The Militant (logo) 
Vol.63/No.38       November 1, 1999 
 
 
Senate rejects test ban treaty; U.S. gov't pursues first-strike nuclear capacity  
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BY MAURICE WILLIAMS 
The U.S. Senate voted down the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty October 13. The vote was a humiliation for U.S. president William Clinton, who signed the treaty in 1996 and once described the pact as the most important of his presidency.

The Senate debate ended with a statement by Senator Jesse Helms, a right-wing Republican from North Carolina, taunting Clinton through an explicit reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal that triggered impeachment proceedings against the president last year.

It was a graphic reflection of the coarseness of bourgeois politics that's become more pronounced since the failed impeachment campaign against Clinton led by rightist forces a year ago. Behind it is the crisis of overproduction of world capitalism, which is fueling interimperialist competition and new attempts by Washington to maintain its hegemony as the number one military and economic power. The drive by the U.S. rulers to bolster their superiority against their imperialist rivals, extend U.S. finance capital's domination of the semicolonial world, and take military initiatives aimed against workers states such as China, has a lot to do with the outcome of the Senate vote.

Supporters of the treaty insisted it "would lock in U.S. nuclear superiority," while opponents said alternatives to atomic test blasts could not guarantee the viability of Washington's nuclear arsenal. Only 26 governments have ratified the treaty.

The pact would extend an earlier ban on atmospheric nuclear testing to those conducted underground. While it prohibits nuclear weapons test explosions around the world, it would allow governments with nuclear weapons to conduct experiments to verify the reliability of their nuclear warheads. The pact allows most of the 4,000 components in a nuclear weapon to be modified, including casings, detonators, batteries, and arming systems.

The treaty also includes "six safeguards" imposed by the Clinton administration that provide for U.S. withdrawal if at some point Washington deems its nuclear weaponry is inadequate.

While the big-business media called the 51-48 vote to reject ratification a blow to "global efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons," politicians from the Democratic and Republican parties emphasized the necessity for Washington to strengthen its nuclear arsenal.

"If we cannot maintain the nuclear deterrent… then we will have to give notice and withdraw," the U.S. president asserted, answering Republican critics of the treaty. He also reiterated Washington's prerogative for military intervention in other countries declaring, "We must not only have a powerful military; we must also lead as we have done time and again.… We will continue to protect our interests around the world."

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Republican who opposed the treaty as "ineffectual," called on the Pentagon "to strengthen our nuclear deterrent in the coming decades."

Meanwhile, the Senate vote drew condemnations from Moscow and Beijing.

A Chinese government official said Washington's rejection of the treaty "leaves us with the impression that America has a double standard. You tell the rest of the world not to do something then you go ahead and do it."

"There is a definite trend visible in recent times in U.S. actions, and it causes deep alarm," asserted Russian foreign ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin. He said Washington's acts of imperial arrogance "are destabilizing the foundations of international relations."  
 

Clinton's nuke program

Last year the U.S. government spent $25 billion to maintain and operate its nuclear arsenal. The Clinton administration has projected spending $4.5 billion a year on the so-called Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program — "a virtual testing regime," stated an article published last year in the New York Times Sunday magazine. The program would enable the Department of Energy to "enhance" nuclear weapons using laboratory tests and computer simulations.

Under the START II (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) agreement with Moscow, the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals would be reduced to 3,000–3,500 warheads. Although the treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1996, the Pentagon "intends to retain thousands more," the Times article stated. Minutemen missiles are still being upgraded and aimed at Russian targets.

Currently Washington has more than 7,100 nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launchers, and bombers; Russia has some 6,200 warheads. The U.S. imperialists have also deployed about 150 nuclear bombs in seven NATO countries, the Washington Post reported October 20. At any given time, the U.S. rulers have more than 2,300 nuclear warheads on alert that can deliver a combined explosive power of 550 million tons of TNT — the equivalent of 44,000 atomic bombs of the caliber dropped on Hiroshima.

Meanwhile, the Clinton administration is pressing full steam ahead to develop a national missile system that would abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty signed in 1972 with the former Soviet Union. The system would purportedly enable Washington to shoot down incoming missiles, which would give it first strike nuclear capacity. The 1972 treaty presumed neither state would launch nuclear warheads against the other if it lacked the means to block retaliation.

Last January the Clinton administration announced it had asked Moscow to renegotiate the ABM treaty to allow the U.S. government to test interceptor missiles — a version of Reagan's "Star Wars" program. The White House has threatened to pull out of the treaty altogether if Moscow disagrees. The week after the Senate rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Washington reiterated the demands around the ABM pact, offering the Russian government some enticements to go along.

On October 19 Moscow rebuffed Washington's offer to help complete a Siberian missile-tracking radar station in exchange for renegotiating the ABM treaty.

"We are open to cooperation," Grigory Berdinnikorf, arms control specialist at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said three days earlier. "But if our cooperation means changing the ABM treaty our answer is 'thanks but no thanks.'"

The U.S. rulers are on a course to carry out the "Star Wars" program, however. The Pentagon has conducted several tests and spent nearly $100 billion over the last four decades on developing the antimissile system. The military successfully fired a "prototype antimissile weapon" October 3, shooting a mock warhead out of the sky over the Pacific Ocean. Nineteen more tests are scheduled and White House officials said a decision on the missile system will be made next June.

George W. Bush, the Republican front runner for the U.S. presidential election next year, has voiced commitment to deploying the Stars Wars missile system.

"Once [U.S. government officials] become sure that they can defend themselves against our missiles, they will start speaking to us from a position of strength," Russian Gen. Yuri Lebedev said earlier this year.

Russian government officials say they have begun to consult with the Beijing about political and military cooperation in the event the U.S. government discards the ABM treaty. The Chinese news media reported October 3 that two Russian warships docked in Shanghai for joint naval exercises to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Chinese revolution.

Tensions have been escalating between Washington and Beijing since the Clinton administration floated plans last August to deploy a so-called Theater Missile Defense system in countries that surround China, including Japan, south Korea, and Taiwan. These moves are putting the U.S. rulers on a collision course with the Chinese workers state. They are preparing for the day when they will attempt use military force to dismantle the gains of workers and farmers in China, who threw off the yoke of capitalists and landlords through revolutionary struggle.  
 

Pakistan, India: possible nuke conflict

The regimes in India and Pakistan, which detonated nuclear bombs underground last year, came close to using nuclear weapons against each other in 1990.. New Delhi and Islamabad have fought three wars since gaining independence in 1947. They edged closer to a fourth war this summer over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

The day before the U.S. Senate rejected the nuclear test ban treaty, Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan at that time, was ousted in a military coup. Less than two weeks earlier, on October 3, Atal Behari Vajpayee, leader of the Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was reelected prime minister of India. Neither the government of Pakistan nor of India have signed the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty.

At his press conference after the treaty vote, Clinton warned both countries about resuming nuclear testing. When asked about Washington's lack of moral authority to demand that other countries stop nuclear testing, he replied, "we were in battle with the new isolationists in the Republican Party."

U.S. vice president Albert Gore, who pledged to make the nuclear test ban pact a campaign issue in his run for president, said the Republicans listened to "a tiny minority of right-wing extremists" when they voted to reject the treaty.

"A little isolationism would be healthy for America.… We can't fix the whole world," wrote Joseph Farah, whose article opposing the treaty ran on ultrarightist presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan's "GoPatGo2000" campaign website. "There is a role for U.S. foreign intervention. There is a time and place for military involvements… I do not advocate retreating from the world." The ultrarightist argues for winning "the war at home" first and that when the government send forces abroad it must use overwhelming power to guarantee victory. He has used the debate to push his "America First" nationalism, insisting treaties such as this violate "American sovereignty."

Ultraconservative Sen. Jesse Helms, a staunch opponent of the treaty, helped Lott organize its defeat on the Senate floor. He took the occasion of the treaty debate to swipe at Clinton's affair with former White House employee Monica Lewinsky in a sex scandal that prompted impeachment proceedings against the president last year. Reflecting the coarsening of capitalist politics, Helms suggested that British prime minister Anthony Blair might end a treaty-related phone call to Clinton by saying, "Give Monica my regards."  
 
 
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