Arsenal can be maintained and improved without testing? A nuclear world is not in the national security interest of the United States and Russia.

The NPT Ratification will Promote disarmament, prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and "reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism. START I is due to expire in December 2009 and the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty will end in 2012. It stressed “the need for more progress in reducing these nuclear arsenals through appropriate follow-on processes.

"President of USA Barak Obama is now driving this process. He is saying these are the president's weapons, and he wants to look again at the doctrine and their role."The disarmament treaty currently being negotiated between the US and Russia applies to deployed strategic warheads, along with their delivery systems, but that leaves out most of the weapons both countries are sitting on. The Obama strategy is to create disarmament momentum in the run-up to the non-proliferation treaty review conference next May, to reduce arsenals to 1,500 warheads each side.

From a high of 65,000 active weapons in 1985, there were about 20,000 active nuclear weapons in the world in 2002. Many of the "decommissioned" weapons were simply stored or partially dismantled, not destroyed. As of 2009, the total number was expected to continue to decline by 30%-50% over the next decade.

The administration is hoping the Security Council meeting helps build support for another key nuclear-arms agreement, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The treaty was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1996 but hasn't yet taken effect, because some countries that have nuclear reactors have not yet ratified it.

The United States is one of those nations. Ratification of the treaty has been at the center of a long-running dispute; although the U.S. has observed a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing since 1992, the Senate rejected the treaty in 1999, and the Bush administration showed no interest in trying again.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a U.S.-sponsored resolution on Thursday September 24 2009 aimed at encouraging nations to scrap their nuclear weapons arsenals. The resolution passed among growing calls for more international pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program and concerns about North Korea, which has tested nuclear weapons

Countries that have openly tested nuclear weapons and are not parties to the NPT are India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel, which has not declared that it is a nuclear-armed state but is believed to have a substantial number of atomic warheads, also has not signed the pact.

Although Iran is a party to the NPT, the U.S. and other Western nations have charged that it is using its nuclear program as a springboard to developing a bomb.
All five permanent members of the council are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and thus are committed to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and reducing their own atomic arsenals, while supporting the right of any country to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

At the 2005 review conference, France and the United States argued that they felt no longer bound by the 13 practical steps on nuclear disarmament contained in the 2000 consensus final document because the global context had changed so dramatically after September 11, 2001. Yet, even nuclear-weapon states disagree on this point. Thus, Duncan reaffirmed in Vienna the United Kingdom’s commitment to “the unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the relevant disarmament measures contained in the 1995 Review Conference decisions and in the 2000 Final Document.”

Several non-nuclear-weapon states, while agreeing with Washington that decisions by review conferences are not legally binding, flatly rejected the U.S. line that review conferences only make suggestions.

U.S. presentation of “A Work Plan for the 2010 Review Cycle: Coping With Challenges Facing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty” as Washington’s attempt at least to appear more constructive than at past NPT meetings. “The United States was more forthcoming and prepared to engage where previously it was sitting back much more,”

Negotiated in the 1990s, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty specified 44 nuclear-capable countries that must give formal approval before it can take effect. Eight countries besides the United States have yet to ratify the treaty: China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan
But later except only four recognized sovereign states are not parties to the treaty: India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. India, Pakistan and North Korea have openly tested and declared that they possess nuclear weapons. Israel has had a policy of opacity regarding its own nuclear weapons program. North Korea acceded to the treaty, violated it, and withdrew from it in 2003.

The administration needs 67 votes in the 100-member Senate to ratify the test ban treaty, which means it will need support from some of the 40 Republicans. No Republican has yet declared support, and key Republicans remain skeptical.

Short-range, tactical weapons like nuclear artillery shells, depth charges and anti-ballistic missiles, of which the US has an estimated 500 and Russia has about 2,000. Such warheads, being smaller, are arguably easier to steal.
The distinction between deployed, reserve and retired warheads. The new deal, like the 2002 Moscow Treaty, deals with deployed warheads that are installed a top missiles ready to fire, or in the form of bombs ready to load on to planes.

Russia has approximately 2,780 deployed strategic warheads, compared with around 2,100 in the USA.

But there is a lot more destructive force sitting in the American and Russian warehouses in the form of reserve arsenals. Much of the disarmament of recent years has involved warheads being removed from missiles and stored in bunkers, under constant maintenance.

They can be reunited with their missiles in a matter of days or weeks. In the case of gravity bombs, the distinction between deployed and reserve stockpiles is even more blurred. In the American case, for example, it depends on whether they are stored on 'forward' air bases in Europe Isreal, or back in the US.

The third category is 'retired for dismantlement'. The warheads are separated from their delivery systems and warehoused without maintenance.
The US has 4,200 such warheads and is only dismantling them at the rate of 270 a year. Russia is thought to have about 8,000 non-deployed warheads, but it is unclear how many are in reserve and how many retired.

"Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city," Obama said, "be it New York or Moscow; Tokyo or Beijing; London or Paris — would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life."

Number of war heads 2009.
(1)Russia has Intercontinental Missiles1355, Short range Missiles -576, Bombs 856.Submarines/Non Strategic-2050, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -8150.Total Number-12987.Total in 2000-21,000.

(2)USA has Intercontinental Missiles-550, Short range Missiles-1152, Bombs-500.
Submarines/Non Strategic-500, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -6700, Total Number-9552.Total in 2000-10,577.

(3) France has Intercontinental Missiles-0, Short range Missiles -0, Bombs 60.Submarines/Non Strategic-240, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -0.Total Number-300.Total in 2000-350.

(4) Israel has Intercontinental Missiles-0, Short range Missiles -0, Bombs 0.Submarines/Non Strategic-0, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -0.Total Number-200.Total in 2000-0.

(5)UK has Intercontinental Missiles-0, Short range Missiles -0, Bombs 0.Submarines/Non Strategic-192, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -0.Total Number-192.Total in 2000-195.

(6) India has Intercontinental Missiles-0, Short range Missiles -0, Bombs 0.Submarines/Non Strategic-0, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -0.Total Number-75.Total in 2000-0.

(7) Pakistan has Intercontinental Missiles-0, Short range Missiles -0, Bombs 0.Submarines/Non Strategic-0, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -0.Total Number-90.Total in 2000-0.

(8) China has Intercontinental Missiles-121, Short range Missiles -0, Bombs 55.Submarines/Non Strategic-192, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -0.Total Number-176.Total in 2000-400.

(9) North Korea has Intercontinental Missiles-0, Short range Missiles -0, Bombs 0.Submarines/Non Strategic-0, In Reserve/awaiting Dismantlement -0.Total Number-2.Total in 2000-0.

China, with its long-range ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles), is in a different league altogether. Its road-mobile DF-31A missile, for instance, can hit targets 11,200 km away, while JL-2 SLBM has a reach beyond 7,200 km.

The Pokhran test of 1974, whose explosive yield was officially claimed to be 12 to 14 kilotons (a kiloton is the equivalent of 1,000 tonnes of TNT, or trinitrotoluene). India conducted five nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, 1998, at the Pokhran range in the western state of Rajasthan. These included a 45- kiloton (kt) thermonuclear device, also called a hydrogen bomb. Other tests on May 11 included a 15-kt fission device and a 0.2-kt sub- kiloton device. The two simultaneous nuclear tests on May 13 were also in the sub-kiloton range - 0.5 and 0.3 k.

The mother of all bombs was tested by Russia (50 MT), followed by US (15 MT), China(3.3 MT), UK (3 MT) , France (2.6 MT) . The bomb dropped on Japan (Little bomb0 was an atom bomb (18KT). If that caused so much destruction, you can imagine what the hydrogen bomb would do. Pakistan produced a total yield in the range of 40 to 45 kilotons nuclear tests on May 28 of boosted devices made with highly enriched uranium (HEU).

India, of course, has no ICBM or SLBM. While it's developing the 3,500- km Agni-III and 5,000-km Agni-V ballistic missiles, the only missiles available to armed forces as of now are Prithvi (150 to 350-km range), Agni-I (700-km) and Agni-II (2,500-km). But they, too, have not undergone the rigorous testing nuclear-capable missiles should undergo.

Moreover, the nuclear-powered submarine INS Arihant, which was launched on July 26, will take at another two to three years to become fully operational. And it will be equipped only with 700-km range missiles to begin with.

According to the bipartisan 2009 Council of Foreign Relations Report on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy co-chaired by Bill Perry and Brent Scowcroft:
While a state could develop a first-generation Hiroshima-type nuclear bomb without nuclear testing, the CTBT would prevent a state from gaining guaranteed technical assurance through nuclear testing that advanced nuclear weapons would work reliably. The political benefit of the CTBT is that it has been strongly linked to the vitality of the nonproliferation regime. The Task Force believes that the benefits outweigh the costs and that the CTBT is in U.S. national security interests.

FMCT is essential to capping global stockpiles of weapons-usable fissile materials, and thus is an important part of a broader effort to reduce those stockpiles and prevent their transfer to other states or terrorist groups. But it will take time to negotiate this treaty at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva. In the meantime, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France should announce moratoria on the production of fissile materials for weapons and seek agreement from China, India, Pakistan, and Israel to do the same.

Other states including Iran, Egypt Brazil and Syria specifically mentioned the decision by members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to exempt India, a non-member to the NPT, from NSG guidelines. Switzerland stated that "these discussions can be perceived as a double standard which is not helpful when it comes to encouraging some States Parties to keep accepting the principles of the fundamental bargain on which the NPT is based.

" Iran vehemently made clear that having access to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy was the main reason for accepting the bargain of the NPT, and Egypt stated that without it the treaty is "fundamentally lopsided" and unbalanced. It is worth noting that Austria tabled its long-awaited working paper on multilateralization of the nuclear fuel cycle proposing a non-discriminatory multilateral framework of supervision of all stages of the nuclear fuel cycle "from the cradle to the grave." This approach seems to have attracted more interest from developing countries than proposals that focus on the supply side only.

Measures leading to the elimination of nuclear weapons," including the CTBT, FMCT, verified reductions, greater transparency, reducing operational status, and refraining from qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons.

Pakistan's motive for pursuing a nuclear weapons program is to counter the threat posed by its principal rival, India, which has superior conventional forces and nuclear weapons. Pakistan has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). "Pakistan remains steadfast in its refusal to sign the NPT, stating that it would do so only after India joined the Treaty. Consequently, not all of Pakistan's nuclear facilities are under IAEA safeguards. Pakistani officials have stated that signature of the CTBT is in Pakistan's best interest, but that Pakistan will do so only after developing a domestic consensus on the issue, and have disavowed any connection with India's decision."

Need to talk with India, Pakistan ,North Korea and Israel. Many tough questions remain. The map we have to a nuclear weapons free world--incomplete as it may be--is good enough to start the journey.
Usman karim based in Lahore Pakistan lmno25@hotmail.com