Bombs away.

With much fanfare, Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in late September at the United Nations. But the United States is still preparing for nuclear war.

The idea behind the treaty is two-fold: By banning tests, it prevents non-nuclear countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. It also prevents the nuclear powers from having a sense of reliability about their own arsenals. If a country can't test a nuclear device, it will have no way of knowing whether the damn thing works--and won't launch it. The risks of a malfunction would be too great. It could be catastrophic for a country to launch a first strike unless that country were confident the weapon would work. A dud would give the enemy a distinct advantage.

The test-ban treaty may succeed in its first goal of keeping the nuclear-weapons club small. But the ban won't succeed in its second goal because the United States has no intention of rendering its nuclear arsenal unreliable, which is one of the reasons India balked at signing the treaty.

The United States wants to cling to its nuclear weapons, and wants to make sure they are reliable. In August 1995, the Clinton Administration acknowledged that "if the safety and reliability of our nuclear deterrent could no longer be certified," then the United States would reserve the option to bolt the treaty. A White House fact sheet, quoted in the September/October issue of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, stated that without a "high level of confidence" in the safety and reliability of the nuclear arsenal, "the President, in consultation with Congress, would be prepared to withdraw from the CTBT under the standard `supreme national interest' clause in order to conduct whatever testing might be required."

There's an escape clause if ever there was one.

The United States is also making a mockery of the test ban by designing simulated nuclear tests in the laboratory. Last year, the Energy Department launched the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program, with a $4 billion annual budget that includes a "largescale computing project to more accurately model nuclear weapons," according to an article in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists a year ago. This followed an order from the Defense Department that the Department of Energy "maintain capability to design, fabricate, and certify new warheads" without underground nuclear testing. Part of this high-tech weapons design and testing will take place at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore Labs.

Soon it may no longer be necessary for the United States to conduct actual tests. It will be able to conduct virtual tests that will ensure the reliability of the nuclear weapons the treaty was designed to make unreliable.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government still has 8,000 operational nuclear warheads, and it intends to maintain that deadly arsenal. That's why the U.S. government has recently resumed an effort to produce tritium, a radioactive gas that is a key ingredient of nuclear warheads. The government had stopped producing tritium in the late 1980s.

Further, the government continues to prepare its soldiers for waging--and surviving--nuclear war. In April 1995, the Pentagon announced it was "testing two commercially approved drugs it hopes will enable soldiers who initially survive a nuclear bomb to last long enough to finish their battlefield mission," The Washington Post reported. "The drugs, which reduce or eliminate the vomiting that follows exposure to radiation, are being tested `to extend the ability of an individual to perform his mission in a radiation environment,' Major General Kenneth Hagemann told reporters."

"Radiation environment" is a classic Pentagon euphemism. But the whole Pentagon rationale for using these anti-nuclear drugs is euphemistic. "The project is part of an effort to upgrade the effectiveness of troops on the post-Cold War battlefield," the Post continued. "Defense officials believe there is a greater possibility than ever before that theater nuclear bombs . . . may be used by a so-called rogue nation like Iran or North Korea."

It is much more likely, however, that the United States would be the nation launching these weapons against the rogue states. As Michael Klare pointed out in "Itching for a Fight" (September issue), the United States waved the nuclear stick against Libya this spring. Assistant Secretary of Defense Kenneth Bacon said that if Libya went ahead with a chemical-weapons plant, the United States would have to destroy it, and this "could include the use of nuclear weapons."

Such a preemptive strike would have violated the Clinton Administration's policy of not initiating nuclear war. But the no-first-use policy no longer seems to be in force. In April, Robert Bell, special assistant to the President and senior director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council, warned that the United States will keep all its options open if another country is "using weapons of mass destruction." The implication is clear: The United States will use nuclear weapons against countries that use--or threaten to use--chemical or biological weapons.

So before we get all carried away by the hoopla surrounding the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, we need to take a hard look at what our own government is doing. It's still in the business of waging nuclear war, as it has been for the last fifty years.

Why does the United States persist with the nuclear folly? There are real and ideological interests that fuel the production of nuclear weapons. The nuclear-energy labs and the nuclear-armament companies, like Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin, have a vested interest. Since the end of World War II, the Pentagon has spent 30 percent of its budget on nuclear-weapons production. Some people are getting rich on this deal.

Other corporate interests rely on nuclear weapons indirectly, for nuclear weapons are the badge and holster of the U.S. empire, the ultimate prop for bullying other nations weaker than our own. To the extent that U.S. multinationals rely on cheap labor and cheap raw materials from abroad, the nuclear arsenal comes in mighty handy.

But it is not just these material interests that hold us back. There are ideological interests, as well. Many Americans have bought into the empire. Many citizens are in thrall of the notion that we are the world's superpower, that we are the top dog, that we rule the world. The ideology of empire provides psychological comfort: That is what's behind those throaty chants of U.S.A., U.S.A. That is what's behind the belligerence whenever the United States takes on a Third World nation, whether it is Libya, Panama, Grenada, Nicaragua, North Korea, or Iraq. That is why "Nuke Qadaffi," or "Nuke Khomeini," or "Nuke Saddam" became popular bumper stickers. (The ease and relish with which people use "nuke" as a verb is the measurement of how perilously close we are to blowing up the world.)

To bring the nuclear age to a nonviolent end, we will need to organize in vast numbers and with great creativity not just against nuclear weapons but against the empire that relies on them.

In the process, we will need to restore an image of ourselves not as rulers but as citizens of the world.