles from Las Vegas, was conducted on January 27, 1951. The United States proceeded to conduct over 1,000 nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site over the next 40 years.

Nevada Test Site: Ho-Hum

A great example of the trivialization
of what has gone on at the Test Site.

The Nevada Test Site tour was an eye-opening endeavor in many ways. Seeing the remnants of our nuclear testing regime was shocking. What struck me over and over from the moment we left Las Vegas on the bus early in the morning was the "ho-hum" attitude of our tour guides, the nonchalance with which they presented a selected set of facts and other statements about the test site and the long-term effects of radiation and nuclear waste.

I suppose that to live with yourself as a NTS lifer, you must force yourself to believe that what has gone on there over the past 60 years has been of great benefit to the country, or at least not particularly damaging. I will give some examples of how this attitude came across.

International Day Against Nuclear Tests

Craters from nuclear tests
at the Nevada Test Site

Today, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Geneva branch hosted a seminar commemorating the International Day against Nuclear Tests in conjunction with the UN Mission of Kazakhstan. The International Day against Nuclear Tests – August 29 – was  adopted by the United Nations General Assembly last year at the urging of Kazakhstan.

Today’s seminar looked at the history of the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan, where the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests, causing untold damage to the land and downwind inhabitants. Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk site 20 years ago today. The seminar also examined the importance of ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which still needs ratification from a few key nations, including the United States, to enter into force.

I am traveling to Las Vegas in October for the fall meeting of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. As part of our meeting, we will take a tour of the Nevada Test Site, where the United States conducted 1,021 nuclear detonations between 1953 and 1992. The pictures of the Nevada Test Site (like the one above) and the testimony of those living downwind from the Nevada Test Site are shocking and sad. I’m sure that a visit in person to the test site will add another layer of strength to my belief that nuclear testing must be stopped forever, and a just compensation paid to the victims of nuclear testing around the world.

The Scope of Nuclear Proliferation

While compiling information for Nuclear Files today, I came across a timeline entry from a document from the Carnegie Endowment that helped visualize just how many countries are involved in nuclear affairs:

“December 2001 - The German cargo ship BBC China is intercepted en route to Libya with components for 1,000 centrifuges. The parts were manufactured in Malaysia by SCOPE and shipped through Dubai.”

In a single event, four separate countries and one company are implicated in the illegal transfer of nuclear technology. More than that, none of these countries are typically “counted” when discussing nuclear proliferation.