Chapter 6: Summary and Recommendations
Recommendation #6: Appoint independent oversight committees and lead agencies that are not influenced by competing institutional priorities.
- A treaty is verifiable if the significance of undetected violations (should they occur) are outweighed by the benefits of the treaty.
- All aspects of treaty verification requirements must be considered together and the cumulative impact evaluated in terms of costs and benefits.
- The technical requirements for CTBT verification are highly sensitive to assessments regarding the credibility of various evasion scenarios and the required confidence levels.
- In the past, verification has been a sensitive issue for the development of a CTBT. Some of the technical issues associated with verification have been misrepresented.
- The current structure for the technical discussions of verification requirements is not open to peer-review, and the discussions are populated by many representatives with institutional conflicts of interest.
To implement...
- An organization without conflicts of interest should lead the U.S. effort to establish and develop the verification provisions required for a CTBT. Senior policy makers should provide for the independent peer-review of these requirements in the context of national security.
Nuclear Testing and Nonproliferation
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