Russia is revoking its ratification of one of the most consequential international agreements for global security: the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that the move is being taken to reestablish strategic parity with the United States, which never ratified it, despite signing it back in 1996. In reality, the negative fallout may eclipse anything that Moscow stands to gain.
For more than two decades, Russia has attempted to make the CTBT an element of its strategic dialogue with the United States. On June 4, 2000, President Putin and U.S. President Bill Clinton signed a Joint Statement on Principles of Strategic Stability that mentioned ratifying the CTBT. Russia did so that same month, but the United States has dragged its feet ever since, primarily to avoid tying its hands in national security matters.
Russian experts have regularly called for a return to strategic parity with the United States, including after Washington exited the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, during European missile defense negotiations in the early 2010s, and more recently. It’s no surprise, therefore, that “mirroring” the United States is now Russia’s rationale for abandoning the CTBT.
In a February speech this year, Putin recalled the treaty, saying that “certain actors in Washington” were considering the possibility of full-scale nuclear weapons testing. His main concern appeared to be the W93, a nuclear warhead that first appeared in a U.S. Department of Energy budgetary request in February 2020, when the U.S. administration was mulling a possible return to nuclear testing, supposedly with the aim of prompting China to sign up to nuclear arms reduction treaties.
That, however, was the Trump administration. The Biden administration, on the contrary, supports the CTBT and has promised to facilitate its entry into force. In addition, Moscow’s understanding of nuclear technology appears to be at least a decade out of date: modern science enables new warheads to be developed without the need for full-scale testing. In 2021, Los Alamos National Laboratory staff member Charlie Nakhleh confirmed that no new nuclear testing would be required before putting the W93 into service. Either the Russian government’s rhetoric is trapped in the past, therefore, or it’s anticipating a Republican victory in 2024.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has also expressed concern about the United States’ decision to “enhance the readiness of its nuclear test site, the Nevada Test Site.” Russian diplomats have been complaining about the site’s increased readiness since at least 2018. Five years later, there still haven’t been any full-fledged tests in Nevada, yet Russia’s complaints remain the same.
Current activities at the Nevada Test Site include subcritical nuclear and non-nuclear experiments permitted under the CTBT. Similar activity has been observed at test sites in China and Russia, and Russia’s Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site is also reportedly ready to resume testing: it’s only a matter of political will.
Russia blames the United States exclusively for preventing the CTBT from taking effect. Yet the United States is only one part of the equation. A total of forty-four “nuclear technology holder” states must sign the CTBT before it can enter into force. Egypt, Israel, Iran, and China have signed the treaty but not ratified it, while India, North Korea, and Pakistan haven’t even gotten that far. Even if the United States ratifies the CTBT, those seven countries are unlikely to follow suit. India and Pakistan are watching each other more than the United States.
China, meanwhile, will only welcome other signatories’ withdrawal from the treaty. Beijing managed to conduct only forty-five nuclear tests prior to signing the CTBT: twenty-three times fewer than Washington. At the time, China’s technical infrastructure lagged behind that of the two nuclear superpowers, so it couldn’t build adequate facilities to simulate tests. Now China is actively expanding its nuclear arsenal and would jump at any opportunity to try out its latest developments.
Russia previously expressed interest in devising reciprocal test site transparency measures with China, but that interest was not mutual. Still, Russia hasn’t criticized China over its lack of enthusiasm, nor does it seem concerned about potential nuclear tests on Chinese territory.
Clearly, then, this isn’t actually about parity with the United States, especially given that just last month Washington invited representatives from China and Russia to inspect subcritical tests of a type permitted under the CTBT, to demonstrate that it was not violating the moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing.
Responding to the invitation, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia had no plans to discuss arms control with the United States. In the past, Russia has pushed for a change in America’s Ukraine policy as a prerequisite for arms control talks. This suggests that the CTBT has become another victim of Russia’s war, and that Moscow is holding its future hostage to extract concessions in Ukraine.
Russia’s de-ratification of the CTBT might be good news for Russia’s allies: especially North Korea and Iran, which want the freedom to develop their nuclear programs. But Russia’s decision is also convenient for the United States and China, for which tests are even more crucial. The CTBT’s ban on nuclear testing limits the ability to circumvent quantitative restrictions by qualitatively improving nuclear weapons.
Russia, meanwhile, is already close to completing the modernization of its nuclear forces: according to President Putin, it has created the Sarmat super-heavy intercontinental ballistic missile and tested the Burevestnik cruise missile. In theory, therefore, Russia has more interest than anyone in preserving the CTBT—and its advantage. But Russia’s priorities apparently lie elsewhere.
Russia doesn’t stand to gain anything from de-ratifying the CTBT. It won’t increase its national security or induce the United States to make concessions on Ukraine, and will only tarnish Russia’s reputation even further in the eyes of its few remaining partners. Moscow had been seen as an important player in nuclear nonproliferation. Not so long ago, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the CTBT as “one of the major international legal instruments designed to put a reliable barrier against the qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons and their spread in the world.”
Now Moscow is telling the world that it no longer considers nonproliferation important: the priority is countering the United States. Perhaps the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) could be next on the chopping block. After all, certain Russian hawks argue that nuclear weapons are necessary to ensure a stable peace, and that many countries should have them.
If de-ratifying the CTBT becomes the first step toward nuclear testing on Russian territory, things will go from bad to worse. Putin has said that “for now, it is sufficient to mirror our enemies: the United States and others.” The crucial part is “for now.” Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of the Kurchatov Institute (a prominent nuclear development lab) and someone who also happens to be close to Putin, is already calling for nuclear testing to show everyone how things stand between Russia and the West. If they happen, the tests would give other countries the moral right to resume testing. Once started, a nuclear chain reaction is very hard to stop.
