WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Thursday that it would ask the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, more than a decade after President Bill Clinton failed to convince the treaty’s opponents that the American arsenal could deter adversaries without ever setting off nuclear explosions.
The effort to move ahead with the treaty — one of the steps the administration wants to take to convince the world that the United States is committed to reducing and ultimately eliminating its arsenals — was announced by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.Speaking at the National Defense University, he was introduced by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, the only cabinet holdover from the Bush administration, and the man the White House believes will help provide political cover for what promises to be another bruising rematch over national security.
Over the next two weeks, President Obama is expected to make several critical decisions about nuclear policy, so Mr. Biden’s speech avoided some of the most contentious issues,
including whether the United States would make a vow of “no first use” of a nuclear weapon. Mr. Obama’s decisions will complete what is known as the Nuclear Posture Review, conducted by each new administration. Officials say that for the first time the review will include American policy for dealing with nuclear threats from terrorists and other nonstate actors.
Mr. Biden, who spent years as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will be a crucial player in the effort to win passage of the treaty. In a way, its approval would change very little: the United States has not conducted a nuclear test in two decades, since they were halted by President George Bush.
To overcome objections to signing the treaty, the administration has pledged to greatly increase the budget of the nation’s three weapons laboratories.
“Unfortunately, during the last decade, our nuclear complex and experts were neglected,” Mr. Biden said. He noted that many of the facilities now in use for making uranium and plutonium “date back to the days when the great powers were led by Harry Truman,Winston Churchill and Joe Stalin.”
He acknowledged that there would be major political fights ahead. “Some in my own party may have trouble reconciling investment of $7 billion in our nuclear complex with a commitment to arms reductions,” he said, arguing that the investment was necessary to make sure that weapons are safe and reliable even without physical testing. “Some in the other party may worry we’re relinquishing capabilities that have kept our country safe.”
Mr. Biden made the case that new technology had solved the problems that concerned critics of the treaty about a decade ago. “The test ban treaty is as important as ever,” he said.
But at a moment that Mr. Obama is struggling to get his domestic agenda through Congress, it is unclear when he will try to move ahead on the treaty, and Mr. Biden offered no timetable for the effort.
The core of the administration’s argument for the treaty is that Washington will never succeed in stopping other countries from seeking, and testing, nuclear arms unless it significantly reduces its own stockpile and agrees to a permanent ban on testing. Opponents maintain that the United States should never tie its hands, and they argue that computer simulations of nuclear tests do not have the demonstration effect of a real test.
“The administration’s agenda is essentially to make the country safer,” said Stephen Young, who follows the issue for the Union of Concerned Scientists, which favors passage of the treaty. “But they face an enormous challenge in gaining the support of cold warriors in the Senate without alienating their traditional allies.”
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