Disarmament means limiting, regulating, reducing, or eliminating a
nation’s armed forces and weapons. Most disarmament agreements are
treaties approved by many nations. Disarmament is also called arms- control.
Disarmament proposals have ranged from general and complete
disarmament to various forms of limited arms control. General and
complete disarmament would allow nations. to keep only those weapons
and forces necessary to provide police services and support international
peacekeeping units. Today, an increasing number of nations are
developing the ability to make nuclear weapons. This trend has led to
growing campaign for arms control. People who favor arms control use
the following arguments:
The overwhelming power of modern weapons exceeds any reasonable
purpose. Today, one submarine can carry missiles and nuclear warheads
that contain more destructive power than all the weapons used during
World War II (1939-1945). The use of all existing nuclear warheads in an
attack would almost certainly destroy the countries attacked.
A nuclear war might produce enough dust and other debris to cause a
major change in the earth’s climate. Many scientists believe that such a
change would threaten every form of life in part or all of the world.
The threat to use nuclear weapons against a country might itself cause
a war. A threatened country might question its ability to survive an attack.
As a result, it might attack first if it feared that it was about to be
attacked. Arms control is intended to reduce such fears.
Arms control reduces the need for countries to acquire nuclear
weapons or increase their supply of other weapons. Arms control thus
eases world tensioned limits other conditions that might lead to nuclear
war. Nations that first try to agree on arms control raise false hopes that
may cause people to oppose spending the money necessary for defence.
Arms control agreements between an open, free society and a secret,
totalitarian society are risky. The totalitarian national often will not permit
adequate inspection to assure that it is keeping its part of the agreements.
Disarmament may damage a nation’s military defence. Arms control
agreements may call for the destruction of some existing weapons and may
also prevent the replacement improvement of other weapons systems.
Some nations want to build nuclear weapons because they regard them
as a symbol of technological achievement and postage. In addition, many
people feel more secure if their country is militarily strong. People who
oppose arms control use the following arguments:
Armed forces and weapons by themselves do not cause international
disputes or tension. They merely reflect political, economic, and other
kinds of disputes. These disputes must be settled before nations can agree
on disarmament.
After two and a half ears of complex negotiations, the Geneva-based
Conference on Disarmament (CD) has produced the text of a
comprehensive test ban (CTB) treaty that would permanently end all
nuclear testing. Although almost all of the conference’s 60 participating
states support the text, the CD failed to reach the required consensus on
the treaty due to Indian opposition and was unable to forward it to the
United Nations. Despite these procedural problems, the over wheeling
support for a test ban will almost certainly result in a treaty based on this
text in the not too distant future.
The CTB would apply to the five nuclear weapon states (Britain,
China, France, Russia and the United States), all of which have now
endorsed the text, the existing prohibition on nuclear explosions covering
the 177 non-nuclear-weapon states that are members of the nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The test ban would also cover the three
nuclear “threshold” states, India, Israel and Pakistan the only non-NPT
member-states that have the technical capability to conduct a nuclear
explosion because as drafted the treaty can not enter into force without
their ratification. Israel has endorsed the present text, but India has
rejected the draft treaty and Pakistan will probably not join until India
does. The treaty prohibits “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other
nuclear explosion”, but does not explicitly define a “nuclear explosion
major stumbling block in previous negotiations. The negotiating history,
however, makes clear that this provision establishes the zero-yield criteria
proposed by President Clinton. The treaty therefore bans very low yield
“hydronuclear” tests and other “small” yield explosions initially advocated
by the nuclear weapon states.
The CD negotiations cap 40 years of efforts to achieve
comprehensive test ban. There were serious, but unsuccessful, efforts
during the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Carter administrations to negate
CTB with the Soviet Union and Britain. The 1963 Limited Test Ban
Treaty prohibited all nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, in outer space
and underwater, but permitted underground explosions. The 1974
Threshold Test Ban Treaty baned underground nuclear explosions with
yields greater than the equivalent of 150 kilotons of high explosives. The
present text will permanently ban all nuclear explosions, including those
conducted underground.
On 24th September 1996, at UN headquarters in New York, 65
countries including declared five nuclear powers, the United States,
China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom signed the Comprehensive
“Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)” as commitment to stop nuclear test explosions.
Critics of the pact say that it is discriminatory as the five declared
powers will continue to carry out laboratory testing.
They also complain that the treaty fails to set out a calendar for
nuclear disarmament.
The pact can only come into force if signed and ratified by 44 named
countries possessing a nuclear reactor, including nuclearthreshold states
India, Israel and Pakistan.
The most direct consequence of the CTB is its role in preventing the
development of new, more sophisticated nuclear weapons by both the
nuclear weapon and threshold states. The experience of Israel, Pakistan
and South Africa demonstrates that technically capable states can develop
first generation fission bombs without tests. The indigenous development
of more sophisticated fission and thermonuclear weapons, however,
requires nuclear testing. This would hold true both for threshold states
improving on untested first generation designs and for the most advanced nuclear weapon states seeking significant new capabilities. Non-nuclear
weapon states that might otherwise be tempted to pursue the nuclear option
that their program would be several limited because they had forsworn
may well be deterred from seeking an initial nuclear capability knowing
testing.
weapons suitable for
Although a CTB would have had a much larger impact in the 1950s
and 1960s when the technology was rapidly evolving, a test ban will still
significantly constrain the qualitative improvement of existing nuclear
arsenals. For instance, the primary motive behind China’s final nuclear
deployment on multiple warhead missiles. A CTB would impose severe
tests may well have been to develop nuclear
limitations on any further modernization of the Chinese nuclear arsenal. A
test ban would also preclude any efforts by the United States or Russia to
develop a new generation of highly sophisticated special effects or special
purpose weapons should their relations deteriorate in the future. Such
weapon, development could not be carried out even by the advanced
nuclear weapon states on the basis of computer calculations alone, and
minor modifications to existing weapons would be pointless with the
proven designs already available.
The CTB will strengthen then the nuclear non-proliferation regime by
demonstration that the five major nuclear powers are serious about their
commitment in the NPT to move toward nuclear disarmament. There is
widespread belief among non-nuclear weapon states that the NPT is
inherently discriminatory because it permanently divides the world into the
nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” The linkage between a test ban and the
nuclear non-proliferation regime was underscored in the NPT’s preamble
and made more explicit at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension
Conference where, in connection with the treaty’s indefinite extension, all
parties pledged to complete a CTB by the end of 1996.
Given this linkage, the signing of a CTB would reassure all NPT
members that they made the correct decision in agreeing to the treaty’s
indefinite extension and would strongly reinforce the implicit obligation of
non-nuclear-weapon states under the NPT not to conduct nuclear
explosions. Thus, by strengthening support for the NPT, the CTB would
help prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons an overarching threat
to US. and intentional security. should not obscure the historic significance of the fact that the five nude
weapon states have endorsed the current draft CTB treaty and have, fox
The entry into force problem and India’s refusal to sign the
Israel has also announced its intention to sign the treaty, and Pakistan has
the first time, simultaneously instituted a moratorium on nuclear testing,
CTB in the near future, New Delhi will find it very difficult to test in the
indicated its willingness to sign if India does. While India will not sign the
face of almost universal support of a global ban. Consequently, even if
the CTB does not formally enter into force for several years, the CD has
will become de jury for the signatories under the Vienna Convention on
already produced a de facto ban on nuclear testing which after signature
norm against nuclear testing, even if India and others choose for the time
the Law of Treaties. Thus, the CTB will establish a new international
being not to adhere to the formal agreement.
India said the nuclear weapon states were practising nuclear apartheid,
keeping nuclear weapons among a select club and prohibiting the rest of
the world from getting them. This argument has a certain appeal because
there is tremendous resistance to the idea that certain states should be able
to maintain huge arsenals of nuclear weapons while denying the same
weapons to other states.
There is a sense at he CD that the nuclear weapon states, particularly
the United States and Russia, practice an arrogance in regards to their own
nuclear arsenals and are moving much too slowly toward the elimination
of these weapons.
There have been 2,046 nuclear explosions over the last 51 years, two
months and four days. That averages one nuclear explosion every nine
days. The US. has set off a nuclear explosion the equivalent of once every
17 days during that time. It is very likely that there will not be another
US nuclear explosion. It is quite likely that there will never be al nother
explosion in the world period.
By signing this treaty, the nuclear weapon states assume the obligation
to do nothing that would obstruct the purpose and object of the treaty. The
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties obligates states to uphold
treaties they have signed while they await their entry into force.
The Limited Test Ban Treaty banned nuclear explosions in e the
atmosphere, underwater and in space. The Threshold Test Ban Ticeaty
limited underground nuclear weapon explosion tests, including peaceful nuclear explosions, to 150 kilotons. With the CTBT negotiating record, it
is clear that the treaty bans not only nuclear explosions, but any nuclear
explosions, but any nuclear energy release from a nuclear explosion. It
bans 150 kilotons; it bans one kiloton. It bans 2 kilograms of high-
explosive release, which is the amount of yield from the hydronuclear tests
the United States conducted during the moratorium from 1958 to 1961
The negotiating record is clear not even 1 gram of energy released from a
nuclear explosion is permitted.
On the other hand, there are activities that look like nuclear tests
which are permitted. At least they look like a nuclear test until the high
explosive is set off, but nothing nuclear happens. These so-called cold
tests cannot be conducted by the non-nuclear weapon states under the
NPT, but they are permitted to the nuclear weapon states. In fact, these
could be accomplished as full scale tests. A gun-type nuclear weapon can
be loaded with uranium 238 from which you cannot make a working
bomb – Instead of uranium-235, and fired. An imposing weapon could also
be loaded with uranium-238 instead of uranium-235. Every thing goes as it
would in a working nuclear weapon but there is no energy realest at all.
Test with weapons using plutonium are more difficult because there
are no naturally occurring isotopes of plutonium and any plutonium isotope
can be used to make a nuclear weapon. but it can be done, for instance, in
half scale test. You could take a nuclear explosive of a certain size and
make it half size by scaling everything down.
Under the CTBT, inertial confinement fusion experiments are
permitted to all. These involve buildings full of lasers or particle
accelerators that implode a tiny pellet of nuclear material with the aim of
reaching commercial nuclear power. Each of these nuclear explosions
would give may be 1 to 10 tons of energy release, but you would need
them very often, more than once a second, in order to mimic an ordinary
power plant. But we’re far from actually achieving even the break even
point or the commercial feasibility of inertial confinement fusion.
Under the CTBT, there’s a lot of information available besides
seismic measurements from the agreed international monitoring regime,
including on-site inspection rights and national technical means of
verification. Só, two stage radiation implosion weapons are out of the
question. Boosted fission weapons cannot be tested at all below a yield of 10
tons to 100 tons, may be more, which are very substantial explosions. they
could not be done in a laboratory containment vessel; they would have to
be done underground. Of course, there are countries that have large
underground facilities where such explosions could take place, and those
will be monitored particularly well under the treaty. A single stage fission
weapon would likely be the design choice for a potential proliferator in a
no-test environment of through tests with no, or very minor, angry
release.
Under Article IX, the CTB treaty will be of unlimited duration. In
addition, each state party has the right to withdraw from the treaty if it
decides that “extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this
Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests”. Notice of intent to
withdraw must be given at least six months in advance.
Pakistan will not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(CTBT) and nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) until India does not
sign them.