An Assessment of Russia’s Withdrawal from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
On November 2, 2023, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin signed a law withdrawing the country’s ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). This multilateral treaty prohibits State parties from conducting, encouraging, or participating in any nuclear weapon test explosion or other nuclear weapon explosion. The CTBT enters into force once it has been ratified by specified States with nuclear power or research reactors. So far, it has been signed by all of the specified States except for India, Pakistan, and North Korea. With Russia’s withdrawal, the CTBT has been ratified by 35 of the required 44 countries, including Britain and France, but not the United States, Israel, Iran, or China.
Russia’s action to “de-ratify”—or by the terms of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to withdraw from—the treaty is part of its overall campaign to undermine the West’s support for Ukraine by provoking fear of nuclear escalation. Although Russia’s decision to withdraw its ratification means the CTBT is further from coming into force and reflects an unfortunate step backwards in terms of nuclear arms control generally, the decision changes little in practical reality.
The Context of Russia’s Nuclear Rhetoric
Russia’s CTBT withdrawal comes as its invasion of Ukraine has turned into a stalemate at best, if not a complete quagmire. The Russian President and his allies, desperate to retain their territorial expansionist gains, have not hesitated to use nuclear threats as an attempt to bully the West into submission. Shortly after the invasion, Russia announced its nuclear forces were on “high alert.” By August 2022, Russia refused to allow U.S. inspectors access to its nuclear weapons sites, as required under the 2010 New START treaty, thereby eviscerating that treaty’s verification regime.
In September 2022, Putin elevated Russia’s nuclear threats, declaring, “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people . . . . This is not a bluff.” By the end of the month, the Russian leader signed treaties approving the accession of seized Ukrainian territory into the Russian Federation.
Although Ukraine has incrementally regained some of its land, Russia has not used its nuclear weapons. Former Russian President and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev blustered that Russia “would have to use nuclear weapons” to defend its new territories if the Ukrainian counter-offensive succeeded. Putin later indicated that use of nuclear weapons merely to defend territory was not part of Russia’s nuclear employment doctrine.
Russia has continued to escalate its nuclear risk posture. In February 2023, Russia suspended its participation in the New START treaty with the United States, which limited nuclear warheads, launchers, and bombers. In June, Russia proclaimed that it had started deploying tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus as a deterrence measure against strategic defeat. As Russia began the process of withdrawing from the CTBT, Putin told the world that Russia had successfully test launched the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, that the Sarmat (a.k.a. “Satan 2”) super heavy missile was ready, and that both were going into production. During the CTBT withdrawal process this October, Russian State TV reported that its military had rehearsed its ability to deliver a massive nuclear strike. Throughout the Ukraine invasion, Russia media commentators have openly discussed the use of these weapons against European capitals.
While Russia elevated its nuclear rhetoric, it also dismantled another arms control agreement. On June 9, 2023, Russia gave notice that it was withdrawing from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty which limited military forces in specified areas of Europe, effective on November 7. While NATO and its member States (see, e.g., Canada, France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have condemned Russia’s withdrawal, Russia never completed the required removal of its forces from Georgia or the Transnistria region of Moldova, and formally suspended compliance with the CFE in 2007. At the time, NATO allies criticized Russia’s suspension, but did not reciprocate. The withdrawal from the CFE within a week of the CTBT revocation illustrate the Russia’s willingness to dismantle arms control measures designed around stability to coerce the West.
Russia’s Rationale
Putin publicly based the CTBT withdrawal on trying to achieve reciprocity with the United States. Russia’s withdrawal law contains the following explanation,
Of all the states that have not ratified the CTBT, the United States has taken the most destructive approach, for many years declaring that Congress would not support its ratification. This created an imbalance between Russia and the United States regarding the scope of obligations under the Treaty, which is unacceptable in the current international situation.
As Russia worked on its formal CTBT ratification withdrawal, its Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, accused the United States of preparing for a nuclear test in Nevada. In fact, the United States, Russia, and China all have new facilities and tunnels at their respective nuclear test sites. Moreover, the United States did conduct what Newsweek characterized as a “high-explosive subsurface chemical explosion” at the Nevada site hours after the Russian Duma voted on the CTBT ratification revocation. The test, which was non-nuclear in nature, was designed to help the United States detect low-yield nuclear explosions around the world. Because the explosion was non-nuclear, it complied with the CTBT. The United States used the Nevada nuclear test site because its infrastructure was built to measure explosions and thereby enable better detection of explosions elsewhere.
U.S. Position on the CTBT
The United States has not conducted a nuclear explosive test since 1992. President Clinton was the first world leader to sign the CTBT in 1996. He explained that the treaty would help to prevent the nuclear powers from developing more advanced and more dangerous weapons and would limit the ability of other States to acquire nuclear weapons. However, when the Senate considered its role to provide advice and consent in 1999, the CTBT failed to receive the number of votes required to ratify the treaty. The Senators opposing it articulated concerns over verification and enforceability. Nonetheless, the U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing has stayed in place throughout administrations regardless of whether an administration opposed or supported the CTBT. The current administration is committed to the CTBT achieving entry into force.
Suspicions of Russian Nuclear Testing
With signature of the CTBT in 1996, each of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council agreed to a moratorium against further testing. But the scope of each State’s moratorium has not been publicly defined. The United States understands that testing moratorium as a “zero yield” testing threshold. That is to say, the prohibition applies to any test that produces a self-sustaining, supercritical nuclear chain reaction of any kind. In 2016, the Governments of China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States issued a joint statement reaffirming their moratoria on nuclear weapons explosions pending the CTBT’s entry into force, and recognizing that a nuclear-weapon explosion would defeat the object and purpose of the CTBT.
The truth is that Russia has likely not adhered to a “zero yield” testing moratorium. The 2009 Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States chaired by former Secretary of Defense William Perry reported, “Apparently Russia and possibly China are conducting low yield tests.”
In 2019, the U.S. State Department’s Arms Control Compliance Report publicly asserted that “during the 1995-2018 timeframe, Russia probably conducted nuclear weapons-related tests at the Novaya Zemlya Nuclear Test Site.” That year, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence stated, “Russia probably is not adhering to its nuclear testing moratorium in a manner consistent with the ‘zero-yield’ standard.” The subsequent 2020 State Department Compliance report repeated the concern about Russia, saying it “does not know how many, if any, supercritical or self-sustaining nuclear experiments Russia conducted in 2019.”
The 2021 report was more cryptic about Russia’s nuclear testing. While Russia never precisely defined its testing moratorium limits, the earlier 1990 Protocol to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty spelled out limits which required Russia and the United States to notify one another of very low yield tests. The 2021 Compliance report said, “in recent years, though not in 2020” Russia’s activities raised concerns over its obligations to notify the United States of low threshold nuclear tests in accordance with the Threshold Test Ban Treaty’s protocol. The 2022 and 2023 reports repeated these general concerns and highlighted the lack of transparency at Russia’s Novaya Zemlya testing site, noting that there were no new developments in the years covered by the respective reports.
Simply stated, Russian complaints of an “imbalance” with the United States regarding the scope of obligations under the CTBT ring hollow. Russian paranoia has driven its violations of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. While Russian leaders assert that they will maintain a nuclear testing moratorium despite the revocation of their ratification so long as the United States isn’t conducting tests, the Russian moratorium may not be terribly credible.
Conclusion
Russia’s withdrawal from the CTBT is part of its overt nuclear threat messaging campaign against the West to cease support of Ukraine. Concerns over Russia’s actions are justified, but concerns over Russia’s history of noncompliance should be of greater concern. Russia has probably been covertly conducting low yield nuclear tests despite its declared moratorium for years.
The CTBT, when in full effect, has an on-site inspection regime. But it could be years before India, Pakistan, and North Korea are ready to sign, let alone ratify, the treaty. In the interim, the United States could seek to negotiate a new agreement with the permanent members of the Security Council to create a more substantive, reciprocal inspection regimes into the existing test moratorium. Such a step may increase confidence and help with ratification of the CTBT in the United States. However, Russia and China have thus far failed to respond to a U.S. proposal for transparency. Moreover, considerable political resistance in the United States may exist toward giving adversaries access to sensitive U.S. nuclear stockpiles and testing infrastructure.
If Russia publicly resumes testing in the near term, it would be taking another manifest step towards escalating nuclear rhetoric to undermine support for Ukraine. Moreover, resuming testing may enable Russia to further refine capabilities like the Burevestnik and Sarmat, or at least communicate to the world its increased confidence in such weapons systems. Resuming testing would be politically risky. As Dr. Heather Williams, director of the Project on Nuclear Issues and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains, the CTBT is a cornerstone of the global nuclear order with 187 signatory States, many of whom rely on Russian military support and have heretofore been reluctant to call out Russian nuclear saber rattling since the Ukrainian invasion.
Dr. Williams’ conclusion, however, is worth repeating. “Russia’s challenge to nuclear norms and manipulation of nuclear risk has had no significant costs for Moscow. Putin might be inclined to think a nuclear test would not be any different.”
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Col Ted Richard serves as the Staff Judge Advocate for Space Operations Command at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official guidance or position of the Department of the Air Force, United States Department of Defense (DoD), or the U.S. Government.
Photo credit: Unsplash
