WILSON: Okay. About a year ago, there was this little bomb, or several tests that went off. What was your reaction to the India and Pakistan nuclear tests last year?

CIRINCIONE: Complete shock. Stunned. Didn't think they were really going to do it. The BJP officials from India had assured the United States that they were not going to test nuclear weapons. I first heard of it when I got phone calls from reporters asking for my reaction and we just, everybody went, you know, you went to the mattresses. It was just a scramble. It was just hectic to look up the production facilities, start looking on your files, the history of the program, what's going on, how much fissile material do they have, where could this lead, what's the Pakistan reaction going to be?

It, uh, settled in over the next couple of days and we realized that the nuclear arms race, uh, wasn't over, that it had gone lateral. That there were new nations, you know, pushing in, saying, you think this club is exclusive? We want to be members. We want the bomb just like you. We want to use this to play world power games just like you. And, it was a real signal that there's more to come.

WILSON: That was a good response, and I'd like to recap that again. And, when you talk about the reporters calling you, were you at work, were you at home, and then did you call anybody? So, I'll start off with the question again. What was your reaction to the India and the Pakistan nuclear tests last year?

CIRINCIONE: It was complete shock. Stunned. Took most experts, and, of course, the most governments completely by surprise. I was in my office working. I started getting phone calls from reporters. And, we immediately started scrambling - looking up the history of the India nuclear program, where are the production reactors, how much fissile material do they have, what's Pakistan going to do? I mean, all of a sudden, we went from a quiet, you know, research operation to a frenetic, you know, go to the mattresses kind of situation where you had to have answers quickly, because people were looking not just reporters, not just the public, but officials were looking for answers to guide their policy, guide their next steps.

WILSON: Because, the leader, basically, of India had said, when he was running for election, right, that he was willing to put India at the forefront of the nuclear powers. Was this something that was to be expected or were you guys all caught by surprise? Nobody expected India to do this?

CIRINCIONE: When the, I think everybody was caught by surprise. The BJP party, when they took control, had this as part of their program. The last time they'd been in power, they had tried to do nuclear tests before but had been thrown out of power forty-five days after they were elected, so they didn't have time. And, what made a difference, I think, for most people was, after their election, BJP officials had talked with State Department officials at the highest level and seemed to be giving them assurances that they were not going to be testing nuclear weapons. Nor did we get any indication from the national intelligence means. I mean, they fooled us.

They were very clever in how they made preparations for these tests. They did it at night, they did it when satellites were not overhead. This was a conscious, deceptive program, and it worked, we weren't able to put any of the normal pressures that we could put on India to stop them from doing this before they did it. So, they, they caught us with our satellites down.

WILSON: Now, just for the sake of information that people need to know, what is the BJP and -- that's the political party in India. Why don't you just describe who the BJP was?

CIRINCIONE: If you're asking me to tell you what the BJP stands for, I can't pronounce that name. But, the BJP is the ultra-nationalist conservative party that surprised many people in India when they won a majority in the recent elections and took control as the majority party for the first time.

WILSON: So, India makes these tests right, literally on the Pakistani border. And, then all of a sudden, all hell breaks lose and then Pakistan comes back. Now, what happened when Pakistan blew up? What was your reaction then? Did you expect it?

CIRINCIONE: I was woken up at 6:30 in the morning by a reporter from CBS radio news. He was calling to ask my reaction to the Pakistan tests. And, yes, this time we were expecting them to do it. We were hoping that the Pakistan government would show some restraint, but the pressures domestically were just enormous. I mean, this is one of the few occasions in history where there were mass demonstrations in favor of nuclear weapons in the streets of Islamabad. If the government hadn't detonated a nuclear weapon, they probably would have been overthrown and another government would have come in that would have done it.

What this meant was we were starting a nuclear arms race in Asia. I mean, this is the great fear of the India and Pakistan tests. It doesn't end there. Tests are the beginning of a weapons program, they're not the culmination of it. And, if India has nuclear weapons and Pakistan has nuclear weapons, then they start to deploy those weapons, that's going to have repercussions for China. China is going to feel threatened. India has threatened China. They've identified China as enemy number one. China is going to have to adjust its nuclear modernization plans to account suddenly for a nuclearized south Asian sub-continent.

What's that going to mean for the neighbors? What's Japan going to think, does Japan suddenly have to rethink its abhorrence of nuclear weapons. What's the United States have to do? Do we have to rethink our policy of not deploying nuclear weapons in Asia? This has ripple effects not just throughout the sub-continent and throughout the hemisphere, but throughout the globe.

WILSON: So, the impacts of the blast and the ratification of CTBT gave it a sense of, what, what was the sense then as soon as this happened -- that CTBT was-- ?

CIRINCIONE: Well, the blast showed us that the arms race wasn't over. For those who thought that the next few decades were going to be a gradual ratcheting down of nuclear arsenals, guess what? The nuclear arms race has gone lateral. Other countries are trying to elbow their way into the exclusive nuclear club, and it's not going to end with Pakistan and Indian. There are other countries who want nuclear weapons, who want to test nuclear weapons.

This makes the effort to stop nuclear tests all the more important. The Comprehensive Test Ban is exactly that. It's a global ban on all nuclear tests everywhere for all time. It stops other nations from acquiring militarily useful nuclear weapons. This is directly in U.S. national security interests.

WILSON: Okay and that takes us to our next question. The next question would have been what is CTBT, what are the goals, and how has it -- how is CTBT related to these tests? And, you've just basically went over it just then, so why don't you, in even more layman's terms, in probably, in about, let's say, this is what it's all about, this is what CTBT is, and this is what it means? Just try to do it more in layman's terms.

CIRINCIONE: Sure. The Comprehensive Test Ban does two things. One, it caps the development efforts of Russia, the United States, and other countries that already have nuclear weapons. It makes it more difficult to design nuclear weapons for new purposes. So, it slows down the existing development cycles in the nuclear weapons states.

More importantly for our current situation, it inhibits other countries from getting nuclear weapons. You can design a nuclear weapon. You might be able, even able to package a nuclear weapon and put a test device together. But, until you actually test it, actually blow it up, the military leaders of other countries are not going to have the confidence that that design works.

In fact, the India and Pakistani tests show that. A lot of their designs seem to have fizzled and it shows the importance of actual tests. This is not an anachronistic treaty. This is on the cutting edge of efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons in the world.

WILSON: Okay, the next question is on the Senate ratification of the CTBT. Why hasn't the U.S. Senate ratified it? The President signed it a while ago, things have gone on for a while, now. One would think that, after the Specter/Biden resolution came out right after these explosions that there would be a new movement in the Senate to go ahead and ratify. It's not out of the ordinary for the Senate to move quickly when they think there's an urgency about signing or ratifying a nuclear agreement. That's happened twenty years ago, or happened in the past. What's happening now in the Senate to not ____ CTBT to pass?

CIRINCIONE: I'll give you a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is the Senate, right now, is controlled by ultra-conservative elements of the Republican party who do not believe in arms control. They believe arms control offers the illusion of protection. It lulls people into thinking that something is being done to reduce a danger when, in fact, the danger is getting worse.

So, Jesse Helms, the senator from North Carolina who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is adamantly opposed to arms control treaties of all kinds anywhere. So, he opposes the comprehensive test ban treaty because he wants to preserve the United States' options for developing new and more powerful or militarily useful nuclear weapons. And, he believes that the CTBT will lull the American population into a belief that the dangers are being reduced when they're actually growing.

I would say there's a hard core opposition to arms control treaties in the Senate that numbers about a quarter of the Senators. There are about twenty-six, twenty-eight very conservative Senators who voted against the chemical weapons convention, for example. A number of them opposed the Start II treaty, Ronald Reagan and George Bush's Start II treaty were opposed by some of these Senators.

They also are leading the charge against a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. I think beneath this, one of the questions you asked is what is the ulterior motive? I think the ulterior motive for some Senators is they want to preserve the option for the United States to develop new, more useful, nuclear weapons. They want to have tests of smaller weapons that could be used for tactical warfare that could be used in warfare with some developing nations, for example.

So, not the big city busters that we have, but ones that are so small that we might reduce the inhibitions to actually use them, things in the ten or twenty kiloton range, or even one kiloton range. They believe that nuclear weapons are just another tool for military operations and they want to preserve the US ability and craftsmanship in this deal so we can use these in future conflicts.

WILSON: So, then, it's sort of like a two-pronged hindrance. One is that there's just a basic philosophical difference within the Senate, there's a strong contingency that's against reducing nuclear weapons, and the second element is they want to reserve the right to use it in strategic limited conflict, the opportunity to use theater nuclear weapons. So, it's that philosophical difference, then?

CIRINCIONE: There's, there's a, this a longer answer than you may want. Let me try to make it brief. There is a fundamental, philosophical battle being waged in the Senate between those people who believe fundamentally that the way to stop the spread of nuclear weapons is to reduce and prevent the threat in the first place. And, you do this by nurturing this interlocking network of treaties and agreements that the United States has painstakingly put together over the last fifty years, and that that's the best way to reduce the threat.

And, the more conservative wing of the Senate who believes that arms control treaties are an illusion of protection and that, in the end, you can only rely on military force and for the United States that means a nuclear force, and they want to preserve all their options. They don't want to give up anything, including developing new nuclear weapons for new missions in new countries.

WILSON: Okay, that's great. Does the --

CIRINCIONE: It's about as brief as I can say it.

WILSON: No, that was wonderful. Actually, that was great. Does the opposition to CTBT that these cadre of Senators have, does it reflect public opinion?

CIRINCIONE: Sure --

WILSON: Why don't you address that --

CIRINCIONE: The public opinion polls have consistently shown that the Comprehensive Test Ban's a wildly popular treaty. You know, going back to the late '50s, there's been overwhelming support for stopping nuclear tests. First in the atmosphere, then when John F. Kennedy achieved the Limited Test Ban Treaty, overwhelmingly popular treaty. In fact, Kennedy said, after he signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, "...if I'd known it was so popular, I would have done it a long time ago."

Well, that's the kind of spirit that President Clinton has. I mean, he knows this is a popular treaty. This is President Clinton's only arms control treaty. He's been in office two terms. This is the only treaty the President has actually negotiated and signed. Clinton wants this treaty to be enforced and he knows it will be a popular treaty.

Another way of phrasing that is that public opinion polls have shown that seventy to eighty percent of the American population supports ending nuclear weapons tests and have for decades. If this treaty can get to a vote on the floor of the Senate, it will pass. Public support is overwhelmingly in favor of it. Editorial opinion around the country is overwhelmingly in favor of it, this is a popular treaty. It's only being blocked right now by the actions of a minority of Republicans senators who are trying to stop it from ever coming to a vote.

WILSON: So, then, one could argue that the public opinion against nuclear testing is also the public opinion against nuclear proliferation, and they want to see the overall diminishing of nuclear weapons around the globe and the polling data is showing that as well?

CIRINCIONE: Yes, the American public does not like nuclear weapons. They're consistently in favor of reducing our own arsenals, of having verifiable, mutually enforceable treaties with other countries to reduce global arsenals for -- anything that we can do to stop and reverse the spread of nuclear weapons. In fact, when you ask people straight out, would you rather live in a world with lots of nuclear weapons or with no nuclear weapons, the answer is overwhelmingly, 'we would rather live in a nuclear weapons free world.' There's a lot of common sense in the American public, and that's reflected in the kinds of treaties that they support.

WILSON: Okay, now, the next question is, is CTBT linked to ballistic missile defense, in your opinion? And, for those people that do link it, what do you say to those people?

Mr. CIRINCIONE: There shouldn't be a link between a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and national missile defense. You can be in favor of erecting a technological shield against missile attack and in favor of stopping nuclear tests everywhere. But, in favor, there is a link.

It tends to be two opposing camps. There's the camp that says the best way to stop the spread of nuclear weapons is to stop the testing of weapons everywhere, negotiate reductions. And, there's the camp that says these treaties are an illusion. The only thing we can depend is on our own technological might. We have to build a shield around the United States. And, so, those who tend to favor missile defense tend to oppose the comprehensive test ban treaty.

WILSON: And, uh, is the ballistic missile defense being used as sort of a pawn in the attempt to get CTBT signed, is it having an impact now?

CIRINCIONE: Missile defense is being put up as the alternative to treaties. We don't need these treaties because the United States is going to remain the most powerful military nation in the world indefinitely, and we can depend on our own military might, indefinitely, to protect us. History has shown us that this kind of thinking is an illusion. Powers rise and fall.

I hope a hundred years from now we're still the militarily dominant power in the world, but we may not be, and I want to make sure that my great grandchildren have a heritage that, at least during our time, we try to reduce the global dangers. So, that whatever the global position is a hundred years from now, we're living in a safer world, not one that still depends on a great power military contention.

WILSON: With limits replaced with agreements, treaties, understanding between countries so the military option isn't the be all, end all, when it comes to --

CIRINCIONE: A world in which nuclear weapons are not the dominant fact of military life, are not the tools of great power and machinations, a world in which there are few or no nuclear weapons. That, if we go to war again, and history tells us we will, at least we won't be threatening millions upon millions of casualties or perhaps the fate of the earth itself.

WILSON: What can be done to move the Senate towards ratification?

CIRINCIONE: Hmm. Two answers. The complete answer. The Senate is controlled by conservative Republican leadership, and they've set up a series of hoops that they want the administration to jump through. And, before we'll be able to get to the comprehensive test ban, we have to debate the ABM treaty and the protocols to the Start treaty that presidents Yeltsin and Clinton negotiated back in 1996. This is going to be a very contentious debate, but Jesse Helms, the Senator who runs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has made it clear we have to have that debate before he'll consider the CTBT.

It's going to be tough summer, it's going to be a tough debate. It will come up. We're going to have to do it. The fate of strategic arms control will swing in the balance. That's the long answer to that.

The short answer to this is: in order to get the Comprehensive Test Ban passed by the Senate, the administration has got to mount a concerted political and public diplomacy campaign to force the Senator to let that treaty go. He's got to convince Senator Helms that he has to bring the comprehensive test ban treaty to the floor of the Senate so that the whole Senate can decide. This is the way democracies decide their policies. We shouldn't allow one senator or a handful of senators to block the democratic process.

WILSON: Yeah, in reality, the chairman is not that's prone to being swayed easily, correct?

CIRINCIONE: Jesse Helms is a friend of his opinion. Uh, he, ah, he doesn't much care what the rest of the country thinks, what the Secretary of State thinks, what the United Nation thinks. He's got his own opinions and he's ruled that committee with an iron hand, and he has a lot of cards to play.

We're concerned about treaties, other people are concerned about appointments, ambassadorships. A lot of things go through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the chairman could hold up with his little pinky, and he's using all those tools at his disposal to try and get what he wants.

WILSON: Okay, now, this leads us to the next question. Should the Jesse Helms contingency win out, should that small cadre within the Senate prevent CTBT from being ratified, what would that mean, if the US doesn't ratify the treaty? What would that mean for US security?

CIRINCIONE: If the United States does not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the treaty is dead. It requires the ratification of forty-four specific nations. Any one of them can kill the treaty. It would be an historic tragedy if the United States killed the treaty that president after president has labored so hard to negotiate and deliver.

If the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty dies, two things happen. Immediately, you've lost a very powerful lever for discouraging other nations from their nuclear urges - North Korea, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel. All either have nuclear weapons or want to acquire nuclear weapons. All would like to test more. The comprehensive test ban refrains that testing to help suppress those nuclear urges.

But, the damage is even more severe than that, because the Comprehensive Test Ban is the key link in this network of treaties. If this fails, all these other treaties that are sort of tied into it, the Non-proliferation treaty, the pacts that govern the export of nuclear weapons, the groups that are, I'm sorry. I stumbled over that. Let me try it again.

WILSON: Go ahead.

CIRINCIONE: If the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is defeated, the consequences are even worse for the health of the entire non-proliferation regime. The Non-proliferation treaty, the main legal and diplomatic barrier to the spread of nuclear weapons in the world, was negotiated and renewed back in 1995 with the promise that the nuclear weapon states would finally pass a comprehensive test ban treaty, after decades of promising to do so. If we reneg on that promise, the other nations in the world will begin to lose faith in the non-proliferation treaty.

They will begin to doubt that there is going to be a negotiated end to the spread of nuclear weapons. They will begin to re-examine their own nuclear options. We're not talking about just third world countries. We're talking about countries like Japan or even some of our western European allies who have eschewed nuclear weapons for decades who now may be forced, from their own military security point of view, to reconsider whether or not nuclear weapons have a role in their own arsenal.

If they're going to look out on a world where there isn't a regulated decrease in nuclear weapons, but, in fact, we may be seeing the beginning of a brand new arms race. We might be going into uncharted territory here. It would be terrible if we burn down the edifice that the United States has worked to painstakingly to construct because a handful of senators had their own visions of a technological replacement to this arms control regime.

WILSON: Some people have said that, because the US has signed the treaty, if it doesn't ratify the treaty, it will be held responsible for the treaty, but it won't be able to ensure, like, inspections, and there are certain benefits to actually ratifying the treaty in the US in its position of leadership around the globe and its interests in the non-proliferation movement will be severely damaged. Why don't you address some of these minor things, but yet significant.

CIRINCIONE: Sure, there's just two things. The international norm on treaties is that any country that has signed the treaty, even if they haven't ratified it, is still obligated to do everything they can to enforce the terms of that treaty. That's true.

However, in this case, this treaty will not come into existence unless forty-four countries sign it. And, at a certain point, according to the international norms, if it becomes unlikely that the treaty will ever come into effect, the signatories of the treaty are released from their obligations. So, this is not indefinite. This treaty cannot enter into force unless you really do get those forty-four signatures.

If the United States does not sign this treaty, there will be a short period of time where the treaty will continue as if it was entering into force. And, under those circumstances, the U.S. will be barred from any participation in the regime that's being set up to implement the treaty, won't be able to play a role in the verification regime.

A very important part of this treaty is it establishes an international verification regime for detecting anyone's nuclear tests. Something very important that we would like whether or not there was a treaty. If we don't sign it, we don't get to play. There's short-term losses to US national security for not signing this treaty.

WILSON: How many countries have signed it now, of the forty-four key?

CIRINCIONE: I'm afraid I don't know. I don't know the latest data. I'll have to look that up. The last time I checked it was something like sixteen, but --

WILSON: Sixteen?

CIRINCIONE: -- I don't know.

WILSON: Okay, in addition to getting --

CIRINCIONE: People are waiting for the United States' signature. There are countries that have indicated they will sign it. But, a lot of people are holding back, waiting to see what the United States will do. That's why the US signature is so important. It's, it's the signature that will propel this treaty into existence or will kill it.

WILSON: Once, in addition to getting the US to ratify the treaty, once the US does ratify the treaty, in our world of worlds, should it happen, what else has to happen before the treaty can be put into force? What will then, in your mind, happen? The U.S. ratifies the treaty. What, then, do you expect? Because it sounds like sort of like, again, the domino principle where, instead of the countries falling in southeast Asia to communism, now we want countries to fall in line either for a comprehensive test ban treaty or it will go the other way. What will happen if the US ratifies the treaty?

CIRINCIONE: There are forty-four nations that have to sign this treaty to bring it into force. Fewer than a third have done so already. People are waiting for the U.S. signature. Once the U.S. signs, there will be a rush for other countries to ratify this, this treaty. There may be one or two that will hold out. But, if the main nations are in line by September 1999, this treaty, for all practical purposes, will be in effect, and the press will be intense on those final holdouts to sign. I would expect that, by September 1999, all, or almost all of the countries would have ratified this treaty as long as the United States has done so by then.

When that happens, the -- two things occur. One, we've finally done it. We now have a global ban, stopping all tests for all time everywhere. And, number two, the international verification regime starts to be created and comes into effect that can monitor the entire globe, so the tests, even very, very small tests, can be reliably detected, and this regime can be enforced.

WILSON: So, basically, what has to happen is, once the U.S. signs, there will be international media momentum developed to get the rest of the countries to sign.

CIRINCIONE: Once the United States ratifies a treaty, it's the equivalent of saying, 'gentlemen, start your engines.' Every other parliament in the world that's considering this treaty will race to get their ratification in on time and to be able to join the international body that's set up to enforce this treaty. We know that other nations are waiting for this.

India and Pakistan, for example, have indicated they will sign. Hopefully, they won't wait for U.S. signature. In an ironic way, it might be the reverse dynamic here, that India and Pakistan sign, that might finally convince the Senate that the time has come to ratify the treaty. But, if India and Pakistan are still holding out, the U.S. signature, or ratification, rather, will be the final impetus to get even these reluctant nations into the table.

WILSON: So, then that brings us to the next question. How close are India and Pakistan to signing the treaty? Are you getting this from behind closed doors, or unnamed sources, diplomatic channels, through the media? How do we know that India and Pakistan are close to signing and are they, do you think?

CIRINCIONE: The leaders of both India and Pakistan have indicated and declared that they will sign the treaty. They put a few qualifications into those statements, though. India, for example, says that it will not be the nation that stands in the way of this treaty entering into force. Meaning it won't be the last hold-out nation. It's unclear whether that means that they're waiting for the U.S. to sign and then they'll sign, or whether they're indicating that they're going to sign, whether or not the United States signs. There are a few loopholes built into some of these statements. But, most of the private assurances being given to the United States officials at this point are that Pakistan, India, will sign the treaty and may do so very soon, that is, this spring or early summer. This would be a very welcome development, not just for the treaty, but for the peace and stability of the south Asian subcontinent.

WILSON: So, if India and Pakistan are first to sign the treaty, what does that say about the US, it's dragging it's feet, it doesn't have such a volatile dynamic on its border. It's not like we're threatening Canada. It says that the United States is in the ironic position of being the main impetus to negotiating this treaty in the first place and may, if the Senate doesn't ratify it, be the nation that kills the child we created.

The next question, and we're almost done here, what will it mean to the world community if the treaty is or is not put into force? I mean, we all like to say that the United Nations is, at fifty years old, we're trying to have more of a sense of world community. If the treaty is not put into force, or if the treaty is put into force, seems like two different paths that we're going to go on. Why don't you just address that briefly.

CIRINCIONE: You know, the stock market continues to go up, nuclear weapons arsenals are declining, the Cold War is over, there is more peace in the world than there was anytime in the last forty years. There are, sometimes we get lulled into this false sense of security that this is the way it's going to go, that as long as we just keep on doing what we're doing, that the world's going to be a more peaceful place. It ain't necessarily so. History has a way of taking abrupt and tragic turns.

It's completely feasible that, if the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty goes down, if the Non-proliferation treaty unravels, if rogue nations think that they have a green light to think that they develop their own nuclear arsenals just the way the big boys did and during the heyday of the Cold War, then we could be seeing a new and very dangerous twenty-first century. Things could get a lot worse for us, and it could happen more quickly than most people imagine.

And, it could happen beginning with something as seemingly benign as the U.S. just not ratifying a treaty, just turning its back saying we don't need this. We have the military power to do whatever we want, or we're going to create a missile defense shield. We can take care of ourselves. We don't have to worry about the rest of the world. History shows when you think like that, you end up creating a world that's much more dangerous, much more unpredictable and, ultimately, not the kind of place that you want your grandchildren to live.

WILSON: Okay, now, the test is thirty-five years old. And, describe for us what CTBT, how CTBT should be relevant to people thirty-five years or younger. A lot of kids today, a lot of young adults today, grew up with the Cold War being over. To them, this almost seems like arguing yesterday's news of the war that we fought before. But, why should this matter to people that are young?

CIRINCIONE: Yeah, no. I was alive and I saw John F. Kennedy say that we have to eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us. But, for a lot of people, this is just a grainy black and white film. You know, what's he talking about, that the race is over.

You've got to think of where you want to be in thirty-five more years, what kind of world do you want to live in? Do you want to live in a world where there are few or no nuclear weapons, where there are international regimes to stop other people from getting these countries, or do you want to live in a military free for all, a jungle where Iran and Iraq have become regional superpowers with their own nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons? Where India and Pakistan have gone to war perhaps a couple of times using nuclear weapons. Where China has emerged and has its, and is spreading its own nuclear weapons technology throughout Asia. What kind of world do you want?

It's, now is the time to be shaping that world and making the decisions. These are important decisions. These are forks in the road for which way you want to go. That's why the debate in the Senate is so important. There's a clash of world visions, of which kind of world we want to create. The comprehensive test ban is at the center of that debate.

WILSON: When John Kennedy gave his American University speech, when he talked about Russia and America, he said we both breathe the same air, we both are human, and we both cherish our children's future. And, that was a seminal speech when it came to trying to warm up what was a very frigid Cold War. Is the lack of movement on Clinton's part to really push this treaty now, is it sending a signal to the rest of the world, what signal are we sending now, when we're not martialing our forces to make this treaty happen?

CIRINCIONE: The United States created this treaty. If we don't push to make it happen, it ain't going to happen. If we're not pushing, it tells the rest of the world that we don't care about this, that we're hedging our bets, that we don't really believe in this vision of a world with few or no nuclear weapons. It tells the rest of the world that we're more concerned about our domestic affairs, political or economic, cultural, than we are about world peace. And, if the US is not leading the movement for world peace, peace is not going to happen. Wars are going to happen.

Interviewer 2: Are you finished?

WILSON: Yeah, what do you think?

Interviewer 2: I have just two questions, real quick. I know you touched on this earlier, but if you could maybe more clear about how banning nuclear tests will curb against nuclear proliferation exactly --

CIRINCIONE: Sure, sure.

WILSON: The cause and effect.

CIRINCIONE: Right. There are many countries who want to acquire nuclear weapons, and it's fairly easy to get the design of the nuclear weapons and even to assemble a device. The main barrier, right now, to actually having a nuclear weapon is getting the fissile material, the plutonium and uranium. With Russia in chaos, there's the prospect that it might become much more easy to acquire that kind of material. There's seven hundred and fifteen tons of it sitting lose in Russia. If you can get the device, if you can get the material, you can build a nuclear weapon, but how do you know if it works, how do you know if it's gonna work? For that, you've got to test it.

You may have eighty percent confidence, but that might not be enough for a country like Iran, Iraq, or even North Korea who's gonna want to know that, who's military leaders are gonna want to know that this device will really work. That's what tests are for. That's what tests are for. If a country can't physically test a nuclear weapon, their military commanders are not gonna have the confidence that that weapon will really work. And, they're not going to want to get into a military showdown with another country with the fear that their trump card is actually a joker, you know. That's why tests are so important to the development of nuclear weapons.

If you can stop the tests, you don't necessarily stop the development of nuclear weapons, but you certainly slow it down and you reduce the confidence that people have in these weapons, and it's part of a framework that's working to prevent and reduce the threat in the first place and ultimately to roll it all back. How's that? You want me to be more specific.

Interviewer 2: No, that's fine. The last question, a lot of people worry that CTBT, they won't be able to maintain -- [inaudible] -- stock --

CIRINCIONE: Ah, yeah, correct.

Interviewer 2: ... stockpile stewardship programs __ otherwise. Can you tell us a little bit about the U.S. stock pile stewardship program and how that's going to --

CIRINCIONE: Sure. The United States has conducted well over a thousand tests of nuclear weapons. Almost every single one of these tests was to verify a new design, to see if the new design worked. None of them had anything to do with safety or what we would think of as reliability of nuclear weapons. So, you don't need nuclear tests for safety and reliability. You can judge those through a variety of other means.

In fact, the United States has a $4.5 billion program - every year we spend 4.5 billion dollars - to verify through a variety of means the safety and reliability of our nuclear arsenal. We take nuclear weapons out of the arsenal, we open them up, we take a look at them. Are the non-nuclear mechanisms still working? How's the pit working? Is there any erosion in the plutonium pit, we do tests of the device itself without the plutonium inside, we do sub-critical tests of the device with a little bit of plutonium inside. All this is allowed by the treaty.

We have thousands of scientists working to make sure that the nuclear weapons we have in our arsenal will work if we ever have to use them and won't work if we don't intend them to go off. It's a comprehensive program that is more than enough, maybe twice as much as what we actually need to maintain the safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons.

WILSON: I've just got one now and this is from the critics of the statement and this what we've just found out. And, I'll be real brief. Is that, because we have the computer technology to do simulations and tests, some people are saying that, okay, we can sign the treaty, but the US is sort of locked into this sense of security, that the US can always test its weapons, but other countries that may feel that their national interests are threatened won't have that technology. What do you say to those critics about the US being able to get around sort of via a loop hole because they have the sophisticated technology?

CIRINCIONE: The United States is the most powerful military country the world has ever seen. There's really no comparison with what we have. We have an advantage in every military confrontation, in every treaty. In the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, we - almost unique among the other nations - have vast computer science at our disposal where we can actually simulate a nuclear explosion and learn from it. We can create a nuclear explosion in our computers and come very close to designing new weapons that way.

In the final analysis, though, military commanders are not satisfied with computer simulations. They'd be happy to play around with other designs, but if you want to ask a military commander to actually deploy a new design, he's gonna want to make sure, or she's gonna make sure that that weapon has been tested. So, the Comprehensive Test Ban does restrain even the United States from developing new kinds of weapons. The computer simulations give us an unfair advantage in some of these fields compared to other countries. I guess I'm glad I live in the country that has that unfair advantage.