Kiss kiss bang bang

Taking a break away from posts about terrorism for the time being (if not the US), here’s a nice fairytale about a little frog living in a land far far away, waiting for a princess to come kiss it and turn it into Wills or Hazza. Of course, by frog, I mean the Comprehensive-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation, by a land far far away, I mean the Vienna International Centre, and by princess, I mean the new US administration.

The Comprehensive-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature in 1996 and is a proposed ban on all nuclear test explosions. The Partial-Test-Ban Treaty bans all test explosions above ground, and what the CTBT would mean is that you can’t explode stuff underground either. The CTBT hasn’t come into force yet because for it to come into force, it needs to be signed and ratified by a group of states called the Annex 2 states (44 states that participated in the negotiation of the treaty and possessed nuclear/research reactors at the time). Therefore, the CTBTO is really the Preparatory Commission for the CTBTO. As it currently stands, out of the Annex 2 states, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Israel and the US have signed but not ratified. DPR Korea, India and Pakistan have neither signed nor ratified. You can keep watch here.

One significant obstacle to getting the CTBT to come into force is the US’ failure to ratify. The US signed the treaty under the Clinton administration, but domestic politics took over, and the treaty never made it through Congress. This is a problem firstly obviously because it’s an Annex 2 state, and secondly because it makes other states think twice about signing and ratifying. If the cool kids aren’t doing it, smaller states don’t want to be doing it either. The other problem that the Preparatory Commission for the CTBTO faces is that no one without an interest in nuclear weapons issues has heard of it. The IAEA gets to go and do all the cool stuff, report directly the UN General Assembly and get in the news, while the CTBTO stays at home with its seismograph and listens for explosions underground (ok, well this is a massive oversimplification, they do lots of other fun stuff too). But at any rate, CTBTO staff regularly have to explain what the CTBT is to state representatives they want to get on side. One of the reasons why I’m writing this post is because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to tell this story, it’s not a good chat-up line, and I don’t want my life to flash before my eyes in the moments before my death to find that I’ve spent it explaining what the CTBTO is.

So, the new US president, who doesn’t need naming, has been making noises for a while about trying to get the CTBT ratified, for example, in this article. And here, post-inauguration:

“Strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Obama and Biden will crack down on nuclear proliferation by strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions.”

“Move Toward a Nuclear Free World: Obama and Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it. Obama and Biden will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist. But they will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. They will stop the development of new nuclear weapons.”

(Foreign Policy, White House website, see also Homeland Security)

And I should care about this because…?

For a lot of people, nuclear weapons issues have faded in significance since the end of the Cold War and been superceded by well, terrorism. But nuclear weapons haven’t gone away, neither has inter-state conflict, and there’s nothing like a couple of nukes to spice up an inter-state conflict. The two biggies are the conflict between India and Pakistan (neither of whom have signed the CTBT) and the tension over a uranium enrichment programme currently being conducted by Iran, which is opposed by pretty much everyone, most notably Israel, which is a nuclear weapons state itself. A genuine move by the international community away from nuclear weapons development, and nuclear weapons altogether, would signal a change in the way governments think about security and what they think security is.

How much would a working CTBT impact upon nuclear weapons development?

Technically speaking, not a lot. There’s a tendency for treaties to lag behind the technologies they want to deal with. States don’t need to conduct nuclear test explosions like they used to; these can be carried out by computer simulations. A complete test ban doesn’t necessarily put a stopper on weapons development. And some legal-technical issues are unclear, like ‘how big is a bang?’ (Big enough to be picked up by the CTBTO monitoring system presumably?) But that isn’t really the point. A working CTBT would demonstrate stronger political will to stop and reverse the spread of nuclear weapons. Attempts to build and pass international law are exercises in the making of norms. You don’t go around stealing other people’s post or throwing babies off bridges, partially because it’s illegal, but mainly because you think it’s wrong, and if you’re a bit of a dick, because everyone else thinks its wrong. Arguably, the CTBT has already had an impact, because the only nuclear test explosion since 1998 (when India and Pakistan conducted two tests each) was conducted by DPR Korea in October 2006.
… and they all lived happily ever after…