The impact of the evolving international-security environment on efforts to end explosive nuclear testing over time

ABSTRACT

Ambassador Jaap Ramaker of the Netherlands served as chairman of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiations. In this article, Ambassador Ramaker reflects on the negotiating process and the ways in which concrete progress of the CTBT ratification process could enhance international peace and security. Ratification by the two remaining nuclear-weapon states would constitute an essential first step and also create a possible area of cooperation between Russia and then United States on a nuclear issue that, for these two states, has long been non-controversial.

KEYWORDS:

• Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
• diplomacy
• multilateralism
• United Nations
• nuclear testing
• history
• Cold War

Notes

1 “Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament,” 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document, Part II Annex, Decision 2, New York 1995, p. 15.

2 United Nations General Assembly, A/RES/50/65, operative paragraph 2.

3 For an overview of the negotiating process, see, for instance, Jaap Ramaker, “The negotiating process, 1994–1996: a view from the chair,” in Mordechai Melamud, Paul Meerts, and I. William Zartman, eds., Banning the Bang or the Bomb? Negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Regime (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 58–74.

4 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, Article XIV, paragraph 2.

5 These efforts by Executive-Secretary Hoffmann were continued by his successors, Ambassador Tibor Tóth of Hungary and the current Executive-Secretary Lassina Zerbo of Burkina Faso, and—from 2004 until 2009—by myself as special representative of the ratifying states to promote the treaty. Executive-Secretary Zerbo created a Group of Eminent Persons in 2013 to pursue the same objective.

6 Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that former US Defense Secretary William J. Perry worried Moscow would withdraw from the CTBT and renew testing: “I’m confident [Russian arms designers are] working on a new bomb … And I’m confident they’re asking for testing.” See William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “Race for Latest Class of Nuclear Arms Threatens to Revive Cold War,” New York Times, April 16, 2016, <www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/science/atom-bomb-nuclear-weapons-hgv-arms-race-russia-china.html>.

7 For the latest status of signature and ratification of the forty-four “Annex II states,” see “Status of Signature and Ratification,” Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty Preparatory Commission, <www.ctbto.org/the-treaty/status-of-signature-and-ratification/>.

8 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2310 (2016), S/RES/2310 (2016), <www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_res_2310.pdf>.

9 Daniel Horner and Kingston Reif, “Lowering Nuclear Risks: An Interview with Former Defense Secretary William Perry,” Arms Control Today, (January/February 2016), <www.armscontrol.org/ACT/2016_0102/Features/Interviews/Lowering-Nuclear-Risks-An-Interview-With-Former-Defense-Secretary-William-Perry>.

10 Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan at Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Hiroshima, Japan, May 27, 2016, <www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/27/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-abe-japan-hiroshima-peace>.