Public support, political polarization, and the nuclear-test ban: evidence from a new US national survey

ABSTRACT

The year 2016 marked twenty years since the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) opened for signature; the twenty-fifth anniversary of the US nuclear-testing moratorium occurred the following year. The international political climate, nuclear-explosion-monitoring capabilities, and US stockpile stewardship have all changed drastically since the US Senate voted against CTBT ratification in 1999, and they continue to evolve. Yet the most recent public-opinion survey on the test ban, showing 84 percent approval across the United States, dates to 2012. Do Americans still emphatically support the CTBT? To answer this question, we worked with the research firm YouGov to design and implement a new scientific survey assessing the current state of national opinion toward the test ban. Analyzing the survey results shows that, although US public support for the test ban remains strong, it has probably weakened since 2012. While political party identification is the best predictor of treaty support or opposition, a majority of Democrats, Republicans, and independents support ratification. However, many Americans remain undecided on whether the Senate should provide its “advice and consent” to ratification.

KEYWORDS:

• Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
• nuclear testing
• United States
• United States Senate
• survey
• public opinion

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for a range of helpful comments on analysis and data visualization from Peter Aronow, Alexander Bollfrass, Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, Mariana Budjeryn, Ambassador Susan Burk, Alexander Coppock, Alexandre Debs, Robert DeGrasse, Charles D. Ferguson, Christine Leah, Natasza Marrouch, David Minchin, Scott Offutt, Jayita Sarkar, Lovely Umayam, and government and military personnel who have asked to remain unnamed. Any errors are our own. In addition, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Funding for this study was provided by Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies and the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

Notes

1 UN General Assembly, A/48/70, December 16, 1993. For an informative timeline of the history of efforts to ban nuclear-explosive testing see Pierce Corden, “Timeline of the CTBT’s Evolution,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23 (June/July 2016), pp. 259–60.

2 For details on the test-ban negotiations in the CD, see e.g., Rebecca Johnson, Unfinished Business: The Negotiation of the CTBT and the End of Nuclear Testing (Geneva: UN Institute for Disarmament Research, 2009); Jaap Ramaker, Jenifer Mackby, Peter Marshall, and Robert Geil, The Final Test: A History of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Negotiations (Vienna: Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, 2003); Mordechai Melamud, Paul Meerts, and I. William Zartman, eds., Banning the Bang or the Bomb? Negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

3 UN Security Council, S/Res/2310, September 23, 2016.

4 For a discussion of the negotiators’ motivations when developing the treaty’s entry into force clause, see Jenifer Mackby, “Still Seeking, Still Fighting,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23 (June/July 2016), pp. 272–77.

5 Liviu Horovitz and Robert Golan-Villela, “Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: How the Dominoes Might Fall after US Ratification,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 17 (June 2010), pp. 239–52; Mackby, “Still Seeking, Still Fighting,” p. 282.

6 For an excellent summary of the 1999 US Senate advice and consent to ratification vote, and the positions on both sides of the debate surrounding the treaty, see Edward Ifft, “The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and US Security,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23 (June/July 2016), pp. 389–91.

7 “Horizontal proliferation” refers to the spread of nuclear weapons to states that do not have them. “Vertical proliferation” refers to existing nuclear-weapon states expanding the capability and/or quantity of their nuclear arsenals. See also Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Final Review of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Treaty Doc. 105–28),” 106th Cong., 1st sess., October 7, 1999. For the range of post-1999 arguments in favor of the CTBT, see Tom Z. Collina and Daryl G. Kimball, Now More Than Ever: The Case for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Washington, DC: Arms Control Association, 2010).

8 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Final Review of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.” For the range of post-1999 arguments in opposition to the CTBT, see National Institute for Public Policy, The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: An Assessment of the Benefits, Costs, and Risks (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2011).

9 President George H.W. Bush declared the moratorium on US nuclear-explosive testing in 1992. On September 23 of that year, the United States carried out its last test, codenamed Divider, at the Nevada Test Site. The US government later renamed the test site as the Nevada National Security Site and downsized its operations there. For a review of the options and legal obligations for states signatories to the test ban prior to its entry into force, see Masahiko Asada, “CTBT: Legal Questions Arising from Its Non-Entry-into-Force,” Journal of Conflict and Security Law, Vol. 7 (April 2002), pp. 94–103; Yasuhito Fukui, “CTBT: Legal Questions Arising from Its Non-Entry into Force Revisited,” Journal of Conflict and Security Law, Vol. 22 (July 2017), pp. 183–200; David A. Koplow, “Sherlock Holmes Meets Rube Goldberg: Fixing the Entry-into-Force Provisions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,” Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, Vol. 28 (Fall 2017), pp. 1–57.

10 See e.g., Paul Burstein, “The Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy: A Review and an Agenda,” Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 56 (March 2003), pp. 29–40; Ole R. Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, rev. edn. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Phillip J. Powlick and Andrew Z. Katz, “Defining the American Public Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus,” Mershon International Studies Review, Vol. 42 (May 1998), pp. 29–61.

11 For a summary of polling data shortly before the US Senate voted to give its advice and consent to ratify New START on December 22, 2010, see Arms Control Association, “America to Senate: Ratify New START Now,” December 15, 2010, <www.armscontrol.org/issuebriefs/AmericaToSenate>.

12 Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Foreign Policy in the New Millennium: Results of the 2012 Chicago Council Survey of American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago, 2012), p. 23.

13 Program on International Policy Attitudes, “PIPA-Knowledge Networks Poll: Americans on WMD Proliferation,” University of Maryland, April 2004, <http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/10536/WMDProlif_Apr04_quaire.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y>, p. 1; see also Steven Kull, “Survey Says: Americans Back Arms Control,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 34 (June 2004), pp. 22–26.

14 Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, “White House Wants to Bury Pact Banning Tests of Nuclear Arms,” New York Times, July 7, 2001, p. A1.

15 Ifft, “The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and US Security,” p. 388.

16 Barack Obama, ‘‘Remarks by President Barack Obama,’’ Prague, April 5, 2009, <http://www.ploughshares.org/sites/default/files/newss/Palm%20Sunday%20Speech.pdf?_ga=1.158481138.975030223.1491777179>.

17 Ifft, “The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and US Security,” p. 389.

18 Ibid., p. 392.

19 Stephen Herzog, “The Nuclear Test Ban: Technical Opportunities for the New Administration,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 47 (January/February 2017), pp. 26–27.

20 Donald J. Trump, “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views,” interviewed by Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger, New York Times, March 26, 2016, <www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-transcript.html>.

21 Quoted in Max Fisher, “Trump’s Nuclear Weapons Tweet, Translated and Explained,” New York Times, December 22, 2016, <www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/22/world/americas/trump-nuclear-tweet.html>.

22 See JASON, “Science Based Stockpile Stewardship,” MITRE Corporation, November 2004, <https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/sbss.pdf>.

23 National Academy of Sciences, The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: Technical Issues for the United States (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2012), pp. 15–33.

24 Ibid., p. 1.

25 For a discussion of North Korea’s nuclear-explosive-testing facilities and capabilities, see Frank Pabian and David Coblentz, “North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site: Analysis Reveals Its Potential for Additional Testing with Significantly Higher Yields,” 38North, March 10, 2017, <http://38north.org/2017/03/punggye031017/>; see also Mary Beth Nikitin, “North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: Technical Issues,” CRS Report for Congress, Library of Congress, April 3, 2013, <https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL34256.pdf>.

26 Zachary Cohen, Ryan Browne, Nicole Gaouette, and Taehoon Lee, “New Missile Test Shows North Korea Capable of Hitting All of US Mainland,” CNN, November 30, 2017, <http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/28/politics/north-korea-missile-launch/index.html>.

27 See e.g., Ola Dahlman, Jenifer Mackby, Svein Mykkeltveit, and Hein Haak, Detect and Deter: Can Countries Verify the Nuclear Test Ban? (New York: Springer, 2011), pp. 29–127; Andreas Persbo, “Compliance Science: The CTBT’s Global Verification System,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23 (June/July 2016), pp. 319–23.

28 Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, “International Monitoring System,” 2018, <www.ctbto.org/map/>.

29 Stephen Herzog, “Assessing the Role of Seismic Data Sharing in CTBT Monitoring,” in John K. Warden, ed., Nuclear Scholars Initiative: A Collection of Papers from the 2012 Nuclear Scholars Initiative (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2012), pp. 183–94; Herzog, “The Nuclear Test Ban,” p. 29. For further discussion of the roles and responsibilities of national data centers, see Ola Dahlman, Svein Mykkeltveit, and Hein Haak, Nuclear Test Ban: Converting Political Visions to Reality (New York: Springer, 2009), p. 173–81; Dahlman et al., Detect and Deter, p. 51.

30 National Academy of Sciences, The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, pp. 35–76, 139–79.

31 Oliver Meier, “Major Exercise Tests CTBT On-site Inspections,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 38 (November 2008), pp. 32–38; Jenifer Mackby, “Did Maridia Conduct a Nuclear Test Explosion? On-site Inspection and the CTBT,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 45 (January/February 2015), pp. 16–22.

32 Rose Gottemoeller, “Rebuilding American Support for the CTBT,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 23 (June/July 2016), pp. 364–66.

33 Like many public policy-polls, including the past surveys on the CTBT we reference, our questions were part of a larger questionnaire for the respondent panel. YouGov conducts polling for a range of notable clients, including CBS and The Economist. For information on YouGov’s survey-panel methodology and reweighting process for addressing demographic sampling variability and assuring that the demographics covariates of the surveyed population match the actual composition of the American population, see YouGov, “Panel Methodology,” 2018, <https://yougov.co.uk/about/panel-methodology/>.

34 This duration in the field is standard practice for large-scale surveys such as the American National Election Studies. Time constancy analysis we performed to validate the data also shows that there were no timing effects on the results. That is, they remain consistent throughout the entire surveying period without fluctuation.

35 When we finalized our survey questions, 164 countries had ratified the CTBT. Just prior to fielding the survey, Myanmar and Swaziland ratified the accord, but we did not have the opportunity to update the survey questionnaire. At the time of writing, the number of states that have ratified stands at 166.

36 Survey wording is always a difficult task, and ours comes with some caveats of which the reader should be made aware. The 2004 and 2012 surveys both asked respondents, “Based on what you know, do you think the U.S. should or should not participate in the treaty that would prohibit nuclear weapon test explosions worldwide?” Our wording regarding “nuclear weapon test explosions” is consistent with these surveys and public-opinion polling on the CTBT—over the past three decades—dating back to the 1990s by organizations like Gallup, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland. However, while the most recent surveys since the 1999 ratification vote assessed the desirability of US “participation” in the CTBT, we asked respondents directly about Senate “approval,” or advice and consent to ratification. There may also be questions of how the addition of the phrase “with 164 other countries,” often used in polls to demonstrate the international nature of multilateral treaties, affected the results. On one hand, Donald J. Trump ran on an “America first” platform that may have discouraged his supporters from voicing support. But on the other hand, the clause may lend global legitimacy to the accord, which Hillary Clinton championed. Regardless, our results suggest a decline in support from the 2004 and 2012 surveys among Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

37 Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Foreign Policy in the New Millennium, p. 23; Program on International Policy Attitudes, “PIPA-Knowledge Networks Poll,” p. 1.

38 We collected the convenience-sample data using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk online labor marketplace and reweighted the population demographics to match the nationally representative data.

39 Howard W. Schuman and Stanley Presser, Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys: Experiments on Question Form, Wording, and Context (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1996), p. 126.

40 Besides our general interest in understanding the large population of “I don’t know” responses, we noted that if these respondents had almost all opted to support the CTBT when given a binary “Yes” or “No” choice, the results would closely mirror the 2004 and 2012 survey results. While we are cautious about convenience-sample inferences, in this section we explain how our projected population of undecided respondents did not overwhelmingly support Senate approval of the CTBT.

41 Gottemoeller, “Rebuilding American Support for the CTBT,” p. 364.

42 “Resolution of Ratification to Treaty Document No. 105–28 CTBT: Roll Call Vote 325,” Congressional Record, Vol. 145 (October 13, 1999), p. S12548.

43 Ibid. Conservative Democratic Senator Robert Byrd (Democrat of West Virginia) voted “Present,” making him the only senator in 1999 to vote neither for nor against the CTBT.

44 Edison Research, “President Exit Polls 2012,” <www.nytimes.com/elections/2012/results/president/exit-polls.html>; Edison Research, “President Exit Polls 2016,” <www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html>.

45 The causal arrow here may go in both directions, between which we do not attempt to adjudicate. Voters may support politicians whose views correspond with their own preferences, and politicians may stake out policy positions that they believe represent the preferences of their political base.

46 Jacob Nebel, “The Nuclear Disarmament Movement: Politics, Potential, and Strategy,” Journal of Peace Education, Vol. 9 (March 2012), pp. 235–37; Johan Bergenäs, “Disarmament Movement Needs Youth Involvement to Counter Cynicism,” World Politics Review, July 30, 2009, <www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/4136/disarmament-movement-needs-youth-involvement-to-counter-cynicism>.

47 For these arguments see e.g., Kaegan McGrath, “Verifiability, Reliability, and National Security: The Case for U.S. Ratification of the CTBT,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 16 (October 2009), pp. 423–28; Deepti Choubey, “The CTBT’s Importance for U.S. National Security,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 14, 2009, <http://carnegieendowment.org/2009/10/14/ctbt-s-importance-for-u.s.-national-security-pub-23999>; Charles D. Ferguson and Stephen Herzog, “Kyl Should Reconsider Opposition to Nuclear Test Ban,” The Hill, March 30, 2011, <http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/152843-kyl-should-reconsider-opposition-to-nuclear-test-ban>.

48 See e.g., Jon Kyl, “Why We Need to Test Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2009, p. 21.

49 Baker Spring, “The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban and U.S. Nuclear Disarmament,” Heritage Foundation, October 6, 1999, <www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-comprehensive-test-ban-treaty-and-us-nuclear-disarmament>.

50 Quoted in James Bennett, “Clinton, at UN, Says He’ll Press Senate on Test Ban Pact,” New York Times, September 23, 1997, p. A3.

51 On the future difficulties of CTBT ratification in the US Senate see, Christopher M. Jones and Kevin P. Marsh, “The Odyssey of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: Clinton, Obama, and the Politics of Treaty Ratification,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 21 (October 2014), pp. 207–27.