Suspicions were recently raised in the U.S. on China violating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
In this backdrop, here is an overview of the evolution of the CTBT and its effectiveness.
What is CTBT?
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is the Treaty banning all nuclear explosions - everywhere, by everyone.
The Treaty was negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
It was opened for signature on 24 September 1996.
The Treaty has not entered into force yet.
[The signature to a treaty indicates that the country accepts the treaty.
The ratification symbolizes the official sanction of a treaty to make it legally binding for the government of a country.]
The CTBT is essentially a “zero-yield” treaty.
This means that the agreement prohibits all nuclear explosions that produce a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction of any kind whether for weapons or peaceful purposes.
How has banning nuclear testing evolved?
For decades, a ban on nuclear testing was seen as the necessary first step towards curbing the nuclear arms race.
But Cold War politics made it impossible.
A Partial Test Ban Treaty was concluded in 1963 banning underwater and atmospheric tests but this only drove testing underground.
By the time the CTBT negotiations began in Geneva in 1994, global politics had changed.
The Cold War had ended and the nuclear arms race was over.
The USSR had broken up and its principal testing site, Semipalatinsk, was in Kazakhstan (Russia still had access to Novaya Zemlya near the Arctic circle).
In 1991, Russia declared a unilateral moratorium on testing, followed by the U.S. in 1992.
By this time, the U.S. had conducted 1,054 tests and Russia, 715.
What were the challenges in the process?
Negotiations on nuclear test ban were often contentious.
France and China continued testing, claiming that they had conducted far fewer tests and needed to validate new designs.
They argued that the CTBT did not imply an end to nuclear deterrence.
France and the U.S. even exploited the idea of a CTBT that would permit testing at a low threshold, below 500 tonnes of TNT (trinitrotoluene) equivalent.
This was one-thirtieth of the “Little Boy”, the bomb that U.S. dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
Civil society and the non-nuclear weapon states reacted negatively to such an idea and it was dropped.
Some countries proposed permanently shutting down all test sites as the best way to verify a comprehensive test ban.
This was unwelcome to the nuclear weapon states.
What was the U.S-proposed idea then?
The U.S. came up with the idea of defining the “comprehensive test ban” as a “zero yield” test ban.
This would prohibit supercritical hydro-nuclear tests but not sub-critical hydrodynamic nuclear tests.
[Hydronuclear experiments, as distinguished from hydrodynamic ones, use actual fissile material assembled to form a supercritical mass in which a chain reaction be-gins.
Dynamic experiments are used to gain information on the physical properties and dynamic behavior of materials used in nuclear weapons.]
Once the UK and France agreed, the U.S. was able to prevail upon Russia and China to accept this understanding.
This was a moment of the U.S.’s unipolar supremacy.
The Clinton administration in the U.S. announced a science-based nuclear Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program.
This was a generously funded project to keep the nuclear laboratories in business and the Pentagon happy.
Accordingly, the CTBT prohibits all parties from carrying out “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.”
The above terms are neither defined nor elaborated.
Why does CTBT lack authority?
Another controversy arose regarding the entry-into-force provisions (Article 14) of the treaty.
India’s proposals for anchoring the CTBT in a disarmament framework did not find acceptance.
In June 1996, India announced its decision to withdraw from the negotiations.
Unhappy at this turn, the U.K., China and Pakistan took the lead in revising the entry-into-force provisions.
The new provisions listed 44 countries by name whose ratification was necessary for the treaty to enter into force and included India.
India protested that this attempt violated a country’s sovereign right to decide if it wanted to join a treaty; but this was ignored.
The CTBT was adopted by a majority vote and opened for signature.
Of the 44 listed countries, to date only 36 have ratified the treaty.
China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the U.S. have signed but not ratified.
China maintains that it will only ratify it after the U.S. does so but the Republican dominated Senate in the U.S. had rejected it in 1999.
In addition, North Korea, India and Pakistan are the three who have not signed.
All three have also undertaken tests after 1996; India and Pakistan in May 1998 and North Korea six times between 2006 and 2017.
The CTBT has, therefore, not entered into force yet, and lacks legal authority.
What role does CTBTO play?
Despite the above, an international organisation to verify the CTBT was established in Vienna.
This, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), functions with a staff of about 230 persons and an annual budget of $130 million.
Ironically, the U.S. is the largest contributor with a share of $17 million.
The CTBTO runs an elaborate verification system built around a network of over 325 seismic, radionuclide, infrasound and hydroacoustic (underwater) monitoring stations.
