'Prez Obama will make a move on CTBT when time comes'

Why the US has become mysteriously quiet on the CTBT's e-i-f, especially in President Barack Obama's second term, was a question this writer put to Honourable Ellen O Tauscher (former US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from 2009 to 2012 when she managed global US security policy in the areas of non-proliferation and arms control).

She cleared up this misbelief saying that is not the case at all. "The President is very aware of the seriousness of CTBT and will make a move only when the opportune moment comes. It all depends on how the other side reacts and it changes constantly. One can't predict when."

When inquired further to understand the crux of the issue, she explained further and from the sum of her statements, this interviewer got the impression that Republicans are speed experts in swap games and if Obama raises the issue in the Senate now, the GOP swappers would ask for concessions on Obamacare/Medicare and social insurance for Americans which Obama has promised his people, or anything else affecting a vital pillar of his home or foreign policy. He wouldn't want to give in.
There are other areas as well where Republicans would ask for credits´. Obama wants to minimise giveaways as little as possible. It's political chessboard game.

However, Tauscher made it clear that most GOP swingers broadly agree in principle on the CTBT e-i-f now unlike in 1999 voting. CTBT requires 2/3 rd Senate majority to be ratified. Here is a classic case of an internal political wrangling blocking and delaying an important disarmament treaty to enter into force by world's most powerful country. Tauscher's keynote address only underlined the standard Democratic Party's positive stand towards the CTBT e-i-f.

There were other scientific-political issues - North Korea, for example, that were discussed.

N. Korea's first explosion (2006) was falsely assessed both by the US and Russia. Russia thought it was around 10 k tons and the US to begin with called it even a bluff. It was CTBT's network-connected radio-nuclide station (RNS) in Yellowknife, Canada 7000 km afar distance that detected the Xenon-133 particles (radioactive isotope of Xenon is released only when a nuclear fission takes place, another isotope released is xenon-131) as the radiation cloud reached the Canadian airspace, and the data was exact. It was a sub-kiloton device.

This detection had one, value-added, commendable quality. The total number of RNSs at IMS' disposal in 2006 was 11 only. Today, in 2013, there are 30. Additionally, 66 RNSs are spread all over the globe. When completed, the total number of IMS-RNSs worldwide will be 40, including stations in China, Japan and Russia. CTBTO scientists use ATM , an acronym for atmospheric transport modelling, to calculate 3-dimensional travel paths of airborne radioactivity.

Since 2006, the respect for CTBT IMS catapulted. The RN-detection then was at a lower levels of xenon-133 by a single station. But the DPRK's (Democratic People's Republic of Korea - North Korea). second test turned out an enigma. Pyongyong announced it had conducted a nuclear test on May 25, 2009. The explosion was immediately detected by CTBTO's 61seismic stations compared to 22 stations in 2006. This time it was a more precise assessment of the event's characteristics, including its location and magnitude.

But the mystery was, no noble gases were detected by any of CTBTO's IMS RNS cluster in nations around test site. OneIndia readers should know that detection of radio-nuclide particle is the ultimate secure rubber-stamp certifying an explosion as absolutely nuclear, and not of any other type (earth quake or tsunami in underwater / underground/ over-ground. CTBTO's explanation "Given the relatively short half-life of radioactive xenon (between 8 hours and 11 days, depending on the isotope), it is unlikely that the IMS will detect or identify xenon from this event after several weeks." Nevertheless, CTBTO experts believe noble gas xenon-133 could be detectable for up to 150 days after a nuclear fission event. But in DPRK's case it failed.

How then to judge? Verification expert, U.S. Professor Paul Richards (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University) envisaged a "bluff" scenario, that of a simulated nuclear explosion using conventional explosives giving out a seismic signal. It's technically possible, but highly implausible, he said. The CTBTO seismic data of May end 2009 indicated an explosion yield far greater than of 2006. But to fake an atomic test, one needs to fire thousands of conventional explosives instantaneously. Richards concluded such a huge logistical undertaking would be virtually impossible not to escape detection from NK's neighbours connected to the IMS. Thus NK second test was no bluff.

But darkness hovers over the N. Korean third test (Feb. 2013). While well detected, in just an hour after the explosion, before the NK govt' s announcement, with 94 IMS seismic stations detecting the event immediately. The test released both Xe-133 and Xe-131 at much higher levels (at Takasaki RN station in Japan). It raises, however, one controversy, as Dr. Siegfried Hecker, former Director, Los Alamos Lab. analysed.

"We would very much like to know whether it is plutonium or highly enriched uranium," Nuclear scientist Hecker, has visited North Korea and told this to a news conference. (He is currently professor at the Stanford University Center).

Radioactive Xenon gases emanating from the third test, whether is from a Pu (Plutonium) or a Uranium(U) device can only be known once we go to the spot soon after the test - that's the unique mission of CTBTO's OSI section (on-site inspection), but non-functional now, because treaty has not entered into force. But circumstantial evidence suggests, however, it is U-type.

Pakistan having huge U- deposits in Balochistan must have gone for a swap deal with N. Korea, nuclear technology & nuc materials in exchange for missile and rocket technology. North Korea might have also mastered both the U and Pu bomb techniques. NK is considered to have Pu for 4-8 nuclear bombs.

Disarmament Play

On the side-line of a panel discussion, a play on Reagan- Gorbachev summit was shown. The play text was purely lifted from original tapes released by Russian government. It is truly amazing that the two had almost reached agreement on total abolition of all nuclear weapons! A grand move, but a dream collapsed! Because of one word the U. S. insisted be included - the SDI (Reagan's craziness for Strategic Defence Initiative - the Star Wars, high-elbowed then also by Secretary of State George Schultz; both were in turn presumably pressured by the U.S. hawk scientist Dr. Edward Teller (father of U. S. Hydrogen Bomb and the grey eminence´ of Los Alamos Lab.) [The immigrant Jewish scientist, late Teller & late Dr. Leo Szilard, were the 2 scientists who coerced Einstein to write that famous letter on Aug.2, 1939 to President Roosevelt asking him to make the A-bomb before Germans made it to decimate non-Aryan races - the Manhattan project]

One can't fault Gorbachev on that. Why on earth did the U.S. want a Star Wars' option unilaterally for the US alone, when both sides agreed to total abolition of all n-weapons, is a question that will hang on US conscience, esp. for the GOP (Grand Old Party - Republicans-conservative), for decades to come. A magnificent, historic opportunity for world peace was lost. A positive evaluation of that meet, however, was that it really sealed the Cold War for good.

US Default

George Walker Bush made it even worse by pulling U. S. out of the bilateral Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia and let CTBT hang in limbo in U. S. Senate, shunning even CTBT's Conferences of State Parties (or called in Vienna CTBT vernacular, the Article XIV Conf.) by not sending a U.S. delegate. COSP is a meet that takes place once in 2- 3 years, a meet where signatory States are obliged to attend.
It was ludicrous to see the U. S., under G.W. Bush, losing its voting rights once in CTBT PrepCom - Preparatory Commission (CTBT provisional Board of Governors) for a period of 6-8 weeks, for non-payment of its dues! However, for America's good fortune, President Obama took over, and he rightfully extruded all such anomalies, rectifying and setting the U.S. role in CTBTO PrepCom back to normal and constructive.

There is not an iota of doubt among CTBT insiders, analysts and experts here that the U.S. ratification is the key to CTBT's e-i-f. Unfortunately, no nation is in a position to directly influence or impact a U. S., glistening, but drowned in a worthless delusion of being the world's most powerful country. Power for a democratic, predominantly "Christian "nation invariably entails leadership in accountability and responsibility towards the entire world. So far the U.S. has let down the world on this treaty. When will U.S. Republicans wake up and be enlightened´´ to ratify CTBT with bipartisan consent? No convincing excuses allowed please!
There is one minor headache for CTBTO management, namely, the budget. It stands for 2013 slightly below zero real growth - i.e. $ 119.6 million, stagnant at last year's level. However, the EU which champions CTBTO's cause has come to the rescue with a voluntary contribution of extra € 5 million for this year.

Perceptions' Conflict

In the Q & A session, One India raised an issue preceded by a comment on the current state of CTBT. There are 4 mutually conflicting perceptions to explain the current impasse with the 8 hold-out nations.

1) CTBT cannot enter into force as long as a comprehensive world security system (CWSS) is not put in place (pessimistic view)

2) CTBT can enter into force only when we go step by step. First the CTBT e-i-f, followed by FMCT e-i-f, and then on to final global disarmament with an established all-world security structure. This perception reflects the current reality and hence positive.

3) A synthesis of 1) & 2) - One must try both ways. Efforts should be made simultaneously to work out a CWSS, while working out the e-i-fs of individual treaties like CTBT & FMCT. Ultimately we will reach the goal of a CWSS.

4) This perception, unlike the first three, is based on the principle of urgency. It says - all the first 3 consume time, Humanity cannot wait that far. It is all the more pressing as one essential factor weighs heavily on world conscience, namely, the Underworld turnover per annum at 1.5 trillion USD by IMF, by UNODC (UN Office for Drugs and Crime) , at 1 trillion USD. These are no small sums. With such amounts calamitously afloat could wreak havoc to the entire global system. It is only left to imagination to visualise how groups like Al-Kaida would want to lay their hands on "orphaned" highly enriched U & Pu. through vicious undercurrent financing

[Many years ago it was once reported that in one Scandinavian country (perhaps Norway) about 100 kilos of nuclear materials (enriched to what high levels, we weren't told ) was either unaccounted for or missing! That was a time when phoney suitcase n-bomb stories made their rounds. One shouldn't forget that over a decade back when Bin Laden was intensely active from his hideout in Afghanistan borders two Pakistani Islam-fundamentalist nuclear scientists went and met Bin Laden and discussed for hours. When I confronted the then US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on this incident at a reception of the Nuclear Threat Initiative at Austria Center in Vienna, and asked what more he knew, he replied with a cold face, "Yes. We are quite aware and we take it very, very seriously." What chokes human conscience here is that pricking question, would our world only wake up when something ghastly and monstrous happens, say, couple of millions dead through a dirty nuclear bomb, and all then sing unisono, penitently, - "Let's ratify CTBT immediately" ? Not, that such disasters cannot in principle happen ex post facto. The point here is, an early CTBT e-i-f will accelerate and shorten an FMCT c-i-f and both together will open up a tough universal control regime (on nuc materials, their clandestine transfer and explosions), which is totally absent now. Only consolation is the voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests declared by all States possessing n-weapons, excepting N.K. That's laudable, but is flimsily structured, hence unstable]

OneIndia then asked: "Will this conference pass a resolution that says, in the next G 20 meet CTBT e-i-f should be placed as No. 1 priority in the Agenda list?" ( G 20, because that's where world's best military and economic powers meet.)

Moderator Dr Partcia Lewis, [Research Director for International Security at Chatham House (London), immediately threw the question on to the audience. She asked if there was any one in the audience against the proposal. There was pin-drop silence.

That meant that the entire 200-odd audience were for it. She then turned to the panel members for their opinion and Dr. Blix concurred that the G20 was the right place for it. The panel members, however, were sceptical if G20 would take up a complicated issue like CTBT-e-i-f as their interests are mostly economic issues. That might be. This writer's information is that they do touch on security matters, at least informally. G20 seems an unconventional possible way out of the current impasse, if pursued perseveringly.

There is one point not mentioned in the Reykjavik play. During the summit at one point, Gorbachev pointed to a WW I rifle hanging on the wall, and told Reagan. "As long as the rifle hangs there, there will be a temptation to use it". He meant, if removed, no such problem arises. It seems Reagan was pretty much touched by that argument.