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The PRESIDING OFFICER. As in executive session, the Senate will now consider the ratification of the START II Treaty.
The clerk will state the resolution of ratification.
Resolved, (two-thirds of the Senators present concurring therein), That (a) The Senate advise and consent to the ratification of the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, signed at Moscow on January 3, 1993, including the following protocols and memorandum of understanding, all such documents being integral parts of and collectively referred to as the `START II Treaty' (contained in Treaty Document 103-1), subject to the conditions of subsection (b) and the declarations of subsection (c):
(1) The Protocol on Procedures Governing Elimination of Heavy ICBMs and on Procedures Governing Conversion of Silo Launchers of Heavy ICBMs Relating to the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (also known as the `Elimination and Conversion Protocol').
(2) The Protocol on Exhibitions and Inspections of Heavy Bombers Relating to the Treaty Between the United States and the Russian Federation Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (also known as the `Exhibitions and Inspections Protocol').
(3) The Memorandum of Understanding on Warhead Attribution and Heavy Bomber Data Relating to the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (also known as the `Memorandum on Attribution').
(b) Conditions.--The advice and consent of the Senate to the ratification of the START II Treaty is subject to the following conditions, which shall be binding upon the President:
(1) Noncompliance.--If the President determines that a party to the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, signed at Moscow on July 3, 1991 (in this resolution referred to as the `START Treaty') or the START II Treaty is acting in a manner that is inconsistent with the object and purpose of the respective Treaty or is in violation of either the START or START II Treaty so as to threaten the national security interests of the United States, then the President shall--
(A) consult with and promptly submit a report to the Senate detailing the effect of such actions on the START treaties ;
(B) seek on an urgent basis a meeting at the highest diplomatic level with the noncompliant party with the objective of bringing the noncompliant party into compliance;
(C) in the event that a party other than the Russian Federation is determined not to be in compliance--
(i) request consultations with the Russian Federation to assess the viability of both START treaties and to determine if a change in obligations is required in either Treaty to accommodate the changed circumstances; and
(ii ) submit for the Senate's advice and consent to ratification any agreement changing the obligations of the United States; and
(D) In the event that noncompliance persists, seek a Senate resolution of support of continued adherence to one or both of the START Treaties , notwithstanding the changed circumstances affecting the object and purpose of one or both of the START treaties .
(2) Treaty obligations.--Ratification by the United States of the START II Treaty--
(A) obligates the United States to meet the conditions contained in this resolution of ratification and shall not be interpreted as an obligation by the United States to accept any modification, change in scope, or extension of the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, signed at Moscow on May 26, 1972 (commonly referred to as the `ABM Treaty'), and
(B) changes none of the rights of either party with respect to the provisions of the ABM Treaty, in particular, Articles 13, 14, and 15.
(3) Financing implementation.--The United States understands that in order to be assured of the Russian commitment to a reduction in arms levels, Russia must maintain a substantial stake in financing the implementation of the START II Treaty. The costs of implementing the START II Treaty should be borne by both parties to the Treaty. The exchange of instruments of ratification of the START II Treaty shall not be contingent upon the United States providing financial guarantees to pay for implementation of commitments by Russia under the START II Treaty.
(4) Exchange of letters.--The exchange of letters--
(A) between Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrey Kozyrev, dated December 29, 1992, regarding SS-18 missiles and launchers now on the territory of Kazakstan,
(B) between Secretary of State Eagleburger and Minister of Foreign Affairs Kozyrev, dated December 29, 1992, and December 31, 1992, regarding heavy bombers, and
(C) between Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, dated December 29, 1992, and January 3, 1993, making assurances on Russian intent regarding the conversion and retention of 90 silo launchers of RS-20 heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) (all having been submitted to the Senate as associated with the START II Treaty),
are of the same force and effect as the provisions of the START II Treaty. The United States shall regard actions inconsistent with obligations under those exchanges of letters as equivalent under international law to actions inconsistent with the START II Treaty.
(5) Space-launch vehicles.--Space-launch vehicles composed of items that are limited by the START Treaty or the START II Treaty shall be subject to the obligations undertaken in the respective Treaty.
(6) NTM and Cuba.--The obligation of the United States under the START Treaty not to interfere with the national technical means (NTM) of verification of the other party to the Treaty does not preclude the United States from pursuing the question of the removal of the electronic intercept facility operated by the Government of the Russian Federation at Lourdes, Cuba.
(7) Implementation Arrangements.--(A) The START II Treaty shall not be binding on the United States until such time as the Duma of the Russian Federation has acted pursuant to its constitutional responsibilities and the START II Treaty enters into force in accordance with Article VI of the Treaty.
(B) If the START II Treaty does not enter into force pursuant to subparagraph (A), and if the President plans to implement reductions of United States strategic nuclear forces below those currently planned and consistent with the START Treaty, then the President shall--
(i) consult with the Senate regarding the effect of such reductions on the national security of the United States; and
(ii ) take no action to reduce United States strategic nuclear forces below that currently planned and consistent with the START Treaty until he submits to the Senate his determination that such reductions are in the national security interest of the United States.
(8) Presidential Certification and Report on National Technical Means.--Within 90 days after the United States deposits instruments of ratification of the START II Treaty, the President shall certify that United States National Technical Means are sufficient to ensure effective monitoring of Russian compliance with the provisions of the Treaty governing the capabilities of strategic missile systems. This certification shall be accompanied by a report to the Senate of the United States indicating how United States National Technical Means, including collection, processing and analytic resources, will be marshalled to ensure effective monitoring. Such report may be supplemented by a classified annex, which shall be submitted to the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Committee on Appropriations, the Committee on Armed Services and the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate.
(c) Declarations.--The advice and consent of the Senate to ratification of the START II Treaty is subject to the following declarations, which express the intent of the Senate:
(1) Cooperative Threat Reductions.--Pursuant to the Joint Statement on the Transparency and Irreversibility of the Process of Reducing Nuclear Weapons, agreed to in Moscow, May 10, 1995, between the President of the United States and the President of the Russian Federation, it is the sense of the Senate that both parties to the START II Treaty should attach high priority to--
(A) the exchange of detailed information on aggregate stockpiles of nuclear warheads, on stocks of fissile materials, and on their safety and security;
(B) the maintenance at distinct and secure storage facilities, on a reciprocal basis, of fissile materials removed from nuclear warheads and declared to be excess to national security requirements for the purpose of confirming the irreversibility of the process of nuclear weapons reduction; and
(C) the adoption of other cooperative measures to enhance confidence in the reciprocal declarations on fissile material stockpiles.
(2) Asymmetry in Reductions: (A) It is the sense of the Senate that, in conducting the reductions mandated by the START or START II Treaty, the President should, within the parameters of the elimination schedules provided for in the START treaties , regulate reductions in the United States strategic nuclear forces so that the number of accountable warheads under the START and START II Treaties possessed by the Russian Federation in no case exceeds the comparable number of accountable warheads possessed by the United States to an extent that a strategic imbalance endangering the national security interests of the United States results.
(B) Recognizing that instability could result from an imbalance in the levels of strategic offensive arms, the Senate calls upon the President to submit a report in unclassified form to the Committees on Foreign Relations and Armed Services of the Senate not later than January 31 of each year beginning with January 31, 1997, and continuing through such time as the reductions called for in the START II Treaty are completed by both parties, which report will provide--
(i) details on the progress of each party's reductions in strategic offensive arms during the previous year;
(ii ) a certification that the Russian Federation is in compliance with the terms of the START II Treaty or specifies any act of noncompliance by the Russian Federation; and
(iii) an assessment of whether a strategic imbalance endangering the national security interests of the United States exists.
(3) Expanding Strategic Arsenals in Countries Other Than Russia: It is the sense of the Senate that, if during the time the START II Treaty remains in force or in advance of any further strategic offensive arms reductions the President determines there has been an expansion of the strategic arsenal of any country not party to the START II Treaty so as to jeopardize the supreme interests of the United States, then the president should consult on an urgent basis with the Senate to determine whether adherence to the START II Treaty remains in the national interest of the United States.
(4) Substantial Further Reductions: Cognizant of the obligation of the United States under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation on Nuclear Weapons of July 1, 1968 `to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at any early date and to nuclear disarmament and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control', and in anticipation of the ratification and entry into force of the START II Treaty, the Senate calls upon the President to seek further strategic offensive arms reductions to the extent consistent with United States national security interests and calls upon the other nuclear weapon states to give careful and early consideration to corresponding reductions of their own nuclear arsenals.
(5) Missile Technology Control Regime: The Senate urges the President to insist that the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakstan, Ukraine, and the Russian Federation abide by the guidelines of the Missile Technology Control Regime [MTCR]. For
purposes of this paragraph, the term `Missile Technology Control Regime' means the policy statement between the United States, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Canada, and Japan, announced April 16, 1987, to restrict sensitive missile-relevant transfers based on the MTCR Annex, and any amendments thereto.
(6) Further Arms Reduction Obligations.--The Senate declares its intention to consider for approval international agreements that would obligate the United States to reduce or limit the Armed Forces or armaments of the United States in a militarily significant manner only pursuant to the Treaty power as set forth in Article ii , Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution.
(7) Treaty interpretation.--The Senate affirms the applicability to all treaties of the constitutionally based principles of Treaty interpretation set forth in the Condition (1) of the resolution of ratification with respect to the INF Treaty. For purposes of this declaration, the term `INF Treaty' refers to the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Short Range Missiles, together with the related memorandum of understanding and protocols, approved by the Senate on May 27, 1988.
(8) Compliance.--(A) Concerned by the clear past pattern of Soviet noncompliance with arms control agreements and continued cases of noncompliance by the Russian Federation, the Senate declares that--
(i) the START II Treaty is in the interests of the United States only if both the United States and the Russian Federation are in strict compliance with the terms of the Treaty as presented to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification, such compliance being measured by performance and not by efforts, intentions, or commitments to comply; and
(ii ) the Senate expects the Russian Federation to be in strict compliance with its obligations under the terms of START IITreaty as presented to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification;
(B) Given its concern about compliance issues, the Senate expects the executive branch of government to offer regular briefings, but not less than four times each year, to the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Armed Services on compliance issues related to the START II Treaty. Such briefings shall include a description of all United States efforts in United States/Russian diplomatic channels and bilateral fora to resolve the compliance issues and shall include, but would not necessarily be limited to, a description of the following:
(i) Any compliance issues the United States plans to raise with the Russian Federation at the Bilateral Implementation Commission, in advance of such meetings.
(ii ) Any compliance issues raised at the Bilateral Implementation Commission, within thirty days of such meetings.
(iii) Any Presidential determination that the Russian Federation is in noncompliance with or is otherwise acting in a manner inconsistent with the object and purpose of the START II Treaty, within 30 days of such a determination, in which case the President shall also submit a written report, with an unclassified summary, explaining why it is in the national security interests of the United States to continue as a party to the START II Treaty.
(9) Submission of Future Agreements as treaties .--The Senate declares that, following Senate advice and consent to ratification of the START II Treaty, any agreement or understanding which in any material way modifies, amends, or reinterprets United States or Russian
obligations under the START II Treaty, including the time frame for implementation of the Treaty, should be submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification.
(10) Nature of Deterrence.--(A) On June 17, 1992, Presidents Bush and Yeltsin issued a Joint Understanding and a Joint Statement at the conclusion of their Washington Summit, the first of which became the foundation for the START II Treaty. The second, the Joint Statement on a Global Protection System, endorsed the cooperative development of a defensive system against ballistic missile attack and demonstrated the belief by the governments of the United States and the Russian Federation that strategic offensive reductions and certain defenses against ballistic missiles are stabilizing compatible, and reinforcing.
(B) It is, therefore, the sense of the Senate that:
(i) The long-term perpetuation of deterrence based on mutual and severe offensive nuclear threats would be outdated in a strategic environment in which the United States and the Russian Federation are seeking to put aside their past adversarial relationship and instead build a relationship based upon trust rather than fear.
(ii ) An offense-only form of deterrence cannot address by itself the emerging strategic environment in which, as Secretary of Defense Les Aspin said in January 1994, proliferators acquiring missiles and weapons of mass destruction `may have acquired such weapons for the express purpose of blackmail or terrorism and thus have a fundamentally different calculus not amenable to deterrence. . . . New deterrent approaches are needed as well as new strategies should deterrence fail.'.
(iii) Defenses against ballistic missiles are essential for new deterrent strategies and for new strategies should deterrence fail. Because deterrence may be inadequate to protect United States forces and allies abroad, theater missile defense is necessary, particularly the most capable systems of the United States such as THAAD, Navy Upper Tier, and the Space and Missile Tracking System. Similarly, because deterrence may be inadequate to protect the United States against long-range missile threats, missile defenses are a necessary part of new deterrent strategies. Such defenses also are wholly in consonance with the summit statements from June 1992 of the Presidents of the United States and the Russian Federation and the September 1994 statements by Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, who said, `We now have the opportunity to create a new relationship, based not on MAD, not on Mutual Assured Destruction, but rather on another acronym, MAS, or Mutual Assured Safety.'.
(iv) As the governments of the United States and Russia have built upon the June 17, 1992, Joint Understanding in agreeing to the START II Treaty, so too should these governments promptly undertake discussions based on the Joint Statement to move forward cooperatively in the development and deployment of defenses against ballistic missiles.
(11) Report on Use of Foreign Excess Ballistic Missiles for Launch Services.--It is the sense of the Senate that the President should not issue licenses for the use of a foreign excess ballistic missile for launch services without first submitting a report to Congress, on a one-time basis, on the implications of the licensing approval on nonproliferation efforts under the Treaty and on the United States space launch industry.
(12) United States Commitments Ensuring the Safety, Reliability, and Performance of Its Nuclear Forces: The Senate declares that the United States is committed to ensuring the safety, reliability, and performance of its nuclear forces. To this end, the United States undertakes the following additional commitments:
(A) The United States is committed to proceeding with a robust stockpile stewardship program, and to maintaining nuclear weapons production capabilities and capacities, that will ensure the safety, reliability, and performance of the United States nuclear arsenal at the START II levels and meet requirements for hedging against possible international developments or technical problems in conformance with United States policies and to underpin deterrence.
(B) The United States is committed to reestablishing and maintaining sufficient levels of production to support requirements for the safety, reliability, and performance of United States nuclear weapons and demonstrate and sustain production capabilities and capacities.
(C) The United States is committed to maintaining United States nuclear weapons laboratories and protecting the core nuclear weapons competencies therein.
(D) As tritium is essential to the performance of modern nuclear weapons, but decays radioactively at a relatively rapid rate, and the United States now has no meaningful tritium production capacity, the United States is committed to ensuring rapid access to a new production source of tritium within the next decade.
(E) As warhead design flaws or aging problems may occur that a robust stockpile stewardship program cannot solve, the United States reserves the right, consistent with United States law, to resume underground nuclear testing if that is necessary to maintain confidence in the nuclear weapons stockpile. The United States is committed to maintaining the Nevada Test Site at a level in which the United States will be able to resume testing within one year following a national decision to do so.
(F) The United States reserves the right to invoke the supreme national interest of the United States to withdraw from any future arms control agreement to limit underground nuclear testing.
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Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, when I brought the START II Treaty to the floor last month, I did so in my capacity as the manage for the Foreign Relations Committee. In my opening statement, I sought to lay out for the body the key provisions of the START II Treaty, the assessment of the Treaty of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the force structure implications of the Treaty for both the Russian Federation and the United States, and the reasons why this Treaty is, on balance, in the national security interests of the United States.
But, Mr. President, I have also approached consideration of the START II Treaty from the vantage point of my membership on the Select Committee on Intelligence. I have spent a great deal of time analyzing United States capabilities to monitor compliance with arms control treaties and the START II Treaty in particular.
I want to share with my colleagues my major findings and explain each of them briefly.
First, no aspects of the START II Treaty text are likely to cause compliance issues because of the manner in which they are worded.
I repeat, I have found no aspects of the START II Treaty text that are likely to cause compliance issues because of the manner in which they are worded. Indeed, START II, by banning test-flights and deployment of MIRV'd ICBM's after 2003, may lessen the likelihood of compliance issues regarding the number of re-entry vehicles with which an ICBM is equipped or tested. It should generally be easier to determine the presence or absence of MIRV's than the determine--or agree upon--whether a numerical limit has been exceeded.
Second, U.S. national technical means are generally sufficient to monitor compliance with both START Treaties . United States capabilities could be insufficient, however, if competition for scarce collection and analytic resources were intense and if Russian practices were to change in ways designed to impede United States monitoring.
As in the case with START I monitoring, the United States will rely upon a combination of capabilities--including imagery, signals intelligence, human intelligence, open-source information and the verification provisions of the START I and START II Treaties --to monitor compliance with the provisions of START II. Despite the strapped resources as well as systems and personnel reductions thus far in the post-cold-war era, the intelligence community assesses a high probability of detecting questionable activity that might be contrary to the Treaty.
I agree with the intelligence community that U.S. national technical means are generally sufficient to monitor compliance with both START Treaties . I have concerns, however, that U.S. capabilities could be insufficient if competition for scarce collection and analytic resources were to intensify and if Russian practices were to change in ways designed to impeded U.S. monitoring. I support the recommendation that the President be required to certify the sufficiency of U.S. monitoring capabilities regarding those START II provisions relating to ICBM and SLBM capabilities and to report to Congress on how such sufficiency will be assured. I would also urge the executive branch to pursue a firm policy regarding Russian actions that may violate the terms of START I or START II , including the verification provisions of those treaties .
Third, I have recommended that the resolution of ratification be conditioned on a requirement that the President certify and, within 90 days of exchanging the instruments of ratification, submit to the Congress a plan for ensuring continued, adequate monitoring of Russian ICBM and SLBM capabilities. This condition has been included in the manager's package of
amendments to the resolution of ratification, accepted by the Senate last month.
The intelligence community's monitoring confidences reflect a vastly changed world from that of a decade ago. The end of the cold war has brought a substantial refocusing of United States intelligence from the old Soviet Union to a much wider variety of threats to the national security. Indicative of this change is the fact that in the fiscal year 1996 budget process, the Department of Defense opposed funding the COBRA DANE radar. In order to protect that important arms control monitoring system, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency [ACDA] stepped in and took responsibility for its funding. The Congress, instead, restored full funding for the COBRA DANE platform in the fiscal year 1996 Intelligence Authorization Act, an action that was sustained in the Defense appropriations bill.
Some other systems that monitor Russian missile tests face uncertain funding futures or are increasingly diverted to other intelligence priorities, like Bosnia and North Korea, or even to nonintelligence functions. Although intelligence officials remain confident of overall U.S. monitoring capabilities, they have acknowledged that these actions affect those capabilities.
I find it totally unacceptable that coverage by National Technical Means of Russian strategic missiles--still the systems with by far the greatest capability to effect the nuclear destruction of United States territory--should be available only at the expense of other important intelligence priorities. That is why I recommend that the resolution of advice and consent to ratification of the START II Treaty be conditioned on a requirement that the President certify and, within 90 days of exchanging instruments of ratification, submit to the Congress a plan for ensuring, continued adequate monitoring of Russian ICBM and SLBM capabilities.
Fourth, it is imperative that the executive branch exercise its START II Treaty right to observe the entire process of pouring concrete into each Russian SS-18 silo that is to be converted.
The intelligence community judges that it can monitor with virtual certainty the elimination or conversion of declared items and the number of deployed silo-based ICBM's, SLBM's and heavy bombers that remain in the Russian force. Treaty provisions designed to enhance verification play important roles in augmenting U.S. National Technical Means in this regard. The 10 annual reentry vehicle inspections permitted under START I will help assure, over time, that those silos are not being used for MIRV'ed missiles, and the 4 extra reentry vehicle inspections at converted SS-18 silos that are provided for in START II will add assurance regarding heavy ICBM's.
One particularly important aspect of START II verification would be the on-site inspection of SS-18 heavy ICBM silo conversions, to guard against a breakout scenario involving speedy reconversion of SS-18 silos. U.S. inspectors can either physically witness the pouring of the 5 meters of concrete in the bottom of the silo or measure silo depth before and after the concrete was poured. In order to guard against improper implementation of the conversion procedures, it is imperative that the executive branch exercise its START II Treaty right to observe the entire process of pouring concrete into each SS-18 silo that is to be converted, and to measure the diameter of the restrictive ring.
Fifth, I urge the firmest practicable policy regarding compliance with START I provisions on the transmission and provision of missile flight test telemetry and interpretive data.
The intelligence community generally expects to be able to monitor the ban on flight-testing of MIRV'd ICBM's after 2003, assuming it receives the good telemetry data mandated by START I. The importance of the START I provisions regarding the transmission and provision of missile flight-test telemetry and interpretative data cannot be overestimated, and the executive branch must adopt the firmest practicable policy regarding Russian compliance with those provisions.
Sixth, monitoring missile production and storage and, consequently, the number
of nondeployed missiles is inherently difficult. As the Director of Central Intelligence has stated, it is possible that some undeclared missiles have been stored at unidentified facilities. In other words, the possible existence of covert, nondeployed mobile missiles must remain an important U.S. intelligence target.
Monitoring missile production and storage and, consequently, the number of nondeployed missiles is inherently difficult. At facilities where the United States conducts continuous perimeter and portal monitoring, the intelligence community's uncertainties are low. Uncertainties are higher, however, in estimates of missiles production at facilities not subject to continuous monitoring or on-site inspection.
A cheating scenario involving covert production and deployment of mobile ICBM's--and especially of MIRV'ed ICBM's--and their launchers would be particularly worrisome. For that reason, the possible existence of covert, nondeployed mobile missiles must remain an important U.S. intelligence target.
Uncertainties in the estimates of numbers of nondeployed missiles will make it difficult for the intelligence community to determine whether all SS-18 airframes have been declared and eliminated as required by START II. On the other hand, SS-18 missiles and canisters are not mobile, are the largest ballistic missile system in the Russian force, and require substantial equipment for handling and transport. Storing and maintaining a covert force of any significant size would be a major undertaking and would increase the risk of detection. As SS-18 silos are destroyed or coverted, moreover, the military utility of any undeclared missiles should steadily diminish. The intelligence community is quite confident of its ability to monitor the essentially irreversible conversion of SS-18 silos.
Seventh, it will be difficult to determine whether Russian heavy bombers are equipped with more than the number of nuclear weapons they are declared to carry. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff believes that cheating scenarios that involve heavy bombers and air-launched cruise missiles generally pose little risk of militarily significant violations.
Mr. President, because heavy bomber weapon loadings can easily be changed, the intelligence community will find it difficult to determine whether Russian heavy bombers are equipped with more than the number of nuclear weapons they are declared to carry. When this matter was considered in the START I context, the executive branch emphasized that heavy bombers are inherently stabilizing, and play a more important role in the U.S. strategic force structure than in the Russian. General Curtin of the Joint Staff noted at the time that cheating scenarios that involve heavy bombers and air-launched cruise missiles generally pose little risk of militarily significant violations. He noted that heavy bombers and air-launch cruise missiles are slow flyers which offer little potential for a surprise attack.
Eighth, the disincentives for Russia to cheat are substantial. I urge the intelligence community, however, to base its collection and analysis priorities upon a cautious appreciation of the record of Soviet and Russian
compliance with arms control agreements.
The disincentives for Russia to cheat on START II are substantial. Many cheating scenarios, such as the reconversion of converted SS-18 silos, would risk U.S. detection. The most feasible cheating scenarios would yield only small gains. Thus, covertly reMIRVing all the 105 single-RV SS-19's allowed under START II would increase the number of Russian reentry vehicles by only about 15 percent. And such scenarios as the covert production of large numbers of ICBM's and their launchers would require a considerable investment of scarce resources.
Despite these disincentives, however, I repeat that the intelligence community needs to base its collection and analysis priorities upon a more cautious appreciation of the record of Soviet and Russian compliance with arms control agreements.
Last, the counterintelligence challenges inherent in START II will be no greater than those of past treaties , and U.S. agencies are capable of handling these challenges.
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Mr. President, let me close by reaffirming the conclusion I set forth last month when I introduced the START II Treaty on this floor.
The START II Treaty is the result of a bipartisan effort, negotiated by a Republican administration and submitted by a Democratic one. Three Secretaries of State and Defense have supported it. START II represents a substantial step forward in attempting to codify strategic stability at greatly reduced levels of armaments. Final reductions must be completed by January 1, 2003--namely, to levels of 3,000 to 3,500 total warheads, of which no more than 1,750 can be based on submarines. It has been the view of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that, with the 3,500 warheads allowed under this Treaty, the United States would remain capable of holding at risk a broad enough range of high value political and military targets to deter any rational adversary from launching a nuclear attack against the United States or against its allies.
START II removes the most destabilizing segment of nuclear inventories--namely MIRV warheads and heavy ICBM's. Elimination also includes all deployed heavy ICBM silos and all test and training launchers. The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the verification procedures are adequate to ensure that the United States will be able to detect any significant violations. Conversely, the Joint Chiefs of Staff also believe that the verification provisions are sufficiently restrictive to protect the United States against unnecessary intrusion by Russian inspectors.
It is my belief that, on balance, the START II Treaty is in the national security interests of the United States, and I would hope that the Senate, having expressed its concerns and advice in the Resolution of Ratification, would consent to the Treaty by an overwhelming margin.
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Mr. PELL. Mr. President, this is indeed a fine day for the U.S. Senate. The Senate has just given its advice and consent to ratification of the Treaty Between the United States and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, known as the START II Treaty.
Mr. President, the START II Treaty was considered thoroughly in hearings that I chaired in May and June 1993, and that my colleague from Indiana chaired in January, February, and March 1995. Witnesses included Secretary of State Warren Christopher; former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger; Secretary of Defense William Perry; Gen. John Shalikashvili, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; John Holum, Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Ambassador Linton Brooks, chief negotiator of the Treaty; Thomas Graham, Jr., Acting Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. James Woolsey and Douglas MacEachin, Deputy Director for Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency. Nongovernmental witnesses included Steven Hadley, an attorney with Shea and Gardner; Sven Kraemer, president, Global 2000; Michael Krepon, president, Henry L. Stimson Center, and Jack Mendelsohn, deputy director of the Arms Control Association.
When it is considering treaties such as this, the committee makes a particular point to receive the considered and independent judgment of the Nation's military leaders for whom it is of critical importance that there be no missteps in arms control. General John M. Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was unequivocal of his endorsement of the Treaty:
The START Treaty offers a significant contribution to our national security. Under its provisions, we achieve the long-standing goal of finally eliminating both heavy ICBMs and the practice of MIRVing ICBMs, thereby significantly reducing the incentive for a first strike. For decades, we and the Russians have lived with this dangerous instability. With this Treaty, we can at long last put it behind us.
The Joint Chiefs and I have carefully assessed the adequacy of our strategic forces under START II. With the balanced triad of 3500 warheads that will remain once this Treaty is implemented, the size and mix of our remaining nuclear forces will support our deterrent and targeting requirements against any known adversary and under the worst assumptions. Both American and Russian strategic nuclear forces will be suspended at levels of rough equivalence; a balance with greatly reduced incentive for a first strike. By every military measure, START II is a sound agreement that will make our nation more secure. Under its terms, our forces will remain militarily sufficient, crisis stability will be greatly improved, and we can be confident in our ability to effectively verify its implementation. This Treaty is clearly in the best interests of the United States.
On the behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I recommend that the Senate promptly give its advice and consent to the ratification of the START II Treaty.
The resolution that the Senate has approved today reflects a careful, bipartisan effort within the Committee on Foreign Relations. It also deals with concerns raised by non-committee Members in amendments approved on the Senate floor on December 22, 1995.
Senate consideration and consent to ratification has taken about 3 years. This is longer than I and others would have wished, but I would remind others that the Senate has a long history of moving deliberately on arms control treaties . The Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons in war, took 5 decades for the Senate to approve.
Our action this evening comes at a most propitious moment. The Russian Prime Minister, Victor Chernomyrdin, will arrive in Washington this weekend for the first top-level United States meetings since the Russian elections in December. Approval of the START II Treaty should prove a fortuitous move if it serves to spur comparable action in the Russian Duma. There is to be a G-7 summit meeting in Moscow in April. I would hope very much that the newly constituted Duma can act on the Treaty by that time, so as to permit exchange of instruments of ratification and entry into force.
Mr. President, the START II Treaty is a major achievement by itself, but it cannot be viewed alone. It must be seen as part of a critically important continuum that began with SALT I, continued
through SALT II and led to START I and START II. There have been related agreements such as the INF Treaty, which required the elimination of the intermediate-range nuclear missiles of the United States and the Soviet Union. There are complementary efforts such as the safe and secure dismantlement program in Russia and attempts to negotiate a missile material production control regime.
In closing, I would point out that the resolution of ratification adopted by the Committee in an 18 to 0 vote recalls the obligation undertaken by the United States and the other nuclear-weapon states `to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament and on a Treaty on general complete disarmament under strict and effective international control', and states clearly that `the Senate calls upon the parties to the START II Treaty to seek further strategic offensive arms reductions consistent with their national security interests and calls upon the other nuclear weapon states to give careful and early consideration to corresponding reductions of their own nuclear arsenals.'
Mr. President, we should be well pleased with our action today, but we must not be satisfied. We must be both steadfast and unrelenting in our efforts to spare our citizens and the world from the terrible catastrophe of war, particularly war through means of weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the ratification of the START II Treaty by the Senate. The case for ratification is, I believe, overwhelming. Both the START I Treaty, negotiated under President Reagan, and the START II Treaty, negotiated under President Bush, are the end-products of bipartisan arms control support by both the Congress and the American people.
Ratification of the START II Treaty is supported by the President, as well as by Secretary of Defense Perry and General Shalikashvili, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Department of Defense is satisfied that the START II Treaty will be fully verifiable, and that ratification and entry into force are in our national interest. The START II Treaty is a continuation of the substantial reductions in strategic weaponry brought about by the signing of the START I Treaty. The signing of the START I Treaty occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall, at the end of the cold war, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the development of democratic movements and free elections in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. These events have transformed the longstanding bipolar relationship between the United States and the now-vanished Soviet Union.
Given these historic changes, ratification of the START II Treaty is the next logical step. Upon entry into full force, the START II Treaty will further reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads held in the active inventories of the United States and Russia from about 8,000 weapons at START I levels by more than 50 percent. By the time START II is fully implemented, the START I and START II Treaties will have led to more than a three-fold reduction in the numbers of strategic nuclear warheads on line.
Moreover, the entry into force of this Treaty will eliminate all of the land-based, multiple-warhead, or MIRV'd, inter-continental ballistic missiles from the arsenals of both sides. It has long been a goal of U.S. arms control policy, under both Republican and Democratic Presidents and Congresses, to eliminate these poised-for-instant-launch MIRV'd ICBM's from the inventories of both sides. Elimination of these land-based ICBM missiles, a required measure under the START II Treaty, will help both to avoid a return to hair-trigger strategic postures on both sides, and to put an end to any conceivable incentive for a `bolt-from-the-blue' attack.
Ratification of the START II Treaty is a highly cost-effective way to reduce the threat to U.S. national security interests posed by nuclear weapons. It will eliminate some 5,000 warheads from the Russian force posture. Our modest verification cost will be dwarfed by the U.S. defense budget savings that will flow from the retirements of our excess strategic nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.
Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support the ratification of the START II Treaty today, and to work to build support and understanding of the advantages of the START II Treaty among the members of the Russian Duma, prior to their consideration of the Treaty later this year. We need to take every opportunity to explain to the new Duma the advantages that will accrue to Russia from the entry into force of this Treaty.
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Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, 3 years ago President George Bush and President Boris Yeltsin met in Moscow to sign a second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. At that time, the dissolution of the Soviet Union made it possible to achieve additional reductions in our nuclear arsenals beyond those provided in the START I Treaty, thereby advancing United States security and further reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation. On December 5, 1994, President Clinton and the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan convened in Budapest to finalize the entry into force of START I, clearing the way for the ratification of START II.
It has thus been a full year since START II has been ready for Senate advice and consent to ratification, and I am pleased that it is finally being considered by the full Senate. The Foreign Relations Committee has held eight hearings on the Treaty, in open and closed session, with administration and private witnesses. On December 12, the Treaty was reported favorably on a unanimous vote of 18 to 0.
Let me elaborate on the substance of this Treaty and its benefits to U.S. security. Building upon START I, the START II Treaty advances our interests by eliminating the most threatening and destabilizing types of weapons in the Russian arsenal. Under the Treaty, Russia has agreed to destroy all of its heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles [ICBM's], including all its SS-18 missiles, which were the centerpiece of the former Soviet Union's strategic nuclear force. The Treaty also ends the practice of putting multiple warheads on (or `MIRVing') ICBM's, a practice which had led to exponential increases in the number of deployed nuclear warheads and heightened the threat of a first nuclear strike. START II requires each side to reduce its deployed warheads from the 6,000 allowed under START I to 3,500 by the year 2003. This will mean a significant reduction in Russia's deployed nuclear warheads, which numbered over 10,000 when the Start Treaty went into force.
In addition, START II limits the number of warheads deployed on Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles [SLBM's], and expands the stringent verification regime put into place by START I. New verification measures, including on-site inspections of SS-18 silo conversions and missile elimination procedures, along with the inspection for all heavy bombers, were added to START II to reduce the risk of non-compliance.
Taken together, the two START Treaties will reduce the deployed strategic offensive arms of the United States and Russia by approximately two-thirds by the year 2003. Two out of every three weapons that were once aimed against the United States are going to be dismantled or destroyed over a period of less than 10 years. The United States will retain a credible nuclear deterrent while increasing our ability to verify Russian compliance with its Treaty obligations.
During the Committee proceedings, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, gave the following testimony in support of ratification:
Let me say at the outset that, on the basis of detailed study of our security needs and careful review of the Treaty, it is my judgment, and the unanimous opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the START II Treaty is in the best interests of the United States. I recommend the Senate provide its advice and consent to START II 's ratification.
President George Bush stated in his January 15, 1993 Letter of Transmittal to the Senate--
The START II Treaty is clearly in the interest of the United States and represents a watershed in our efforts to stabilize the nuclear balance and further reduce strategic offensive arms. I therefore urge the Senate to give prompt and favorable consideration to the Treaty, including its Protocols and Memorandum on Attribution, and to give its advice and consent to ratification.
Then-Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger concluded in his letter of submittal to President Bush--
This Treaty is truly an historic achievement. By significantly reducing strategic offensive arms, and by eliminating those that pose the greatest threat to stability, the START II Treaty will enhance the national security of the United States. It is in the best interest of the United States of America, the Russian Federation, and, indeed, the entire world that this Treaty enter into force promptly. I strongly recommend its transmission to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification.
Mr. President, ratification of START II not only will lock in reductions that benefit U.S. security directly, it will send an important signal to other countries that the United States is serious about nuclear non-proliferation. It will encourage other nations to join us in the process of limiting weapons of mass destruction and will lay the foundation for future arms control agreements. As Spurgeon Keeny, Jr., President of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, warned, `Failure to complete Senate action promptly could delay for years the entry into force of these agreements with great disadvantage to United States security.'
I think the risks of inaction are grave indeed, and I urge my colleagues to join in giving prompt advice and consent to ratification.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me start off by saying that there is nothing wrong with arms control in principle, but there are a lot of reasons to oppose the START II Treaty. The Treaty does not destroy a single Russian warhead. It talks about downgrading, reducing, downloading, retiring, converting--all actions that can be reversed. The Russians do not have to destroy the warheads.
I wondered also what would happen to those warheads if Russia should decide to comply with the START II Treaty--this is a big `if,' since they have not complied with other treaties --but if they did, what would happen to those warheads if they were, for example, to download them?
We all know the financial needs of the former Soviet Union, Russia in particular. And we also know that there is a market for those warheads in hostile areas of the world--in the Middle East, North Korea, China, all throughout the world. You have to ask: what would happen to those warheads? We are looking at an agreement that allows Russia to continue modernization, build heavy missiles for 7 more years, and new submarine-launched missiles, and new land missiles, including a hard-to-find mobile missile that even the United States does not have. It allows them to conduct aggressive military exercises and to increase anti-U.S. intelligence.
I feel that no effective verification or enforcement could be put in place with this Treaty, even if the Russians should comply with it. But let us look at the history. People assume they are going to comply with the START II Treaty but they did not comply with the START I Treaty, they did not comply with the biological weapons convention, with the chemical weapons convention, the INF Treaty, the ABM Treaty. Just around Christmastime Pavel Grachev, who is the Minister of Defense for Russia, made a statement that they did not intend to comply with our Conventional Forces Europe Treaty, the CFE Treaty.
Their reason for not complying, he said, was that the CFE Treaty was not a Treaty made between the United States and Russia, but between the United States and the USSR. I would ask why, if that is true, are we so compelled to comply with the ABM Treaty, which also was not between the United States and Russia, but was ratified in 1972 when Russia was still the Soviet Union? So I have to ask the question, why is it so important, at this particular time, to have the START II Treaty?
Let us look at what has happened just recently. I know we all rejoiced just a few years ago when Boris Yeltsin and the reformers took control. But look what happened just in the last election, last December, of the Duma. The Communists, now, have 157 seats; Boris Yeltsin and the Reform Party, only 55 seats; the person I think most people here dread more than anyone else, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, his party, the Ultranationalists, took 51 seats. So he is almost even with Yeltsin's party, and it is just one-third of what the Communists now have. So, it is a totally different environment right now in Russia from 1993, when the START II Treaty was signed by President Bush and President Yeltsin.
I think, when you realize that we are ratifying a flawed agreement with a country that has never lived up to previous agreements, and that we are accepting Russia's demands that we remain naked to missile attacks from all over the world, that this is wrong.
On December 28 President Clinton vetoed the defense authorization bill. His prime objection to this bill was that we were spending money on a national missile defense system. In his message he declared that this might violate the 1972 ABM Treaty, which prevents the deployment of a multiple-site missile defense system in the United States. Clinton stated that the missile defense plan `* * * puts the United States policy on a collision course with the ABM Treaty and puts at risk continued Russian implementation of the START I Treaty and Russian ratification of the START II Treaty.'
Our President rejects a national missile defense system. He says that U.S. national security in the post-cold-war world rests on two treaties , the ABM Treaty and the START Treaty, both negotiated at the height of the cold war. That is the linkage the President is making. We can argue whether or not there is a linkage between the ABM Treaty and the START II Treaty, but in fact the President thinks there is. He has stated that there is, and he accepts the Russians' linkage between these treaties , which says that we must abide by one, the ABM Treaty, to get the other, the START Treaty.
You might ask yourself the question: why is it that Russia is
so interested in those two treaties ? First of all, I have serious doubts that they would comply with the START II Treaty. Maybe they have doubts that they would, too. But it seems to me they are bent on our agreeing to reduce our nuclear capability, which they would do to, and at the same time they are even more interested in the ABM Treaty. I think this is something we really have not talked about enough.
The ABM Treaty was one that was put together in a Republican administration. It was Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's project. Dr. Kissinger was the architect of the ABM Treaty of 1972. In 1972 we had two superpowers in this world. Mr. President, we could identify who the enemy was. At that time it seemed to be a good idea. I did not agree with it at the time, but I certainly did not question the wisdom of President Nixon and of Dr. Kissinger, because it seemed that a policy of mutual assured destruction was in the best interests of the United States. Simply put, that is a policy that says: we agree not to defend ourselves and not to implement a national missile defense system if you agree to do the same thing. That way, the risk of complete destruction keeps us from attacking each other.
You may believe that this was not a good idea at the time. I did not think it was a good idea. But there is certainly some justification for it.
That is not the environment that we are in today. In fact, Henry Kissinger himself has said that it is insane to continue with this type of policy in today's environment when you have the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction all throughout the world. It was Kissinger who said, and this is a direct quote: `It is nuts to make a virtue out of our vulnerability.'
People have made several references to the fact that President Reagan actually started some of the START negotiations. But I would recall the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland. It was really the defining moment in the cold war. Gorbachev proposed to eliminate all nuclear weapons and everyone was all excited. But then he established the condition that President Reagan would have to kill the Strategic Defense Initiative, a plan for a national missile defense system. In other words, he said we will agree to doing away with and destroying all nuclear weapons if you agree to make yourself vulnerable to an attack.
Reagan walked away from the bad agreement in order to save the United States missile defense program. We are faced with the same choice. Our President currently is embracing that very notion that Reagan rejected, even though, since 1986, the missile threat has greatly increased and Russia has violated Treaty after Treaty. We have to ask, what is so good about the tradeoff now?
Mr. President, I will make this brief because I have made this statement on the floor so many times before. I have deep concern about what is happening right now with our attitude toward a national missile defense system. It is kind of interesting--all these people who come in and want to talk about how bad a national missile defense system is always use such words as `Star Wars,' trying to make it look like something that is mythical, something that is science fiction. In fact, anyone who was watching TV during the Persian Gulf war knows that the technology of knocking missiles down with missiles is something that is alive and well.
President Clinton appointed Jim Woolsey to be CIA Director, and he was certainly privileged to more information, or as much as anyone else in the world, concerning this Nation's defense. And he said that there are between 20 and 25 nations around the world who currently have, or are developing, weapons of mass destruction, either nuclear, chemical, or biological, and are developing the missile means to deliver those weapons of mass destruction.
So there is a greater threat. Most people who are watching the security scene today believe there is a greater threat facing America today than there was during the cold war, because now we are not talking about one enemy, we are talking about 25 or so countries that are developing this technology.
If anyone is comfortable in what is happening right now, I suggest that you read last Wednesday's New York Times. I will not submit this for the Record because I did so yesterday when I first read it. I was still in some degree of shock. The New York Times provides fresh evidence of the folly of leaving America vulnerable to ballistic missile attack.
In an article entitled--listen to this--`As China threatens Taiwan, it makes sure United States listens--' the Times reports on ominous information recently passed to National Security Adviser Anthony Lake concerning measures being taken by Beijing to facilitate military action against Taiwan, and points to statements intended to detour the United States from coming to Taipei's assistance. Referring to Charles Freeman--he is a former U.S. Ambassador to China, now Assistant Secretary of Defense--the article reports that `A Chinese official told him of the advanced state of military planning and that preparations for a missile attack on Taiwan and the target selection to carry it out have been completed and await final decision by the politburo in Beijing.' Freeman reportedly told Lake that `A Chinese official asserted that China could act militarily against Taiwan without fear of intervention by the United States because American leaders `care more about'--listen to this--`Los Angeles than they do Taiwan.' That statement Mr. Freeman characterized as an indirect threat by China to use nuclear weapons against the United States.
Mr. President, this is the environment we are in today. Today the Senate is considering a Treaty, START II, that will further endanger our country because the President and the Russians link it to the ABM Treaty, which precludes our country from defending itself against missile attack.
I would like to submit something for the Record. It was in the Wall Street Journal, in an editorial called, `The ABM Treaty's Threat,' on January 2.
I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
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With his veto of the 1996 defense bill last week, President Clinton just made the world a more dangerous place. If there's a silver lining, it is that it sets down an important political marker for this year's presidential campaign. GOP upstart Steve Forbes also put down a marker last week, castigating Bob Dole and the Senate for their apparent willingness to ratify the START II Treaty--a `further pretext,' Mr. Forbes said, for the `policy of leaving the American people vulnerable to missile attack.
Given the current Senate, the President's veto is almost certain to be sustained, hamstringing the effort to build critically needed defenses against ballistic missile attack. Millions of Americans may pay for his decision with their lives, when some future commander-in-chief lacks the means to shoot down a ballistic missile heading on a lethal trajectory for an American city. By vetoing the bill, Mr. Clinton also shows that he has no viable strategy for dealing with the changed nuclear realities of the post-Cold War world--realities that are discussed nearby by former Reagan Defense official Fred C. Ikle.
The Administration, to the extent it's thinking at all instead of repeating Democratic Party rote, remains mired in an obsolete mindset that sees Moscow as our main foe and regards arms control and `mutual assured destruction' as the centerpiece of policy. Mr. Clinton's principal objection to the GOP defense bill is that by requiring deployment of a missile-defense system by 2003 it would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty under which the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed not to defend themselves against missile attack.
The Republican bill is `on a collision course with the ABM Treaty,' Mr. Clinton said in his veto message. That, as we see it, is precisely the point. The ABM Treaty is a grave danger to national security and the United States ought to exercise its prerogative to withdraw. If any progress toward defense is to be made, every Republican Presidential candidate ought to pledge to give the required notice on his first day in office.
We thought back in 1972 that agreeing not to defend against missile attack was a reckless promise, but today any vestige of a rationale has vanished. More than two-dozen nations already possess ballistic missiles and a number will soon have missiles capable of reaching across the Atlantic or the Pacific. It's not hard to imagine that Washington or San Francisco would make tempting targets for a lunatic leader in one of the Iraqs or North Koreas of the world. When that happens, it will be too late to start building a missile defense.
The ABM Treaty is just one relic of the Cold War that Mr. Clinton is intent on preserving. He further objects that it would derail his arms-control efforts, keeping the Russian Duma from ratifying Start II, under which Russia would reduce its nuclear arsenal to 3,500 warheads from about 8,000. Whatever the Duma does, it looks likely that the U.S. Senate will ratify Salt II three years after it was signed by Presidents Bush and Yeltsin. Perfunctory debate ended last week and a vote is expected soon. Mr. Forbes, free of the impact of past habit, is one of the few Republican voices urging against ratification.
Yet with few exceptions, Republicans do believe that defending America against missile attack ought to be a national priority. Their Congress has put forward a workable and affordable plan toward that goal. On the other hand, we have a President who's decided that it is more important to the security of the United States to reduce the number of Russian nuclear warheads than to have the capability to defend ourselves against missile attack from the madmen of the world.
As for Start II, somehow we don't find it very comforting to contemplate a world in which the Russians have 4,500 fewer scary things tucked away in their arsenal but a Saddam Hussein has one that he intends to use on us. Clearly it's time for a new security strategy. It will require more, but missile defense will be a cornerstone. Mr. Ikle argues that to wake the world to this obvious need may well take a nuclear explosion, either accidental or deliberate.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I will quote one sentence, which says:
As for START II, somehow we don't find it very comforting to contemplate a world in which the Russians have 4,500 fewer scary things tucked away in their arsenal but a Saddam Hussein has one that he intends to use on us.
So, in conclusion, I say, Mr. President, that passing of this Treaty right now may be important to the President's agenda. But if this Treaty is really important, why are we rushing through it with so little debate?
This morning we had a meeting in my office at 9 o'clock. It was with the 11 freshmen that were elected to this body in 1994. At that time we did not even know this was going to be on the agenda today. This was put on 10 hours ago before we had a chance to come out, debate it, get people together to really be concerned and to understand the full ramifications of this Treaty and how it provides a chance of making us vulnerable--10 hours. That is all the time we had.
What kind of a message will the rogue countries in the world get if we pass, on the same day, a defense bill recently stripped of missile defense and a START II Treaty on Russia's terms? Just to satisfy Russia, President Clinton was willing to veto the defense bill that attempted to protect Americans from missile attack.
Yes, we are getting the Russians down to 3,500 missiles, if they comply. But we are giving Russia a practical veto on our ability to defend ourselves. We have countries out there--China we just talked about, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya--any number of countries that are a direct threat to this country, and they are not constrained by any of the provisions in the START II agreement or in the ABM Treaty.
My simple proposition is this: Missile defense should be our highest national security priority. If the President believes that our highest priority must be sacrificed to gain Russia's approval of START II, I say it is too high a price to pay.
Mr. President, every time I come out here and we talk about this Treaty or we talk about the ABM Treaty or we talk about the missile defense of this country, I remember the days following the April 19 bombing in Oklahoma City in my beautiful State of Oklahoma. I had very close friends with daughters and sons and mothers and fathers who were in that building, the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, hoping day after day and hour after hour that they would find them still to be alive until finally all hope was given up. We lost 169 lives in the most brutal terrorist attack in the history of America. I saw those things. My son, an orthopedic surgeon, was practicing with a doctor who went in and amputated the leg of a woman in order to extract her from the bomb site.
When I think about that, I remember that the bomb which blew up the Federal building was rated at 1 ton of TNT, and the smallest nuclear warhead known today is rated at 1 kiloton of TNT, or 1,000 times the size of the bomb that exploded in Oklahoma City.
That is why I stated on this floor last week that if the vote is 98 to 1, I will be the one to oppose the ratification of the START II agreement because, Mr. President, it is the right thing to do for America.
I yield the floor.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote to ratify the START II agreement. By ratifying this Treaty, the Senate will be taking a major step toward eliminating the menace of nuclear arms from the face of the Earth.
Since the dawn of the nuclear age at the end of World War II, nuclear arms control has been our highest priority. One of President Kennedy's proudest achievements was the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963. which banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. Many of us today continue to attempt to build on that achievement by enacting a comprehensive test ban Treaty to ban all nuclear tests.
In recent decades, we have made progress toward reducing covert nuclear arsenals. Negotiations on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty began in 1982, at one of the most difficult points in our cold war relationship with the Soviet Union. Although the first years of the START process saw only sporadic progress, our goal of achieving significant, verifiable reductions in the superpowers' strategic nuclear arsenals never wavered.
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, our long-standing efforts were rewarded with the signing of the START I Treaty by President Bush in 1991 and its ratification by Congress the following year.
Now, nearly 3 years after the signing of START II by President Bush in Moscow, we are achieving another milestone in the process by ratifying this far-reaching agreement.
This second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty lives up to its name--it bring about dramatic reductions in the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia. The United States and the Soviet Union had arsenals with over 10,000 nuclear warheads when the Berlin Wall came down. START I is bringing the level down to between 6,000 and 7,000. START II will cut the arsenals in half
again--to between 3,000 and 3,500 nuclear warheads by the year 2003. It has been more than 40 years since Russia's nuclear threat to the United States has been this small. We are moving in the direction of eliminating the nuclear menace that threatens our national survival.
In addition to reducing the size of the United States and Russian arsenals, the Treaty before us will restructure the strategic forces of both nations to create a more stable nuclear relationship.
First, the Treaty eliminates multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles [MIRV's] from the land-based missile forces of both nations. This step achieves a goal that many of us have sought for over two decades--to eliminate the incentive for either side to strike at the other's multiple-warhead land-based missiles in a time of crisis.
Another major accomplishment of the Treaty is to eliminate heavy ICBM's from the arsenals of both countries. The SS-18 missile in the Russian arsenal, which caused such concern for the United States for so long, will be scrapped.
Another strength of this Treaty is in the area of verification. START II builds on the ground-breaking verification regime established by the START I Treaty. This regime includes extensive onsite inspections, notifications, and the use of national technical means of verification, our network of intelligence satellites and sensors. In ways like these, the ratification regime gives us a high degree of confidence that we can accurately assess Russian compliance with this Treaty.
In addition to the verification procedures included in the Treaty, the greater openness in current-day Russian society, compared to the closed nature of the Soviet Union, gives much wider information about Russian strategic behavior and intentions.
START II is also a major part of the effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other nations. During review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty last spring, many of the nations which voted with us for a permanent extension of that Treaty conditioned their vote on progress in United States-Russian arms reduction, specifically the approval of START II.
If the United States is to lead a worldwide effort to eliminate the threat of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, we need to take steps to reduce the United States and Russian nuclear arsenals. This Treaty represents the single largest step in that direction in history. It earns us the credibility and respect necessary to enable President Clinton to conclude negotiations in 1996 of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, outlawing nuclear explosions around the globe. This achievement, which is within our grasp, will be the most important step toward limiting worldwide nuclear proliferation since the NPT was negotiated nearly three decades ago.
The end of the cold war has recast the international security landscape. Before the Berlin Wall fell, there was little hope of cutting nuclear arsenals this deeply. Now, we have a unique opportunity to reduce the nuclear threat to all nations.
The NPT, the Comprehensive Test Ban, and the two START Treaties are pillars of an evolving strategy that relies increasingly on cooperation and consensus to achieve security from nuclear threats, even as we continue to maintain the forces necessary for a stable deterrent.
One of our greatest challenges is to continue this progress, to pursue arms control as vigorously as we can, to bring other nations into cooperative security regimes, to do all we can to prevent nuclear weapons from reaching the hands of terrorists, and to develop more effective means for peaceful resolution of international conflicts. These efforts, if tenaciously pursued, will allow us to reduce, and perhaps one day, to eliminate, weapons of mass destruction from the face of the Earth. I urge my colleagues to ratify this Treaty.
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Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the START II Treaty and the conditions and declarations outlined in the resolution of ratification.
Last month's Russian parliamentary elections, in which opponents of free market reform and conciliation with the West made shocking gains, and the resignations from President Yeltsin's administration of several important reformers have created an atmosphere of great uncertainty in United States-Russian relations, I daresay there is no one in this body that has failed to see the significance in these events. I am sure that they will figure prominently in the foreign policy debates of the coming year.
These developments, however, as disturbing as they are, should not preclude us from moving forward with arms control agreements. We have reached arms control agreements with Russia in days much darker than these. We cannot base an issue of such monumental importance to our security as the quantity and quality of weapons possessed by the world's second largest nuclear power on the intricacies and imponderables of Russian politics.
What is going on inside Russia today, and what we can do to turn it to our advantage will be debated for years. We should lock in the reductions in START II made possible by the collapse of the Soviet Union while we have the opportunity.
I am not going to go into too much detail. My colleagues are all familiar with the Treaty. I do, however, want to point out a number of its more salient and compelling provisions. If fully implemented, START II will limit the United States and Russia to 3,500 deployed warheads each--a reduction by half of our START I limits and an overall reduction of two-thirds; it will ban all land-based, multiple warhead missiles; and it will eliminate all of Russia's heaviest missiles.
In addition, I believe the Foreign Relations Committee and the managers of the resolution have added crucial conditions which improve upon the Treaty. I find two of these conditions most striking: One concerning noncompliance and the other the ABM Treaty.
The record of Russian compliance with other treaties , the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention, are not entirely reassuring. Compounding the problem of noncompliance, the administration's efforts to bring the Russians into compliance have been no more reassuring. In the case of the CFE Treaty, the administration made substantive changes in Russia's obligations, without Senate consent, in an
effort to gain Russian compliance. Despite this effort, months later, the administration was forced to declare Moscow in violation of the very targets designed to accommodate it. An article in this week's Washington Post by Thomas Lippman illustrates a similar problem related to Russian START I compliance. I ask that it be printed in the Record.
The Foreign Relations Committee has wisely seen fit to deal with this problem. According to a condition passed by the Foreign Relations Committee before sending the resolution of ratification to the floor, the President must report to the Senate on noncompliance and submit changes in the obligations of the parties to the Senate. The Senate has every right to review changes in the obligations and trade-offs to which it agrees. In the case of persistent noncompliance, the President must return to the Senate to seek its consent to continue U.S. adherence.
The committee is to be commended for taking responsible action on an issue so potentially and justifiably damaging to the Treaty's prospects.
With regard to the ABM Treaty, the tortuous process by which agreement was finally reached on the DOD authorization bill was a reminder that it remains a hotly contested issue not soon to be resolved. The Foreign Relations Committee, again commendably, has acted to preclude linking the futures of the START II and ABM treaties . After all, these treaties were reached in different eras and are separated by 20 years. The Foreign Relations Committee has included a condition stating that Russian ratification of START II should not be contingent on continued adherence by the United States to Russian interpretation of the ABM Treaty. The managers amendment makes this more explicit by declaring that nothing in the START II Treaty changes the rights of either party to the ABM Treaty.
Like NAFTA, START II is a Republican Treaty--inspired by Ronald Reagan and negotiated by President Bush. Ronald Reagan came to office pledging `peace through strength' and left office having concluded the first strategic weapons reduction Treaty in history. START II builds on these historic reductions. The Senate should follow through on President Reagan's vision and ratify the START II Treaty.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
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Russia has balked at implementing any of the nuclear security and weapons inspection agreements announced by President Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin at their summit meeting last May, throwing up a major roadblock to U.S-Russian cooperation in key security issues, U.S. officials said.
After a promising start on discussions aimed at carrying out the agreements, the Russians pulled back and have essentially suspended the talks, according to several officials who said they were perplexed and frustrated by the developments.
Officials at the State Department, the White House and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said it is unclear why the Russians have backed away and there may be multiple reasons. What is clear, they said, is that the mutual inspections and data exchanges on weapons and nuclear materials--which the presidents said would happen--are not about to happen.
The failure to carry through on the agreements does not by itself threaten U.S. security or U.S.-Russian relations, officials said. But in the context of other recent developments in Russia such as the removal of almost all pro-Western reformers from Yeltsin's government and the appointment of a Russian nationalist, Yevgeny Primakov, as foreign minister, it adds to a troubling recent pattern that has clouded Washington's relations which Moscow.
`We hope to implement all the agreements presidents Clinton and Yeltsin arrived at during their Moscow summit,' State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said. `Over the past couple of years we have found that some of these arms agreements are very difficult, and it is sometimes necessary to bring in senior officials because the bureaucracy in both countries can only take them so far,' Burns said. He added that the United States and Russia are cooperating on many other issues, such as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.
Clinton and Yeltsin on May 10 issued a `Joint Statement on the Transparency and Irreversibility of the Process of Reducing Nuclear Weapons,' containing measures by which each country could assure itself that the other was carrying out promised nuclear weapons reductions.
They said the two countries would `exchange on a regular basis' detailed information on their stockpiles of weapons and nuclear materials. They also said the two countries would undertake `reciprocal monitoring' of the facilities where they store nuclear materials removed from dismantled warheads. And they said they would `seek to conclude in the shortest possible time' a legal agreement ensuring protection of the exchanged data.
None of it has happened. The legal agreement was never negotiated, making it impossible to exchange classified data and develop the `chain of custody' agreement sought by the United States. And the United States refused to allow Russian officials to inspect the only U.S. nuclear weapons dismantlement facility, the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Tex., because Russia would not allow U.S. inspectors to visit a comparable plant there.
In the same joint declaration, Clinton and Yeltsin `urged progress' in carrying out a 1994 agreement by which Russia was to cease producing plutonium, the key building block of nuclear weapons. That has not happened either, officials said, but for different reasons: The United States has been able to come up with the money to replace the electric power and heat generated by the Russian plutonium-producing reactors, so the reactors still are operating.
Discussions on this issue are to resume later this month, Energy Department officials said.
The failure to implement the agreements contributes to widespread suspicion in Congress about the ability and will of the Russian defense establishment to carry out such accords.
That suspicion was manifest when the Senate began consideration of the START II arms reduction Treaty on the Friday before Christmas. In that session, which attracted little notice because of the timing, the Senate approved a Resolution of Ratification that directs the president to follow specific procedures in the event of Russian noncompliance.
`In the event that noncompliance persists' after diplomatic approaches, the resolution says, the president must return to the Senate for a determination of whether the United States will continue to be bound by the Treaty.
`Obviously we all hope and require that the Russians fully comply with START II,' said Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.).
`But their record and the record of the former Soviet Union with respect to compliance with arms control agreements is somewhat dubious. I will note just a few of the areas of violation in the past: the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons agreements, the Missile Technology Control Regime, START I and the conventional forces in Europe treaties . All of these agreements have provisions that Russia has in one way or another failed to comply [with],' Kyl said.
The START II Treaty, signed in 1991, requires the United States and Russia to make further deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems by 2003. During the pre-Christmas discussion, senators of both parties made clear that they will ratify it by an overwhelming vote, but the resolution they adopted specified that this country will not be bound by its terms until it has been ratified by the Russian Duma, a much more dubious proposition.
Russian ratification is not imminent, several analysts said, because of strong opposition in the recently elected Duma, or lower house of parliament, where many members reportedly regard its terms as skewed in favor of the United States.
The Senate resolution called on `both parties to the START II Treaty to attach high priority' to implementation of the May 10 joint declaration so that compliance with START I and START II can be verified, but did not make implementation a condition of START II ratification.
U.S. officials involved in the `transparency and irreversibility' issue offered several explanations of what might be holding up an agreement on the Russian side.
`The Russians have essentially told us they are doing a reassessment. It probably has to do with the political situation there,' one said. `They have a lot of communists and nationalists in the Duma.'
The Russians `have very limited interagency communication,' another source said. `Their vertical communication is relatively poor. And there's the fiefdom problem,' an indirect allusion to the prickly and independent Russian Atomic Energy Minister, Viktor Mikhailov. `We're talking about letting out information about the crown jewels,' another U.S. official said. `Both sides are pretty nervous about it, but especially them.'
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to express my unqualified support for ratification of the START II Treaty. I am happy that the Senate is finally considering this measure and believe the implementation of this Treaty is another step on the road to eliminating the most destabilizing strategic weapons.
In January 1993, President George Bush and President Boris Yeltsin signed the Treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation on further reduction and limitation of strategic arms. Their determination and cooperation helped build upon the progress that was achieved from the START I Treaty. The result of START II will mean greater reductions in strategic nuclear forces.
Ratification of this Treaty today is critical, as it continues a process begun by START I. This Treaty will help enhance U.S. and international security and substantially reduce the number of strategic warheads currently deployed by both countries. In early December, I joined a number of my Senate colleagues in sending a letter to the majority leader urging that both START II and the Chemicals Weapons Convention [CWC] be brought before the Senate for action. Shortly thereafter, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously to approve ratification of START II. This issue has bipartisan support. Today we have an opportunity to act on that.
Mr. President, this Treaty has many important provisions. It will eliminate around 4,000 strategic nuclear weapons from the arsenal of the former Soviet Union. Specifically, it will eliminate all Russian heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles [ICBM's], and all multiple-warhead ICBM's. Eliminating these weapons would greatly reduce the threat of first strike in the event of renewed hostilities with the former Soviet Union. By eliminating this capability, United States-Russian strategic relations will be strengthened.
Another important aspect of START II is that it strengthens our ability to verify information, conduct on-site inspections, and deter possible violations of the Treaty. This will help ensure compliance and allow monitoring of the progress being made to reduce these weapons. Under this Treaty, reduction of arms will take place over a 5- to 7-year period. When these reductions are completed, the United States and Russia will each be limited to between 3,000 and 3,500 deployed strategic warheads. It is my hope that ratification of this Treaty today will help encourage Russia to complete its own START II ratification efforts.
Mr. President, since the end of the cold war, our world has undergone a tremendous transformation. There is less fear and worry about nuclear war. We have made substantial efforts to reduce nuclear weapons. President Clinton has made nonproliferation and arms reduction a major priority. But the weapons are still here. Ratification of this Treaty clearly represents significant progress with regard to reducing nuclear arms. However, there is still work yet to be done.
Last year 187 nations voted to indefinitely extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] with a commitment to work on a Comprehensive Test Ban [CTB] Treaty. I am extremely encouraged by this action and believe that we must work to reach an agreement on a CTB in the near future. In addition, the Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC] is also awaiting ratification by the United States. The CWC bans the development, production, stockpiling, and use of toxic chemicals as a weapon. Clearly, we must eliminate these weapons of mass destruction. By addressing these issues, it is my hope that other countries will be more likely to follow the U.S. example and end their reliance on a nuclear deterrent.
Mr. President, today we have an opportunity to ratify a Treaty that is vital to U.S. strategic interests. We have an opportunity to help make the world a safer place to live--a safer place for our children. START II has strong support from the American public, the national security community and many Members of this body. We must continue with our efforts to reduce these weapons of mass destruction, and ratification of START II is a critical step toward this end.
I urge my colleagues to support this measure.
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Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, 3 years after its signing by the United States and the Soviet Union, the second landmark Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty has finally come to the floor of the Senate for consideration. I want to join the overwhelming majority of my colleagues in strongly supporting the ratification of START II, and hope it will move quickly into force. Indeed, this Treaty is key to our national and international security, and will help set the tone for what should be a more peaceful era.
Mr. President, the risk of detonation of a nuclear device in Western Europe or the United States may have actually increased since the end of the Cold War. There are literally tens of thousands of weapons, and mass quantities of nuclear materials, in Russia's stockpile, and their safety and security are in question. Just one of those has to get into the hands of a rogue nation or a high-paying terrorist to threaten or destroy Washington, Bonn, London, or any other major metropolis.
When START II goes into force, however, 8,000 strategic weapons--4,000 from both Russia and the United States--will be tabbed for destruction. This will include the abolition of the core of the Russian nuclear arsenal--the deadly SS-18--and the multiple independent re-entry vehicles [MIRV's], significantly reducing the likelihood of either side launching a nuclear first strike. START II, however, does leave intact our defensive, second strike capability.
Implementation of START II, moreover--coupled with the Non-Proliferation Treaty the United States signed earlier this year--would reflect monumental reform of our nuclear posture. Not only will these two treaties help reduce the possibility of an accidental launch or the sabotage of nuclear weapons and materials, they will establish a new approach toward global non-proliferation. As the United States and Russia will downsize their stockpiles, other nuclear countries could proceed with reduction of their arsenals. This will bring us several steps closer to successful conclusion of a comprehensive nuclear test ban Treaty.
Perhaps the most significant achievements of START II would be the consecration of an international alliance against the scourge of nuclear war, rather than continuation of the build-up by nations which could each independently threaten a nuclear explosion.
Mr. President, the post-cold war era brings an opportunity to reshape U.S. defense posture and policy. No longer will we have to rely on the threat of nuclear weapons nor, I believe, permanently deploy United States combat forces abroad, except in limited and rare occasions, in order to protect our interests.
While we can all agree on the need--indeed the moral imperative--of ending the threat of nuclear war, there is an equal need for debate on where we go from here. For example, the mission and, indeed, the necessity of alliances such as NATO--anchored in nuclear doctrine and massive retaliation--are only now being reconsidered. The Bosnia operation is the most recent example of an unfortunate tendency to address, by a rather ad hoc process, questions regarding our role, mission and methods in the new era.
The Congress, and particularly the Senate, will play a pivotal role in that debate, Mr. President. I have made clear my view that it will be incumbent on this body to assert its constitutional prerogative in shaping the future of our national security posture.
Ratifying the START II Treaty will be an important step in accepting and asserting our responsibilities. Time is of the essence, Mr. President. The Russian Duma will not ratify the Treaty until the Senate does, and, as we saw in last month's parliamentary elections in Russia, the Duma could become more anti-Western and regressive. We must lock in these reductions, and begin implementation of START II as soon as possible.
The Senate has dallied long enough on issues of paramount importance to national security. START II and the equally vital Chemical Weapons Convention have unfortunately been held hostage by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This has reflected badly on this Senate, and badly served US interests. Therefore, I am gratified that we are finally here today, debating START II, and would urge swift ratification of this Treaty and the CWC. We must consolidate the gains the new era affords us, lest we revert back to the dangers and antiquated thinking of the cold war.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to ratify the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by an overwhelming vote. This Treaty will receive bipartisan support because it makes an enormous contribution to our security. That is why I am glad to be part of a large group of Senators who support this Treaty.
President Bush and President Yeltsin of Russia signed the START II Treaty in January of 1993, in one of the greatest achievements of the Bush administration. Once President Clinton agreed on the implementation of the first START Treaty with the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the Ukraine, START I came into force in December 1994, and the way was cleared for ratification of this START II Treaty by the Senate and the Russian Duma.
I will not dwell on why it has taken so long for the Senate to take up this Treaty. I will only note that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee conducted no business meetings for 4 1/2 months. It took courage for the Senator from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, to block other Senate business in order to free the START II Treaty from a committee that had been shut down. So I want to congratulate him on the fact that the Senate is now debating this Treaty. He has made a great contribution to our national security and our future by ensuring that this Treaty come to the floor.
Mr. President, the START II Treaty is the single greatest step in the history of arms control. It aims to eliminate `first strike' capability. It is the fear of a nuclear first strike--sometimes called a bolt out of the blue--that keeps the nuclear powers on hair trigger alert and encourages the nuclear arms race. But the START II Treaty would enable the United States and the Russian Federation to rest assured that neither can knock the other out with a surprise attack.
Each would retain enough of a deterrent to inflict punishing retaliation after a first strike, which means that a first strike would be a losing strategy. The United States would also retain a hedge against a breakout from the Treaty in the event of a military coup or other reversal of democracy in Russia. The remaining U.S. arsenal would also defend us against rogue nations that might conceivably seek to threaten us or our allies with limited weapons of mass destruction.
Even as we strive for peace and stability, we must not let our guard down. That is why it is essential that we retain a robust force of Minuteman III's, B-52 bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
It is important to note that the START II Treaty would eliminate the backbone of the Russian nuclear deterrent, the massive SS-18 land-based missile. The Russians have 188 of them, with 10 warheads each. If ratified, START II will require the SS-18's to be destroyed. More than 2,000 other Russian warheads would also be destroyed.
START II embodies the principle that the cold war is over. We built up our nuclear capability in order to outweigh the Soviet Union's numerical superiority in conventional weapons, especially in Europe. The Soviet Union is gone; the Berlin Wall is no more; Europe is no longer divided by Communist tyranny. Much of our nuclear arsenal has lost its purpose. By ratifying START II, the Senate would recognize that we have entered a new era.
Ratification will also demonstrate American leadership. It will show the Russian Duma that the United States Senate is serious about arms control. It will lead the way for other nuclear powers to cut their own stockpiles of weapons. And it will demonstrate to nonnuclear states that the United States is living up to the commitment made when we signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, that we would work for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.
The START II Treaty would reduce the likelihood of an accidental launch or terrorist attack. Fewer nuclear weapons means better control over those weapons by a country's civilian leadership. Better control means a lesser likelihood that those weapons will fall into the wrong hands.
Lastly, the START II Treaty is verifiable. The Treaty continues the stringent START I verification regime of satellites and other intelligence, data exchange, notification, exhibition, and onsite inspection to detect and deter possible breaches of the Treaty. But START II includes new verification measures, including observation of silo conversion and missile elimination procedures, exhibitions, and inspections of all heavy bombers to confirm weapon loads, and exhibitions of heavy bombers reoriented to a conventional role to confirm their observable differences.
We North Dakotans know about nuclear weapons. After all, with our two Minuteman wings and our B-52 bombers, it has been said that North Dakota is the third strongest nuclear power in the entire world, after the United States and Russia. We have been a cold war arsenal for decades. We remain ready to help ensure peace in a new world.
At the same time, North Dakotans are glad to see the nuclear shadow lightening. It is time to ratify the START II Treaty. Coupled with a strong defense, it will help build our national security. I urge my colleagues to support START II.
Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
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Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the Senate has had the opportunity to review and consider the START II Treaty for almost three years, and it is now offering its advice and consent to that Treaty. I am pleased to endorse this Treaty, which will substantially reduce the nuclear threat that has hovered for so many years like a dark cloud over both the United States and Russia. The START II Treaty builds on twenty years of arms control efforts ranging from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), through the SALT I, SALT II, and START I treaties .
The START II Treaty, signed by Presidents Bush and Yeltsin on January 3, 1993, commits the United States and Russia to deeper reductions in strategic offensive nuclear weapons, and goes beyond the START I Treaty to include warheads on heavy bombers. The START II Treaty also establishes a limit of 3,500 deployed warheads, a ban on all land-based, multiple warhead ballistic missiles, and limitations on the number of warheads deployed on all submarine launched ballistic missiles. When taken together and fully implemented by January 1, 2003, START I and START II will have cut the deployed strategic weapons of the United States and Russia by approximately two-thirds.
The Arms Control Observer Group, which I co-chair with the distinguished Senator from Alaska, Senator Stevens, has offered a package of nine amendments to the Treaty document. These amendments address a number of concerns. Most importantly, one amendment states that nothing in START II changes the rights of either party to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Another states the requirement for Senate advice and consent to any possible future amendments to START II. I commend Senator Stevens and all of the members of the Arms Control Observer Group for their efforts to review this important Treaty.
The START II Treaty is an important step forward for arms control. Arms control measures are a more sensible and cost effective means of addressing the actual threats to U.S. national security than are some of the costly and theoretical ballistic missile defense programs on which billions of taxpayer dollars have been lavished. I much prefer to spend money to destroy actual missiles and missile silos outright, than to spend money on exotic technologies of only hypothetical effectiveness. Reducing the threat by such concrete measures is the cornerstone of effective threat reduction, which also reduces the need to spend, spend, spend, on more and more costly and dangerous weapons.
Mr. President, the nuclear sword of Damocles has hung by a thread over the lives of every U.S. citizen since we entered the nuclear age. Arms control measures like this START II Treaty do not remove that menacing sword, but each arms control Treaty strengthens the thread suspending the sword, weaving it into a sturdy, and safer, cord.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, I rise to offer some personal reflections on both the substance of this Treaty and the process by which the Senate is considering it.
Frankly, I am troubled by the casual, disengaged manner in which the Senate is exercising its advice and consent responsibilities. Clearly, there are numerous issues of importance to the country which demand our attention these days. But national security policy is not something that we can set aside and deal with only when it is convenient.
Maintaining a strong and effective national security policy requires our constant vigilance. It requires that we rise above the kind of partisan politics which are so prevalent in Washington today. It requires that we submit prospective arms accords to rigorous examination and analysis to ensure that these treaties are verifiable, enforceable, and supportive of our national interests.
But where has this scrutiny been? How many of my colleagues have actually sat down and reviewed the details of this Treaty? How many of my colleagues have examined the verification regime, the intelligence assessments, the Russian strategic modernization program, and the political transition that is ongoing in Russia. With all due respect, other than select members of the Foreign Relations, Intelligence, and Armed Services Committees, I would say very few. That does not speak well for this institution. It does not speak well for those of us who have been elected to uphold the Constitution.
Mr. President, I want to raise a number of issues that trouble me about this Treaty. First off, I am concerned by loopholes in the Treaty that allow thousands of systems and warheads to avoid destruction. The Treaty establishes central limits on deployed systems and accountable warheads, but it does not require destruction of many of these systems. Either side is permitted to retain a vast stockpile of nondeployed missiles, launchers, and warheads; but with the exception of the SS-18, only deployed systems are accountable. This can hardly be considered legitimate arms reduction.
I am also troubled by the intelligence community's lack of confidence in its ability to verify Russian compliance. Although the administration has touted the effectiveness of the START verification regime, which START II continues, the intelligence community has been less convincing. In its report on the START Treaty, the Senate Intelligence Committee stated:
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Members of the Senate should understand, however, that U.S. intelligence will have less than high confidence in its monitoring of such areas as nondeployed mobile ICBM's, the
number of reentry vehicles actually carried by some ICBM's and SLBM's, and some provisions relating to cruise missiles and the heavy bombers that carry them.
The Intelligence Committee's report continues, saying `this committee remains deeply concerned, moreover, that Russia's former, and perhaps continuing, biological weapons program may indicate that the Russian military is capable of mounting or continuing a START violation, either in contravention of the wishes of Russia's civilian authorities, or with the knowledge or support of at least part of that leadership.'
Mr. President, these are very sobering appraisals and they focus on a key point. Without full, unconditional compliance, no arms control agreement is worth the paper it is printed on. The former Soviet Union consistently violated every arms control agreement it was a party to. Indeed, on an annual basis, successive administrations cited Soviet violations of the SALT I and SALT II Treaties , the CFE Treaty, the INF Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.
But this pattern did not end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Today Russia is in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention and the CFE Treaty. They are also refusing to implement any of the nuclear security and weapons inspection agreements announced by President Clinton and Boris Yeltsin at their summit meeting last May.
I have heard many of the Treaty's supporters brush off the noncompliance issue as an effort to revive outdated cold war rhetoric. But how does one explain this continuing pattern of noncompliance in the so called ERA of glasnost? We are not talking about events that occurred 10 years ago, we are talking about the Russian's violating the CFE Treaty today by failing to destroy tanks, armor and other weapons based east of the Ural mountains. We are talking about Russia's failure to honor its commitments made less than a year ago in the joint statement on the transparency and irreversibility of nuclear arms reductions.
And what about the recent Duma elections in which the nationalists and Communists in Russia gained 33 percent of the lower house seats? What about Boris Yeltsin's removal of virtually all pro-Western democratic reformers from his government? What about the continuing onslaught in Chechnya where innocent civilians are being routinely slaughtered in their homes and in the streets?
If Russia is engaging in such ruthless behavior, and is continuing to violate its existing Treaty obligations, all under the stewardship of Boris Yeltsin and the more liberal, pro-democratic forces, how can we realistically expect its behavior to improve with the hardliners now taking power. The truth is there is absolutely no indication that the Russian legislature
will even ratify START II, let alone comply. In fact, according to administration officials, the Russians have essentially told us that they are delaying consideration of START II indefinitely while they reassess the Treaty.
At the same time, the Russians are trying to manipulate the START II ratification issue to coerce financial and military concessions from the United States. Specifically, the Russians have stated that unless we suspend NATO expansion, unless we continue to adhere unconditionally to the ABM Treaty, and unless we increase financial aid to Russia, they will not ratify START II. Where I come from that is called extortion. And it is wrong.
Yet advocates of the Treaty, in both the administration and Congress, are going along with these Russian threats, and using them as a rationale to slow NATO expansion, prevent the United States from defending itself against ballistic missiles, and increase foreign aid. But what about our sovereignty? What about the security of our Nation? What about the security of NATO and the newly independent democracies in Eastern Europe? How can we possibly bow to such extortion and allow Russia to effectively wield a veto over our national defense policies? It is morally, ethically, and strategically misguided.
Mr. President, I am particularly troubled by the bogus linkage that has been drawn between the START II Treaty and national missile defense. There is no legitimate linkage between the two issues. The ABM Treaty was crafted during the cold war and is premised on the outdated doctrine of mutual assured destruction. But the world is now multipolar. The monolithic Soviet threat has been replaced by numerous regional threats. Mutual assured destruction is neither relevant to, or capable of deterring, these threats. The only responsible way to counter ballistic missile threats to our homeland is to develop and deploy national missile defenses.
The truth is, missile defenses do not threaten Russia. If Russia and the United States are no longer adversaries, and are no longer targeting nuclear weapons against each other, how could the deployment of a limited defense against other potential adversaries threaten Russia in any way? How are we provoking Russia or undermining cooperation if we defend the American people against the likes of Kim Jong-Il, Saddam Hussein, or Moammar Khadafi?
Those who say that any decision to protect the American people against ballistic missiles will kill the START II Treaty are engaging in pure fear mongering. It is irresponsible and unsupportable.
Mr. President, against the current backdrop of political, economic and military turmoil in Russia, against the backdrop of continuing noncompliance with existing arms control agreements,
and against the backdrop of uncertainty over the verification regime, why are we rubber stamping this Treaty with very little consideration in the Senate? With so many questions unanswered, it seems to me that the most responsible course of action would be for the Senate to delay action until we have a better understanding of the military and political situation that is unfolding in Russia. We also should demand full compliance with all existing arms control accords before ratifying a new, major Treaty. In my view, to ratify START II now, when Russia remains in noncompliance with other accords, would legitimize their behavior and thoroughly undermine our national security. We would, in effect, be rewarding their defiance. That can only encourage more violations, and further jeopardize our security.
I urge my colleagues to carefully consider these issues. The Constitution clearly calls upon us to safeguard the interests of the Nation through the advice and consent process. While I support the initiatives recommended by the arms control observer group to help strengthen the resolution of ratification, they alone do not address the plethora of issues that remain outstanding. We do the Constitution and the American people a disservice if we fail to more thoroughly evaluate these issues prior to ratification. For these reasons I must oppose ratification.
Mr. President, I ask that several articles be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Russia has balked at implementing any of the nuclear security and weapons inspection agreements announced by President Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin at their summit meeting last May, throwing up a major roadblock to U.S.-Russian cooperation in key security issues, U.S. officials said.
After a promising start on discussions aimed at carrying out the agreements, the Russians pulled back and have essentially suspended the talks, according to several officials who said they were perplexed and frustrated by the developments.
Officials at the State Department, the White House and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said it is unclear why the Russians have backed away and there may be multiple reasons. What is clear, they said, is that the mutual inspections and data exchanges on weapons and nuclear materials--which the presidents said would happen--are not about to happen.
The failure to carry through on the agreements does not itself threaten U.S. security or U.S.-Russian relations, officials said. But in the context of other recent developments in Russia, such as the removal of almost all pro-Western reformers from Yeltsin's government and the appointment of a Russian nationalist. Yevgeny Primakov, as foreign minister, it adds to a troubling recent pattern that has clouded Washington's relations with Moscow.
`We hope to implement all the agreements presidents Clinton and Yeltsin arrived at during their Moscow summit.' State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said. `Over the past couple of years we have found that some of these arms agreements are very difficult, and it is sometimes necessary to bring in senior officials because the bureaucracy in both countries can only take them so far,' Burns said. He added that the United States and Russia are cooperating on many other issues, such as the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.
Clinton and Yeltsin on May 10 issued a `Joint Statement on the Transparency and Irreversibility of the Process of Reducing Nuclear Weapons,' containing measures by which each country could assure itself that the other was carrying out promised nuclear weapons reductions.
They said the two countries would `exchange on a regular basis' detailed information on their stockpiles of weapons and nuclear materials. They also said the two countries would undertake `reciprocal monitoring' of the facilities where they store nuclear materials removed from dismantled warheads. And they said they would `seek to conclude in the shortest possible time' a legal agreement ensuring protection of the exchange data.
None of it has happened. The legal agreement was never negotiated, making it impossible to exchange classified data and develop the `chain of custody' agreement sought by the United States. And the United States refused to allow Russian officials to inspect the only U.S. nuclear weapons dismantlement facility, the Pantext plant near Amarillo, Tex., because Russia would not allow U.S. inspectors to visit a comparable plan there.
In the same joint declaration, Clinton and Yeltsin `urged progress' in carrying out a 1994 agreement by which Russia was to cease producing plutonium, the key building block of nuclear weapons. That has not happened either, officials said, but for different reasons: The United States has been unable to come up with the money to replace the electric power and heat generated by the Russian plutonium-producing reactors, so the reactors still are operating.
Discussions on this issue are to resume later this month, Energy Department officials said.
The failure to implement the agreements contributes to widespread suspicion in Congress about the ability and will of the Russian defense establishment to carry out such accords.
That suspicion was manifest when the Senate began consideration of the START II arms reduction Treaty on the Friday before Christmas. In that session, which attracted little notice because of the timing, the Senate approved a Resolution of Ratification that directs the president to follow specific procedures in the event of Russian noncompliance.
`In the event that noncompliance persists' after diplomatic approaches, the resolution says, the president must return to the Senate for a determination of whether the United States will continue to bound by the Treaty.
`Obviously we all hope and require that the Russians fully comply with START II,' said Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.).
`But their record and the record of the former Soviet Union with respect to compliance with arms control agreements is somewhat dubious. I will note just a few of the areas of violation in the past: the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons agreements, the Missile Technology Control Regime, START I and the conventional forces in Europe treaties . All of these agreements have provisions that Russia has in one way or another failed to comply [with],' Kyl said.
The START II Treaty, signed in 1991, requires the United States and Russia to make further deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems by 2003. During the pre-Christmas discussion, senators of both parties made clear that they will ratify it by an overwhelming vote, but the resolution they adopted specified that this country will not be bound by its terms until it has been ratified by the Russian Duma, a much more dubious proposition.
Russian ratification is not imminent, several analysts said, because of strong opposition in the recently elected Duma, or lower house of parliament, where many members reportedly regard its terms as skewed in favor of the United States.
The Senate resolution called on `both parties to the START II Treaty to attach high priority' to implementation of the May 10 joint declaration so that compliance with START I and START II can be verified, but did not make implementation a condition of START II ratification.
U.S. officials involved in the `transparency and irreversibility' issue offered several explanations of what might be holding up an agreement on the Russian side.
`The Russians have essentially told us they are doing a reassessment. It probably has to do with the political situation there,' one said. `They have a lot of communists and nationalists in the Duma.'
The Russians `have very limited interagency communication,' another source said. `Their vertical communication is relatively poor. And there's the fiefdom problem,' an indirect allusion to the prickly and independent Russian Atomic Energy Minister, Viktor Mikhailov. `We're talking about letting out information about the crown jewels,' another U.S. official said. `Both sides are pretty nervous about it, but especially them.'
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The upcoming round of negotiations on a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which begins Jan. 22 in Geneva, will be the most crucial in the 38-nation talks, experts said last week.
An agreement on a draft text is necessary by the end of the 10-week session to meet a September U.N. deadline, John Holum, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said Jan. 19.
China's insistence that a CTBT Treaty allow so-called peaceful nuclear explosions is considered a key obstacle in the talks, which are ruled by consensus. The other major nuclear powers have rejected China's stance.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yukihiko Ikeda, in office barely a week, raced through high-level Washington in the past few days with a message of friendship, reassurance and commitment to the U.S.-Japan security partnership in Asia.
In meetings with President Clinton and his senior foreign policy and national security advisers, Ikeda said the United States and its troops in Japan are `vital' to the security of a potentially unstable region.
That Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto sent him here on short notice on his first official mission reflects the Japanese government's view that the United States represents `our most important bilateral relationship,' Ikeda said yesterday.
In the past such views might have been unremarkable. But the alleged abduction and rape of a Japanese schoolgirl by U.S. servicemen on Okinawa last year have led to questions here and in Asia about the desirability of keeping nearly 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan.
Essays have been streaming out of foreign policy think tanks suggesting that the vigorous, economically strong countries of the region should assume more responsibility for their own security and the U.S. role perhaps should be reduced.
Absolutely not, said Ikeda, a former director
general of Japan's defense agency. In the absence of a regional security framework such as NATO, he said, the United States and its bilateral security agreements with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan are the `pivot' of Asia-Pacific stability.
In a statement issued as he took office Jan. 11, Hashimoto said `the Japan-United States relationship is vital for the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region, as well as for the entire world.'
Ikeda used similar language yesterday in a meeting with Washington Post editors and reporters. The United States and Japan, he said, will make `the utmost effort to try to prevent the Okinawa incident from becoming an obstacle to the vital U.S. role in the region.'
Clinton is scheduled to make a state visit to Japan in April. On Friday, Ikeda and Secretary of State Warren Christopher agreed to accelerate the work of a joint commission studying the grievances of Okinawans about the U.S. troop presence in the hope of devising a solution by the time Clinton visits, according to State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns.
It may well take longer, Ikeda said yesterday. `A solution is very difficult to find,' he said. `The Okinawan people want the troop presence drastically reduced. But the security of Japan has to be considered as well. . . . We have to allow the United States to perform its obligation.'
About 26,000 U.S. troops, or more than half the forces in Japan, are on Okinawa. Ikeda said possible outcomes include the redeployment of some troops from Okinawa to other parts of Japan, smaller U.S. bases and increased local input into decisions by U.S. commanders.
As potential sources of instability in East and Southeast Asia, Ikeda cited economic chaos and political instability in North Korea, the presence of Russian troops in the Pacific basin, military buildups in Southeast Asian nations and territorial disputes such as the overlapping claims to the Spratly Islands.
He also noted that China's defense spending has been increasing by about 20 percent a year. `Japan is not defining China as a threat or a risk,' he said, but Beijing's military buildup must be taken into account as `an objective fact.'
In a paper published Friday urging the United States to resist calls for reduction of its military presence in Asia, former undersecretary of state Arnold Kanter said: `So long as the United States is seen to be both committed to maintaining robust military forces in the region and reliable in honoring in commitments, China's neighbors see less need to respond to changes in its capabilities. This stabilizing role performed by the U.S. presence also helps to reassure countries in Southeast Asia about Japan, and Japan and South Korea about each other.'
Ikeda agreed. `Other nations enjoy indirectly the benefits of the U.S.-Japan security Treaty, he said.
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Bosnia. I'm more than satisfied with the troops.
I have some concerns. I want them to hurry up and do whatever we can to continue to improve [troop] living conditions. We've got to get the laundry set up, better food. That's a big part of morale. They're over there in a strange place in a cold winter with a lot of mud, and I want them to know that we're doing everything we can for the quality of life.
We have to supervise the separation of forces. After that, as we monitor those areas, I'm still concerned, although we're making good progress, about all the demining efforts. I don't want to lose anybody to those mines.
I'm just hoping that we have enough time to move this civilian reconstruction effort fast enough so that people will begin to see and feel the benefits of peace.
Moscow.--As prospects dim for U.S. and Russian ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II ), Moscow is quietly, yet steadily, bolstering its nuclear arsenal with new and upgraded missiles and strategic bombers from its neighboring Cold War client state of Ukraine.
In addition to the 32 SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missiles that Moscow intends to acquire from Kiev, Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) is working to increase the life span of its silo-based multiple-warhead ballistic missiles by 25 years.
Moreover, Russian Defense Ministry sources say the potential threat posed by expansion of NATO could accelerate development and production of a new multipurpose battlefield missile with a range of 400 kilometers. Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry announced that the new missile was successfully