Last week, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution which paved the way for member nations to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would outlaw all nuclear weapon testing worldwide.

Above ground, below ground, undersea or in the atmosphere; all test detonations would be banned.

Governments worldwide are trumpeting the treaty as a great step forward in the eventual abolition of all nuclear weapons, a move toward total nuclear disarmament.

The reasoning is, if nations can’t test the bomb, then they won’t deploy the bomb as a part of their military arsenals.

Bull.

The nuclear genie has been out of the bottle for 50 years, and it’s not going back.

Banning terrestrial nuclear testing is certainly a good idea from an environmental standpoint. There isn’t a place on earth which can be enhanced by the detonation of a nuclear weapon (insert the Gary, Ind. or East St. Louis, Ill. joke of your choice here).

And it’s good public relations for the nations which vocally support and sign the treaty.

A signature on the treaty says “We think nukes are bad” to the entire world. That is such a bold statement to make to the world.

But really, the CNTBT is just that — good P.R. It does not in any way forward the concept or goal of nuclear disarmament.

Why? Because the technology is still available. And not just in the form of finished weapons; the information is still available, and controlling the spread of information is next to impossible.

The five primary nuclear powers — the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, China — all voted for the resolution and have pledged to sign the CNTBT.

But the practical effect of the treaty on these countries will be minimal.

They all have nuclear arsenals which are highly developed, arsenals which have been constantly refined and modified since 1964 — the year China joined the nuclear club.

All own weapons which vary in size from small, portable tactical weapons to massive “city busters,” bombs which can erase a city the size of New York from the surface of the planet.

More importantly, they have the technical knowledge to build more weapons of proven design. These weapons have been thoroughly tested and can be adapted for a variety of delivery systems, from free-fall bombs to missile warheads.

A ban on testing will do nothing to prevent the established nuclear powers from maintaining or even expanding their nuclear arsenals. Not only are proven designs readily available, but they have all the data necessary to simulate nuclear weapons detonations using supercomputers.

In fact, the U.S. is constructing a custom supercomputer with just one purpose— to simulate nuclear blasts and validate weapons designs. France can supposedly now do the same, and it’s likely that the British can, or they’ll ask for our help.

But who really needs to develop their own nukes anyway?

Developing a nuclear arsenal is easier than ever, and ground-up development is completely unnecessary.

Anyone taking a trip to the former Soviet Union with a wad of cash or a Mercedes can probably find someone willing to sell some serious fireworks.

Better yet, nations can engage in a bit of espionage and steal the plans for their new arsenals.

This is no fantasy; it has already happened. The Soviets were developing nukes in World War II, just as the U.S. and Germany were, but their program was slow and backward.

So they stole the pieces of information they were missing from the U.S.’s Manhattan Project, and by 1949, they had a workable nuclear weapon that they could deliver.

Who is to say that a motivated nation couldn’t do something like that again?

With modern information storage and transmission systems, it could be very easy to steal and send the info.

And there are firms willing to sell the necessary components for nukes, as evidenced by Iraq’s clandestine attempt to create a nuclear arsenal prior to the Gulf War.

With six definite and two probable nuclear powers, there is more than one source from which to appropriate the necessary information — and that doesn’t even count the former Soviet states, three of which are likely to have such information sitting about.

And it is likely that one of these 11 nations has less-than-perfect security for their nuclear secrets.

So, does the CNTBT make the world a safer place? Not a chance.

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Kevin Kirby is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Louisville, Ky. He has a B.A. in political science from the University of Wyoming.