There is a serious discussion to be had about the wisdom of arms control efforts. Alan Caruba, in the Washington Times, fails to take part in it. The piece is a hodgepodge of unsupported attacks on arms control efforts, which I will address one by one.
It is instructive that both Pakistan and India acquired their nuclear weapons without anyone being aware of it until after the fact. At CIA headquarters, when India announced its successful test, it came as a very big surprise. These days, the United States is busy reassuring Israel that Iran is “at least a year away” from nuclear status, and you can imagine how relieved they are to hear that.
This is completely misleading. Caruba is alluding to the fact that the United States did not detect the 1998 Indian nuclear tests before they happened. The United States was well aware of both the Indian and the Pakistani nuclear weapons programs for a long time, especially since India tested a nuclear device in 1974. Caruba then moves on to attack the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization designated last Sunday as the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. Given the total lack of success in thwarting any nation that wants a nuke, my confidence in the United Nations’ treaty is zero.
Nobody is suggesting that CTBT will single-handled thwart the nuclear ambitions of any country. Rather, it is one more tool to detect and discourage nuclear testing. Moreover, the CTBT has not been ratified by the U.S., nor has it gone into effect. Is Caruba actually blaming a dormant treaty for failing to solve the problem of nuclear proliferation?
Robert R. Monroe, a retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy and former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency from 1977 to 1980, expressed the opinion, “The treaty has many problems from being unverifiable to giving Russia virtual veto power over U.S. missile defense, and more.” That’s bad enough, but it’s worse than that.
New START does not limit U.S. missile defense no matter how many times New START critics insist that it does. As the Arms Control Association’s Tom Collina says:
“[T]he treaty will not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said May 18. The treaty’s preamble acknowledges the interrelationship between offense and defense, and Russia has made a unilateral statement that if U.S. missile defense activities jeopardize Moscow’s supreme interests, it may withdraw from the treaty. Both sides have the right to say what they want in a unilateral statement, which has no legal impact on the treaty. Both sides have the right to withdraw from the treaty, just as the United States withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty during the Bush administration. U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty did not lead to Russia’s withdrawal from START I.
Caruba throws in some questions about his opponent’s patriotism for good measure.
There are those who love test-ban treaties. They love the idea of unilaterally disarming the United States in a world where there are nations that may not love us.
Sigh.
Not surprisingly, the nations with nukes have not signed onto anything that would take away their deterrent factor, and, of course, Iran is hellbent on getting nukes for itself.
Again, totally misleading. The nations with nuclear weapons (including the United States!) have signed a variety of bilateral and multilateral agreements to limit their nuclear weapons programs. Whether these limits “take away their deterrent factor” is another issue. Would the CTBT limit our ability to use our hundreds of highly-tested, well-maintained nuclear weapons? Of course not.
There are much better versions of all these arguments, so it is unclear why the Washington Times gave Caruba this opportunity. Putting U.S. foreign policy on a sensible footing requires that nonsense like this be rebutted.
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