On Tuesday, Russia announced that Russia has de-ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CNTBT). Congressman Mike Rogers (R-AL03) and senior GOP Armed Services Leadership members released a statement in response to the Russian announcement.
“Russia’s ‘de-ratification’ of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty lays bare Putin’s disdain for anything that might interfere with his nuclear ambitions,” Rogers and the other Congress members wrote. “The CTBT, rejected by the Senate in 1999, is a hollow, fatally-flawed regime. Despite this obvious truth, the Biden administration continues to waste time and money looking for ways to prop up this irrelevant treaty in hopes of reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense. The administration should not allow a single additional U.S. taxpayer dollars to go towards implementing ineffective agreements. Instead, it should focus on holding our adversaries accountable for their actions and modernizing an aging nuclear deterrent that is increasingly not fit for the growing 21st-century threats.”
In addition to Rogers, the letter was also signed by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jim Risch (R-Idaho).
The House Armed Services Committee said Russia’s “de-ratification” of the CTBT is the latest in a series of Russian moves that demonstrate just how ineffective the treaty has been in curbing Putin’s nuclear ambitions.
Rogers claims that Russia consistently ignores the primary purpose of the agreement, conducting multiple nuclear tests at the Novaya Zemlya Test Site to inform its development of new and novel nuclear weapons. Rogers also accused Moscow of exploiting its control of the CTBT’s International Monitoring System by deactivating radiation sensors to hide evidence of a failed test of its dangerous SKYFALL nuclear-powered cruise missile.
Rogers claimed that even with these actions, the Biden administration continues to waste taxpayer money looking for ways to prop up the treaty, which failed Senate ratification in 1999. Rogers claims that these efforts have amounted to nothing more than attempts to undercut support for our Department of Defense and Department of Energy efforts to rebuild our aging deterrent as well as signal to our adversaries that we will ignore their violations of arms control agreements to the detriment of our own national security. Rogers said that the administration’s actions come at a uniquely dangerous time, highlighted by the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States’ conclusion that the U.S. faces “the unprecedented existential challenge of facing two nuclear-armed peer adversaries.”
Rogers is in his eleventh term representing Alabama’s Third Congressional District.
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email brandonmreporter@gmail.com.
