U.S. Can’t Make Sense of Its Military Dominance

Today, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to pass judgment on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty--either rejecting it outright or, its proponents hope, postponing a vote, perhaps until 2001.

Few Americans understand what the treaty is about, and most have never heard of it. That is precisely the problem: This treaty is being considered without sufficient strategic analysis, public discussion and political debate. The almost lackadaisical way in which the treaty has come before the Senate is in sharp contrast with earlier examples of nuclear arms control.

During the Cold War, no such treaty reached the Senate floor before first being subjected to deep analysis and thorough debate by the strategic community. No treaty went to Capitol Hill without weeks or months of White House attention and activity. But it is not just that the Clinton administration was slow to recognize how tough the Senate ratification fight would be; it is also that no underlying strategic consensus has emerged about the best way realistically to protect U.S. security.

At heart, today’s unclear debate is a product of the unprecedented situation in which the U.S. finds itself. We face no serious, direct threat to the homeland and no realistic military competitor. We outclass everyone in the capacity to wage modern conventional warfare. Of course, nuclear weapons abound--at least seven other countries must now be reckoned to possess the bomb--but at the moment, none threatens the United States. But what about the future?

Underlying the debate about the test ban treaty is the slowly emerging concept that we must preserve indefinitely our absolute military advantage over everyone else, at least over all countries that are not tried and trusted allies. We saw one virtue in this concept during the recent Kosovo war. But nuclear weapons are a different matter: A nation does not have to field a sophisticated arsenal to pose a serious threat to us or to others.

In anticipating such a development, we have implicitly decided not to try creating a new balance of power to engage a putative challenger--e.g., China--nor, even if new nuclear threats emerge, will we look to the kind of deterrence that underpinned security during the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the United States each found that it had no option to making itself totally vulnerable to nuclear retaliation by the other, what was called “mutually assured destruction.”

Instead, we are seeking to keep others from becoming a nuclear threat to us. Thus we impose sanctions on Iraq and Iran and tie relations with Moscow to its withholding nuclear advice from them; attempt a carrot-and-stick approach to North Korea; hope that relations with China will not turn sour; and plan a limited national missile defense system to intercept a handful of missiles from “rogue” states.

Against this background, opponents of the test ban treaty seem to believe that, by guaranteeing that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is reliable and effective, other states will be inhibited from developing weapons or, if they do, they will be deterred from using them. The treaty’s proponents argue that the U.S. can lead by political and moral example: If we stop testing, others will face opprobrium in doing so.

Neither argument is totally convincing. Outdistancing a potential nuclear challenger is no guarantee that it will not build a few bombs and, at least, threaten their use to deter us; and no moral-suasion-through-example will stop a country with compelling reasons to “go nuclear.”

The treaty’s proponents do have the advantage in other arguments: that it provides for building seismic stations to detect nuclear testing; that countries like China, which would have to conduct extensive testing to perfect their arsenals, would clearly telegraph their intentions; and that the treaty has an escape clause for U.S. national security.

But the debate on the treaty and its fate do not answer the most critical issues. We ourselves proved that a Hiroshima-type bomb doesn’t have to be tested before it can be used. No test-ban treaty can stop that from happening. Nor can a policy of keeping militarily ahead of all potential adversaries provide assurances of protection against limited threats with very potent weapons. And, most important, looking for technical solutions to security challenges can only go so far. It does not relieve us of the burden of dealing with the sources of conflict.

However the CTBT issue is now resolved, there is no substitute for a serious, long-term and essentially political strategy of countering the spread and potential use of nuclear weapons. That we are still far from such a strategy was evidenced by last year’s nuclear testing by Pakistan and India. This did not reflect a failure of Western intelligence to predict it was going to happen but a failure of Western policy to deal with the root causes and effects of regional insecurity, political tensions and rivalries and national ambitions.

It is in these areas where the answers must be found to limiting nuclear threats. Even if ratified, the treaty can only be one part of that effort.