Bombs away.

• Position: Criticism of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty - Column

With much fanfare, Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in late September at the United Nations. But the United States is still preparing for nuclear war.

The idea behind the treaty is two-fold: By banning tests, it prevents non-nuclear countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. It also prevents the nuclear powers from having a sense of reliability about their own arsenals. If a country can't test a nuclear device, it will have no way of knowing whether the damn thing works--and won't launch it. The risks of a malfunction would be too great. It could be catastrophic for a country to launch a first strike unless that country were confident the weapon would work. A dud would give the enemy a distinct advantage.

The test-ban treaty may succeed in its first goal of keeping the nuclear-weapons club small. But the ban won't succeed in its second goal because the United States has no intention of rendering its nuclear arsenal unreliable, which is one of the reasons India balked at signing the treaty.

The United States wants to cling to its nuclear weapons, and wants to make sure they are reliable. In August 1995, the Clinton Administration acknowledged that "if the safety and reliability of our nuclear deterrent could no longer be certified," then the United States would reserve the option to bolt the treaty. A White House fact sheet, quoted in the September/October issue of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, stated that without a "high level of confidence" in the safety and reliability of the nuclear arsenal, "the President, in consultation with Congress, would be prepared to withdraw from the CTBT under the standard `supreme national interest' clause in order to conduct whatever testing might be required."

There's an escape clause if ever there was one.

The United States is also making a mockery of the test ban by designing simulated nuclear tests in the laboratory. Last year, the Energy Department launched the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program, with a $4 billion annual budget that includes a "largescale computing project to more accurately model nuclear weapons," according to an article in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists a year ago. This followed an order from the Defense Department that the Department of Energy "maintain capability to design, fabricate, and certify new warheads" without underground nuclear testing. Part of this high-tech weapons design and testing will take place at the National Ignition Facility at...