AFF/CTBT: IMPACT - LACK OF CTBT RISKS NUCLEAR CHAOS

WITHOUT FOLLOWING THE RULES OF THE CTBT THE WORLD WILL SINK INTO NUCLEAR CHAOS

ANN ROOSEVELT BMD Monitor November 26, 1999 HEADLINE: Albright: Extreme Views On ABM Treaty Are Dangerous //acs-ln-12-22-99

[Secretary of State Madeleine Albright]

"Because if we do not accept the rules we insist that others follow, others will not accept them either. The result will be a steady weakening of nuclear controls. And if efforts at control fail, within a couple of decades or less, a host of nations from the Middle East through South Asia to the Korean Peninsula could possess nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them at long range," she said.

"One can imagine then a world imperiled by bitter regional rivalries in which governments are able to threaten and destroy each other without ever having to mass troops at a border, send an aircraft aloft, or launch a ship of war. This is where the issues of nuclear testing and missile defense are linked. For those of us concerned about defending against missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction should be the first to value halting nuclear tests as an initial line of defense."

DEFEAT OF CTBT WILL SET IN MOTION A DEADLY CHAIN OF NUCLEAR BUILD-UPS AND PROLIFERATION

Andrew Koch, specialist in non-proliferation issues, Jane's Defence Weekly, October 20, 1999 HEADLINE: US rejection of CTBT sends out mixed messages // ln-10-29-99-acs

The faltering of US leadership on nuclear testing has also raised the prospect of India followed by Pakistan conducting more nuclear tests. Although India has promised to sign the CTBT, New Delhi did so reluctantly and could use the Senate vote as a pretext to gain more vital testing data for its ambitious nuclear arsenal. Independent seismologists have publicly doubted India's claims that it successfully conducted five nuclear tests, including one thermonuclear explosion, in May 1998. Were New Delhi to conduct further tests, China would come under growing pressure to re-think its own testing programme, opening the door for Russia to follow suit. Chinese thinking on the matter is similar to Moscow's: both deeply distrust US motives and feel that their nuclear deterrents could be undermined by US theatre and national missile defence programmes. From Moscow and Beijing's perspective, failure of the US Senate to ratify the CTBT, when the USA retains the world's most sophisticated atomic arsenal and largest test data pool, can only mean that Congressional Republicans seek to re-start the US nuclear testing programme and build new nuclear weapons.