Treaty Failure Stymies Independent Verification of American Report of Chinese Nuclear Test

Independent verification of America’s claim that Communist China conducted a nuclear test in 2020 may never be possible in the absence of a ratified test ban treaty, one of several nuclear agreements that have lapsed or failed to enter into force. The last treaty limiting American and Russian weapons, known as New START, expired this week. A senior State Department official, Thomas DiNanno, leveled the widely reported charge at a disarmament conference in Geneva on Friday, saying, “I can reveal that the U.S. government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons.”Mr. DiNanno, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, added that the Chinese military “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognized these tests violate test ban commitments.” He said China used a method known as “decoupling” to “decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring, to hide their activities from the world.”The international body responsible for monitoring nuclear testing says it has been unable to detect any evidence of a Chinese nuclear test on June 22, 2020, the only date cited by Mr. DiNanno, even after going back and reviewing its data from that day.The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization “did not detect any event consistent with the characteristics of a nuclear weapon test explosion at that time. Subsequent, more detailed analyses have not altered that determination,” said Robert Floyd, executive secretary of the CTBTO.“Any nuclear test explosion, by any state, is of deepest concern,” Mr. Floyd added in a press release. The CTBTO was established to monitor nuclear testing under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and functions as a preparatory committee pending the long-awaited final ratification of the treaty.China’s representative at the Geneva conference, Shen Jian, bluntly challenged the American accusation, saying “We firmly oppose this false narrative and reject the US’s unfounded accusations.” Mr. Shen, China’s ambassador on nuclear disarmament, later posted on X saying, “China has no intention of engaging in any arms race with any other country.”While the Chinese denial is not persuasive, the American claim of a covert nuclear test would carry more international credibility if confirmed by the CTBTO. However, that organization lacks the ability to detect extremely low-yield tests as long as the test-ban treaty remains unratified by all its signatories.Mr. Floyd said the CTBTO’s International Monitoring System is capable of detecting nuclear explosions with a yield as low as 500 metric tons of TNT, roughly 3 percent of the Hiroshima explosion in 1945.It is unclear, however, whether a test could evade the group’s equipment through the use of decoupling, a technique in which the explosive device is suspended in an underground cavern to greatly reduce the seismic wave through the surrounding rock.“Mechanisms which could address smaller explosions are provided by the Treaty but can only be used once the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty enters into force,” Mr. Floyd said in his statement. These include on-site inspections in the case of suspected treaty violations.Until now, most of the 187 signatories to the treaty have voluntarily honored the treaty’s provisions, even as it remains unratified by nine countries, including America and China. Russia ratified the treaty in 2020 but later withdrew, citing America’s failure to ratify.America has also accused Russia of nuclear testing, saying in a 2020 report that the country “has conducted nuclear weapons-related experiments that have created nuclear yield.” The unclassified report did not identify sources and Russia has denied the claim.President Trump has cited the reports of Russian and Chinese testing as justification for an immediate resumption of American nuclear testing. In an October 30 posting on his Truth Social site, the president said he had told the Pentagon to begin testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with other nuclear powers.The resumption of a nuclear arms race becomes more likely with this week’s expiry of the New Start Treaty, which placed verifiable limits on Russian and American deployed intercontinental-range nuclear weapons.Other nuclear treaties that have expired or failed to come into force include the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which America left in 2019 citing Russian violations; the Open Skies Treaty which America and Russia pulled out of in 2020 and 2021 respectively; and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which has not been signed or ratified by any nuclear-armed state.

Treaty Failure Stymies Independent Verification of American Report of Chinese Nuclear Test

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