It is indisputable that the United States can ensure the safety and reliability of its vast nuclear arsenal via advanced simulations based on years of testing. Why, then, would a band of renegade senators want to undermine U.S. global leadership and give aspiring nuclear powers carte blanche to test their nuclear weapon designs, or let China develop "boosted" nuclear weapons for its long-range missile force by torpedoing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty?
Politics, of course. Except this time, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott and the 49 other senators who voted to kill the test-ban treaty on Oct. 13 are playing with fire. Inexplicably, they even went against the wishes of the vast majority of the American people-some polls estimate more than 80 percent-who support a global ban on underground nuclear testing.
The Senate's ill-advised action came just two days after a military coup in Pakistan, a nuclear power that conducted tit-for-tat nuclear tests with India last year. How will the generals in Islamabad interpret the Senate vote? What's to stop them from resuming their highly nationalistic underground testing program? If they do, India will most assuredly answer in kind.
A key complaint of test-ban opponents is that the treaty as submitted is unverifiable. If that's true, and many experts argue that it isn't, then the treaty should be amended to permit the most intrusive verification regime possible.
The incentive to cheat seems far too small to risk international condemnation, especially since low-yield, hard-to-detect tests aren't much good for verifying new weapon designs. In the meantime, a vast network of precisely located seismic sensors can detect the higher-yield tests needed to verify new bomb designs.
The U.S. has spent billions on the supercomputer technology needed to simulate the effects of a nuclear blast. It has spent billions more collecting and analyzing data on more than 1,000 atmospheric and underground nuclear tests.
Recently, according to press reports, the U.S. Air Force began dropping bomb cases filled with concrete on Iraqi targets to minimize the "collateral damage" caused by high-explosive conventional weapons dropped on urban targets.
The Senate vote does not stop the debate on ending underground nuclear testing. President Clinton, eager to secure a legacy on arms control, erred in pushing for a vote in an atmosphere poisoned by partisan one-upmanship.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty should be placed back on the Senate calendar for extended debate so that it can be amended, ratified and put into force.
More important, the Senate should stop playing with fire when it comes to the fate of the Earth.
George Leopold is Washington Bureau Chief at EE Times.
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