Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
10/3/2014
While U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech this week at the United Nations marked the second time in two weeks that senior Obama Administration officials have advocated for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty’s entry into force while citing the need for Congressional educational outreach efforts, it remains unclear when the Administration might ramp up a push for the treaty. Kerry’s address followed a Sept. 15 CTBT-focused event at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller joined Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and other Administration officials in pushing for entry into force of the CTBT, which would ban nuclear weapons testing worldwide.
In his speech, Kerry acknowledged that the United States has not ratified the CTBT, but also underscored its alignment with U.S. policy and reiterated the Obama Administration’s commitment to its entry into force. “What this treaty does is simple: It sets standards and enforces the kind of verification measures that the United States already has in place, and that’s why we remain a strong supporter of the treaty,” Kerry said.
He also touted advances of the U.S. stockpile stewardship program and the “nearly completed” CTBT international monitoring system, and cited both as imperatives for U.S. Senate ratification. “I know some members of the United States Senate still have concerns about this treaty. I believe they can be addressed by science, by facts, through computers and the technology we have today coupled with a legitimate stockpile stewardship program,” Kerry said. “As the United States Senate considers ratification, it will require assurances not only that an effective, operational, and sustainable verification regime is in place, but that other nations are committed to sustaining it.”
Little Noise on Hill About CTBT
Despite the high-profile speeches, there are few signs of the Administration moving to engage lawmakers on the issue. One Congressional staffer said he has not heard any recent talk on Capitol Hill about the issue. “I’d expect the Administration to ramp up advocacy for it if it were really going to come up in the Senate, and I haven’t heard of that happening yet, but I guess anything is possible,” the staffer said. A foreign affairs officer in the State Department told NS&D Monitor in an Oct. 2 email that he hadn’t noticed any recent increase in State Department activity related to CTBT.
Pierce Corden, visiting scholar at the Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has organized CTBT workshops and presentations on Capitol Hill, and said he has heard that Gottemoeller is contacting Senate offices about the issue, but also noted that he had not been approached to arrange any upcoming presentations on the Hill. “The big workshop we did was the summer of 2012, and we did the Hill briefing at that point, but we don’t anticipate anything specific at the moment,” he said. Before the 2012 briefings on the Hill, the most recent presentations were given in 2008 and 2009 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he said.
Administration ‘Checking the Box’ on Treaty
Thomas Graham, a leading expert on nuclear non-proliferation and former special representative of the president of the United States for arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament, wrote in a Sept. 30 email to NS&D Monitor that the that recent CTBT speeches merely equate to “checking the box” and don’t constitute any new Administration push for entry into force. Graham expressed gloomy prospects for Senate ratification. “I don’t think that Kerry’s words, eloquent as they are, will change anything,” he said.
Cordon wrote in an Oct. 1 email to NS&D Monitor that educating senators would be essential to ensuring CTBT ratification. “Well prior to the Senate taking up the CTBT again for giving its advice and consent to ratification, it will be important that all senators are fully briefed on the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile stewardship program’s successes, and prospects for ensuring that the stockpile is effective indefinitely, and that they are briefed on both U.S. national technical means of verification as well as the International Monitoring System/International Data Center.”
Is Education the Key to Ratification?
But Graham claimed that CTBT’s stagnation did not stem from a lack of Senatorial knowledge about the topic. “It is almost certainly far too late for this Administration to succeed on CTBT; the 2016 presidential campaign begins in a few months, but even if somehow this wasn’t the case, the CTBT can’t be won by eloquent exhortations or offers of education,” Graham wrote. “It will be won by the president announcing that CTBT is now his highest legislative priority and then by the private deals he makes one-on-one with the republican senators he needs.”
While Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said it was too early to predict prospects for CTBT ratification in the upcoming congresses, he expressed optimism about the potential benefits of educating senators, and added that current senators are simply uninformed about the issues associated with the 1996 agreement. “There’s a lot of work to do, if only because about two-thirds of the Senate today has never seriously considered issues related to the CTBT, and they and their staff are simply not familiar with the issues and the facts, which are considerably different than they were in 1999,” he said.
In that year, CTBT ratification failed in the Senate. But Kimball also highlighted what he sees as the value of recent Obama Administration pushes for entry into force. “I think it is significant that they have, after a long hiatus, begun talking about the national security benefits of the treaty, and I hope it’s the beginning of a much more robust effort,” he said.
International Leaders Back Treaty at UN Meeting
Kerry joined about 30 other world leaders and representatives from a total of about 90 countries to issue the UN’s Seventh Joint Ministerial Statement calling for the treaty’s entry into force. “Almost 20 years have passed since the CTBT was opened for signature,” the statement reads. “Although the Treaty is yet to come into force, the nuclear test moratorium has become a de facto international norm. However, without the lasting and legally-binding effect of entry into force of the Treaty, such a norm remains fragile. We therefore urge all states that have not done so to sign and ratify the Treaty, in particular the remaining eight Annex 2 States to sign and ratify without delay.”
Signed by 183 states and ratified by 163 nations, the CTBT awaits ratification of eight “Annex 2” states—the United States, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, India, China, Israel and Egypt—to enter into force. “One can argue that because the treaty hasn’t entered into force, indeed, it’s a source of concern,” said CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo. “But is it reason to lose hope? Absolutely not. …There’s hope because there is leadership. There is hope as well because we all know what’s happening in our world today dictates that we get this treaty into force to contribute to what we want to achieve: A world free of nuclear weapons, and a world of peace and security.”
Kerry urged the seven other Annex 2 countries to “accelerate their efforts” to ratify CTBT. “There is no reason for the Annex II states to wait for the United States before completing their own ratification process, and this treaty is a national security imperative for all of us,” he said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon specifically thanked representatives of countries that haven’t ratified the treaty for their attendance at the UN Ministerial meeting. “Throughout my diplomatic career, I have pushed for an end to nuclear tests,” Ki-moon said. “As Secretary-General, I have consistently advocated universal ratification of the CTBT. This treaty bans all nuclear tests, constrains the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons, and contributes to progress on nuclear disarmament. The CTBT also helps protect our environment against harmful radioactive by-products of nuclear tests. But we must secure the ratifications necessary for entry into force. I call for urgent ratification by the eight remaining Annex 2 States.”
Kerry Calls IMS System ‘One of the Great Accomplishments of the Modern World’
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Organization (CTBTO) Preparatory Commission has established and certified 82 percent of the 337 total planned international monitoring systems to monitor CTBT compliance, and at the Sept. 15 USIP event, Moniz said that 35 of 37 planned U.S. stations have been set up. The “verification regime is one of the great accomplishments of the modern world,” Kerry said. “The international monitoring system is nearly complete; it is robust, it is effective, and it has contributed critical scientific data on everything from tsunami warnings to tracking radioactivity and nuclear reactor accidents.”
Kerry also underscored U.S. contributions to the treaty budget, as the United States has given more than $40 million above its assessment throughout the past two years. “I’m here to tell you that we want to make sure that the investment that you put into this organization that is unique is not lost,” Zerbo said. “We want to tell you that we’re ready because of you, and we’re ready to prove that this international monitoring system serves as the deterrent it was meant for.”
