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Abstract
President Barack Obama has pledged to secure the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was previously rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1999. This article attempts to predict the potential implications of Washington's ratification for the treaty's future by analyzing the positions and options of the eight other essential holdouts. The authors conclude that without the United States to hide behind, facing domestic and international constraints, and lacking substantial strategic reasons to remain outside the treaty, most holdouts will move toward ratification. Nonetheless, the process is likely to be time consuming, and several of the key actors remain unpredictable.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank their colleagues and friends Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Sean Dunlop, Jean du Preez, Cristina Hansell, Sharad Joshi, Stephanie Lieggi, Kaegan McGrath, and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their indispensable comments and suggestions.
Notes
1. Annex 2 states are the “forty-four countries that participated in the negotiations of the CTBT from 1994 to 1996 and that possessed nuclear power reactors or research reactors during that time. All of these states must sign and ratify the CTBT before it can enter into force.” See “Glossary: Annex 2 States,” CTBTO, <www.ctbto.org/glossary/?letter=a&cHash=4d181e9a0c>.
2. ”Arms Control Today 2008 Presidential Q&A: President-elect Barack Obama,” Arms Control Today, December 2008, <www.armscontrol.org/2008election>.
3. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama in Prague as Delivered,” Czech Republic, April 5, 2009, <www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered/>.
4. “If US Ratifies CTBT, China, India, Pak Will Follow,” Press Trust of India, June 2, 2006.
5. See, for example, Stephen Rademaker, speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 13, 2009, <media.csis.org/csistv/?090513_pdti>.
6. Thanos Dokos, Negotiations for a CTBT, 1958–1994 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1995).
7. For Chinese and Israeli positions, see Keith Hansen, The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 68–69.
8. “Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century U.S. National Security,” report by a Joint Working Group of AAAS, the American Physical Society, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 2008, <csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/081208_nuclear_weapons_report.pdf>.
9. George Bunn, “The Status of the Norms against Nuclear Testing,” Nonproliferation Review 6 (Winter 1999), pp. 20–32.
10. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52 (Autumn 1998), pp. 887–917.
11. William J. Perry and James R. Schlesinger, “America's Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States,” United States Institute for Peace, June 2009, pp. 85, 87.
12. Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
13. Thomas Graham Jr., Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law (Seattle: UW Press, 2002), pp. 257–93.
14. John M. Shalikashvili, “Letter to the President and Report on Findings and Recommendations Concerning the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,” State Department, January 2001. See also Kaegan McGrath, “Verifiability, Reliability, and National Security: The Case for U.S. Ratification of the CTBT,” Nonproliferation Review 16 (November 2009), pp. 407–33.
15. Hassan Wirajuda, foreign minister of Indonesia, speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, June 8, 2009, <www.carnegieendowment.org/files/060809_indonesianfm.pdf>. [On May 4, 2010, shortly before this journal went to press, Indonesia‘s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa announced his country was “initiating the process” to ratify the CTBT.—Ed.]
16. See Jing-dong Yuan, “Sino-U.S. Relations: Dealing with a Rising Power,” in Jean du Preez, ed., Nuclear Challenges and Policy Options for the Next U.S. Administration, Occassional Paper No. 14 (Monterey: James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2008), pp. 59–63. See also Cristina Hansell and Nikita Perfilyev, “Together Toward Nuclear Zero: Understanding Chinese and Russian Security Concerns,” Nonproliferation Review 16 (November 2009), pp. 435–61.
17. Statement on Disarmament by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, August 19, 2005.
18. Authors' interviews with UN officials who worked at the CTBTO, December 2009 and January 2010, Vienna, Austria.
19. For a review of China's test ban policies over time, see Evan Medeiros, Reluctant Restraint: The Evolution of China's Nonproliferation Policies and Practices, 1980–2004 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 30–97; or Wendy Frieman, China, Arms Control, and Nonproliferation (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 38–40.
20. Statement by H.E. Ambassador Zhang Yan, to the Article XIV Conference, September 4, 2003, <www.ctbto.org/fileadmin/content/reference/article_xiv/2003/statements/0309_pm/0409_am/05_china_e.pdf>.
21. See Bates Gill, “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Dynamics of Chinese Nonproliferation and Arms Control Policy-Making in an Era of Reform,” in David M. Lampton, ed., The Makings of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 257–89; and Michael D. Swaine and Alastair Iain Johnston, “China and Arms Control Institutions,” in Elizabeth Economy and Michel Oksenberg, eds., China Joins the World: Progress and Prospects (Washington: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999), pp. 90–135. For a detailed argument regarding China's unequal constraints under and lack of readiness for the CTBT, see Xiangli Sun, “Implications of a Comprehensive Test Ban for China's Security Policy,” Center for International Security and Arms Control, June 1997, <iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/10261/sun.pdf>.
22. Jeffrey Lewis, The Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 87–140. For a discussion from a slightly different perspective, see Frieman, China, Arms Control, and Nonproliferation, pp. 52–60.
23. For a discussion of this issue, see Lewis, The Minimum Means of Reprisal, pp. 115–116; or Frieman, China, Arms Control, and Nonproliferation, pp. 57–60.
24. The authors would like to thank Kaegan McGrath for pointing out this argument.
25. For a survey of Chinese perceptions of the CTBT, see Lora Saalman, “How Chinese Analysts View Arms Control, Disarmament, and Nuclear Deterrence after the Cold War,” in Cristina Hansell and William Potter, eds., Engaging China and Russia on Nuclear Disarmament, Occasional Paper No. 15 (Monterey: James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2009), pp. 54–57. See also Li Bin, “China: Weighing the Costs,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2004, pp. 21–23.
26. Frieman, China, Arms Control, and Nonproliferation, pp. 52–54.
27. For a detailed review of China's negotiation proposals see Zou Yunhua, “China and the CTBT Negotiations,” Center for International Security and Cooperation, December 1998, <iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/10220/zouctbt.pdf>.
28. Rebecca Johnson, Unfinished Business: The Negotiation of the CTBT and the End of Nuclear Testing (New York and Geneva: UNIDIR, 2009), p. 218.
29. This sections expands and sharpens ideas first presented by the authors in Liviu Horovitz and Robert Golan-Vilella, “Boosting the CTBT's Prospects in the Middle East,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2010, pp. 9–16, <thebulletin.metapress.com/content/d731t734167248k3/fulltext.pdf>.
30. On Egypt: authors’ interviews with UN officials, May 2009, New York, and January 2010, Vienna, Austria.
31. For early references of this view, see Gerald Steinberg, “Israel and the Changing Global Non-Proliferation Regime: The NPT Extension, CTBT and Fissile Cut-Off,” in Efraim Inbar and Shmuel Sandler, eds., Middle Eastern Security (Boston: Routledge, 1995), pp. 70–83. See also Graham, Disarmament Sketches, p. 249.
32. During the discussions over the final draft of the treaty, Ambassador Jaap Ramaker of the Netherlands made statements on the record regarding the limitation of inspections to the treaty's subject matter and on the safeguards included in the treaty against violation of a state's sovereignty. See Johnson, Unfinished Business, p. 137. The treaty stipulates that thirty of the fifty-one members of the Executive Council would have to vote for an OSI. For a discussion of these points, see: Hansen, The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, p. 37.
33. David Albright, Jacqueline Shire, and Paul Brannan, “Has Iran Achieved a Nuclear Weapons Breakout Capability? Not Yet, But Soon,” Institute for Science and International Security, December 2, 2008, <isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/LEU_Iran_2December2008.pdf>.
34. Daryl Kimball, “The Enduring Value of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and New Prospects for Entry Into Force,” CTBTO Spectrum 11 (2008), p. 12; and Deepti Choubey, “Don't Wait for the United States,” CTBTO Spectrum 12 (2009), p. 11.
35. For an analysis of Egypt's nuclear ambitions, see Maria Rost Rublee, “Egypt's Nuclear Weapons Program: Lessons Learned,” Nonproliferation Review 13 (November 2006), pp. 555–67; or Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 229–45.
36. For a review of Egypt's diplomatic efforts see Robert J. Einhorn, “Egypt: Frustrated but Still on a Non-Nuclear Course,” in Kurt M. Campbell et al., eds., The Nuclear Tipping Point (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 43–82.
37. For example, see Statement by H.E. Ambassador Mahmoud Mubarak, to the Article XIV Conference, November 11–13, 2001.
38. Shai Feldman, Israeli Nuclear Deterrence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 67.
39. Tariq Rauf and Rebecca Johnson, “After the NPT's Indefinite Extension,” Nonproliferation Review 3, (Fall 1995), pp. 28–42.
40. Peter Jones, “Negotiating Regional Security and Arms Control in the Middle East: The ACRS Experience and Beyond,” Journal of Strategic Studies 26 (September 2003), pp. 137–54.
41. Harald Müller, “The NPT Review Conference: Reasons and Consequences of Failure and Options for Repair,” Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Paper Number 31, August 2005.
42. For a discussion of Egypt's diplomatic efforts, see also James Walsh, “Will Egypt Seek Nuclear Weapons?” in William Potter, ed., Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21 st Century: A Comparative Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming).
43. Inder Gujral, minister of external affairs, “On the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,” statement in the Indian Parliament, September 11, 1996.
44. See George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
45. For an excellent review of India's change in positions, see Dinshaw Mistry, “Domestic-International Linkages: India and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,” Nonproliferation Review 5 (Fall 1998), pp. 25–38. For the political statement see Arundhati Ghose, “Negotiating the CTBT: India's Security Concerns and Nuclear Disarmament,” Journal of International Affairs 57 (Summer 1997). For a detailed review, see Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb, pp. 358–403.
46. Johnson, Unfinished Business, pp. 109–45; and Jatin Desai, Nuclear Diplomacy: The Art of the Deal (New Delhi: Ajay Verma, 2000), pp. 158–59.
47. Statement by Ambassador Arundhati Ghose, to the UN General Assembly, September 10, 1996.
48. Atal Behari Vajpayee, “Address to the 53rd UN General Assembly,” September 24, 2998.
49. For an excellent review of these negotiations see Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Washington: Brookings, 2004), for this argument especially pp. 170–90. A somewhat alternative view is provided in Jaswant Singh, In Service of Emergent India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
50. Interview with Brajesh Mishra, national security advisor to the prime minister, The Outlook, New Delhi, September 3, 2001.
51. Speech by Special Envoy to the Prime Minister Shyam Saran, to the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, March 23, 2009.
52. For example, see Rajesh M. Basrur, “Indian Perspectives on the Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” in Barry Blechman, ed., Unblocking the Road to Zero: Perspectives of Advanced Nuclear Nations (Washington: Stimson, 2009), p. 20; and Arvind Gupta, “India Needs to Watch the Evolving US Position on Nuclear Issues,” Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, May 19, 2009.
53. Statement by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, May 11, 1998, <nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/Indianofficial.txt>.
54. “Draft Report of National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine,” Embassy of India: Washington, DC, August 17, 1999.
55. In the common statement from July 2005, India stated that “it would be ready to […] continue [the] unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing.” See U.S. White House, “Joint Statement Between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,” July 18, 2005, <www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/07/20050718-6.html>. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph confirmed this stance before the U.S. Senate: “[India's] ending of nuclear explosive tests [is] one of the conditions of full civil nuclear cooperation.” Robert Joseph, “Implications of U.S.-India Nuclear Energy Cooperation,” Hearing at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, November 2, 2005. It was only under obvious internal pressure that Pranab Mukherjee, India's external affairs minister, declared in front of the legislature that “India has the sovereign right to test and would do so if it is necessary in national interest,” and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh responded that “if a necessity for carrying out a nuclear test arises in future, there is nothing in the agreement which prevents us from carrying out tests.” See “Pranab Mukherjee Says India Has Sovereign Right to Conduct Nuclear Test,” AndhraNews.net, August 16, 2007, <www.andhranews.net/India/2007/August/16-Pranab-Mukherjee-says-11996.asp>; and “Indian Lawmakers Attack U.S. Nuclear Deal,” Global Security Newswire, November 29, 2007.
56. Jeffrey Lewis, “India Gets NSG Waiver,” ArmsControlWonk.com, September 7, 2008, <www.armscontrolwonk.com/2028/nuclear-deal-passes-nsg>.
57. Amandeep Gill, “Possible Indian Reaction to U.S. Ratification of the CTBT,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 5, 2009, <www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/possible-indian-reaction-to-us-ratification-of-the-ctbt>.
58. Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb, p. 380.
59. Quoted in Ashok Kapur, Pakistan's Nuclear Development (New York: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 107.
60. William R. Doerner and Ross H. Munro, “Pakistan Knocking at the Nuclear Door,” Time, March 30, 1987, <www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963894,00.html>.
61. Johnson, Unfinished Business, pp. 98, 117.
62. “Record of the Press Briefing on 18 June 2009,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan, June 18, 2009, <www.mofa.gov.pk/Spokesperson/2009/June/Spokes_18_06_09.htm>.
63. “The US Administration Has Sought a Waiver from the US Congress for the Implementation of US-India Agreement on Civilian Nuclear Cooperation,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan, March 17, 2006.
64. George Perkovich, “Could Anything Be Done to Stop Them? Lessons from Pakistan's Proliferating Past,” in Henry D. Sokolski, ed., Pakistan's Nuclear Future: Worries Beyond War (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2008), p. 83.
65. Shalini Chawla, “Pakistan's Economic Desperation and High Defence Spending,” National Defence and Aerospace Power 1 (November 28, 2008), p. 3.
66. See Michael J. Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), pp. 17–18.
67. For a complete account of the 1993–94 North Korean crisis and the negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework, see Leon V. Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
68. “North Korea Calls for End to Hostility with US,” BBC News, January 1, 2010.
69. “North Korea Profile: Biological Overview,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies/Nuclear Threat Initiative, June 2009.
70. See for example Solingen, Nuclear Logics, p. 124; Vladimir F. Li, “North Korea and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” in James Clay Moltz and Alexandre Y. Mansourov, eds., The North Korean Nuclear Program (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), p. 139.
71. “DPRK Foreign Ministry Declares Strong Counter-Measures against UNSC's ‘Resolution 1874,’” Korean Central News Agency, June 13, 2009.
72. Kim Myong Chol, “Kim Jong-il Shifts to Plan B,” Asia Times, May 21, 2009.
73. Jayshree Bajoria, “The China-North Korea Relationship,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 18, 2008; and “Shades of Red: China's Debate over North Korea,” International Crisis Group, Asia Report No. 179, November 2, 2009, <www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6371>.
74. For example, see Bonnie S. Glaser and Wang Liang, “North Korea: The Beginning of a China-U.S. Partnership?” Washington Quarterly 31 (Summer 2008), pp. 165–80.
75. Jing-dong Yuan, “North Korea and Beijing's Day of Reckoning,” Opinion Asia, June 22, 2009.
76. “Shades of Red,” International Crisis Group.
77. Hui Zhang, “Ending North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions: The Need for Stronger Chinese Action,” Arms Control Today, July/August 2009, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2009_07-08/zhang>.
78. Andrew Scobell, Projecting Pyongyang: The Future of North Korea's Kim Jong Il Regime (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2008), p. 26.