Just hours before North Korea apparently conducted its fifth underground nuclear detonation, a group of 33 GOP senators on Thursday threatened to block U.S. funding for the international organization tasked with monitoring such activity if the Obama administration moves forward with any U.N. Security Council resolution that imposes international obligations on the United States when it comes to nuclear testing.
The Senate rejected U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1999, and President Barack Obama never followed through on his 2009 pledge to bring the accord back before the upper chamber for consideration. The United States is one of eight remaining nations that must ratify the CTBT for it to enter into force.
The administration has acknowledged it is in talks with Security Council member states on what it says would be a nonbinding resolution aimed at strengthening the global moratoria on nuclear explosive testing. Republicans have expressed concern that Obama is instead seeking to circumvent the Senate’s constitutional role in deciding whether the United States joins international treaties.
“If you decide to pursue a Security Council Resolution that accepts the imposition of international obligations that the Senate has explicitly rejected, we would make every effort to prevent the authorization or appropriation of the approximately $32 million per year, or 25% of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Preparatory Commission budget, that Congress has been willing to provide during your Administration notwithstanding the Senate’s decision to reject the CTBT. The United States has no need for the CTBT international monitoring system given our own national capabilities,” according to the GOP letter sent to Obama on Thursday.
At about 9 a.m. Friday in North Korea (8:30 p.m. Thursday on the U.S. East Coast), more than two dozen sensor stations operated by the Preparatory Commission for the CTBTO in the region detected “an unusual seismic event” of roughly magnitude 5.0 in North Korea, according to the organization. The U.S. Geological Survey also identified what it said appeared to be a magnitude 5.3 explosion in North Korea. Both organizations noted the event occurred in the area the North uses for nuclear testing. This would be the nation’s first test since January of this year, and appears to be slightly more powerful, the CTBTO said. North Korea quickly issued a statement acknowledging the event.
The coincidental timing of the Republicans’ letter and North Korean nuclear detonation did not go unnoticed.
“A UN Security Council resolution – which will strengthen the global taboo against nuclear testing at a critical time – deserves the strong support of responsible policymakers the world over, especially in the U.S. Senate, which has failed to provide its advice and consent for ratification of the treaty by the United States,” the Arms Control Association’s Daryl Kimball and Kelsey Davenport said in a statement early Friday.
The North is the only nation today conducting such tests, which are a key step in development of a nuclear arsenal, and is another one of the eight countries that must ratify the CTBT for it to enter into force (the others being China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, and Pakistan). The United States put its own voluntary suspension on testing into place in the 1990s under President George H.W. Bush.
In an Aug. 10 letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield laid out the boundaries of the resolution being discussed with other U.N. Security Council states: a reaffirmation of support for the global moratoria on testing and for the CTBT Organization and its global nuclear-blast detection system. The administration also hopes for a political statement from the five nuclear-weapon states under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – “expressing the view that a nuclear test would defeat the object and purpose of the CTBT.”
Frifield emphasized that the administration has no plan to secure a legally binding prohibition on nuclear testing. Nonetheless, in an Aug. 12 letter to Obama, Corker called attention to specific language in Frifield’s message: “’Object and purpose’ obligations for countries that have signed and not ratified a treaty are specifically articulated in Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which the United States also has not ratified; but they have been recognized by successive U.S. administrations as customary international law that present a binding restriction on the United States.”
The question of whether the Vienna Convention could ultimately serve to establish a legal obligation to the United States for the CTBT regime was at the heart of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Wednesday on the Security Council resolution and of the Republican senators’ letter Thursday.
“Some of the language [in Frifield’s letter] had ambiguities and certainly could in fact be interpreted to be something that creates customary international law, which could create some binding effects on future administrations,” Corker said Wednesday.
Still, he was not among the signatories to the GOP letter to Obama, which included Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ted Cruz (Texas), John McCain (Ariz.), and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). The lawmakers put a number of requests and questions to the president, including:
- “How the obligation under international law of the United States to forego nuclear weapons testing under the CTBT will change following the United Nations Security Council action on that issue sought by your Administration.”
- “Does the Senate’s consistent objection to Article 18 [of the Vienna Convention] amount to “persistent objection” under international law that would exempt the United States from whatever customary international legal obligation is embodied in that article?”
- Whether the nuclear-weapon nations statement or Security Council resolution would establish any mechanism for the 15-nation U.N. body to evaluate any future U.S. nuclear weapons activity deemed necessary to ensure a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent.
- Submitting a clear statement from the secretary of state regarding what nuclear weapons test activity is banned by the CTBT, along with assurance that this is understood by the five nuclear-weapon states and all of the treaty’s signatories. “Will this be the definition used in the P5 statement or UNSCR?”
- Provide U.S. government determinations regarding whether any CTBT signatory states has conducted a test producing a nuclear yield since 1996, when the accord was opened for signatures, as well as during the Obama administration.
The U.N. General Assembly adopted the CTBT almost exactly 20 years ago, on Sept. 10, 1996; it has been signed by 183 nations and ratified by 164.
In the United States, the treaty’s supporters say the U.S. stockpile stewardship program can sustain a reliable nuclear arsenal, while discouraging further testing makes it harder for other nations to develop their own nuclear weapons, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said during the hearing. Critics of the CTBT regime argue that the United States may itself one day need to conduct nuclear tests to strengthen its own deterrent, and worry that other nations could develop a weapon even without testing.
The capacity of the growing web of hundreds of CTBT seismic, hydroacoustic, and other sensors to detect any and all underground testing is also a point of dispute. Supporters of the treaty note that none of North Korea’s test blasts in recent years escaped detection, including this week’s event.
