15 June 1998
HOLUM: INDIAN, PAKISTANI NUCLEAR TESTS THREATEN GLOBAL SECURITY
(Says "horrified" world "must register its disapproval") (1230) By Jacquelyn S. Porth USIA Security Affairs Writer Washington -- India and Pakistan have taken "a step across a boundary that has made them demonstrably less secure" in conducting recent nuclear weapons tests, and have challenged the central principles of global security, a key U.S. arms control official says. Acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Holum says he believes they will gradually come to realize that their nuclear tests were not "an intelligent national security step." Holum told a gathering of international arms control experts in Philadelphia June 10 that "India and Pakistan have pushed to the forefront weapons the world is leaving behind." The two nations are also "diverting resources to destructive technologies a half-century old," he said, with the result being "no triumph of technology, only a surrender of self-control." Global leaders should be careful to do nothing that would drive India and Pakistan out of existing arms control regimes, Holum said. He also stressed the importance of maintaining current lines of communication with them in order to solve a nuclear proliferation problem that has "horrified the world community." Holum said the message to both governments should be "to cease their inflammatory rhetoric, adopt a cooling-off period, restore bilateral dialogue, avoid provocative actions in Kashmir, and address the root causes of their tensions." "The world must register its disapproval," he said, so that both nations understand "the depth and durability of international ire." Through doing so, Holum added, "we notify other would-be proliferators that nuclear programs carry untenable costs." The ultimate objective of international reaction must be for India and Pakistan to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapon states," he said. The NPT will not be modified "to accommodate their self-declared nuclear status," Holum emphasized. Holum and other speakers at the 7th annual Defense Special Weapons Agency conference in Philadelphia on "Controlling Arms" returned again and again to the issue of Indian and Pakistani nuclear testing. Former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn described the situation on the subcontinent as "extremely dangerous" for India and Pakistan. These two countries are the ones that are likely to be victims of a nuclear explosion, he said, stressing the need to conduct nuclear fall-out studies. It is imperative for the world community to "weigh in" with these two countries, Nunn said, and help them sort out historic animosities arising from the Kashmir dispute. He also said it is important for American and Russian nuclear experts to sit down with representatives from India and Pakistan and help them understand what was done, during and immediately after the Cold War, to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. Dr. Anatoliy Grytsenko of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council said the recent nuclear tests represented a failure of world arms control policy. How the international community survives this important test in the coming months will determine the future of international security structures and military alliances, he said. India and Pakistan learned nothing from Ukraine, which has given up its nuclear weapons, Grytsenko asserted. Iran might next run its own tests, he speculated, leaving open the possibility that Israel and North Korea would follow. Not all of these fledgling nuclear states have good civilian control of their militaries, he warned, urging the United States to increase military-to-military contacts as a way to change thinking about the role of nuclear power. Nunn raised the possibility of offering India and Pakistan a jointly-manned center for early warning of missile launches using U.S. detection satellites on Aegis radar-equipped ships in the Indian Ocean. He asked whether such an offer should be conditioned on "both countries pledging to take verifiable steps to assure the world that nuclear weapons are not being deployed." "Should we ask Russia to join in this proposal with Russia's own missile warning radar providing partial coverage of both India and Pakistan? Should we design this concept so that it could include China in the future?" Nunn asked. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John Shalikashvili told the conference participants "it is important for the administration and...Congress to be clear that despite India's and Pakistan's regrettable actions, the (Comprehensive Test Ban) Treaty remains in the best security interest of everyone." Even though sanctions against these two nations must stay in place, Shalikashvili said India and Pakistan cannot be isolated and it is clear that efforts must be redoubled "to keep either of them from mating their nuclear devices to their missiles." Ways must be found to make the CTBT so attractive to both that they will sign, he noted. "It is critical to cool the temperature just as soon as possible," Shalikashvili added, "The animosity between the two is too great -- and the possibility of armed conflict too real -- for us and the world not to try everything possible while there is still a chance to keep the Indian subcontinent free of nuclear weapons." Holum said some critics of the CTBT have argued that the failure to detect Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests in advance undermines the case for the treaty. But the CTBT "does not depend on predicting tests, but on catching tests if they happen," he said. On May 11, the official said, seismic sensors in Europe, Scandinavia, Western Africa and the South Pacific picked up the tests and "pointed unambiguously toward an underground nuclear explosion" in India. Sensors are only one of the CTBT's verification resources, Holum explained. There will also be an International Monitoring System, satellite surveillance and on-site inspections. "The CTBT, combined with unified political and economic will," he said, "builds a significant deterrent to nuclear proliferation." What the treaty needs most is U.S. ratification, Holum said. "Especially now, we need to reinforce U.S. leadership for non-proliferation by not legally reserving for ourselves something (nuclear testing) we do not need and will not use anyway, and something we and the rest of the world have rightly condemned in South Asia." The issue of cyber attacks, or how to defend against information warfare, was another issue which occupied many of the panels and the more than 400 participants from China, Russia, the Netherlands, France, Israel, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Poland, Canada and Germany. Nunn stressed the need to prevent computer attacks and to prepare and train to manage attacks. Nunn also floated the idea of creating a U.S.-Russian cooperative program for a joint ballistic missile and aircraft warning and tracking system to provide worldwide coverage for U.S., Russian and third-country launches. He suggested including France, China and the United Kingdom later on. The Defense Department's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, which has accelerated the dismantlement of thousands of former Soviet nuclear weapons, also drew the attention of many conference participants. Retired Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Kuenning, who is now deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for CTR, said the $450 million which is being spent on the program needs to be sustained for several additional years. While much has been accomplished in the field of nuclear dismantlement, he noted, there is much to be done in terms of chemical and biological weapons and facility dismantlement.
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