#WTH A new nuclear arms race?

Not so fast. That's not what Trump said.

Note: Stephen Rademaker has joined the pod on several occasions to discuss nuclear proliferation and sanctions. He is the former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, and guest wrote this for #WTH.

The arms control community is in shock over President Trump’s announcement yesterday on Truth Social that he has directed the resumption of nuclear weapons testing by the United States. They interpret this as a departure from the nuclear testing moratorium America has observed since 1992, and a threat to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that was signed in 1996 and rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1999.

But before declaring that the sky is falling, it’s important to carefully parse what the President said. Here are his words:

The clear implication is that he plans to match what other countries are already doing. The only other country that has anything approaching an active nuclear weapons testing program is North Korea, which last tested in 2017. So perhaps he means he intends to keep pace with North Korea by resuming the kind of testing the United States conducted until 1992. But the balance of Trump’s Truth Social post was about the nuclear weapons programs of Russia and China, so the more plausible reading is that he’s talking about keeping pace with the nuclear programs of those countries.

Russia and China aren’t testing, the arms control community asserts, so there’s nothing there for America to keep pace with. Trump therefore is wrong both on the policy and on his facts, they claim.

But this argument overlooks important facts that were put on the public record by the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States in its 2009 report to Congress. This Commission was appointed by the congressional leadership in 2008 to make recommendations regarding U.S. nuclear weapons strategy. The Chairman of the Commission was former (Democratic) Secretary of Defense William Perry, and the Vice-Chairman was former (GOP) Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. The Commission had a total of 12 members, equally divided among Democrats and Republicans, all experts in the field of defense and arms control.

Among other things, the Commission carefully reviewed the CTBT. Unlike most other issues considered by the Commission, it was unable to forge a consensus on whether the United States should ratify the CTBT. The members split evenly on this question, with all the Democratic appointees favoring approval of the CTBT, and all the Republicans opposing. The Commission’s report included brief summaries of the case for approval of the CTBT made by the Commission members in favor of the treaty, and of the case against.

One of the key points made by the opponents was that:

. . . the treaty remarkably does not define a nuclear test. In practice this allows different interpretations of its prohibitions and asymmetrical restrictions. The strict U.S. interpretation precludes tests that produce a nuclear yield. However, other countries with different interpretations could conduct tests with hundreds of tons of nuclear yield— allowing them to develop or advance nuclear capabilities with low-yield, enhanced radiation, and electro-magnetic pulse. Apparently Russia and possibly China are conducting low yield tests. This is quite serious because Russian and Chinese doctrine highlights tactical nuclear warfighting. (Emphasis added)

Opponents of the treaty went on to point out that, according to a 2002 report of the National Academy of Sciences, it is possible to conceal from detection underground nuclear tests with yields up to 1000-2000 tons. This means that it is possible for countries like Russia and China to conduct low-yield tests based on their definition of what is prohibited by the treaty without fear of detection.

Supporters of the CTBT on the Commission did not dispute these factual assertions. To the contrary, they agreed that the lack of an agreed definition of precisely what activity the treaty prohibits is a problem. Because of the shared concern about the lack of an agreed definition, the Commission unanimously recommended that:

To prepare the way for Senate re-review of the CTBT, the administration should …secure P-5 agreement on a clear and precise definition of banned and permitted test activity.

This, of course, never happened, and therefore to this day there are divergent understandings among the nuclear weapons states as to what level of nuclear yield can permissibly be generated in a nuclear test, consistent with the limitations of the CTBT. If all President Trump meant to say is that the United States is now going to adopt the Russian and Chinese definition of what kind of nuclear testing activity is permissible under the CTBT, and structure U.S. weapons tests “on an equal basis”, then this was hardly a step toward a renewed nuclear arms race.

In a statement issued following President Trump’s announcement, the Arms Control Association seemed to acknowledge that it’s possible this is what Trump meant. But then it goes on to say, “Accusations that Russia and China may have conducted super-critical nuclear weapons tests are unsubstantiated and highly debatable, and such test[s] provide little value for advancing the capabilities of their nuclear programs.”

That’s their opinion, and they’re entitled to it. But one wonders why, if the assertions made in the Strategic Posture Commission report by opponents of the CTBT were in fact “unsubstantiated and highly debatable,” the supporters of the treaty (who had access to the latest intelligence information) didn’t argue that in their response. Instead, they joined the opponents in saying that there’s a problem with the treaty that needs to be fixed. It should not be excluded that President Trump’s announcement will contribute to achieving that fix “on an equal basis”.