Kissinger Rebuts Clinton & Co.’s Claim that C.T.B.T. Was Defeated by Partisan Politics, Isolationists

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of the United States Senate’s decisive rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) last month, President Clinton, Vice President Gore, their senior subordinates and other zealous advocates of arms control sought to obscure this defeat — if not set the stage for a renewed ratification bid — by propagating several untruths. Specifically, they claimed that: the Treaty was no given serious attention by the Senate; there were "no hearings"on the matter; there was insufficient time for debate; and no opportunity to amend the resolution of ratification.

Arguably, the most insidious and misleading of such falsehoods, however, was the endlessly repeated claim that partisan politics and isolationist impulses were responsible for the Senate’s action. This contention, which was parotted by foreign governments, opinion-makers and editorialists around the world, impugned the integrity and gravitas of every one of the fifty-one Senators who voted on the merits to reject this fatally flawed accord. To his credit, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — who was one of many prominent former Cabinet officers and other experts who recommended against Senate advice and consent to the CTBT — wrote a syndicated op.ed. article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 21 November calling such claims "absurd." Dr. Kissinger’s should be the last word on this defective accord and the "traditional, toothless" variety of arms control of which it is a prime example.

Arms Control to Suit a New World

By Henry A. Kissinger

The Washington Post, November 26, 1999

The Clinton administration’s reaction to the Senate’s refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty threatens to erode the bipartisan approach that has sustained U.S. foreign policy even within the administration. President Bill Clinton condemned the vote as a symptom of militant isolationism, and the State Department notified foreign governments that it still considered itself legally bound by the treaty. All this has tempted some foreign leaders to question the credibility of America’s international role.

It is high time to put an end to name-calling. The treaty failed because the end of the Cold War has transformed global strategic conditions and the nature of arms control. No doubt, isolationists, in different guises, exist on the extremes of both parties. But it is absurd to blame the Senate vote on an isolationist cabal when six former secretaries of defense, four former national-security advisors and four former CIA directors opposed ratification, while four former secretaries of state, myself included, refused to endorse it.

The deadlock between administration righteousness and senators’ lack of confidence in the administration’s security policy has revived the acrimonious arms-control controversies of the early 1970s. Yet, the key issue–the transformation of the nature of arms control with the end of the Cold War–has been almost totally submerged.

When nuclear stockpiles reached tens of thousands of deliverable weapons and war threatened the extinction of humanity, individuals in and out of government began to advocate the then-unprecedented proposition that the holders of these vast arsenals might negotiate to mitigate nuclear danger by limiting their nuclear buildups and establishing some rules for deployment. The purpose was to reduce the risk of surprise attack, accidental war or war by momentum, such as World War I. The result were two agreements in the 1970s limiting the number of delivery vehicles on both sides. However controversial, the accords were maintained throughout the Cold War by administrations of both parties, including President Ronald Reagan’s.

This "strategic" approach to arms control, which always insisted on retaining the option of modernization and never took risks with verifiability, was nearly overwhelmed by assaults from two opposite directions. One came from a "radical" theology of arms control, which sought to base U.S. security on guaranteeing the maximum destructiveness of nuclear war. Advocates of Mutual Assured Destruction insisted on leaving civilian populations totally vulnerable to nuclear attack. Hence, they opposed any kind of defense against nuclear missiles and tried to thwart any modernization as destabilizing. Their goal was to prevent war by imposing strategic nuclear passivity on the United States.

The difference between the strategic and radical schools of arms control was illustrated by their respective attitudes toward nuclear testing. True, the "strategic" arms controllers negotiated an underground test ban. But unlike the current version of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the ban was confined to tests above a specific threshold that was verifiable and allowed a limited number of proof-tests of existing stockpiles to determine their reliability.

Opponents of arms control in the 1970s lumped the "radical" and "strategic" schools together and attacked any effort to stabilize military relations between the superpowers as a mirage or a deliberate deception. The radical arms controllers never encountered a new technology they could approve; their critics never confronted an arms-control agreement that they could countenance.

With the test-ban treaty, Clinton’s became the first administration to throw its weight behind the radical arms controllers, and it did so without consulting either key senators or former senior officials. The administration ignored the experience of the Threshold Test Ban of the 1970s and pursued a comprehensive and permanent ban, despite the knowledge that it was not verifiable at low levels.

The Senate vote should be interpreted as a wake-up call to the revolutionary change in the nature of the U.S. strategic problem and in the role (and limits) of arms control. The "strategic" arms control of the 1970s sought to regulate a bilateral U.S.-Soviet relationship. Each of the parties could be assumed to have a parallel interest in reducing the risks of surprise attack or accidental war. Though this premise was questioned on ideological grounds, it was possible to design plausible negotiating positions on the basis of which strategic equilibrium might transcend ideology, at least as far as the goal of preventing a nuclear holocaust was concerned.

But the conflict between two nuclear superpowers is no longer the overwhelming threat. Rather, it is the spread of weapons of mass destruction to countries that reject any common norms and seek nuclear weapons to blackmail the rest of the world. The premise of the complete test ban was that cessation of tests by the nuclear powers would set an example for other countries to stay out of the nuclear-weapons field. But the countries about which we are most concerned have neither signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty nor would they be constrained by it if they did sign it. After all, North Korea, Iran and Iraq had all signed the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accepted its inspections. Yet, each is actively pursuing clandestine nuclear capabilities in violation of agreements it signed.

The oft-repeated argument that a complete test ban, if observed, would freeze the U.S. nuclear advantage does not apply to rudimentary nuclear capabilities of rogue states. Industrialized proliferators may sign the complete test ban for exactly the opposite reason: to achieve a pause to enable them to narrow the gap with U.S. technology.

The United States has a special responsibility for international security, especially involving nuclear weapons. For the sake of all who depend on U.S. protection, Washington cannot afford to subordinate national security to doubtful, speculative benefits. The U.S. is the ultimate guarantor against the scourge of biological and chemical warfare. It needs a capacity to resist with discrimination, that is, in a way that will minimize catastrophe and not stake everything on the nihilism of the theory of Mutual Assured Destruction. For the U.S. to give up technological options is a far graver decision than for countries relying on far more rudimentary capabilities.

Democratic governments have an obligation to their publics to demonstrate serious efforts to reduce the dangers of a nuclear holocaust and nuclear proliferation. But traditional arms-control agreements, especially of the toothless variety, may have come to the end of the road. Existing nonproliferation agreements should be preserved, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the suppliers’ restraints of the more recent period, such as the Missile Technology Control Regime and the Canberra Group restricting chemical exports.

But new nuclear states like India and Pakistan are reachable by traditional instruments and norms of diplomacy. Their friends can assist them in achieving a stable mutual deterrence and give stabilizing reassurances about their conventional security. Even a less sweeping test ban might have a place in such a strategy if it had a verifiable threshold, a time limit that permitted reassessment in the light of experience, quotas for proof-testing and agreement on sanctions against violators.

But what is really needed is a new common policy for nations already possessing nuclear arsenals. They must agree on controls over the export of their technologies and devise precise and tough sanctions against states acquiring weapons of mass destruction and those nations that supply them.

In too many countries, foreign policy has turned into a subdivision of domestic politics. But if, as Clemenceau said, war is too serious to be left to the generals, the future of nuclear weapons is too fateful an issue to be dominated by partisan slogans, either here or abroad.

Henry A. Kissinger, Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger frequently writes for, The Times.