NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
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NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
(Senate - June 08, 2000)
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NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, for the information of the Senate, I would
like to pose a unanimous consent request with regard to the sequencing
of speakers.
We have the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts who has, under a
previous order, 1 hour. I suggest he be the first and lead off this
morning, followed by the distinguished Senator from Maine, the chair of
the Senate Seapower Subcommittee, and that would be for a period of 30
minutes thereafter. Following that, the distinguished ranking member
and I have some 30 cleared amendments which we will offer to the Senate
following these two sets of remarks.
Then Senator Smith; as soon as I can reach him, I will sequence him
in.
I just inform the Senate I will be seeking recognition to offer an
amendment on behalf of Senator Dodd and myself, and I will acquaint the
ranking member with the text of that amendment shortly.
Just for the moment, the unanimous consent request is the Senator
from Massachusetts, followed by the Senator from Maine followed by a
period of time, probably not to exceed 30 minutes, for the ranking
member and myself to deal with some 30-odd amendments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I would add the following: It is my
understanding of the unanimous consent agreement that recognition of
the speakers who are listed here with a fixed period of time, including
Senator Kerry, Senator Smith, Senator Snowe, and Senator Inhofe, is
solely for the purpose of debate and not for the purpose of offering an
amendment. Is the Senator correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WARNER. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bunning). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and ranking member for
their courtesy and I appreciate the time of the Senate to be able to
discuss an issue of extraordinary importance. It is an issue that is
contained in this bill. It is a line item in this bill of some $85
million with respect to the issue of national missile defense.
President Clinton has just returned from his first meeting with the
new Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and arms control dominated their
agenda, in particular, the plan of the United States to deploy a
limited national defense system, which would require amending the 1972
ABM Treaty. Russia is still strongly opposed to changing that treaty,
and I think we can all expect this will continue to be an issue of
great discussion between the United States and Russia in the months and
possibly years to come.
As I said, in the Senate today, this defense bill authorizes funding
for the construction of the national missile defense initial deployment
facilities. Regretfully, we do not always have the time in the Senate
to lay out policy considerations in a thorough, quiet, and thoughtful
way, and I will try to do that this morning. The question of whether,
when, and how the United States should deploy a defense against
ballistic missiles is, in fact, complex--tremendously complex. I want
to take some time today to walk through the issues that are involved in
that debate and to lay bare the implications it will have for the
national security of the United States.
No American leader can dismiss an idea that might protect American
citizens from a legitimate threat. If there is a real potential of a
rogue nation, as we call them, firing a few missiles at any city in the
United States, responsible leadership requires that we make our best,
most thoughtful efforts to defend against that threat. The same is true
of the potential threat of accidental launch. If ever either of these
things happened, no leader could explain away not having chosen to
defend against such a disaster when doing so made sense.
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The questions before us now are several. Does it make sense to deploy
a national missile defense now, unilaterally, if the result might be to
put America at even greater risk? Do we have more time to work with
allies and others to find a mutually acceptable, nonthreatening way of
proceeding? Have the threats to which we are responding been
exaggerated, and are they more defined by politics than by genuine
threat assessment and scientific fact? Have we sufficiently explored
various technologies and architectures so we are proceeding in the most
thoughtful and effective way?
The President has set out four criteria on which he will base his
decision to deploy an NMD: The status of the threat, the status and
effectiveness of the proposed system's technology, the cost of the
system, and the likely impact of deploying such a system on the overall
strategic environment and U.S. arms control efforts in general. In my
judgment, at this point in time none of these criteria are met to
satisfaction.
While the threat from developing missile programs has emerged more
quickly than we expected, I do not believe it justifies a rush to
action on the proposed defensive system, which is far from
technologically sound and will probably not even provide the
appropriate response to the threat as it continues to develop. More
importantly, a unilateral decision of the United States to deploy an
NMD system could undermine global strategic stability, damage our
relationship with key allies in Europe and Asia, and weaken our
continuing efforts to reduce the nuclear danger.
Turning first to the issue of the threat that we face, this question
deserves far greater scrutiny than it has thus far received. I hear a
number of colleagues, the State Department, and others, saying: Oh,
yes, the threat exists. Indeed, to some degree the threat does exist.
But it is important for us to examine to what degree. Recently, the
decades-long debate on the issue of deploying an NMD has taken on
bipartisan relevance as the threat of a rogue ballistic missile program
has increased.
I want to be very clear. At this point, I support the deployment, in
cooperation with our friends and allies, of a limited, effective
National Missile Defense System aimed at containing the threat from
small rogue ballistic missile programs or the odd, accidental, or
unauthorized launch from a major power. But I do not believe the United
States should attempt to unilaterally deploy a National Missile Defense
System aimed at altering the strategic balance. We have made tremendous
progress over the last two decades in reducing the threat from weapons
of mass destruction through bilateral strategic reductions with Russia
and multilateral arms control agreements such as the Chemical Weapons
Convention. We simply cannot allow these efforts to be undermined in
any way as we confront the emerging ballistic missile threat.
Even as we have made progress with Russia on reducing our cold war
arsenals, ballistic missile technology has spread, and the threat to
the United States from rogue powers, so-called, has grown. The July
1998 Rumsfeld report found that the threat from developing ballistic
missile states, especially North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, is developing
faster than expected and could pose an imminent threat to the U.S.
homeland in the next 5 years. That conclusion was reinforced just 1
month later when North Korea tested a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 missile,
launching it over Japan and raising tensions in the region. While the
missile's third stage failed, the test confirmed that North Korea's
program for long-range missiles is advancing towards an ICBM capability
that could ultimately--and I stress ultimately--threaten the United
States, as surely as its shorter range missiles threaten our troops and
our allies in the region today.
A 1999 national intelligence estimate on the ballistic missile threat
found that in addition to the continuing threat from Russia and China,
the United States faces a developing threat from North Korea, Iran, and
Iraq.
In addition to the possibility that North Korea might convert the
Taepo Dong-1 missile into an inaccurate ICBM capable of carrying a
light payload to the United States, the report found that North Korea
could weaponize the larger Taepo Dong-2 to deliver a crude nuclear
weapon to American shores, and it could do so at any time, with little
warning. The NIE also found that, in the next 15 years, Iran could test
an ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear weapon to the United States--and
certainly to our allies in Europe and the Middle East--and that Iraq
may be able to do the same in a slightly longer time frame.
The picture of the evolving threat to the United States from
ballistic missile programs in hostile nations has changed minds in the
Senate about the necessity of developing and testing a national missile
defense. It has changed my mind about what might be appropriate to
think about and to test and develop.
If Americans in Alaska or Hawaii must face this threat, however
uncertain, I do not believe someone in public life can responsibly tell
them: We will not look at or take steps to protect you.
But as we confront the technological challenges and the political
ramifications of developing and deploying a national missile defense,
we are compelled to take a closer look at the threat we are rushing to
meet. I believe the missile threat from North Korea, Iran, and Iraq is
real but not imminent, and that we confront today much greater, much
more immediate dangers, from which national missile defense cannot and
will not protect us.
To begin, it is critical to note that both the Rumsfeld Commission
and the National Intelligence Estimate adopted new standards for
assessing the ballistic missile threat in response to political
pressures from the Congress.
The 1995 NIE was viciously criticized for underestimating the threat
from rogue missile programs. Some in Congress accused the
administration of deliberately downplaying the threat to undermine
their call for a national missile defense.
To get the answer that they were looking for, the Congress then
established the Rumsfeld Commission to review the threat. Now, that
commission was made up of some of the best minds in U.S. defense
policy--both supporters and skeptics of national missile defense. I do
not suggest the commission's report was somehow fixed. These are people
who have devoted their lives in honorable service to their country. The
report reflects no less than their best assessment of the threat.
But in reaching the conclusions that have alarmed so many about the
immediacy of the threat, we must responsibly take note of the fact that
the commission did depart from the standards that we had traditionally
used to measure the threat.
First, the commission reduced the range of ballistic missiles that we
consider to be a threat from missiles that can reach the continental
United States to those that can only reach Hawaii and Alaska.
I think this is a minor distinction because, as I said earlier, no
responsible leader is going to suggest that you should leave Americans
in Hawaii or Alaska exposed to attack. But certainly the only reason to
hit Hawaii or Alaska, if you have very few weapons measured against
other targets, is to wreak terror. And insomuch as that is the only
reason, one has to factor that into the threat analysis in ways they
did not.
Secondly, it shortened the time period for considering a developing
program to be a threat from the old standard which measured when a
program could actually be deployed to a new standard of when it was
simply tested.
Again, I would be willing to concede this as a minor distinction
because if a nation were to be intent on using one of these weapons, it
might not wait to meet the stringent testing requirements that we
usually try to meet before deploying a new system. It could just test a
missile, see that it works, and make plans to use it.
These changes are relatively minor, but they need to be acknowledged
and factored into the overall discussion.
But the third change which needs to be factored in is not
insignificant because both the Rumsfeld Commission and the 1999 NIE
abandoned the old standard of assessing the likelihood that a nation
would use its missile capacity in favor of a new standard of whether a
nation simply has the relevant capacity for a missile attack,
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with no analysis whatsoever of the other factors that go into a
decision to actually put that capability to use.
This is tremendously important because, as we know from the cold war,
threat is more than simply a function of capability; it is a function
of attention and other political and military considerations. Through
diplomacy and deterrence, the United States can alter the intentions of
nations that pursue ballistic missile programs and so alter the threat
they pose to us.
This is not simply wishful thinking. There are many examples today of
nations who possess the technical capacity to attack the United States,
but whom we do not consider a threat. India and Pakistan have made
dramatic progress in developing medium-range ballistic missile
programs. But the intelligence community does not consider India and
Pakistan to pose a threat to U.S. interests. Their missile capacity
alone does not translate into a threat because they do not hold
aggressive intentions against us.
Clearly, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are hostile to us, and our
ability to use diplomacy to reduce the threat they pose will be
limited. But having the capacity to reach us and an animosity towards
us does not automatically translate into the intention to use weapons
of mass destruction against us.
In the 40 years that we faced the former Soviet Union, with the raw
capability to destroy each other, neither side resorted to using its
arsenal of missiles. Why not? Because even in periods of intense
animosity and tension, under the most unpredictable and isolated of
regimes, political and military deterrence has a powerful determining
effect on a nation's decision to use force. We have already seen this
at work in our efforts to contain North Korea's nuclear and missile
programs. We saw it at work in the gulf war when Saddam Hussein was
deterred from using his weapons of mass destruction by the sure promise
of a devastating response from the United States.
During the summer of 1999, intelligence reports indicated that North
Korea was preparing the first test-launch of the Taepo Dong-2. Regional
tensions rose, as Japan, South Korea and the United States warned
Pyongyang that it would face serious consequences if it went ahead with
another long-range missile launch. The test was indefinitely delayed,
for ``political reasons,'' which no doubt included U.S. military
deterrence and the robust diplomatic efforts by the United States and
its key allies in the region.
Threatening to cut off nearly $1 billion of food assistance and KEDO
funding to North Korea should the test go forward, while also holding
out the possibility of easing economic sanctions if the test were
called off, helped South Korea, Japan and the United States make the
case to Pyongyang that its interests would be better served through
restraint. An unprecedented dialogue between the United States and
North Korea, initiated by former Secretary of Defense William Perry
during the height of this crisis, continues today. It aims to
verifiably freeze Pyongyang's missile programs and end 50 years of
North Korea's economic isolation.
Acknowledging that these political developments can have an important
impact on the threat, the intelligence community, according to a May 19
article in the Los Angeles Times, will reflect in its forthcoming NIE
that the threat from North Korea's missile program has eased since last
fall. And if it has eased since last fall, indeed, we should be
thinking about the urgency of decisions we make that may have a
profound impact on the overall balance of power.
In short, even as we remain clear-eyed about the threat these nations
pose to American interests, we must not look at the danger as somehow
preordained or unavoidable.
In cooperation with our friends and allies, we must vigorously
implore the tools of diplomacy to reduce the threat. We must redouble
our efforts to stop the proliferation of these deadly weapons. We
cannot just dismiss the importance of U.S. military deterrence.
Only madmen, only the most profoundly detached madmen, bent on self-
destruction, would launch a missile against U.S. soil, which obviously
would invite the most swift and devastating response. One or two or
three missiles fired by North Korea or Iraq would leave a clear address
of who the sender was, and there is no question that the United States
would have the ability to eliminate them from the face of this planet.
All people would recognize that as an immediate and legitimate
response.
My second major concern about the current debate over the missile
threat is that it does nothing to address equally dangerous but more
immediate and more likely threats to U.S. interests.
For one, U.S. troops and U.S. allies today confront the menace of
theater ballistic missiles, capable of delivering chemical or
biological weapons. We saw during the gulf war how important theater
missile defense is to maintaining allied unity and enabling our troops
to focus on their mission. We must continue to push this technology
forward regardless of whether we deploy an NMD system.
The American people also face the very real threat of terrorist
attack. The 1999 State Department report on Patterns of Global
Terrorism shows that while the threat of state-sponsored terrorism
against the U.S. is declining, the threat from nonstate actors, who
increasingly have access to chemical and biological weapons, and
possibly even small nuclear devices, is growing. These terrorist groups
are most likely to attack us covertly, quietly slipping explosives into
a building, unleashing chemical weapons into a crowded subway, or
sending a crude nuclear weapon into a busy harbor.
An NMD system will not protect American citizens from any of these
more immediate and more realistic threats.
Finally, on the issue of the missile threat we are confronting, I
remain deeply concerned about Russia's command and control over its
nuclear forces. Russia has more than 6,000 strategic missiles armed
with nuclear warheads. Maintaining these missiles on high alert
significantly increases the threat of an accidental or an unauthorized
launch. In 1995, the Russian military misidentified a U.S. weather
rocket launched from Norway as a possible attack on the Russian
Federation. With Russia's strategic forces already on high-alert,
President Yelstin and his advisors had just minutes to decide whether
to launch a retaliatory strike on the United States. And yet, in an
effort to reassure Russia that the proposed missile defense will not
prompt an American first strike, the administration seems to be
encouraging Russia to, in fact, maintain its strategic forces on high
alert to allow for a quick, annihilating counterattack that would
overwhelm the proposed limited defense they are offering.
In effect, in order to deploy the system the administration is
currently defining, they are prepared to have Russia, maintain with a
bad command-and-control system weapons on hair trigger or targeted in
order to maintain the balance.
In sum, the threat from rogue missile programs is neither as imminent
nor is as mutable as some have argued. We have time to use the
diplomatic tools at our disposal to try to alter the political
calculation that any nation might make before it decided to use
ballistic missile capacity.
Moreover, the United States faces other, more immediate threats that
will not be met by an NMD. To meet the full range of threats to our
national security, we need to simultaneously address the emerging
threat from the rogue ballistic missile program, maintain a vigorous
defense against theater ballistic missiles and acts of terrorism, and
avoid actions that would undermine the strategic stability we have
fought so hard to establish.
Let me speak for a moment now about the technology. In making his
deployment decision, the President will also consider the technological
readiness and effectiveness of the proposed system. Again, I have grave
concerns that we are sacrificing careful technical development of this
system to meet an artificial deadline, and, may I say, those concerns
are shared by people far more expert than I am. Moreover, even if the
proposed system were to work as planned, I am not convinced it would
provide the most effective defense against a developing missile threat.
Let's look for a moment at the system currently under consideration.
The
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administration has proposed a limited system to protect all 50 States
against small-scale attacks by ICBMs. In the simplest terms, this is a
ground-based, hit-to-kill system.
An interceptor fired from American soil must hit the incoming missile
directly to destroy it. Most of the components of this system are
already developed and are undergoing testing. It will be deployed in 3
phases and is to be completed by about 2010, if the decision to deploy
is made this year. The completed system will include 200, 250
interceptors deployed in Alaska and North Dakota, to be complemented by
a sophisticated array of upgraded early-warning radars and satellite-
based launch detection and tracking systems. I have two fundamental
questions about this proposed system: Will the technology work as
intended, and is the system the most appropriate and effective defense
against this defined threat?
There are three components to consider in answering the first
question: The technology's ability to function at the most basic level,
its operational effectiveness against real world threats, and its
reliability.
I do not believe the compressed testing program and decision deadline
permit us to come close to drawing definitive conclusions about those
three fundamental elements of readiness.
In a Deployment Readiness Review scheduled for late July of this
year, the Pentagon will assess the system, largely on the results of
three intercept tests. The first of these in October of 1999 was
initially hailed as a success because the interceptor did hit the
target, but then, on further examination, the Pentagon conceded that
the interceptor had initially been confused, it had drifted off course,
ultimately heading for the decoy balloon, and possibly striking the
dummy warhead only by accident. That is test No. 1.
The second test in January of 2000 failed because of a sensor coolant
leak.
The third test has not even taken place yet. The third test,
initially planned for April 2000, was postponed until late June and has
recently been postponed again. It is expected in early July, just a few
weeks before the Pentagon review.
To begin with, after two tests, neither satisfactory, it is still
unclear whether the system will function at a basic level under the
most favorable conditions. Even if the next test is a resounding
success, I fail to see how that would be enough to convince people we
have thoroughly vetted the potential problems of a system.
On the second issue of whether the system will be operationally
effective, we have very little information on which to proceed. We have
not yet had an opportunity to test operational versions of the
components in anything such as the environment they would face in a
real defensive engagement. We are only guessing at this point how well
the system would respond to targets launched from unanticipated
locations or how it would perform over much greater distances and much
higher speeds than those at which it has been tested.
Finally, the question of reliability is best answered over time and
extensive use of the system. Any program in its developing stages will
run into technical glitches, and this program has been no different.
That does not mean the system will not ever work properly, but it does
mean we ought to take the time to find out, particularly before we do
something that upsets the balance in the ways this may potentially do.
That is one more reason to postpone the deployment decision, to give
the President and the Pentagon the opportunity to conduct a thorough
and rigorous testing program.
This recommendation is not made in a vacuum. Two independent reviews
have reached a similar conclusion about the risks of rushing to
deployment. In February of 1998, a Pentagon panel led by former Air
Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Welch, characterized the truncated
testing program as a ``rush to failure.'' The panel's second report
recommended delaying the decision to deploy until 2003 at the earliest
to allow key program elements to be fully tested and proven. The
concerns of the Welch Panel were reinforced by the release in February
2000 of a report by the Defense Department's office of operational test
and evaluation (DOT).
The Coyle report decried the undue pressure being applied to the
national missile defense testing program and warned that rushing
through testing to meet artificial decision deadlines has
``historically resulted in a negative effect on virtually every
troubled DOD development program.'' The Report recommended that the
Pentagon postpone its Deployment Readiness Review to allow for a
thorough analysis and clear understanding of the results of the third
intercept test (now scheduled for early July), which will be the first
``integrated systems'' test of all the components except the booster.
The scientific community is concerned about more than the risks of a
shortened testing program. The best scientific minds in America have
begun to warn that even if the technology functions as planned, the
system could be defeated by relatively simple countermeasures. The 1999
NIE that addressed the ballistic missile threat concluded that the same
nations that are developing long-range ballistic missile systems could
develop or buy countermeasure technologies by the time they are ready
to deploy their missile systems.
Just think, we could expend billions of dollars, we could upset the
strategic balance, we could initiate a new arms race, and we could not
even get a system that withstands remarkably simple, inexpensive
countermeasures. Now, there is a stroke of brilliant strategic
thinking.
The proposed national missile defense is an exo-atmospheric system,
meaning the interceptor is intended to hit the target after the boost
phase when it has left the atmosphere and before reentry. An IBM
releases its payload immediately after the boost phase. If that payload
were to consist of more than simply one warhead, then an interceptor
would have more than one target with which to contend after the boost
phase.
The Union of Concerned Scientists recently published a thorough
technical analysis of three countermeasures that would be particularly
well suited to overwhelming this kind of system, chemical and
biological bomblets, antisimulation decoys, and warhead shrouds. North
Korea, Iran, and Iraq are all believed to have programs capable of
weaponizing chemical and biological weapons which are cheaper and
easier to acquire than the most rudimentary nuclear warhead.
The most effective means of delivering a CBW, a chemical-biological
warfare warhead on a ballistic missile, is not to deploy one large
warhead filled with the agent but to divide it up into as many a
s 100
submunitions, or bomblets. There are few technical barriers to
weaponizing CBW this way, and it allows the agents to be dispersed over
a large area, inflicting maximum casualties. Because the limited NMD
system will not be able to intercept a missile before the bomblets are
dispersed, it could quickly be overpowered by just three incoming
missiles armed with bomblets--and that is assuming every interceptor
hit its target. Just one missile carrying 100 targets would pose a
formidable challenge to the system being designed with possibly
devastating effects.
The exo-atmospheric system is also vulnerable to missiles carrying
nuclear warheads armed with decoys. Using antisimulation, an attacker
would disguise the nuclear warhead to look like a decoy by placing it
in a lightweight balloon and releasing it along with a large number of
similar but empty balloons. Using simple technology to raise the
temperature in all of the balloons, the attacker could make the balloon
containing the warhead indistinguishable to infrared radar from the
empty balloons, forcing the defensive system to shoot down every
balloon in order to ensure that the warhead is destroyed. By deploying
a large number of balloons, an attacker could easily overwhelm a
limited national missile defense system. Alternately, by covering the
warhead with a shroud cooled by liquid nitrogen, an attacker could
reduce the warhead's infrared radiation by a factor of at least 1
million, making it incredibly difficult for the system's sensors to
detect the warhead in time to hit it.
I have only touched very cursorily on the simplest countermeasures
that could be available to an attacker with ballistic missiles, but I
believe this discussion raises serious questions about
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a major operational vulnerability in the proposed system and about
whether this system is the best response to the threats we are most
likely to face in the years ahead. I don't believe it is.
There is a simpler, more sensible, less threatening, more manageable
approach to missile defense that deserves greater consideration. Rather
than pursuing the single-layer exo-atmospheric system, I believe we
should focus our research efforts on developing a forward-deployed,
boost phase intercept system. Such a system would build on the current
technology of the Army's land-based theater high altitude air defense,
THAAD, and the Navy's sea-based theaterwide defense system to provide
forward-deployed defenses against both theater ballistic missile
threats and long-range ballistic missile threats in their boost phase.
The Navy already deploys the Aegis fleet air defense system. An
upgraded version of this sea-based system could be stationed off the
coast of North Korea or in the Mediterranean or in the Persian Gulf to
shoot down an ICBM in its earliest and slowest stage. The ground-based
THAAD system could be similarly adapted to meet the long-range and
theater ballistic missile threats. Because these systems would target a
missile in its boost phase, they would eliminate the current system's
vulnerability to countermeasures. This approach could also be more
narrowly targeted at specific threats and it could be used to extend
ballistic missile protection to U.S. allies and to our troops in the
field.
As Dick Garwin, an expert on missile defense and a member of the
Rumsfeld Commission has so aptly argued, the key advantage to the
mobile forward-deployed missile defense system is that rather than
having to create an impenetrable umbrella over the entire U.S.
territory, it would only require us to put an impenetrable lid over the
much smaller territory of an identified rogue nation or in a location
where there is the potential for an accidental launch. A targeted
system, by explicitly addressing specific threats, would be much less
destabilizing than a system designed only to protect U.S. soil. It
would reassure Russia that we do not intend to undermine its nuclear
deterrent, and it would enable Russia and the United States to continue
to reduce and to secure our remaining strategic arsenals. It would
reassure U.S. allies that they will not be left vulnerable to missile
threats and that they need not consider deploying nuclear deterrents of
their own. In short, this alternative approach could do what the
proposed national defense system will not do: It will make us safer.
There are two major obstacles to deploying a boost phase system, but
I believe both of those obstacles can and must be overcome. First, the
technology is not yet there. The Navy's theaterwide defense system was
designed to shoot down cruise missiles and other threats to U.S.
warships. Without much faster intercept missiles than are currently
available, the system would not be able to stop a high speed ICBM, even
in the relatively slow boost phase. The THAAD system, which continues
to face considerable challenges in its demonstration and testing
phases, is also being designed to stop ballistic missiles, but it
hasn't been tested yet against the kinds of high speeds of an ICBM.
Which raises the second obstacle to deploying this system: the
current interpretation of the ABM Treaty, as embodied in the 1997
demarcation agreements between Russia and the United States, does not
allow us to test or deploy a theater ballistic missile system capable
of shooting down an ICBM. I will address this issue a little more in a
moment, but let me say that I am deeply disturbed by the notion that we
should withdraw from the ABM Treaty and unilaterally deploy an ABM
system, particularly the kind of system I have defined that may not do
the job. In the long run, such a move would undermine U.S. security
rather than advance it. It is possible--and I believe necessary--to
reach an agreement with Russia on changes to the ABM Treaty that would
allow us to deploy an effective limited defense system such as I have
described. In fact, President Putin hinted quite openly at the
potential for that kind of an agreement being reached. I commend the
President for working hard to reach an agreement with Russia that will
allow us both to deploy in an intelligent and mutual way that does not
upset the balance.
I want to briefly address the issue of cost, which I find to be the
least problematic of the four criterion under consideration. Those who
oppose the idea of a missile defense point to the fact that, in the
last forty years, the United States has spent roughly $120 billion
trying to develop an effective defense against ballistic missiles. And
because this tremendous investment has still not yielded definitive
results, they argue that we should abandon the effort before pouring
additional resources into it.
I disagree. I believe that we can certainly afford to devote a small
portion of the Defense budget to develop a workable national missile
defense. The projected cost of doing so varies--from roughly $4 billion
to develop a boost-phase system that would build on existing defenses
to an estimated $60 billion to deploy the three-phased ground-based
system currently under consideration by the Administration. These
estimates will probably be revised upward as we confront the inevitable
technology challenges and delays. But, spread out over the next 5 to 10
years, I believe we can well afford this relatively modest investment
in America's security, provided that our research efforts focus on
developing a realistic response to the emerging threat.
My only real concern about the cost of developing a national missile
defense is in the perception that addressing this threat somehow makes
us safe from the myriad other threats that we face. We must not allow
the debate over NMD to hinder our cooperation with Russia, China, and
our allies to stop the proliferation of WMD and ballistic missile
technology. In particular, we must remain steadfast in our efforts to
reduce the dangers posed by the enormous weapons arsenal of the former
Soviet Union. Continued Russian cooperation with the expanded
Comprehensive Threat Reduction programs will have a far greater impact
on America's safety from weapons of mass destruction than deploying an
NMD system. We must not sacrifice the one for the other.
Let me go to the final of the four considerations the President has
set forward because I believe that a unilateral decision to deploy a
national missile defense system would have a disastrous effect on the
international strategic and political environment. It could destabilize
our already difficult relationships with Russia and China and undermine
our allies' confidence in the reliability of the U.S. defensive
commitment. It would jeopardize current hard fought arms control
agreements, and it could erode more than 40 years of U.S. leadership on
arms control.
The administration clearly understands the dangers of a unilateral
U.S. deployment. President Clinton was not able to reach agreement with
the Russian President, but he has made progress in convincing the
Russian leadership that the ballistic missile threat is real. To be
clear, I don't support the administration's current proposal, but I do
support its effort to work out with Russia this important issue. The
next administration needs to complete that task, if we cannot do it in
the next months.
While simply declaring our intent to deploy a system does not
constitute an abrogation of the ABM Treaty, it surely signals that the
U.S. withdrawal from the treaty is imminent.
Mr. President, the first casualty of such a declaration would be
START II. Article 2 paragraph 2 of the Russian instrument of
ratification gives Russia the right to withdraw from START II if the
U.S. withdraws from or violates the 1972 ABM Treaty. Russia would also
probably stop implementation of START I, as well as cooperation with
our comprehensive threat reduction program. I don't have time at this
moment to go through the full picture of the threat reduction problems.
But suffice it to say that really the most immediate and urgent threat
the United States faces are the numbers of weapons on Russian soil with
a command and control system that is increasingly degraded, and the
single highest priority of the United States now is keeping the
comprehensive threat reduction program on target. To lose that by a
unilateral statement of our intention to proceed would be one of the
most dramatic losses of the last 40 to 50 years.
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So continued cooperation with Russia on these arms control programs
is critical. Furthermore, no matter how transparent we are with Russia
about the intent and capabilities of the proposed system, Russia's
military leadership will interpret a unilateral deployment as a direct
threat to their deterrence capacity. And while Russia doesn't have the
economic strength today to significantly enhance its military
capabilities, there are clear examples of Russia's capacity to wield
formidable military power when it wants. We must not allow a unilateral
NMD deployment to provoke the Russian people into setting aside the
difficult but necessary tasks of democratization and economic reform in
a vain effort to return to Russia's days of military glory.
Finally, with regard to Russia, a unilateral deployment by the United
States would jeopardize our cooperation on a whole range of significant
issues. However imperfect it is, U.S.-Russian cooperation will continue
to be important on matters from stopping Teheran's proliferation
efforts and containing Iraq's weapons programs to promoting stability
in the Balkans.
While the impact of a limited U.S. system on Russian security
considerations would be largely perceptual, at least as long as that
system remains limited, its impact on China's strategic posture is real
and immediate. China today has roughly 20-plus long-range missiles. The
proposed system would undermine China's strategic deterrent as surely
as it would contain the threat from North Korea. And that poses a
problem because, unlike North Korea, China has the financial resources
to build a much larger arsenal.
The Pentagon believes it is likely that China will increase the
number and sophistication of its long-range missiles just as part of
its overall military modernization effort, regardless of what we do on
NMD. But as with Russia, if an NMD decision is made without
consultation with China, the leadership in Beijing will perceive the
deployment as at least partially directed at them. And given the recent
strain in U.S.-China relations and uncertainty in the Taiwan Strait,
the vital U.S. national interest in maintaining stability in the
Pacific would, in fact, be greatly undermined by such a decision made
too rashly.
Nobody understands the destabilizing effect of a unilateral U.S. NMD
decision better than our allies in Europe and in the Pacific. The steps
that Russia and China would take to address their insecurities about
the U.S. system will make their neighbors less secure. And a new
environment of competition and distrust will undermine regional
stability by impeding cooperation on proliferation, drug trafficking,
humanitarian crises, and all the other transnational problems we are
confronting together. So I think it is critical that we find a way to
deploy an NMD without sending even a hint of a message that the
security of the American people is becoming decoupled from that of our
allies. In Asia, both South Korea and Japan have the capability to
deploy nuclear programs of their own. Neither has done so, in part,
because both have great confidence in the integrity the U.S. security
guarantees and in the U.S. nuclear umbrella that extends over them.
They also believe that, while China does aspire to be a regional power,
the threat it poses is best addressed through engagement and efforts to
anchor China in the international community. Both of these assumptions
would be undermined by a unilateral U.S. NMD deployment.
First, our ironclad security guarantees will be perceived by the
Japanese, by the South Koreans, and others, as somewhat rusty if we
pursue a current NMD proposal to create a shield over the U.S.
territory. U.S. cities would no longer be vulnerable to the same
threats from North Korea that Seoul and Tokyo would continue to face.
And so they would say: Well, there is a decoupling; we don't feel as
safe as we did. Maybe now we have to make decisions to nuclearize
ourselves in order to guarantee our own safety.
China's response to a unilateral U.S. NMD will make it, at least in
the short term, a far greater threat to regional stability than it
poses today. If South Korea and Japan change their perceptions both of
the threat they face and of U.S. willingness to protect them, they then
could both be motivated to explore independent means of boosting their
defenses. Then it becomes a world of greater tensions, not lesser
tensions. It becomes a world of greater hair-trigger capacity, not
greater safety-lock capacity.
Our European allies have expressed the same concerns about decoupling
as I have expressed about Asia. We certainly cannot dismiss the
calculations that Great Britain, France, and Germany will make about
the impact of the U.S. NMD system. But I believe their concerns hinge
largely on the affect a unilateral decision would have on Russia,
concerns that would be greatly ameliorated if we make the NMD decision
with Russia's cooperation.
Finally, much has been made of the impact a U.S. national missile
defense system would have and what it would do to the international
arms control regime. For all of the reasons I have just discussed, a
unilateral decision would greatly damage U.S. security interests. I
want to repeat that. It will, in fact, damage U.S. security interests.
The history of unilateral steps in advancing strategic weapons shows
a very clear pattern of sure response and escalation. In 1945, the
United States exploded the first atomic bomb. The Soviets followed in
1949. In 1948, we unveiled the first nuclear-armed intercontinental
bomber. The Soviets followed in 1955. In 1952, we exploded the first
hydrogen bomb. The Soviets followed 1 year later. In 1957, the Soviets
beat us, for the one time, and launched the first satellite into orbit
and perfected the first ICBM. We followed suit within 12 months. In
1960, the United States fired the first submarine-launched ballistic
missile. The Soviets followed in 1968. In 1964, we developed the first
multiple warhead missile and reentry vehicle; we tested the first MIRV.
The Soviets MIRVed in 1973, and so on, throughout the cold war, up
until the point that we made a different decision--the ABM Treaty and
reducing the level of nuclear weapons.
The rationale for testing and deploying a missile defense is to make
America and the world safer. It is to defend against a threat, however
realistic, of a rogue state/terrorist launch of an ICBM, or an
accidental launch. No one has been openly suggesting a public rationale
at this time of a defense against any and all missiles, such as the
original Star Wars envisioned, but some have not given up on that
dream. It is, in fact, the intensity and tenacity of their continued
advocacy for such a system that drives other people's fears of what the
U.S. may be up to and which significantly complicates the test of
selling even a limited and legitimately restrained architecture.
Mr. President, in diplomacy--as in life--other nations and other
people make policies based not only on real fears, or legitimate
reactions to an advocacy/nonfriend's actions, but they also make
choices based on perceived fears--on worst case scenarios defined to
their leaders by experts. We do the same thing.
The problem with unilaterally deployed defense architecture is that
other nations may see intentions and long-term possibilities that
negatively affect their sense of security, just as it did throughout
the cold war. For instance, a system that today is limited, but
exclusively controlled by us and exclusively within our technological
capacity is a system that they perceive could be expanded and
distributed at any time in the future to completely alter the balance
of power--the balance of terror as we have thought of it. That may
sound terrific to us and even be good for us for a short period of
time--but every lesson of the arms race for the last 55 years shows
that the advantage is short lived, the effect is simply to require
everyone to build more weapons at extraordinary expense, and the
advantage is inevitably wiped out with the world becoming a more
dangerous place in the meantime. That is precisely why the ABM treaty
was negotiated--to try to limit the unbridled competition, stabilize
the balance and create a protocol by which both sides could confidently
reduce weapons.
The negotiation of the ABM Treaty put an end to this cycle of
ratcheting up the strategic danger. After 20 years of trying to outdo
each other--building an increasingly dangerous, increasingly unstable
strategic environment in the process--we recognized that deploying
strategic defenses, far from
[[Page
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making us safer, would only invite a response and an escalation of the
danger. There is no reason to believe that a unilateral move by the
United States to alter the strategic balance would not have the same
affect today as it had for forty years. At the very least, it would
stop and probably reverse the progress we have made on strategic
reductions. And it will reduce our capacity to cooperate with Russia on
the single greatest threat we face, which are the ``loose nukes''
existing in the former Soviet Union.
Under START I levels, both sides agree to reduce those arsenals to
6,500 warheads. Under START II, those levels come down to 3,500
warheads. And we are moving toward further reductions in our
discussions on START III, down to 2,000 warheads. With every agreement,
the American people are safer. A unilateral withdrawal from the ABM
Treaty would stop this progress in its tracks. No NMD system under
consideration can make us safe enough to justify such a reckless act.
I strongly disagree with my colleagues who argue that the United
States is no longer bound by our legal obligations under the ABM
Treaty. No president has ever withdrawn us from the Treaty, and
President Clinton has reaffirmed our commitment to it. We retain our
obligations to the Treaty under international law, and those
obligations continue to serve us well. It would never have been
possible to negotiate reductions in U.S. and Soviet strategic forces
without the ABM Treaty's limit on national missile defense. The
Russians continue to underscore that linkage. And since, as I've
already argued, Russia's strategic arsenal continues to pose a serious
threat to the United States and her allies, we must not take steps--
including the unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty--that will
undermine our efforts to reduce and contain that threat.
However, the strategic situation we confront today is worlds apart
from the one we faced in 1972, and we must not artificially limit our
options as we confront the emerging threats to our security. Under the
forward-deployed boost-phase system I have described, the United States
would need to seek Russian agreement to change the 1997 ABM Treaty
Demarcation agreements, which establish the line between theater
missile defense systems that are not limited by the Treaty and the
strategic defenses the Treaty proscribes. In a nutshell, these
agreements allow the United States to deploy and test the PAC-3, THAAD
and Navy Theater-Wide TMD systems, but prohibit us from developing or
testing capabilities that would enable these systems to shoot down
ICBMs.
As long as we are discussing ABM Treaty amendments with Russia, we
should work with them to develop a new concept of strategic defense. A
boost-phase intercept program would sweep away the line between theater
and long-range missile defense. But by limiting the number of
interceptors that could be deployed and working with Russia, China, and
our allies, so that we move multilaterally, we can maximize the
transparency of the system, we can strike the right balance between
meeting new and emerging threats without abandoning the principles of
strategic stability that have served us well for decades.
The most important challenge for U.S. national security planners in
the years ahead will be to work with our friends and allies to develop
a defense against the threat that has been defined. But how we respond
to that threat is critical. We must not rush into a politically driven
decision on something as critical as this; on something that has the
potential by any rational person's thinking to make us less secure--not
more secure.
I urge President Clinton to delay the deployment decision
indefinitely. I believe, even while the threat we face is real and
growing, that it is not imminent. We have the time. We need to take the
time to develop and test the most effective defense, and we will need
time to build international support for deploying a limited, effective
system.
I believe that support will be more forthcoming when we are seen to
be responding to a changing security environment rather than simply
buckling to political pressure.
For 40 years, we have led international efforts to reduce and contain
the danger from nuclear weapons. We can continue that leadership by
exploiting our technological strengths to find a system that will
extend that defense to our friends and allies but not abrogate the
responsibilities of leadership with a hasty, shortsighted decision that
will have lasting consequences.
I hope in the days and months ahead my colleagues will join me in a
thoughtful and probing analysis of these issues so we can together make
the United States stronger and not simply make this an issue that falls
prey to the political dialog in the year 2000.
I thank my colleagues for their time. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
Maine is recognized for 30 minutes.
Ms. SNOWE. I thank the President.
I want to begin my remarks by commending our Chairman, Senator John
Warner, who has provided extraordinary leadership in crafting this
measure which supports our men and women in uniform with funding for
the pay, health care, and hardware that they need and deserve. I can
think of no one with greater credibility on these issues or a wider
breadth of knowledge, and I thank him for his outstanding efforts.
I also want to thank the distinguished ranking member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin, who also has made invaluable
contributions to the development of this reauthorization.
This critical legislation which we are considering here today, with
our distinguished chairman, and the bipartisan support of the ranking
member, Senator Levin, the senior Senator from Michigan, represents the
committee's response to legitimate concerns and recognizes the
sacrifices of those who are at the heart of the legislation--the men
and women who serve in our Nation's Armed Forces.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee and chair of the Seapower
Subcommittee, I know we must never forget that the men and women in
uniform are the ones who make our Nation's defense force the finest and
strongest in the world, and I salute each of them for their unwavering
service.
We are honor bound to ensure that they are provided the very best
equipment, afforded the highest respect, and compensated at a level
commensurate with their remarkable service to this Nation. And I
believe this bill reflects those principles.
Since the end of the cold war we have reduced the overall military
force structure by 36 percent and reduced the defense budget by 40
percent--a trend that this bill reverses.
And let me say that comes not a moment too soon. Because while the
size of our armed services has decreased, the number of contingencies
that our service members are called on to respond to has increased in a
fashion that can only be described as dramatic.
In fact, the Navy/Marine Corps team alone responded to 58 contingency
missions between 1980 and 1989, while between 1990 and 1999 they
responded to 192--a remarkable threefold increase in operations.
During the cold war, the U.N. Security Council rarely approved the
creation of peace operations. In fact, the U.N. implemented only 13
such operations between 1948 and 1978, and none from 1979 to 1987. By
contrast, since 1988--just twelve years ago--38 peacekeeping operations
have been established--nearly three times as many than the previous 40
years.
As a result of the challenges presented by having to do more with
less, the Armed Services Committee has heard from our leaders in
uniform on how our current military forces are being stretched too
thin, and that estimates predicted in the fiscal year 1997 QDR
underestimated how much the United States would be using our military.
I fully support this bill which authorizes $309.8 billion in budget
authority, an amount which is consistent with the concurrent budget
resolution. For the second year in a row--we recognize the shortfall
and reverse a 14-year decline by authorizing a real increase in defense
spending. This funding is $4.5 billion above the President's fiscal
year 2001 request, and provides a necessary increase in defense
spending that is vital if we are to meet the national security
challenges of the 21st century.
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This bill not only provides funds for better tools and equipment for
our service men and women to do their jobs but it also enhances quality
of life for themselves and their families. It approves a 3.7-percent
pay raise for our military personnel as well as authorizing extensive
improvements in military health care for active duty personnel,
military retirees, and their families.
As chair of the Seapower Subcommittee, I was particularly interested
in an article that I read this morning in Defense News titled ``U.S.
Navy: Stretched Too Thin?'' by Daniel Goure. I ask unanimous consent
that this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Defense News, June 12, 2000]
U.S. Navy: Stretched Thin?--Surging Demands Overwhelm Shrinking Force
(By Daniel Goure)
The term floating around Washington to describe the current
state of the U.S. armed forces is overstretched. This means
the military is attempting to respond to too many demands
with too few forces.
Clear evidence of this overstretch was provided by the war
in Kosovo. In order to meet the demands posed by that
conflict, the United States had to curtail air operations in
the skies over Iraq and leave the eastern Pacific without an
aircraft carrier.
The number of missions the U.S. military has been asked to
perform has increased dramatically in the last decade--by
some measures almost eight-fold--while the force posture has
shrunk by more than a third.
In testimony this year before Congress, senior Defense
Department officials and the heads of the military services
revealed the startling fact that by their own estimates the
existing force posture is inadequate to meet the stated
national security requirement of being able to fight and win
two major theater wars.
Nowhere is the problem worse than for the Navy. This is
due, in large measure, to the Navy's unique set of roles and
missions. Unlike the other services which are now poised to
conduct expeditionary warfare based on power projection from
the continental United States, the Navy is required to
maintain continuous forward presence in all critical regions.
The Armed Forces Journal reported that in September 1998,
Adm. Jay Johnson, chief of naval operations, told the Senate
Armed Services Committee that ``On any given day, one-third
of the Navy's forces are forward deployed. . . . In addition,
it must ensure freedom of the seas and, increasingly, provide
time-critical strike assets for operations against the
world's littorals under the rubric of operations from the
sea.''
It should be remembered that the 1999 military strikes
against terrorist sites in Afghanistan, which is land-locked,
and Sudan, which has coastline only on the Red Sea, was
accomplished solely by cruise missiles launched from U.S.
Navy ships.
Naturally, naval forces are in demand during crisis and
conflict and have made significant, and in some instances,
singular contributions to military operations in the Balkans
and Middle East.
In fact, since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has
responded to some 80 crisis deployments, approximately one
every four weeks, while struggling to maintain forward
presence in non-crises regions.
So far, the Navy has been able to perform its missions and
respond to crises. This is unlikely to remain true in the
future. The size of the navy has shrunk by nearly half during
the last decade. From a force of well over 500 ships at the
end of the Cold War, the navy is reduced to some 300 ships
today.
The mathematics of the problem are simple: A force half the
size attempting to perform eight times the missions has an
effective 16-fold increase in its required operational tempo.
This increased burden results in longer deployments, reduced
maintenance, lower morale and less time on-station.
Ultimately, it means that on any given day, there will not be
enough ships to meet all the requirements and cover all the
crises.
The Navy understands the problem. In testimony before the
House of Representatives this year. Vice Adm. Conrad
Lautenbach, deputy chief of naval operations, stated that
``it is no secret that our current resources of 316 ships is
fully deployed and in many cases stretched thin to meet the
growing national security demands.''
This is not merely the view from the headquarters. Adm.
Dennis McGinn, commander Third Fleet, stated in an appearance
before Congress in February that ``force structure throughout
the Navy is such that an increased commitment anywhere
necessitates reduction of operations somewhere else, or a
quality of life impact due to increased operating tempo.''
Vice Adm. Charles Moore, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet,
operating in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, told the House
Armed Services procurement subcommittee Feb. 29 that
``Although I am receiving the necessary forces to meet Fifth
Fleet obligations, the fleet is stretched, and I am uncertain
how much longer they can continue to juggle forces to meet
the varied regional requirements, including the Fifth
Fleet's.
``I am uncertain that we have the surge capability to a
major theater contingency, or theater war. Eventually, the
increased operational tempo on our fewer and fewer ships will
take its toll on their availability and readiness.''
The reality is that numbers matter, particularly for naval
forces. This is due in part to the tyranny of distance that
is imposed on every Navy ship, whether or not it is steaming
in harm's way. Deployments to the Persian Gulf, 8,000 miles
from the Navy's home ports on both coasts, mean ships must
travel from 10 to 14 days just to reach their forward
deployed positions.
Even deployments from Norfolk, Va., to the Caribbean take
several days. The conventional wisdom is that in order to
provide adequate rotation and maintain a tolerable
operational tempo, an inventory of three ships is required
for every one deployed forward.
However, when the time required for steaming to and from
global deployment areas, maintenance and overhaul, and
training and shakedowns are included, the ratio rises to
four, five and even six ships to one.
As a result of recent events such as Kosovo, in which U.S.
naval forces in the western Pacific were stripped of their
aircraft carrier in order to support naval operations in the
Adriatic, public and congressional attention was focused on
the inadequacy of the Navy's inventory of aircraft carriers.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff published an attack submarine study
that concluded the nation requires 68 attack boats instead of
the 50 they had been allowed.
Attention is particularly lacking on the Navy's surface
combatants. These are the destroyers and cruisers, the
workhorses of the Navy. Not only do they protect aircraft
carriers and visibly demonstrate forward presence, but due to
the advent of precision strike systems and advanced
communication and surveillance, increasingly are the
principal combat forces deployed to a regional crisis.
A recent surface combatant study concluded that the Navy
required up to 139 multimission warships to satisfy the full
range of requirements and meet day-to-day operations.
Instead, the navy has been allowed only 116. At least a
quarter of these are aging frigates and older destroyers that
lack the
Major Actions:
All articles in Senate section
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
(Senate - June 08, 2000)
Text of this article available as:
TXT
PDF
[Pages S4722-
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NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, for the information of the Senate, I would
like to pose a unanimous consent request with regard to the sequencing
of speakers.
We have the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts who has, under a
previous order, 1 hour. I suggest he be the first and lead off this
morning, followed by the distinguished Senator from Maine, the chair of
the Senate Seapower Subcommittee, and that would be for a period of 30
minutes thereafter. Following that, the distinguished ranking member
and I have some 30 cleared amendments which we will offer to the Senate
following these two sets of remarks.
Then Senator Smith; as soon as I can reach him, I will sequence him
in.
I just inform the Senate I will be seeking recognition to offer an
amendment on behalf of Senator Dodd and myself, and I will acquaint the
ranking member with the text of that amendment shortly.
Just for the moment, the unanimous consent request is the Senator
from Massachusetts, followed by the Senator from Maine followed by a
period of time, probably not to exceed 30 minutes, for the ranking
member and myself to deal with some 30-odd amendments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I would add the following: It is my
understanding of the unanimous consent agreement that recognition of
the speakers who are listed here with a fixed period of time, including
Senator Kerry, Senator Smith, Senator Snowe, and Senator Inhofe, is
solely for the purpose of debate and not for the purpose of offering an
amendment. Is the Senator correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WARNER. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bunning). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and ranking member for
their courtesy and I appreciate the time of the Senate to be able to
discuss an issue of extraordinary importance. It is an issue that is
contained in this bill. It is a line item in this bill of some $85
million with respect to the issue of national missile defense.
President Clinton has just returned from his first meeting with the
new Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and arms control dominated their
agenda, in particular, the plan of the United States to deploy a
limited national defense system, which would require amending the 1972
ABM Treaty. Russia is still strongly opposed to changing that treaty,
and I think we can all expect this will continue to be an issue of
great discussion between the United States and Russia in the months and
possibly years to come.
As I said, in the Senate today, this defense bill authorizes funding
for the construction of the national missile defense initial deployment
facilities. Regretfully, we do not always have the time in the Senate
to lay out policy considerations in a thorough, quiet, and thoughtful
way, and I will try to do that this morning. The question of whether,
when, and how the United States should deploy a defense against
ballistic missiles is, in fact, complex--tremendously complex. I want
to take some time today to walk through the issues that are involved in
that debate and to lay bare the implications it will have for the
national security of the United States.
No American leader can dismiss an idea that might protect American
citizens from a legitimate threat. If there is a real potential of a
rogue nation, as we call them, firing a few missiles at any city in the
United States, responsible leadership requires that we make our best,
most thoughtful efforts to defend against that threat. The same is true
of the potential threat of accidental launch. If ever either of these
things happened, no leader could explain away not having chosen to
defend against such a disaster when doing so made sense.
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The questions before us now are several. Does it make sense to deploy
a national missile defense now, unilaterally, if the result might be to
put America at even greater risk? Do we have more time to work with
allies and others to find a mutually acceptable, nonthreatening way of
proceeding? Have the threats to which we are responding been
exaggerated, and are they more defined by politics than by genuine
threat assessment and scientific fact? Have we sufficiently explored
various technologies and architectures so we are proceeding in the most
thoughtful and effective way?
The President has set out four criteria on which he will base his
decision to deploy an NMD: The status of the threat, the status and
effectiveness of the proposed system's technology, the cost of the
system, and the likely impact of deploying such a system on the overall
strategic environment and U.S. arms control efforts in general. In my
judgment, at this point in time none of these criteria are met to
satisfaction.
While the threat from developing missile programs has emerged more
quickly than we expected, I do not believe it justifies a rush to
action on the proposed defensive system, which is far from
technologically sound and will probably not even provide the
appropriate response to the threat as it continues to develop. More
importantly, a unilateral decision of the United States to deploy an
NMD system could undermine global strategic stability, damage our
relationship with key allies in Europe and Asia, and weaken our
continuing efforts to reduce the nuclear danger.
Turning first to the issue of the threat that we face, this question
deserves far greater scrutiny than it has thus far received. I hear a
number of colleagues, the State Department, and others, saying: Oh,
yes, the threat exists. Indeed, to some degree the threat does exist.
But it is important for us to examine to what degree. Recently, the
decades-long debate on the issue of deploying an NMD has taken on
bipartisan relevance as the threat of a rogue ballistic missile program
has increased.
I want to be very clear. At this point, I support the deployment, in
cooperation with our friends and allies, of a limited, effective
National Missile Defense System aimed at containing the threat from
small rogue ballistic missile programs or the odd, accidental, or
unauthorized launch from a major power. But I do not believe the United
States should attempt to unilaterally deploy a National Missile Defense
System aimed at altering the strategic balance. We have made tremendous
progress over the last two decades in reducing the threat from weapons
of mass destruction through bilateral strategic reductions with Russia
and multilateral arms control agreements such as the Chemical Weapons
Convention. We simply cannot allow these efforts to be undermined in
any way as we confront the emerging ballistic missile threat.
Even as we have made progress with Russia on reducing our cold war
arsenals, ballistic missile technology has spread, and the threat to
the United States from rogue powers, so-called, has grown. The July
1998 Rumsfeld report found that the threat from developing ballistic
missile states, especially North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, is developing
faster than expected and could pose an imminent threat to the U.S.
homeland in the next 5 years. That conclusion was reinforced just 1
month later when North Korea tested a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 missile,
launching it over Japan and raising tensions in the region. While the
missile's third stage failed, the test confirmed that North Korea's
program for long-range missiles is advancing towards an ICBM capability
that could ultimately--and I stress ultimately--threaten the United
States, as surely as its shorter range missiles threaten our troops and
our allies in the region today.
A 1999 national intelligence estimate on the ballistic missile threat
found that in addition to the continuing threat from Russia and China,
the United States faces a developing threat from North Korea, Iran, and
Iraq.
In addition to the possibility that North Korea might convert the
Taepo Dong-1 missile into an inaccurate ICBM capable of carrying a
light payload to the United States, the report found that North Korea
could weaponize the larger Taepo Dong-2 to deliver a crude nuclear
weapon to American shores, and it could do so at any time, with little
warning. The NIE also found that, in the next 15 years, Iran could test
an ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear weapon to the United States--and
certainly to our allies in Europe and the Middle East--and that Iraq
may be able to do the same in a slightly longer time frame.
The picture of the evolving threat to the United States from
ballistic missile programs in hostile nations has changed minds in the
Senate about the necessity of developing and testing a national missile
defense. It has changed my mind about what might be appropriate to
think about and to test and develop.
If Americans in Alaska or Hawaii must face this threat, however
uncertain, I do not believe someone in public life can responsibly tell
them: We will not look at or take steps to protect you.
But as we confront the technological challenges and the political
ramifications of developing and deploying a national missile defense,
we are compelled to take a closer look at the threat we are rushing to
meet. I believe the missile threat from North Korea, Iran, and Iraq is
real but not imminent, and that we confront today much greater, much
more immediate dangers, from which national missile defense cannot and
will not protect us.
To begin, it is critical to note that both the Rumsfeld Commission
and the National Intelligence Estimate adopted new standards for
assessing the ballistic missile threat in response to political
pressures from the Congress.
The 1995 NIE was viciously criticized for underestimating the threat
from rogue missile programs. Some in Congress accused the
administration of deliberately downplaying the threat to undermine
their call for a national missile defense.
To get the answer that they were looking for, the Congress then
established the Rumsfeld Commission to review the threat. Now, that
commission was made up of some of the best minds in U.S. defense
policy--both supporters and skeptics of national missile defense. I do
not suggest the commission's report was somehow fixed. These are people
who have devoted their lives in honorable service to their country. The
report reflects no less than their best assessment of the threat.
But in reaching the conclusions that have alarmed so many about the
immediacy of the threat, we must responsibly take note of the fact that
the commission did depart from the standards that we had traditionally
used to measure the threat.
First, the commission reduced the range of ballistic missiles that we
consider to be a threat from missiles that can reach the continental
United States to those that can only reach Hawaii and Alaska.
I think this is a minor distinction because, as I said earlier, no
responsible leader is going to suggest that you should leave Americans
in Hawaii or Alaska exposed to attack. But certainly the only reason to
hit Hawaii or Alaska, if you have very few weapons measured against
other targets, is to wreak terror. And insomuch as that is the only
reason, one has to factor that into the threat analysis in ways they
did not.
Secondly, it shortened the time period for considering a developing
program to be a threat from the old standard which measured when a
program could actually be deployed to a new standard of when it was
simply tested.
Again, I would be willing to concede this as a minor distinction
because if a nation were to be intent on using one of these weapons, it
might not wait to meet the stringent testing requirements that we
usually try to meet before deploying a new system. It could just test a
missile, see that it works, and make plans to use it.
These changes are relatively minor, but they need to be acknowledged
and factored into the overall discussion.
But the third change which needs to be factored in is not
insignificant because both the Rumsfeld Commission and the 1999 NIE
abandoned the old standard of assessing the likelihood that a nation
would use its missile capacity in favor of a new standard of whether a
nation simply has the relevant capacity for a missile attack,
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with no analysis whatsoever of the other factors that go into a
decision to actually put that capability to use.
This is tremendously important because, as we know from the cold war,
threat is more than simply a function of capability; it is a function
of attention and other political and military considerations. Through
diplomacy and deterrence, the United States can alter the intentions of
nations that pursue ballistic missile programs and so alter the threat
they pose to us.
This is not simply wishful thinking. There are many examples today of
nations who possess the technical capacity to attack the United States,
but whom we do not consider a threat. India and Pakistan have made
dramatic progress in developing medium-range ballistic missile
programs. But the intelligence community does not consider India and
Pakistan to pose a threat to U.S. interests. Their missile capacity
alone does not translate into a threat because they do not hold
aggressive intentions against us.
Clearly, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are hostile to us, and our
ability to use diplomacy to reduce the threat they pose will be
limited. But having the capacity to reach us and an animosity towards
us does not automatically translate into the intention to use weapons
of mass destruction against us.
In the 40 years that we faced the former Soviet Union, with the raw
capability to destroy each other, neither side resorted to using its
arsenal of missiles. Why not? Because even in periods of intense
animosity and tension, under the most unpredictable and isolated of
regimes, political and military deterrence has a powerful determining
effect on a nation's decision to use force. We have already seen this
at work in our efforts to contain North Korea's nuclear and missile
programs. We saw it at work in the gulf war when Saddam Hussein was
deterred from using his weapons of mass destruction by the sure promise
of a devastating response from the United States.
During the summer of 1999, intelligence reports indicated that North
Korea was preparing the first test-launch of the Taepo Dong-2. Regional
tensions rose, as Japan, South Korea and the United States warned
Pyongyang that it would face serious consequences if it went ahead with
another long-range missile launch. The test was indefinitely delayed,
for ``political reasons,'' which no doubt included U.S. military
deterrence and the robust diplomatic efforts by the United States and
its key allies in the region.
Threatening to cut off nearly $1 billion of food assistance and KEDO
funding to North Korea should the test go forward, while also holding
out the possibility of easing economic sanctions if the test were
called off, helped South Korea, Japan and the United States make the
case to Pyongyang that its interests would be better served through
restraint. An unprecedented dialogue between the United States and
North Korea, initiated by former Secretary of Defense William Perry
during the height of this crisis, continues today. It aims to
verifiably freeze Pyongyang's missile programs and end 50 years of
North Korea's economic isolation.
Acknowledging that these political developments can have an important
impact on the threat, the intelligence community, according to a May 19
article in the Los Angeles Times, will reflect in its forthcoming NIE
that the threat from North Korea's missile program has eased since last
fall. And if it has eased since last fall, indeed, we should be
thinking about the urgency of decisions we make that may have a
profound impact on the overall balance of power.
In short, even as we remain clear-eyed about the threat these nations
pose to American interests, we must not look at the danger as somehow
preordained or unavoidable.
In cooperation with our friends and allies, we must vigorously
implore the tools of diplomacy to reduce the threat. We must redouble
our efforts to stop the proliferation of these deadly weapons. We
cannot just dismiss the importance of U.S. military deterrence.
Only madmen, only the most profoundly detached madmen, bent on self-
destruction, would launch a missile against U.S. soil, which obviously
would invite the most swift and devastating response. One or two or
three missiles fired by North Korea or Iraq would leave a clear address
of who the sender was, and there is no question that the United States
would have the ability to eliminate them from the face of this planet.
All people would recognize that as an immediate and legitimate
response.
My second major concern about the current debate over the missile
threat is that it does nothing to address equally dangerous but more
immediate and more likely threats to U.S. interests.
For one, U.S. troops and U.S. allies today confront the menace of
theater ballistic missiles, capable of delivering chemical or
biological weapons. We saw during the gulf war how important theater
missile defense is to maintaining allied unity and enabling our troops
to focus on their mission. We must continue to push this technology
forward regardless of whether we deploy an NMD system.
The American people also face the very real threat of terrorist
attack. The 1999 State Department report on Patterns of Global
Terrorism shows that while the threat of state-sponsored terrorism
against the U.S. is declining, the threat from nonstate actors, who
increasingly have access to chemical and biological weapons, and
possibly even small nuclear devices, is growing. These terrorist groups
are most likely to attack us covertly, quietly slipping explosives into
a building, unleashing chemical weapons into a crowded subway, or
sending a crude nuclear weapon into a busy harbor.
An NMD system will not protect American citizens from any of these
more immediate and more realistic threats.
Finally, on the issue of the missile threat we are confronting, I
remain deeply concerned about Russia's command and control over its
nuclear forces. Russia has more than 6,000 strategic missiles armed
with nuclear warheads. Maintaining these missiles on high alert
significantly increases the threat of an accidental or an unauthorized
launch. In 1995, the Russian military misidentified a U.S. weather
rocket launched from Norway as a possible attack on the Russian
Federation. With Russia's strategic forces already on high-alert,
President Yelstin and his advisors had just minutes to decide whether
to launch a retaliatory strike on the United States. And yet, in an
effort to reassure Russia that the proposed missile defense will not
prompt an American first strike, the administration seems to be
encouraging Russia to, in fact, maintain its strategic forces on high
alert to allow for a quick, annihilating counterattack that would
overwhelm the proposed limited defense they are offering.
In effect, in order to deploy the system the administration is
currently defining, they are prepared to have Russia, maintain with a
bad command-and-control system weapons on hair trigger or targeted in
order to maintain the balance.
In sum, the threat from rogue missile programs is neither as imminent
nor is as mutable as some have argued. We have time to use the
diplomatic tools at our disposal to try to alter the political
calculation that any nation might make before it decided to use
ballistic missile capacity.
Moreover, the United States faces other, more immediate threats that
will not be met by an NMD. To meet the full range of threats to our
national security, we need to simultaneously address the emerging
threat from the rogue ballistic missile program, maintain a vigorous
defense against theater ballistic missiles and acts of terrorism, and
avoid actions that would undermine the strategic stability we have
fought so hard to establish.
Let me speak for a moment now about the technology. In making his
deployment decision, the President will also consider the technological
readiness and effectiveness of the proposed system. Again, I have grave
concerns that we are sacrificing careful technical development of this
system to meet an artificial deadline, and, may I say, those concerns
are shared by people far more expert than I am. Moreover, even if the
proposed system were to work as planned, I am not convinced it would
provide the most effective defense against a developing missile threat.
Let's look for a moment at the system currently under consideration.
The
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administration has proposed a limited system to protect all 50 States
against small-scale attacks by ICBMs. In the simplest terms, this is a
ground-based, hit-to-kill system.
An interceptor fired from American soil must hit the incoming missile
directly to destroy it. Most of the components of this system are
already developed and are undergoing testing. It will be deployed in 3
phases and is to be completed by about 2010, if the decision to deploy
is made this year. The completed system will include 200, 250
interceptors deployed in Alaska and North Dakota, to be complemented by
a sophisticated array of upgraded early-warning radars and satellite-
based launch detection and tracking systems. I have two fundamental
questions about this proposed system: Will the technology work as
intended, and is the system the most appropriate and effective defense
against this defined threat?
There are three components to consider in answering the first
question: The technology's ability to function at the most basic level,
its operational effectiveness against real world threats, and its
reliability.
I do not believe the compressed testing program and decision deadline
permit us to come close to drawing definitive conclusions about those
three fundamental elements of readiness.
In a Deployment Readiness Review scheduled for late July of this
year, the Pentagon will assess the system, largely on the results of
three intercept tests. The first of these in October of 1999 was
initially hailed as a success because the interceptor did hit the
target, but then, on further examination, the Pentagon conceded that
the interceptor had initially been confused, it had drifted off course,
ultimately heading for the decoy balloon, and possibly striking the
dummy warhead only by accident. That is test No. 1.
The second test in January of 2000 failed because of a sensor coolant
leak.
The third test has not even taken place yet. The third test,
initially planned for April 2000, was postponed until late June and has
recently been postponed again. It is expected in early July, just a few
weeks before the Pentagon review.
To begin with, after two tests, neither satisfactory, it is still
unclear whether the system will function at a basic level under the
most favorable conditions. Even if the next test is a resounding
success, I fail to see how that would be enough to convince people we
have thoroughly vetted the potential problems of a system.
On the second issue of whether the system will be operationally
effective, we have very little information on which to proceed. We have
not yet had an opportunity to test operational versions of the
components in anything such as the environment they would face in a
real defensive engagement. We are only guessing at this point how well
the system would respond to targets launched from unanticipated
locations or how it would perform over much greater distances and much
higher speeds than those at which it has been tested.
Finally, the question of reliability is best answered over time and
extensive use of the system. Any program in its developing stages will
run into technical glitches, and this program has been no different.
That does not mean the system will not ever work properly, but it does
mean we ought to take the time to find out, particularly before we do
something that upsets the balance in the ways this may potentially do.
That is one more reason to postpone the deployment decision, to give
the President and the Pentagon the opportunity to conduct a thorough
and rigorous testing program.
This recommendation is not made in a vacuum. Two independent reviews
have reached a similar conclusion about the risks of rushing to
deployment. In February of 1998, a Pentagon panel led by former Air
Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Welch, characterized the truncated
testing program as a ``rush to failure.'' The panel's second report
recommended delaying the decision to deploy until 2003 at the earliest
to allow key program elements to be fully tested and proven. The
concerns of the Welch Panel were reinforced by the release in February
2000 of a report by the Defense Department's office of operational test
and evaluation (DOT).
The Coyle report decried the undue pressure being applied to the
national missile defense testing program and warned that rushing
through testing to meet artificial decision deadlines has
``historically resulted in a negative effect on virtually every
troubled DOD development program.'' The Report recommended that the
Pentagon postpone its Deployment Readiness Review to allow for a
thorough analysis and clear understanding of the results of the third
intercept test (now scheduled for early July), which will be the first
``integrated systems'' test of all the components except the booster.
The scientific community is concerned about more than the risks of a
shortened testing program. The best scientific minds in America have
begun to warn that even if the technology functions as planned, the
system could be defeated by relatively simple countermeasures. The 1999
NIE that addressed the ballistic missile threat concluded that the same
nations that are developing long-range ballistic missile systems could
develop or buy countermeasure technologies by the time they are ready
to deploy their missile systems.
Just think, we could expend billions of dollars, we could upset the
strategic balance, we could initiate a new arms race, and we could not
even get a system that withstands remarkably simple, inexpensive
countermeasures. Now, there is a stroke of brilliant strategic
thinking.
The proposed national missile defense is an exo-atmospheric system,
meaning the interceptor is intended to hit the target after the boost
phase when it has left the atmosphere and before reentry. An IBM
releases its payload immediately after the boost phase. If that payload
were to consist of more than simply one warhead, then an interceptor
would have more than one target with which to contend after the boost
phase.
The Union of Concerned Scientists recently published a thorough
technical analysis of three countermeasures that would be particularly
well suited to overwhelming this kind of system, chemical and
biological bomblets, antisimulation decoys, and warhead shrouds. North
Korea, Iran, and Iraq are all believed to have programs capable of
weaponizing chemical and biological weapons which are cheaper and
easier to acquire than the most rudimentary nuclear warhead.
The most effective means of delivering a CBW, a chemical-biological
warfare warhead on a ballistic missile, is not to deploy one large
warhead filled with the agent but to divide it up into as many a
s 100
submunitions, or bomblets. There are few technical barriers to
weaponizing CBW this way, and it allows the agents to be dispersed over
a large area, inflicting maximum casualties. Because the limited NMD
system will not be able to intercept a missile before the bomblets are
dispersed, it could quickly be overpowered by just three incoming
missiles armed with bomblets--and that is assuming every interceptor
hit its target. Just one missile carrying 100 targets would pose a
formidable challenge to the system being designed with possibly
devastating effects.
The exo-atmospheric system is also vulnerable to missiles carrying
nuclear warheads armed with decoys. Using antisimulation, an attacker
would disguise the nuclear warhead to look like a decoy by placing it
in a lightweight balloon and releasing it along with a large number of
similar but empty balloons. Using simple technology to raise the
temperature in all of the balloons, the attacker could make the balloon
containing the warhead indistinguishable to infrared radar from the
empty balloons, forcing the defensive system to shoot down every
balloon in order to ensure that the warhead is destroyed. By deploying
a large number of balloons, an attacker could easily overwhelm a
limited national missile defense system. Alternately, by covering the
warhead with a shroud cooled by liquid nitrogen, an attacker could
reduce the warhead's infrared radiation by a factor of at least 1
million, making it incredibly difficult for the system's sensors to
detect the warhead in time to hit it.
I have only touched very cursorily on the simplest countermeasures
that could be available to an attacker with ballistic missiles, but I
believe this discussion raises serious questions about
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a major operational vulnerability in the proposed system and about
whether this system is the best response to the threats we are most
likely to face in the years ahead. I don't believe it is.
There is a simpler, more sensible, less threatening, more manageable
approach to missile defense that deserves greater consideration. Rather
than pursuing the single-layer exo-atmospheric system, I believe we
should focus our research efforts on developing a forward-deployed,
boost phase intercept system. Such a system would build on the current
technology of the Army's land-based theater high altitude air defense,
THAAD, and the Navy's sea-based theaterwide defense system to provide
forward-deployed defenses against both theater ballistic missile
threats and long-range ballistic missile threats in their boost phase.
The Navy already deploys the Aegis fleet air defense system. An
upgraded version of this sea-based system could be stationed off the
coast of North Korea or in the Mediterranean or in the Persian Gulf to
shoot down an ICBM in its earliest and slowest stage. The ground-based
THAAD system could be similarly adapted to meet the long-range and
theater ballistic missile threats. Because these systems would target a
missile in its boost phase, they would eliminate the current system's
vulnerability to countermeasures. This approach could also be more
narrowly targeted at specific threats and it could be used to extend
ballistic missile protection to U.S. allies and to our troops in the
field.
As Dick Garwin, an expert on missile defense and a member of the
Rumsfeld Commission has so aptly argued, the key advantage to the
mobile forward-deployed missile defense system is that rather than
having to create an impenetrable umbrella over the entire U.S.
territory, it would only require us to put an impenetrable lid over the
much smaller territory of an identified rogue nation or in a location
where there is the potential for an accidental launch. A targeted
system, by explicitly addressing specific threats, would be much less
destabilizing than a system designed only to protect U.S. soil. It
would reassure Russia that we do not intend to undermine its nuclear
deterrent, and it would enable Russia and the United States to continue
to reduce and to secure our remaining strategic arsenals. It would
reassure U.S. allies that they will not be left vulnerable to missile
threats and that they need not consider deploying nuclear deterrents of
their own. In short, this alternative approach could do what the
proposed national defense system will not do: It will make us safer.
There are two major obstacles to deploying a boost phase system, but
I believe both of those obstacles can and must be overcome. First, the
technology is not yet there. The Navy's theaterwide defense system was
designed to shoot down cruise missiles and other threats to U.S.
warships. Without much faster intercept missiles than are currently
available, the system would not be able to stop a high speed ICBM, even
in the relatively slow boost phase. The THAAD system, which continues
to face considerable challenges in its demonstration and testing
phases, is also being designed to stop ballistic missiles, but it
hasn't been tested yet against the kinds of high speeds of an ICBM.
Which raises the second obstacle to deploying this system: the
current interpretation of the ABM Treaty, as embodied in the 1997
demarcation agreements between Russia and the United States, does not
allow us to test or deploy a theater ballistic missile system capable
of shooting down an ICBM. I will address this issue a little more in a
moment, but let me say that I am deeply disturbed by the notion that we
should withdraw from the ABM Treaty and unilaterally deploy an ABM
system, particularly the kind of system I have defined that may not do
the job. In the long run, such a move would undermine U.S. security
rather than advance it. It is possible--and I believe necessary--to
reach an agreement with Russia on changes to the ABM Treaty that would
allow us to deploy an effective limited defense system such as I have
described. In fact, President Putin hinted quite openly at the
potential for that kind of an agreement being reached. I commend the
President for working hard to reach an agreement with Russia that will
allow us both to deploy in an intelligent and mutual way that does not
upset the balance.
I want to briefly address the issue of cost, which I find to be the
least problematic of the four criterion under consideration. Those who
oppose the idea of a missile defense point to the fact that, in the
last forty years, the United States has spent roughly $120 billion
trying to develop an effective defense against ballistic missiles. And
because this tremendous investment has still not yielded definitive
results, they argue that we should abandon the effort before pouring
additional resources into it.
I disagree. I believe that we can certainly afford to devote a small
portion of the Defense budget to develop a workable national missile
defense. The projected cost of doing so varies--from roughly $4 billion
to develop a boost-phase system that would build on existing defenses
to an estimated $60 billion to deploy the three-phased ground-based
system currently under consideration by the Administration. These
estimates will probably be revised upward as we confront the inevitable
technology challenges and delays. But, spread out over the next 5 to 10
years, I believe we can well afford this relatively modest investment
in America's security, provided that our research efforts focus on
developing a realistic response to the emerging threat.
My only real concern about the cost of developing a national missile
defense is in the perception that addressing this threat somehow makes
us safe from the myriad other threats that we face. We must not allow
the debate over NMD to hinder our cooperation with Russia, China, and
our allies to stop the proliferation of WMD and ballistic missile
technology. In particular, we must remain steadfast in our efforts to
reduce the dangers posed by the enormous weapons arsenal of the former
Soviet Union. Continued Russian cooperation with the expanded
Comprehensive Threat Reduction programs will have a far greater impact
on America's safety from weapons of mass destruction than deploying an
NMD system. We must not sacrifice the one for the other.
Let me go to the final of the four considerations the President has
set forward because I believe that a unilateral decision to deploy a
national missile defense system would have a disastrous effect on the
international strategic and political environment. It could destabilize
our already difficult relationships with Russia and China and undermine
our allies' confidence in the reliability of the U.S. defensive
commitment. It would jeopardize current hard fought arms control
agreements, and it could erode more than 40 years of U.S. leadership on
arms control.
The administration clearly understands the dangers of a unilateral
U.S. deployment. President Clinton was not able to reach agreement with
the Russian President, but he has made progress in convincing the
Russian leadership that the ballistic missile threat is real. To be
clear, I don't support the administration's current proposal, but I do
support its effort to work out with Russia this important issue. The
next administration needs to complete that task, if we cannot do it in
the next months.
While simply declaring our intent to deploy a system does not
constitute an abrogation of the ABM Treaty, it surely signals that the
U.S. withdrawal from the treaty is imminent.
Mr. President, the first casualty of such a declaration would be
START II. Article 2 paragraph 2 of the Russian instrument of
ratification gives Russia the right to withdraw from START II if the
U.S. withdraws from or violates the 1972 ABM Treaty. Russia would also
probably stop implementation of START I, as well as cooperation with
our comprehensive threat reduction program. I don't have time at this
moment to go through the full picture of the threat reduction problems.
But suffice it to say that really the most immediate and urgent threat
the United States faces are the numbers of weapons on Russian soil with
a command and control system that is increasingly degraded, and the
single highest priority of the United States now is keeping the
comprehensive threat reduction program on target. To lose that by a
unilateral statement of our intention to proceed would be one of the
most dramatic losses of the last 40 to 50 years.
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So continued cooperation with Russia on these arms control programs
is critical. Furthermore, no matter how transparent we are with Russia
about the intent and capabilities of the proposed system, Russia's
military leadership will interpret a unilateral deployment as a direct
threat to their deterrence capacity. And while Russia doesn't have the
economic strength today to significantly enhance its military
capabilities, there are clear examples of Russia's capacity to wield
formidable military power when it wants. We must not allow a unilateral
NMD deployment to provoke the Russian people into setting aside the
difficult but necessary tasks of democratization and economic reform in
a vain effort to return to Russia's days of military glory.
Finally, with regard to Russia, a unilateral deployment by the United
States would jeopardize our cooperation on a whole range of significant
issues. However imperfect it is, U.S.-Russian cooperation will continue
to be important on matters from stopping Teheran's proliferation
efforts and containing Iraq's weapons programs to promoting stability
in the Balkans.
While the impact of a limited U.S. system on Russian security
considerations would be largely perceptual, at least as long as that
system remains limited, its impact on China's strategic posture is real
and immediate. China today has roughly 20-plus long-range missiles. The
proposed system would undermine China's strategic deterrent as surely
as it would contain the threat from North Korea. And that poses a
problem because, unlike North Korea, China has the financial resources
to build a much larger arsenal.
The Pentagon believes it is likely that China will increase the
number and sophistication of its long-range missiles just as part of
its overall military modernization effort, regardless of what we do on
NMD. But as with Russia, if an NMD decision is made without
consultation with China, the leadership in Beijing will perceive the
deployment as at least partially directed at them. And given the recent
strain in U.S.-China relations and uncertainty in the Taiwan Strait,
the vital U.S. national interest in maintaining stability in the
Pacific would, in fact, be greatly undermined by such a decision made
too rashly.
Nobody understands the destabilizing effect of a unilateral U.S. NMD
decision better than our allies in Europe and in the Pacific. The steps
that Russia and China would take to address their insecurities about
the U.S. system will make their neighbors less secure. And a new
environment of competition and distrust will undermine regional
stability by impeding cooperation on proliferation, drug trafficking,
humanitarian crises, and all the other transnational problems we are
confronting together. So I think it is critical that we find a way to
deploy an NMD without sending even a hint of a message that the
security of the American people is becoming decoupled from that of our
allies. In Asia, both South Korea and Japan have the capability to
deploy nuclear programs of their own. Neither has done so, in part,
because both have great confidence in the integrity the U.S. security
guarantees and in the U.S. nuclear umbrella that extends over them.
They also believe that, while China does aspire to be a regional power,
the threat it poses is best addressed through engagement and efforts to
anchor China in the international community. Both of these assumptions
would be undermined by a unilateral U.S. NMD deployment.
First, our ironclad security guarantees will be perceived by the
Japanese, by the South Koreans, and others, as somewhat rusty if we
pursue a current NMD proposal to create a shield over the U.S.
territory. U.S. cities would no longer be vulnerable to the same
threats from North Korea that Seoul and Tokyo would continue to face.
And so they would say: Well, there is a decoupling; we don't feel as
safe as we did. Maybe now we have to make decisions to nuclearize
ourselves in order to guarantee our own safety.
China's response to a unilateral U.S. NMD will make it, at least in
the short term, a far greater threat to regional stability than it
poses today. If South Korea and Japan change their perceptions both of
the threat they face and of U.S. willingness to protect them, they then
could both be motivated to explore independent means of boosting their
defenses. Then it becomes a world of greater tensions, not lesser
tensions. It becomes a world of greater hair-trigger capacity, not
greater safety-lock capacity.
Our European allies have expressed the same concerns about decoupling
as I have expressed about Asia. We certainly cannot dismiss the
calculations that Great Britain, France, and Germany will make about
the impact of the U.S. NMD system. But I believe their concerns hinge
largely on the affect a unilateral decision would have on Russia,
concerns that would be greatly ameliorated if we make the NMD decision
with Russia's cooperation.
Finally, much has been made of the impact a U.S. national missile
defense system would have and what it would do to the international
arms control regime. For all of the reasons I have just discussed, a
unilateral decision would greatly damage U.S. security interests. I
want to repeat that. It will, in fact, damage U.S. security interests.
The history of unilateral steps in advancing strategic weapons shows
a very clear pattern of sure response and escalation. In 1945, the
United States exploded the first atomic bomb. The Soviets followed in
1949. In 1948, we unveiled the first nuclear-armed intercontinental
bomber. The Soviets followed in 1955. In 1952, we exploded the first
hydrogen bomb. The Soviets followed 1 year later. In 1957, the Soviets
beat us, for the one time, and launched the first satellite into orbit
and perfected the first ICBM. We followed suit within 12 months. In
1960, the United States fired the first submarine-launched ballistic
missile. The Soviets followed in 1968. In 1964, we developed the first
multiple warhead missile and reentry vehicle; we tested the first MIRV.
The Soviets MIRVed in 1973, and so on, throughout the cold war, up
until the point that we made a different decision--the ABM Treaty and
reducing the level of nuclear weapons.
The rationale for testing and deploying a missile defense is to make
America and the world safer. It is to defend against a threat, however
realistic, of a rogue state/terrorist launch of an ICBM, or an
accidental launch. No one has been openly suggesting a public rationale
at this time of a defense against any and all missiles, such as the
original Star Wars envisioned, but some have not given up on that
dream. It is, in fact, the intensity and tenacity of their continued
advocacy for such a system that drives other people's fears of what the
U.S. may be up to and which significantly complicates the test of
selling even a limited and legitimately restrained architecture.
Mr. President, in diplomacy--as in life--other nations and other
people make policies based not only on real fears, or legitimate
reactions to an advocacy/nonfriend's actions, but they also make
choices based on perceived fears--on worst case scenarios defined to
their leaders by experts. We do the same thing.
The problem with unilaterally deployed defense architecture is that
other nations may see intentions and long-term possibilities that
negatively affect their sense of security, just as it did throughout
the cold war. For instance, a system that today is limited, but
exclusively controlled by us and exclusively within our technological
capacity is a system that they perceive could be expanded and
distributed at any time in the future to completely alter the balance
of power--the balance of terror as we have thought of it. That may
sound terrific to us and even be good for us for a short period of
time--but every lesson of the arms race for the last 55 years shows
that the advantage is short lived, the effect is simply to require
everyone to build more weapons at extraordinary expense, and the
advantage is inevitably wiped out with the world becoming a more
dangerous place in the meantime. That is precisely why the ABM treaty
was negotiated--to try to limit the unbridled competition, stabilize
the balance and create a protocol by which both sides could confidently
reduce weapons.
The negotiation of the ABM Treaty put an end to this cycle of
ratcheting up the strategic danger. After 20 years of trying to outdo
each other--building an increasingly dangerous, increasingly unstable
strategic environment in the process--we recognized that deploying
strategic defenses, far from
[[Page
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making us safer, would only invite a response and an escalation of the
danger. There is no reason to believe that a unilateral move by the
United States to alter the strategic balance would not have the same
affect today as it had for forty years. At the very least, it would
stop and probably reverse the progress we have made on strategic
reductions. And it will reduce our capacity to cooperate with Russia on
the single greatest threat we face, which are the ``loose nukes''
existing in the former Soviet Union.
Under START I levels, both sides agree to reduce those arsenals to
6,500 warheads. Under START II, those levels come down to 3,500
warheads. And we are moving toward further reductions in our
discussions on START III, down to 2,000 warheads. With every agreement,
the American people are safer. A unilateral withdrawal from the ABM
Treaty would stop this progress in its tracks. No NMD system under
consideration can make us safe enough to justify such a reckless act.
I strongly disagree with my colleagues who argue that the United
States is no longer bound by our legal obligations under the ABM
Treaty. No president has ever withdrawn us from the Treaty, and
President Clinton has reaffirmed our commitment to it. We retain our
obligations to the Treaty under international law, and those
obligations continue to serve us well. It would never have been
possible to negotiate reductions in U.S. and Soviet strategic forces
without the ABM Treaty's limit on national missile defense. The
Russians continue to underscore that linkage. And since, as I've
already argued, Russia's strategic arsenal continues to pose a serious
threat to the United States and her allies, we must not take steps--
including the unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty--that will
undermine our efforts to reduce and contain that threat.
However, the strategic situation we confront today is worlds apart
from the one we faced in 1972, and we must not artificially limit our
options as we confront the emerging threats to our security. Under the
forward-deployed boost-phase system I have described, the United States
would need to seek Russian agreement to change the 1997 ABM Treaty
Demarcation agreements, which establish the line between theater
missile defense systems that are not limited by the Treaty and the
strategic defenses the Treaty proscribes. In a nutshell, these
agreements allow the United States to deploy and test the PAC-3, THAAD
and Navy Theater-Wide TMD systems, but prohibit us from developing or
testing capabilities that would enable these systems to shoot down
ICBMs.
As long as we are discussing ABM Treaty amendments with Russia, we
should work with them to develop a new concept of strategic defense. A
boost-phase intercept program would sweep away the line between theater
and long-range missile defense. But by limiting the number of
interceptors that could be deployed and working with Russia, China, and
our allies, so that we move multilaterally, we can maximize the
transparency of the system, we can strike the right balance between
meeting new and emerging threats without abandoning the principles of
strategic stability that have served us well for decades.
The most important challenge for U.S. national security planners in
the years ahead will be to work with our friends and allies to develop
a defense against the threat that has been defined. But how we respond
to that threat is critical. We must not rush into a politically driven
decision on something as critical as this; on something that has the
potential by any rational person's thinking to make us less secure--not
more secure.
I urge President Clinton to delay the deployment decision
indefinitely. I believe, even while the threat we face is real and
growing, that it is not imminent. We have the time. We need to take the
time to develop and test the most effective defense, and we will need
time to build international support for deploying a limited, effective
system.
I believe that support will be more forthcoming when we are seen to
be responding to a changing security environment rather than simply
buckling to political pressure.
For 40 years, we have led international efforts to reduce and contain
the danger from nuclear weapons. We can continue that leadership by
exploiting our technological strengths to find a system that will
extend that defense to our friends and allies but not abrogate the
responsibilities of leadership with a hasty, shortsighted decision that
will have lasting consequences.
I hope in the days and months ahead my colleagues will join me in a
thoughtful and probing analysis of these issues so we can together make
the United States stronger and not simply make this an issue that falls
prey to the political dialog in the year 2000.
I thank my colleagues for their time. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
Maine is recognized for 30 minutes.
Ms. SNOWE. I thank the President.
I want to begin my remarks by commending our Chairman, Senator John
Warner, who has provided extraordinary leadership in crafting this
measure which supports our men and women in uniform with funding for
the pay, health care, and hardware that they need and deserve. I can
think of no one with greater credibility on these issues or a wider
breadth of knowledge, and I thank him for his outstanding efforts.
I also want to thank the distinguished ranking member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin, who also has made invaluable
contributions to the development of this reauthorization.
This critical legislation which we are considering here today, with
our distinguished chairman, and the bipartisan support of the ranking
member, Senator Levin, the senior Senator from Michigan, represents the
committee's response to legitimate concerns and recognizes the
sacrifices of those who are at the heart of the legislation--the men
and women who serve in our Nation's Armed Forces.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee and chair of the Seapower
Subcommittee, I know we must never forget that the men and women in
uniform are the ones who make our Nation's defense force the finest and
strongest in the world, and I salute each of them for their unwavering
service.
We are honor bound to ensure that they are provided the very best
equipment, afforded the highest respect, and compensated at a level
commensurate with their remarkable service to this Nation. And I
believe this bill reflects those principles.
Since the end of the cold war we have reduced the overall military
force structure by 36 percent and reduced the defense budget by 40
percent--a trend that this bill reverses.
And let me say that comes not a moment too soon. Because while the
size of our armed services has decreased, the number of contingencies
that our service members are called on to respond to has increased in a
fashion that can only be described as dramatic.
In fact, the Navy/Marine Corps team alone responded to 58 contingency
missions between 1980 and 1989, while between 1990 and 1999 they
responded to 192--a remarkable threefold increase in operations.
During the cold war, the U.N. Security Council rarely approved the
creation of peace operations. In fact, the U.N. implemented only 13
such operations between 1948 and 1978, and none from 1979 to 1987. By
contrast, since 1988--just twelve years ago--38 peacekeeping operations
have been established--nearly three times as many than the previous 40
years.
As a result of the challenges presented by having to do more with
less, the Armed Services Committee has heard from our leaders in
uniform on how our current military forces are being stretched too
thin, and that estimates predicted in the fiscal year 1997 QDR
underestimated how much the United States would be using our military.
I fully support this bill which authorizes $309.8 billion in budget
authority, an amount which is consistent with the concurrent budget
resolution. For the second year in a row--we recognize the shortfall
and reverse a 14-year decline by authorizing a real increase in defense
spending. This funding is $4.5 billion above the President's fiscal
year 2001 request, and provides a necessary increase in defense
spending that is vital if we are to meet the national security
challenges of the 21st century.
[[Page
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This bill not only provides funds for better tools and equipment for
our service men and women to do their jobs but it also enhances quality
of life for themselves and their families. It approves a 3.7-percent
pay raise for our military personnel as well as authorizing extensive
improvements in military health care for active duty personnel,
military retirees, and their families.
As chair of the Seapower Subcommittee, I was particularly interested
in an article that I read this morning in Defense News titled ``U.S.
Navy: Stretched Too Thin?'' by Daniel Goure. I ask unanimous consent
that this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Defense News, June 12, 2000]
U.S. Navy: Stretched Thin?--Surging Demands Overwhelm Shrinking Force
(By Daniel Goure)
The term floating around Washington to describe the current
state of the U.S. armed forces is overstretched. This means
the military is attempting to respond to too many demands
with too few forces.
Clear evidence of this overstretch was provided by the war
in Kosovo. In order to meet the demands posed by that
conflict, the United States had to curtail air operations in
the skies over Iraq and leave the eastern Pacific without an
aircraft carrier.
The number of missions the U.S. military has been asked to
perform has increased dramatically in the last decade--by
some measures almost eight-fold--while the force posture has
shrunk by more than a third.
In testimony this year before Congress, senior Defense
Department officials and the heads of the military services
revealed the startling fact that by their own estimates the
existing force posture is inadequate to meet the stated
national security requirement of being able to fight and win
two major theater wars.
Nowhere is the problem worse than for the Navy. This is
due, in large measure, to the Navy's unique set of roles and
missions. Unlike the other services which are now poised to
conduct expeditionary warfare based on power projection from
the continental United States, the Navy is required to
maintain continuous forward presence in all critical regions.
The Armed Forces Journal reported that in September 1998,
Adm. Jay Johnson, chief of naval operations, told the Senate
Armed Services Committee that ``On any given day, one-third
of the Navy's forces are forward deployed. . . . In addition,
it must ensure freedom of the seas and, increasingly, provide
time-critical strike assets for operations against the
world's littorals under the rubric of operations from the
sea.''
It should be remembered that the 1999 military strikes
against terrorist sites in Afghanistan, which is land-locked,
and Sudan, which has coastline only on the Red Sea, was
accomplished solely by cruise missiles launched from U.S.
Navy ships.
Naturally, naval forces are in demand during crisis and
conflict and have made significant, and in some instances,
singular contributions to military operations in the Balkans
and Middle East.
In fact, since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has
responded to some 80 crisis deployments, approximately one
every four weeks, while struggling to maintain forward
presence in non-crises regions.
So far, the Navy has been able to perform its missions and
respond to crises. This is unlikely to remain true in the
future. The size of the navy has shrunk by nearly half during
the last decade. From a force of well over 500 ships at the
end of the Cold War, the navy is reduced to some 300 ships
today.
The mathematics of the problem are simple: A force half the
size attempting to perform eight times the missions has an
effective 16-fold increase in its required operational tempo.
This increased burden results in longer deployments, reduced
maintenance, lower morale and less time on-station.
Ultimately, it means that on any given day, there will not be
enough ships to meet all the requirements and cover all the
crises.
The Navy understands the problem. In testimony before the
House of Representatives this year. Vice Adm. Conrad
Lautenbach, deputy chief of naval operations, stated that
``it is no secret that our current resources of 316 ships is
fully deployed and in many cases stretched thin to meet the
growing national security demands.''
This is not merely the view from the headquarters. Adm.
Dennis McGinn, commander Third Fleet, stated in an appearance
before Congress in February that ``force structure throughout
the Navy is such that an increased commitment anywhere
necessitates reduction of operations somewhere else, or a
quality of life impact due to increased operating tempo.''
Vice Adm. Charles Moore, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet,
operating in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, told the House
Armed Services procurement subcommittee Feb. 29 that
``Although I am receiving the necessary forces to meet Fifth
Fleet obligations, the fleet is stretched, and I am uncertain
how much longer they can continue to juggle forces to meet
the varied regional requirements, including the Fifth
Fleet's.
``I am uncertain that we have the surge capability to a
major theater contingency, or theater war. Eventually, the
increased operational tempo on our fewer and fewer ships will
take its toll on their availability and readiness.''
The reality is that numbers matter, particularly for naval
forces. This is due in part to the tyranny of distance that
is imposed on every Navy ship, whether or not it is steaming
in harm's way. Deployments to the Persian Gulf, 8,000 miles
from the Navy's home ports on both coasts, mean ships must
travel from 10 to 14 days just to reach their forward
deployed positions.
Even deployments from Norfolk, Va., to the Caribbean take
several days. The conventional wisdom is that in order to
provide adequate rotation and maintain a tolerable
operational tempo, an inventory of three ships is required
for every one deployed forward.
However, when the time required for steaming to and from
global deployment areas, maintenance and overhaul, and
training and shakedowns are included, the ratio rises to
four, five and even six ships to one.
As a result of recent events such as Kosovo, in which U.S.
naval forces in the western Pacific were stripped of their
aircraft carrier in order to support naval operations in the
Adriatic, public and congressional attention was focused on
the inadequacy of the Navy's inventory of aircraft carriers.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff published an attack submarine study
that concluded the nation requires 68 attack boats instead of
the 50 they had been allowed.
Attention is particularly lacking on the Navy's surface
combatants. These are the destroyers and cruisers, the
workhorses of the Navy. Not only do they protect aircraft
carriers and visibly demonstrate forward presence, but due to
the advent of precision strike systems and advanced
communication and surveillance, increasingly are the
principal combat forces deployed to a regional crisis.
A recent surface combatant study concluded that the Navy
required up to 139 multimission warships to satisfy the full
range of requirements and meet day-to-day operations.
Instead, the navy has been allowed only 116. At least a
quarter of these are aging frigates and older destroyers that
Amendments:
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NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
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Summary:
All articles in Senate section
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
(Senate - June 08, 2000)
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NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, for the information of the Senate, I would
like to pose a unanimous consent request with regard to the sequencing
of speakers.
We have the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts who has, under a
previous order, 1 hour. I suggest he be the first and lead off this
morning, followed by the distinguished Senator from Maine, the chair of
the Senate Seapower Subcommittee, and that would be for a period of 30
minutes thereafter. Following that, the distinguished ranking member
and I have some 30 cleared amendments which we will offer to the Senate
following these two sets of remarks.
Then Senator Smith; as soon as I can reach him, I will sequence him
in.
I just inform the Senate I will be seeking recognition to offer an
amendment on behalf of Senator Dodd and myself, and I will acquaint the
ranking member with the text of that amendment shortly.
Just for the moment, the unanimous consent request is the Senator
from Massachusetts, followed by the Senator from Maine followed by a
period of time, probably not to exceed 30 minutes, for the ranking
member and myself to deal with some 30-odd amendments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I would add the following: It is my
understanding of the unanimous consent agreement that recognition of
the speakers who are listed here with a fixed period of time, including
Senator Kerry, Senator Smith, Senator Snowe, and Senator Inhofe, is
solely for the purpose of debate and not for the purpose of offering an
amendment. Is the Senator correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WARNER. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bunning). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and ranking member for
their courtesy and I appreciate the time of the Senate to be able to
discuss an issue of extraordinary importance. It is an issue that is
contained in this bill. It is a line item in this bill of some $85
million with respect to the issue of national missile defense.
President Clinton has just returned from his first meeting with the
new Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and arms control dominated their
agenda, in particular, the plan of the United States to deploy a
limited national defense system, which would require amending the 1972
ABM Treaty. Russia is still strongly opposed to changing that treaty,
and I think we can all expect this will continue to be an issue of
great discussion between the United States and Russia in the months and
possibly years to come.
As I said, in the Senate today, this defense bill authorizes funding
for the construction of the national missile defense initial deployment
facilities. Regretfully, we do not always have the time in the Senate
to lay out policy considerations in a thorough, quiet, and thoughtful
way, and I will try to do that this morning. The question of whether,
when, and how the United States should deploy a defense against
ballistic missiles is, in fact, complex--tremendously complex. I want
to take some time today to walk through the issues that are involved in
that debate and to lay bare the implications it will have for the
national security of the United States.
No American leader can dismiss an idea that might protect American
citizens from a legitimate threat. If there is a real potential of a
rogue nation, as we call them, firing a few missiles at any city in the
United States, responsible leadership requires that we make our best,
most thoughtful efforts to defend against that threat. The same is true
of the potential threat of accidental launch. If ever either of these
things happened, no leader could explain away not having chosen to
defend against such a disaster when doing so made sense.
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The questions before us now are several. Does it make sense to deploy
a national missile defense now, unilaterally, if the result might be to
put America at even greater risk? Do we have more time to work with
allies and others to find a mutually acceptable, nonthreatening way of
proceeding? Have the threats to which we are responding been
exaggerated, and are they more defined by politics than by genuine
threat assessment and scientific fact? Have we sufficiently explored
various technologies and architectures so we are proceeding in the most
thoughtful and effective way?
The President has set out four criteria on which he will base his
decision to deploy an NMD: The status of the threat, the status and
effectiveness of the proposed system's technology, the cost of the
system, and the likely impact of deploying such a system on the overall
strategic environment and U.S. arms control efforts in general. In my
judgment, at this point in time none of these criteria are met to
satisfaction.
While the threat from developing missile programs has emerged more
quickly than we expected, I do not believe it justifies a rush to
action on the proposed defensive system, which is far from
technologically sound and will probably not even provide the
appropriate response to the threat as it continues to develop. More
importantly, a unilateral decision of the United States to deploy an
NMD system could undermine global strategic stability, damage our
relationship with key allies in Europe and Asia, and weaken our
continuing efforts to reduce the nuclear danger.
Turning first to the issue of the threat that we face, this question
deserves far greater scrutiny than it has thus far received. I hear a
number of colleagues, the State Department, and others, saying: Oh,
yes, the threat exists. Indeed, to some degree the threat does exist.
But it is important for us to examine to what degree. Recently, the
decades-long debate on the issue of deploying an NMD has taken on
bipartisan relevance as the threat of a rogue ballistic missile program
has increased.
I want to be very clear. At this point, I support the deployment, in
cooperation with our friends and allies, of a limited, effective
National Missile Defense System aimed at containing the threat from
small rogue ballistic missile programs or the odd, accidental, or
unauthorized launch from a major power. But I do not believe the United
States should attempt to unilaterally deploy a National Missile Defense
System aimed at altering the strategic balance. We have made tremendous
progress over the last two decades in reducing the threat from weapons
of mass destruction through bilateral strategic reductions with Russia
and multilateral arms control agreements such as the Chemical Weapons
Convention. We simply cannot allow these efforts to be undermined in
any way as we confront the emerging ballistic missile threat.
Even as we have made progress with Russia on reducing our cold war
arsenals, ballistic missile technology has spread, and the threat to
the United States from rogue powers, so-called, has grown. The July
1998 Rumsfeld report found that the threat from developing ballistic
missile states, especially North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, is developing
faster than expected and could pose an imminent threat to the U.S.
homeland in the next 5 years. That conclusion was reinforced just 1
month later when North Korea tested a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 missile,
launching it over Japan and raising tensions in the region. While the
missile's third stage failed, the test confirmed that North Korea's
program for long-range missiles is advancing towards an ICBM capability
that could ultimately--and I stress ultimately--threaten the United
States, as surely as its shorter range missiles threaten our troops and
our allies in the region today.
A 1999 national intelligence estimate on the ballistic missile threat
found that in addition to the continuing threat from Russia and China,
the United States faces a developing threat from North Korea, Iran, and
Iraq.
In addition to the possibility that North Korea might convert the
Taepo Dong-1 missile into an inaccurate ICBM capable of carrying a
light payload to the United States, the report found that North Korea
could weaponize the larger Taepo Dong-2 to deliver a crude nuclear
weapon to American shores, and it could do so at any time, with little
warning. The NIE also found that, in the next 15 years, Iran could test
an ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear weapon to the United States--and
certainly to our allies in Europe and the Middle East--and that Iraq
may be able to do the same in a slightly longer time frame.
The picture of the evolving threat to the United States from
ballistic missile programs in hostile nations has changed minds in the
Senate about the necessity of developing and testing a national missile
defense. It has changed my mind about what might be appropriate to
think about and to test and develop.
If Americans in Alaska or Hawaii must face this threat, however
uncertain, I do not believe someone in public life can responsibly tell
them: We will not look at or take steps to protect you.
But as we confront the technological challenges and the political
ramifications of developing and deploying a national missile defense,
we are compelled to take a closer look at the threat we are rushing to
meet. I believe the missile threat from North Korea, Iran, and Iraq is
real but not imminent, and that we confront today much greater, much
more immediate dangers, from which national missile defense cannot and
will not protect us.
To begin, it is critical to note that both the Rumsfeld Commission
and the National Intelligence Estimate adopted new standards for
assessing the ballistic missile threat in response to political
pressures from the Congress.
The 1995 NIE was viciously criticized for underestimating the threat
from rogue missile programs. Some in Congress accused the
administration of deliberately downplaying the threat to undermine
their call for a national missile defense.
To get the answer that they were looking for, the Congress then
established the Rumsfeld Commission to review the threat. Now, that
commission was made up of some of the best minds in U.S. defense
policy--both supporters and skeptics of national missile defense. I do
not suggest the commission's report was somehow fixed. These are people
who have devoted their lives in honorable service to their country. The
report reflects no less than their best assessment of the threat.
But in reaching the conclusions that have alarmed so many about the
immediacy of the threat, we must responsibly take note of the fact that
the commission did depart from the standards that we had traditionally
used to measure the threat.
First, the commission reduced the range of ballistic missiles that we
consider to be a threat from missiles that can reach the continental
United States to those that can only reach Hawaii and Alaska.
I think this is a minor distinction because, as I said earlier, no
responsible leader is going to suggest that you should leave Americans
in Hawaii or Alaska exposed to attack. But certainly the only reason to
hit Hawaii or Alaska, if you have very few weapons measured against
other targets, is to wreak terror. And insomuch as that is the only
reason, one has to factor that into the threat analysis in ways they
did not.
Secondly, it shortened the time period for considering a developing
program to be a threat from the old standard which measured when a
program could actually be deployed to a new standard of when it was
simply tested.
Again, I would be willing to concede this as a minor distinction
because if a nation were to be intent on using one of these weapons, it
might not wait to meet the stringent testing requirements that we
usually try to meet before deploying a new system. It could just test a
missile, see that it works, and make plans to use it.
These changes are relatively minor, but they need to be acknowledged
and factored into the overall discussion.
But the third change which needs to be factored in is not
insignificant because both the Rumsfeld Commission and the 1999 NIE
abandoned the old standard of assessing the likelihood that a nation
would use its missile capacity in favor of a new standard of whether a
nation simply has the relevant capacity for a missile attack,
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with no analysis whatsoever of the other factors that go into a
decision to actually put that capability to use.
This is tremendously important because, as we know from the cold war,
threat is more than simply a function of capability; it is a function
of attention and other political and military considerations. Through
diplomacy and deterrence, the United States can alter the intentions of
nations that pursue ballistic missile programs and so alter the threat
they pose to us.
This is not simply wishful thinking. There are many examples today of
nations who possess the technical capacity to attack the United States,
but whom we do not consider a threat. India and Pakistan have made
dramatic progress in developing medium-range ballistic missile
programs. But the intelligence community does not consider India and
Pakistan to pose a threat to U.S. interests. Their missile capacity
alone does not translate into a threat because they do not hold
aggressive intentions against us.
Clearly, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are hostile to us, and our
ability to use diplomacy to reduce the threat they pose will be
limited. But having the capacity to reach us and an animosity towards
us does not automatically translate into the intention to use weapons
of mass destruction against us.
In the 40 years that we faced the former Soviet Union, with the raw
capability to destroy each other, neither side resorted to using its
arsenal of missiles. Why not? Because even in periods of intense
animosity and tension, under the most unpredictable and isolated of
regimes, political and military deterrence has a powerful determining
effect on a nation's decision to use force. We have already seen this
at work in our efforts to contain North Korea's nuclear and missile
programs. We saw it at work in the gulf war when Saddam Hussein was
deterred from using his weapons of mass destruction by the sure promise
of a devastating response from the United States.
During the summer of 1999, intelligence reports indicated that North
Korea was preparing the first test-launch of the Taepo Dong-2. Regional
tensions rose, as Japan, South Korea and the United States warned
Pyongyang that it would face serious consequences if it went ahead with
another long-range missile launch. The test was indefinitely delayed,
for ``political reasons,'' which no doubt included U.S. military
deterrence and the robust diplomatic efforts by the United States and
its key allies in the region.
Threatening to cut off nearly $1 billion of food assistance and KEDO
funding to North Korea should the test go forward, while also holding
out the possibility of easing economic sanctions if the test were
called off, helped South Korea, Japan and the United States make the
case to Pyongyang that its interests would be better served through
restraint. An unprecedented dialogue between the United States and
North Korea, initiated by former Secretary of Defense William Perry
during the height of this crisis, continues today. It aims to
verifiably freeze Pyongyang's missile programs and end 50 years of
North Korea's economic isolation.
Acknowledging that these political developments can have an important
impact on the threat, the intelligence community, according to a May 19
article in the Los Angeles Times, will reflect in its forthcoming NIE
that the threat from North Korea's missile program has eased since last
fall. And if it has eased since last fall, indeed, we should be
thinking about the urgency of decisions we make that may have a
profound impact on the overall balance of power.
In short, even as we remain clear-eyed about the threat these nations
pose to American interests, we must not look at the danger as somehow
preordained or unavoidable.
In cooperation with our friends and allies, we must vigorously
implore the tools of diplomacy to reduce the threat. We must redouble
our efforts to stop the proliferation of these deadly weapons. We
cannot just dismiss the importance of U.S. military deterrence.
Only madmen, only the most profoundly detached madmen, bent on self-
destruction, would launch a missile against U.S. soil, which obviously
would invite the most swift and devastating response. One or two or
three missiles fired by North Korea or Iraq would leave a clear address
of who the sender was, and there is no question that the United States
would have the ability to eliminate them from the face of this planet.
All people would recognize that as an immediate and legitimate
response.
My second major concern about the current debate over the missile
threat is that it does nothing to address equally dangerous but more
immediate and more likely threats to U.S. interests.
For one, U.S. troops and U.S. allies today confront the menace of
theater ballistic missiles, capable of delivering chemical or
biological weapons. We saw during the gulf war how important theater
missile defense is to maintaining allied unity and enabling our troops
to focus on their mission. We must continue to push this technology
forward regardless of whether we deploy an NMD system.
The American people also face the very real threat of terrorist
attack. The 1999 State Department report on Patterns of Global
Terrorism shows that while the threat of state-sponsored terrorism
against the U.S. is declining, the threat from nonstate actors, who
increasingly have access to chemical and biological weapons, and
possibly even small nuclear devices, is growing. These terrorist groups
are most likely to attack us covertly, quietly slipping explosives into
a building, unleashing chemical weapons into a crowded subway, or
sending a crude nuclear weapon into a busy harbor.
An NMD system will not protect American citizens from any of these
more immediate and more realistic threats.
Finally, on the issue of the missile threat we are confronting, I
remain deeply concerned about Russia's command and control over its
nuclear forces. Russia has more than 6,000 strategic missiles armed
with nuclear warheads. Maintaining these missiles on high alert
significantly increases the threat of an accidental or an unauthorized
launch. In 1995, the Russian military misidentified a U.S. weather
rocket launched from Norway as a possible attack on the Russian
Federation. With Russia's strategic forces already on high-alert,
President Yelstin and his advisors had just minutes to decide whether
to launch a retaliatory strike on the United States. And yet, in an
effort to reassure Russia that the proposed missile defense will not
prompt an American first strike, the administration seems to be
encouraging Russia to, in fact, maintain its strategic forces on high
alert to allow for a quick, annihilating counterattack that would
overwhelm the proposed limited defense they are offering.
In effect, in order to deploy the system the administration is
currently defining, they are prepared to have Russia, maintain with a
bad command-and-control system weapons on hair trigger or targeted in
order to maintain the balance.
In sum, the threat from rogue missile programs is neither as imminent
nor is as mutable as some have argued. We have time to use the
diplomatic tools at our disposal to try to alter the political
calculation that any nation might make before it decided to use
ballistic missile capacity.
Moreover, the United States faces other, more immediate threats that
will not be met by an NMD. To meet the full range of threats to our
national security, we need to simultaneously address the emerging
threat from the rogue ballistic missile program, maintain a vigorous
defense against theater ballistic missiles and acts of terrorism, and
avoid actions that would undermine the strategic stability we have
fought so hard to establish.
Let me speak for a moment now about the technology. In making his
deployment decision, the President will also consider the technological
readiness and effectiveness of the proposed system. Again, I have grave
concerns that we are sacrificing careful technical development of this
system to meet an artificial deadline, and, may I say, those concerns
are shared by people far more expert than I am. Moreover, even if the
proposed system were to work as planned, I am not convinced it would
provide the most effective defense against a developing missile threat.
Let's look for a moment at the system currently under consideration.
The
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administration has proposed a limited system to protect all 50 States
against small-scale attacks by ICBMs. In the simplest terms, this is a
ground-based, hit-to-kill system.
An interceptor fired from American soil must hit the incoming missile
directly to destroy it. Most of the components of this system are
already developed and are undergoing testing. It will be deployed in 3
phases and is to be completed by about 2010, if the decision to deploy
is made this year. The completed system will include 200, 250
interceptors deployed in Alaska and North Dakota, to be complemented by
a sophisticated array of upgraded early-warning radars and satellite-
based launch detection and tracking systems. I have two fundamental
questions about this proposed system: Will the technology work as
intended, and is the system the most appropriate and effective defense
against this defined threat?
There are three components to consider in answering the first
question: The technology's ability to function at the most basic level,
its operational effectiveness against real world threats, and its
reliability.
I do not believe the compressed testing program and decision deadline
permit us to come close to drawing definitive conclusions about those
three fundamental elements of readiness.
In a Deployment Readiness Review scheduled for late July of this
year, the Pentagon will assess the system, largely on the results of
three intercept tests. The first of these in October of 1999 was
initially hailed as a success because the interceptor did hit the
target, but then, on further examination, the Pentagon conceded that
the interceptor had initially been confused, it had drifted off course,
ultimately heading for the decoy balloon, and possibly striking the
dummy warhead only by accident. That is test No. 1.
The second test in January of 2000 failed because of a sensor coolant
leak.
The third test has not even taken place yet. The third test,
initially planned for April 2000, was postponed until late June and has
recently been postponed again. It is expected in early July, just a few
weeks before the Pentagon review.
To begin with, after two tests, neither satisfactory, it is still
unclear whether the system will function at a basic level under the
most favorable conditions. Even if the next test is a resounding
success, I fail to see how that would be enough to convince people we
have thoroughly vetted the potential problems of a system.
On the second issue of whether the system will be operationally
effective, we have very little information on which to proceed. We have
not yet had an opportunity to test operational versions of the
components in anything such as the environment they would face in a
real defensive engagement. We are only guessing at this point how well
the system would respond to targets launched from unanticipated
locations or how it would perform over much greater distances and much
higher speeds than those at which it has been tested.
Finally, the question of reliability is best answered over time and
extensive use of the system. Any program in its developing stages will
run into technical glitches, and this program has been no different.
That does not mean the system will not ever work properly, but it does
mean we ought to take the time to find out, particularly before we do
something that upsets the balance in the ways this may potentially do.
That is one more reason to postpone the deployment decision, to give
the President and the Pentagon the opportunity to conduct a thorough
and rigorous testing program.
This recommendation is not made in a vacuum. Two independent reviews
have reached a similar conclusion about the risks of rushing to
deployment. In February of 1998, a Pentagon panel led by former Air
Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Welch, characterized the truncated
testing program as a ``rush to failure.'' The panel's second report
recommended delaying the decision to deploy until 2003 at the earliest
to allow key program elements to be fully tested and proven. The
concerns of the Welch Panel were reinforced by the release in February
2000 of a report by the Defense Department's office of operational test
and evaluation (DOT).
The Coyle report decried the undue pressure being applied to the
national missile defense testing program and warned that rushing
through testing to meet artificial decision deadlines has
``historically resulted in a negative effect on virtually every
troubled DOD development program.'' The Report recommended that the
Pentagon postpone its Deployment Readiness Review to allow for a
thorough analysis and clear understanding of the results of the third
intercept test (now scheduled for early July), which will be the first
``integrated systems'' test of all the components except the booster.
The scientific community is concerned about more than the risks of a
shortened testing program. The best scientific minds in America have
begun to warn that even if the technology functions as planned, the
system could be defeated by relatively simple countermeasures. The 1999
NIE that addressed the ballistic missile threat concluded that the same
nations that are developing long-range ballistic missile systems could
develop or buy countermeasure technologies by the time they are ready
to deploy their missile systems.
Just think, we could expend billions of dollars, we could upset the
strategic balance, we could initiate a new arms race, and we could not
even get a system that withstands remarkably simple, inexpensive
countermeasures. Now, there is a stroke of brilliant strategic
thinking.
The proposed national missile defense is an exo-atmospheric system,
meaning the interceptor is intended to hit the target after the boost
phase when it has left the atmosphere and before reentry. An IBM
releases its payload immediately after the boost phase. If that payload
were to consist of more than simply one warhead, then an interceptor
would have more than one target with which to contend after the boost
phase.
The Union of Concerned Scientists recently published a thorough
technical analysis of three countermeasures that would be particularly
well suited to overwhelming this kind of system, chemical and
biological bomblets, antisimulation decoys, and warhead shrouds. North
Korea, Iran, and Iraq are all believed to have programs capable of
weaponizing chemical and biological weapons which are cheaper and
easier to acquire than the most rudimentary nuclear warhead.
The most effective means of delivering a CBW, a chemical-biological
warfare warhead on a ballistic missile, is not to deploy one large
warhead filled with the agent but to divide it up into as many a
s 100
submunitions, or bomblets. There are few technical barriers to
weaponizing CBW this way, and it allows the agents to be dispersed over
a large area, inflicting maximum casualties. Because the limited NMD
system will not be able to intercept a missile before the bomblets are
dispersed, it could quickly be overpowered by just three incoming
missiles armed with bomblets--and that is assuming every interceptor
hit its target. Just one missile carrying 100 targets would pose a
formidable challenge to the system being designed with possibly
devastating effects.
The exo-atmospheric system is also vulnerable to missiles carrying
nuclear warheads armed with decoys. Using antisimulation, an attacker
would disguise the nuclear warhead to look like a decoy by placing it
in a lightweight balloon and releasing it along with a large number of
similar but empty balloons. Using simple technology to raise the
temperature in all of the balloons, the attacker could make the balloon
containing the warhead indistinguishable to infrared radar from the
empty balloons, forcing the defensive system to shoot down every
balloon in order to ensure that the warhead is destroyed. By deploying
a large number of balloons, an attacker could easily overwhelm a
limited national missile defense system. Alternately, by covering the
warhead with a shroud cooled by liquid nitrogen, an attacker could
reduce the warhead's infrared radiation by a factor of at least 1
million, making it incredibly difficult for the system's sensors to
detect the warhead in time to hit it.
I have only touched very cursorily on the simplest countermeasures
that could be available to an attacker with ballistic missiles, but I
believe this discussion raises serious questions about
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a major operational vulnerability in the proposed system and about
whether this system is the best response to the threats we are most
likely to face in the years ahead. I don't believe it is.
There is a simpler, more sensible, less threatening, more manageable
approach to missile defense that deserves greater consideration. Rather
than pursuing the single-layer exo-atmospheric system, I believe we
should focus our research efforts on developing a forward-deployed,
boost phase intercept system. Such a system would build on the current
technology of the Army's land-based theater high altitude air defense,
THAAD, and the Navy's sea-based theaterwide defense system to provide
forward-deployed defenses against both theater ballistic missile
threats and long-range ballistic missile threats in their boost phase.
The Navy already deploys the Aegis fleet air defense system. An
upgraded version of this sea-based system could be stationed off the
coast of North Korea or in the Mediterranean or in the Persian Gulf to
shoot down an ICBM in its earliest and slowest stage. The ground-based
THAAD system could be similarly adapted to meet the long-range and
theater ballistic missile threats. Because these systems would target a
missile in its boost phase, they would eliminate the current system's
vulnerability to countermeasures. This approach could also be more
narrowly targeted at specific threats and it could be used to extend
ballistic missile protection to U.S. allies and to our troops in the
field.
As Dick Garwin, an expert on missile defense and a member of the
Rumsfeld Commission has so aptly argued, the key advantage to the
mobile forward-deployed missile defense system is that rather than
having to create an impenetrable umbrella over the entire U.S.
territory, it would only require us to put an impenetrable lid over the
much smaller territory of an identified rogue nation or in a location
where there is the potential for an accidental launch. A targeted
system, by explicitly addressing specific threats, would be much less
destabilizing than a system designed only to protect U.S. soil. It
would reassure Russia that we do not intend to undermine its nuclear
deterrent, and it would enable Russia and the United States to continue
to reduce and to secure our remaining strategic arsenals. It would
reassure U.S. allies that they will not be left vulnerable to missile
threats and that they need not consider deploying nuclear deterrents of
their own. In short, this alternative approach could do what the
proposed national defense system will not do: It will make us safer.
There are two major obstacles to deploying a boost phase system, but
I believe both of those obstacles can and must be overcome. First, the
technology is not yet there. The Navy's theaterwide defense system was
designed to shoot down cruise missiles and other threats to U.S.
warships. Without much faster intercept missiles than are currently
available, the system would not be able to stop a high speed ICBM, even
in the relatively slow boost phase. The THAAD system, which continues
to face considerable challenges in its demonstration and testing
phases, is also being designed to stop ballistic missiles, but it
hasn't been tested yet against the kinds of high speeds of an ICBM.
Which raises the second obstacle to deploying this system: the
current interpretation of the ABM Treaty, as embodied in the 1997
demarcation agreements between Russia and the United States, does not
allow us to test or deploy a theater ballistic missile system capable
of shooting down an ICBM. I will address this issue a little more in a
moment, but let me say that I am deeply disturbed by the notion that we
should withdraw from the ABM Treaty and unilaterally deploy an ABM
system, particularly the kind of system I have defined that may not do
the job. In the long run, such a move would undermine U.S. security
rather than advance it. It is possible--and I believe necessary--to
reach an agreement with Russia on changes to the ABM Treaty that would
allow us to deploy an effective limited defense system such as I have
described. In fact, President Putin hinted quite openly at the
potential for that kind of an agreement being reached. I commend the
President for working hard to reach an agreement with Russia that will
allow us both to deploy in an intelligent and mutual way that does not
upset the balance.
I want to briefly address the issue of cost, which I find to be the
least problematic of the four criterion under consideration. Those who
oppose the idea of a missile defense point to the fact that, in the
last forty years, the United States has spent roughly $120 billion
trying to develop an effective defense against ballistic missiles. And
because this tremendous investment has still not yielded definitive
results, they argue that we should abandon the effort before pouring
additional resources into it.
I disagree. I believe that we can certainly afford to devote a small
portion of the Defense budget to develop a workable national missile
defense. The projected cost of doing so varies--from roughly $4 billion
to develop a boost-phase system that would build on existing defenses
to an estimated $60 billion to deploy the three-phased ground-based
system currently under consideration by the Administration. These
estimates will probably be revised upward as we confront the inevitable
technology challenges and delays. But, spread out over the next 5 to 10
years, I believe we can well afford this relatively modest investment
in America's security, provided that our research efforts focus on
developing a realistic response to the emerging threat.
My only real concern about the cost of developing a national missile
defense is in the perception that addressing this threat somehow makes
us safe from the myriad other threats that we face. We must not allow
the debate over NMD to hinder our cooperation with Russia, China, and
our allies to stop the proliferation of WMD and ballistic missile
technology. In particular, we must remain steadfast in our efforts to
reduce the dangers posed by the enormous weapons arsenal of the former
Soviet Union. Continued Russian cooperation with the expanded
Comprehensive Threat Reduction programs will have a far greater impact
on America's safety from weapons of mass destruction than deploying an
NMD system. We must not sacrifice the one for the other.
Let me go to the final of the four considerations the President has
set forward because I believe that a unilateral decision to deploy a
national missile defense system would have a disastrous effect on the
international strategic and political environment. It could destabilize
our already difficult relationships with Russia and China and undermine
our allies' confidence in the reliability of the U.S. defensive
commitment. It would jeopardize current hard fought arms control
agreements, and it could erode more than 40 years of U.S. leadership on
arms control.
The administration clearly understands the dangers of a unilateral
U.S. deployment. President Clinton was not able to reach agreement with
the Russian President, but he has made progress in convincing the
Russian leadership that the ballistic missile threat is real. To be
clear, I don't support the administration's current proposal, but I do
support its effort to work out with Russia this important issue. The
next administration needs to complete that task, if we cannot do it in
the next months.
While simply declaring our intent to deploy a system does not
constitute an abrogation of the ABM Treaty, it surely signals that the
U.S. withdrawal from the treaty is imminent.
Mr. President, the first casualty of such a declaration would be
START II. Article 2 paragraph 2 of the Russian instrument of
ratification gives Russia the right to withdraw from START II if the
U.S. withdraws from or violates the 1972 ABM Treaty. Russia would also
probably stop implementation of START I, as well as cooperation with
our comprehensive threat reduction program. I don't have time at this
moment to go through the full picture of the threat reduction problems.
But suffice it to say that really the most immediate and urgent threat
the United States faces are the numbers of weapons on Russian soil with
a command and control system that is increasingly degraded, and the
single highest priority of the United States now is keeping the
comprehensive threat reduction program on target. To lose that by a
unilateral statement of our intention to proceed would be one of the
most dramatic losses of the last 40 to 50 years.
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So continued cooperation with Russia on these arms control programs
is critical. Furthermore, no matter how transparent we are with Russia
about the intent and capabilities of the proposed system, Russia's
military leadership will interpret a unilateral deployment as a direct
threat to their deterrence capacity. And while Russia doesn't have the
economic strength today to significantly enhance its military
capabilities, there are clear examples of Russia's capacity to wield
formidable military power when it wants. We must not allow a unilateral
NMD deployment to provoke the Russian people into setting aside the
difficult but necessary tasks of democratization and economic reform in
a vain effort to return to Russia's days of military glory.
Finally, with regard to Russia, a unilateral deployment by the United
States would jeopardize our cooperation on a whole range of significant
issues. However imperfect it is, U.S.-Russian cooperation will continue
to be important on matters from stopping Teheran's proliferation
efforts and containing Iraq's weapons programs to promoting stability
in the Balkans.
While the impact of a limited U.S. system on Russian security
considerations would be largely perceptual, at least as long as that
system remains limited, its impact on China's strategic posture is real
and immediate. China today has roughly 20-plus long-range missiles. The
proposed system would undermine China's strategic deterrent as surely
as it would contain the threat from North Korea. And that poses a
problem because, unlike North Korea, China has the financial resources
to build a much larger arsenal.
The Pentagon believes it is likely that China will increase the
number and sophistication of its long-range missiles just as part of
its overall military modernization effort, regardless of what we do on
NMD. But as with Russia, if an NMD decision is made without
consultation with China, the leadership in Beijing will perceive the
deployment as at least partially directed at them. And given the recent
strain in U.S.-China relations and uncertainty in the Taiwan Strait,
the vital U.S. national interest in maintaining stability in the
Pacific would, in fact, be greatly undermined by such a decision made
too rashly.
Nobody understands the destabilizing effect of a unilateral U.S. NMD
decision better than our allies in Europe and in the Pacific. The steps
that Russia and China would take to address their insecurities about
the U.S. system will make their neighbors less secure. And a new
environment of competition and distrust will undermine regional
stability by impeding cooperation on proliferation, drug trafficking,
humanitarian crises, and all the other transnational problems we are
confronting together. So I think it is critical that we find a way to
deploy an NMD without sending even a hint of a message that the
security of the American people is becoming decoupled from that of our
allies. In Asia, both South Korea and Japan have the capability to
deploy nuclear programs of their own. Neither has done so, in part,
because both have great confidence in the integrity the U.S. security
guarantees and in the U.S. nuclear umbrella that extends over them.
They also believe that, while China does aspire to be a regional power,
the threat it poses is best addressed through engagement and efforts to
anchor China in the international community. Both of these assumptions
would be undermined by a unilateral U.S. NMD deployment.
First, our ironclad security guarantees will be perceived by the
Japanese, by the South Koreans, and others, as somewhat rusty if we
pursue a current NMD proposal to create a shield over the U.S.
territory. U.S. cities would no longer be vulnerable to the same
threats from North Korea that Seoul and Tokyo would continue to face.
And so they would say: Well, there is a decoupling; we don't feel as
safe as we did. Maybe now we have to make decisions to nuclearize
ourselves in order to guarantee our own safety.
China's response to a unilateral U.S. NMD will make it, at least in
the short term, a far greater threat to regional stability than it
poses today. If South Korea and Japan change their perceptions both of
the threat they face and of U.S. willingness to protect them, they then
could both be motivated to explore independent means of boosting their
defenses. Then it becomes a world of greater tensions, not lesser
tensions. It becomes a world of greater hair-trigger capacity, not
greater safety-lock capacity.
Our European allies have expressed the same concerns about decoupling
as I have expressed about Asia. We certainly cannot dismiss the
calculations that Great Britain, France, and Germany will make about
the impact of the U.S. NMD system. But I believe their concerns hinge
largely on the affect a unilateral decision would have on Russia,
concerns that would be greatly ameliorated if we make the NMD decision
with Russia's cooperation.
Finally, much has been made of the impact a U.S. national missile
defense system would have and what it would do to the international
arms control regime. For all of the reasons I have just discussed, a
unilateral decision would greatly damage U.S. security interests. I
want to repeat that. It will, in fact, damage U.S. security interests.
The history of unilateral steps in advancing strategic weapons shows
a very clear pattern of sure response and escalation. In 1945, the
United States exploded the first atomic bomb. The Soviets followed in
1949. In 1948, we unveiled the first nuclear-armed intercontinental
bomber. The Soviets followed in 1955. In 1952, we exploded the first
hydrogen bomb. The Soviets followed 1 year later. In 1957, the Soviets
beat us, for the one time, and launched the first satellite into orbit
and perfected the first ICBM. We followed suit within 12 months. In
1960, the United States fired the first submarine-launched ballistic
missile. The Soviets followed in 1968. In 1964, we developed the first
multiple warhead missile and reentry vehicle; we tested the first MIRV.
The Soviets MIRVed in 1973, and so on, throughout the cold war, up
until the point that we made a different decision--the ABM Treaty and
reducing the level of nuclear weapons.
The rationale for testing and deploying a missile defense is to make
America and the world safer. It is to defend against a threat, however
realistic, of a rogue state/terrorist launch of an ICBM, or an
accidental launch. No one has been openly suggesting a public rationale
at this time of a defense against any and all missiles, such as the
original Star Wars envisioned, but some have not given up on that
dream. It is, in fact, the intensity and tenacity of their continued
advocacy for such a system that drives other people's fears of what the
U.S. may be up to and which significantly complicates the test of
selling even a limited and legitimately restrained architecture.
Mr. President, in diplomacy--as in life--other nations and other
people make policies based not only on real fears, or legitimate
reactions to an advocacy/nonfriend's actions, but they also make
choices based on perceived fears--on worst case scenarios defined to
their leaders by experts. We do the same thing.
The problem with unilaterally deployed defense architecture is that
other nations may see intentions and long-term possibilities that
negatively affect their sense of security, just as it did throughout
the cold war. For instance, a system that today is limited, but
exclusively controlled by us and exclusively within our technological
capacity is a system that they perceive could be expanded and
distributed at any time in the future to completely alter the balance
of power--the balance of terror as we have thought of it. That may
sound terrific to us and even be good for us for a short period of
time--but every lesson of the arms race for the last 55 years shows
that the advantage is short lived, the effect is simply to require
everyone to build more weapons at extraordinary expense, and the
advantage is inevitably wiped out with the world becoming a more
dangerous place in the meantime. That is precisely why the ABM treaty
was negotiated--to try to limit the unbridled competition, stabilize
the balance and create a protocol by which both sides could confidently
reduce weapons.
The negotiation of the ABM Treaty put an end to this cycle of
ratcheting up the strategic danger. After 20 years of trying to outdo
each other--building an increasingly dangerous, increasingly unstable
strategic environment in the process--we recognized that deploying
strategic defenses, far from
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making us safer, would only invite a response and an escalation of the
danger. There is no reason to believe that a unilateral move by the
United States to alter the strategic balance would not have the same
affect today as it had for forty years. At the very least, it would
stop and probably reverse the progress we have made on strategic
reductions. And it will reduce our capacity to cooperate with Russia on
the single greatest threat we face, which are the ``loose nukes''
existing in the former Soviet Union.
Under START I levels, both sides agree to reduce those arsenals to
6,500 warheads. Under START II, those levels come down to 3,500
warheads. And we are moving toward further reductions in our
discussions on START III, down to 2,000 warheads. With every agreement,
the American people are safer. A unilateral withdrawal from the ABM
Treaty would stop this progress in its tracks. No NMD system under
consideration can make us safe enough to justify such a reckless act.
I strongly disagree with my colleagues who argue that the United
States is no longer bound by our legal obligations under the ABM
Treaty. No president has ever withdrawn us from the Treaty, and
President Clinton has reaffirmed our commitment to it. We retain our
obligations to the Treaty under international law, and those
obligations continue to serve us well. It would never have been
possible to negotiate reductions in U.S. and Soviet strategic forces
without the ABM Treaty's limit on national missile defense. The
Russians continue to underscore that linkage. And since, as I've
already argued, Russia's strategic arsenal continues to pose a serious
threat to the United States and her allies, we must not take steps--
including the unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty--that will
undermine our efforts to reduce and contain that threat.
However, the strategic situation we confront today is worlds apart
from the one we faced in 1972, and we must not artificially limit our
options as we confront the emerging threats to our security. Under the
forward-deployed boost-phase system I have described, the United States
would need to seek Russian agreement to change the 1997 ABM Treaty
Demarcation agreements, which establish the line between theater
missile defense systems that are not limited by the Treaty and the
strategic defenses the Treaty proscribes. In a nutshell, these
agreements allow the United States to deploy and test the PAC-3, THAAD
and Navy Theater-Wide TMD systems, but prohibit us from developing or
testing capabilities that would enable these systems to shoot down
ICBMs.
As long as we are discussing ABM Treaty amendments with Russia, we
should work with them to develop a new concept of strategic defense. A
boost-phase intercept program would sweep away the line between theater
and long-range missile defense. But by limiting the number of
interceptors that could be deployed and working with Russia, China, and
our allies, so that we move multilaterally, we can maximize the
transparency of the system, we can strike the right balance between
meeting new and emerging threats without abandoning the principles of
strategic stability that have served us well for decades.
The most important challenge for U.S. national security planners in
the years ahead will be to work with our friends and allies to develop
a defense against the threat that has been defined. But how we respond
to that threat is critical. We must not rush into a politically driven
decision on something as critical as this; on something that has the
potential by any rational person's thinking to make us less secure--not
more secure.
I urge President Clinton to delay the deployment decision
indefinitely. I believe, even while the threat we face is real and
growing, that it is not imminent. We have the time. We need to take the
time to develop and test the most effective defense, and we will need
time to build international support for deploying a limited, effective
system.
I believe that support will be more forthcoming when we are seen to
be responding to a changing security environment rather than simply
buckling to political pressure.
For 40 years, we have led international efforts to reduce and contain
the danger from nuclear weapons. We can continue that leadership by
exploiting our technological strengths to find a system that will
extend that defense to our friends and allies but not abrogate the
responsibilities of leadership with a hasty, shortsighted decision that
will have lasting consequences.
I hope in the days and months ahead my colleagues will join me in a
thoughtful and probing analysis of these issues so we can together make
the United States stronger and not simply make this an issue that falls
prey to the political dialog in the year 2000.
I thank my colleagues for their time. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
Maine is recognized for 30 minutes.
Ms. SNOWE. I thank the President.
I want to begin my remarks by commending our Chairman, Senator John
Warner, who has provided extraordinary leadership in crafting this
measure which supports our men and women in uniform with funding for
the pay, health care, and hardware that they need and deserve. I can
think of no one with greater credibility on these issues or a wider
breadth of knowledge, and I thank him for his outstanding efforts.
I also want to thank the distinguished ranking member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin, who also has made invaluable
contributions to the development of this reauthorization.
This critical legislation which we are considering here today, with
our distinguished chairman, and the bipartisan support of the ranking
member, Senator Levin, the senior Senator from Michigan, represents the
committee's response to legitimate concerns and recognizes the
sacrifices of those who are at the heart of the legislation--the men
and women who serve in our Nation's Armed Forces.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee and chair of the Seapower
Subcommittee, I know we must never forget that the men and women in
uniform are the ones who make our Nation's defense force the finest and
strongest in the world, and I salute each of them for their unwavering
service.
We are honor bound to ensure that they are provided the very best
equipment, afforded the highest respect, and compensated at a level
commensurate with their remarkable service to this Nation. And I
believe this bill reflects those principles.
Since the end of the cold war we have reduced the overall military
force structure by 36 percent and reduced the defense budget by 40
percent--a trend that this bill reverses.
And let me say that comes not a moment too soon. Because while the
size of our armed services has decreased, the number of contingencies
that our service members are called on to respond to has increased in a
fashion that can only be described as dramatic.
In fact, the Navy/Marine Corps team alone responded to 58 contingency
missions between 1980 and 1989, while between 1990 and 1999 they
responded to 192--a remarkable threefold increase in operations.
During the cold war, the U.N. Security Council rarely approved the
creation of peace operations. In fact, the U.N. implemented only 13
such operations between 1948 and 1978, and none from 1979 to 1987. By
contrast, since 1988--just twelve years ago--38 peacekeeping operations
have been established--nearly three times as many than the previous 40
years.
As a result of the challenges presented by having to do more with
less, the Armed Services Committee has heard from our leaders in
uniform on how our current military forces are being stretched too
thin, and that estimates predicted in the fiscal year 1997 QDR
underestimated how much the United States would be using our military.
I fully support this bill which authorizes $309.8 billion in budget
authority, an amount which is consistent with the concurrent budget
resolution. For the second year in a row--we recognize the shortfall
and reverse a 14-year decline by authorizing a real increase in defense
spending. This funding is $4.5 billion above the President's fiscal
year 2001 request, and provides a necessary increase in defense
spending that is vital if we are to meet the national security
challenges of the 21st century.
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This bill not only provides funds for better tools and equipment for
our service men and women to do their jobs but it also enhances quality
of life for themselves and their families. It approves a 3.7-percent
pay raise for our military personnel as well as authorizing extensive
improvements in military health care for active duty personnel,
military retirees, and their families.
As chair of the Seapower Subcommittee, I was particularly interested
in an article that I read this morning in Defense News titled ``U.S.
Navy: Stretched Too Thin?'' by Daniel Goure. I ask unanimous consent
that this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Defense News, June 12, 2000]
U.S. Navy: Stretched Thin?--Surging Demands Overwhelm Shrinking Force
(By Daniel Goure)
The term floating around Washington to describe the current
state of the U.S. armed forces is overstretched. This means
the military is attempting to respond to too many demands
with too few forces.
Clear evidence of this overstretch was provided by the war
in Kosovo. In order to meet the demands posed by that
conflict, the United States had to curtail air operations in
the skies over Iraq and leave the eastern Pacific without an
aircraft carrier.
The number of missions the U.S. military has been asked to
perform has increased dramatically in the last decade--by
some measures almost eight-fold--while the force posture has
shrunk by more than a third.
In testimony this year before Congress, senior Defense
Department officials and the heads of the military services
revealed the startling fact that by their own estimates the
existing force posture is inadequate to meet the stated
national security requirement of being able to fight and win
two major theater wars.
Nowhere is the problem worse than for the Navy. This is
due, in large measure, to the Navy's unique set of roles and
missions. Unlike the other services which are now poised to
conduct expeditionary warfare based on power projection from
the continental United States, the Navy is required to
maintain continuous forward presence in all critical regions.
The Armed Forces Journal reported that in September 1998,
Adm. Jay Johnson, chief of naval operations, told the Senate
Armed Services Committee that ``On any given day, one-third
of the Navy's forces are forward deployed. . . . In addition,
it must ensure freedom of the seas and, increasingly, provide
time-critical strike assets for operations against the
world's littorals under the rubric of operations from the
sea.''
It should be remembered that the 1999 military strikes
against terrorist sites in Afghanistan, which is land-locked,
and Sudan, which has coastline only on the Red Sea, was
accomplished solely by cruise missiles launched from U.S.
Navy ships.
Naturally, naval forces are in demand during crisis and
conflict and have made significant, and in some instances,
singular contributions to military operations in the Balkans
and Middle East.
In fact, since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has
responded to some 80 crisis deployments, approximately one
every four weeks, while struggling to maintain forward
presence in non-crises regions.
So far, the Navy has been able to perform its missions and
respond to crises. This is unlikely to remain true in the
future. The size of the navy has shrunk by nearly half during
the last decade. From a force of well over 500 ships at the
end of the Cold War, the navy is reduced to some 300 ships
today.
The mathematics of the problem are simple: A force half the
size attempting to perform eight times the missions has an
effective 16-fold increase in its required operational tempo.
This increased burden results in longer deployments, reduced
maintenance, lower morale and less time on-station.
Ultimately, it means that on any given day, there will not be
enough ships to meet all the requirements and cover all the
crises.
The Navy understands the problem. In testimony before the
House of Representatives this year. Vice Adm. Conrad
Lautenbach, deputy chief of naval operations, stated that
``it is no secret that our current resources of 316 ships is
fully deployed and in many cases stretched thin to meet the
growing national security demands.''
This is not merely the view from the headquarters. Adm.
Dennis McGinn, commander Third Fleet, stated in an appearance
before Congress in February that ``force structure throughout
the Navy is such that an increased commitment anywhere
necessitates reduction of operations somewhere else, or a
quality of life impact due to increased operating tempo.''
Vice Adm. Charles Moore, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet,
operating in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, told the House
Armed Services procurement subcommittee Feb. 29 that
``Although I am receiving the necessary forces to meet Fifth
Fleet obligations, the fleet is stretched, and I am uncertain
how much longer they can continue to juggle forces to meet
the varied regional requirements, including the Fifth
Fleet's.
``I am uncertain that we have the surge capability to a
major theater contingency, or theater war. Eventually, the
increased operational tempo on our fewer and fewer ships will
take its toll on their availability and readiness.''
The reality is that numbers matter, particularly for naval
forces. This is due in part to the tyranny of distance that
is imposed on every Navy ship, whether or not it is steaming
in harm's way. Deployments to the Persian Gulf, 8,000 miles
from the Navy's home ports on both coasts, mean ships must
travel from 10 to 14 days just to reach their forward
deployed positions.
Even deployments from Norfolk, Va., to the Caribbean take
several days. The conventional wisdom is that in order to
provide adequate rotation and maintain a tolerable
operational tempo, an inventory of three ships is required
for every one deployed forward.
However, when the time required for steaming to and from
global deployment areas, maintenance and overhaul, and
training and shakedowns are included, the ratio rises to
four, five and even six ships to one.
As a result of recent events such as Kosovo, in which U.S.
naval forces in the western Pacific were stripped of their
aircraft carrier in order to support naval operations in the
Adriatic, public and congressional attention was focused on
the inadequacy of the Navy's inventory of aircraft carriers.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff published an attack submarine study
that concluded the nation requires 68 attack boats instead of
the 50 they had been allowed.
Attention is particularly lacking on the Navy's surface
combatants. These are the destroyers and cruisers, the
workhorses of the Navy. Not only do they protect aircraft
carriers and visibly demonstrate forward presence, but due to
the advent of precision strike systems and advanced
communication and surveillance, increasingly are the
principal combat forces deployed to a regional crisis.
A recent surface combatant study concluded that the Navy
required up to 139 multimission warships to satisfy the full
range of requirements and meet day-to-day operations.
Instead, the navy has been allowed only 116. At least a
quarter of these are aging frigates and older destroyers that
lack the
Major Actions:
All articles in Senate section
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
(Senate - June 08, 2000)
Text of this article available as:
TXT
PDF
[Pages S4722-
S4809]
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2001--Continued
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, for the information of the Senate, I would
like to pose a unanimous consent request with regard to the sequencing
of speakers.
We have the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts who has, under a
previous order, 1 hour. I suggest he be the first and lead off this
morning, followed by the distinguished Senator from Maine, the chair of
the Senate Seapower Subcommittee, and that would be for a period of 30
minutes thereafter. Following that, the distinguished ranking member
and I have some 30 cleared amendments which we will offer to the Senate
following these two sets of remarks.
Then Senator Smith; as soon as I can reach him, I will sequence him
in.
I just inform the Senate I will be seeking recognition to offer an
amendment on behalf of Senator Dodd and myself, and I will acquaint the
ranking member with the text of that amendment shortly.
Just for the moment, the unanimous consent request is the Senator
from Massachusetts, followed by the Senator from Maine followed by a
period of time, probably not to exceed 30 minutes, for the ranking
member and myself to deal with some 30-odd amendments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I would add the following: It is my
understanding of the unanimous consent agreement that recognition of
the speakers who are listed here with a fixed period of time, including
Senator Kerry, Senator Smith, Senator Snowe, and Senator Inhofe, is
solely for the purpose of debate and not for the purpose of offering an
amendment. Is the Senator correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WARNER. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bunning). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and ranking member for
their courtesy and I appreciate the time of the Senate to be able to
discuss an issue of extraordinary importance. It is an issue that is
contained in this bill. It is a line item in this bill of some $85
million with respect to the issue of national missile defense.
President Clinton has just returned from his first meeting with the
new Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and arms control dominated their
agenda, in particular, the plan of the United States to deploy a
limited national defense system, which would require amending the 1972
ABM Treaty. Russia is still strongly opposed to changing that treaty,
and I think we can all expect this will continue to be an issue of
great discussion between the United States and Russia in the months and
possibly years to come.
As I said, in the Senate today, this defense bill authorizes funding
for the construction of the national missile defense initial deployment
facilities. Regretfully, we do not always have the time in the Senate
to lay out policy considerations in a thorough, quiet, and thoughtful
way, and I will try to do that this morning. The question of whether,
when, and how the United States should deploy a defense against
ballistic missiles is, in fact, complex--tremendously complex. I want
to take some time today to walk through the issues that are involved in
that debate and to lay bare the implications it will have for the
national security of the United States.
No American leader can dismiss an idea that might protect American
citizens from a legitimate threat. If there is a real potential of a
rogue nation, as we call them, firing a few missiles at any city in the
United States, responsible leadership requires that we make our best,
most thoughtful efforts to defend against that threat. The same is true
of the potential threat of accidental launch. If ever either of these
things happened, no leader could explain away not having chosen to
defend against such a disaster when doing so made sense.
[[Page
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The questions before us now are several. Does it make sense to deploy
a national missile defense now, unilaterally, if the result might be to
put America at even greater risk? Do we have more time to work with
allies and others to find a mutually acceptable, nonthreatening way of
proceeding? Have the threats to which we are responding been
exaggerated, and are they more defined by politics than by genuine
threat assessment and scientific fact? Have we sufficiently explored
various technologies and architectures so we are proceeding in the most
thoughtful and effective way?
The President has set out four criteria on which he will base his
decision to deploy an NMD: The status of the threat, the status and
effectiveness of the proposed system's technology, the cost of the
system, and the likely impact of deploying such a system on the overall
strategic environment and U.S. arms control efforts in general. In my
judgment, at this point in time none of these criteria are met to
satisfaction.
While the threat from developing missile programs has emerged more
quickly than we expected, I do not believe it justifies a rush to
action on the proposed defensive system, which is far from
technologically sound and will probably not even provide the
appropriate response to the threat as it continues to develop. More
importantly, a unilateral decision of the United States to deploy an
NMD system could undermine global strategic stability, damage our
relationship with key allies in Europe and Asia, and weaken our
continuing efforts to reduce the nuclear danger.
Turning first to the issue of the threat that we face, this question
deserves far greater scrutiny than it has thus far received. I hear a
number of colleagues, the State Department, and others, saying: Oh,
yes, the threat exists. Indeed, to some degree the threat does exist.
But it is important for us to examine to what degree. Recently, the
decades-long debate on the issue of deploying an NMD has taken on
bipartisan relevance as the threat of a rogue ballistic missile program
has increased.
I want to be very clear. At this point, I support the deployment, in
cooperation with our friends and allies, of a limited, effective
National Missile Defense System aimed at containing the threat from
small rogue ballistic missile programs or the odd, accidental, or
unauthorized launch from a major power. But I do not believe the United
States should attempt to unilaterally deploy a National Missile Defense
System aimed at altering the strategic balance. We have made tremendous
progress over the last two decades in reducing the threat from weapons
of mass destruction through bilateral strategic reductions with Russia
and multilateral arms control agreements such as the Chemical Weapons
Convention. We simply cannot allow these efforts to be undermined in
any way as we confront the emerging ballistic missile threat.
Even as we have made progress with Russia on reducing our cold war
arsenals, ballistic missile technology has spread, and the threat to
the United States from rogue powers, so-called, has grown. The July
1998 Rumsfeld report found that the threat from developing ballistic
missile states, especially North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, is developing
faster than expected and could pose an imminent threat to the U.S.
homeland in the next 5 years. That conclusion was reinforced just 1
month later when North Korea tested a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 missile,
launching it over Japan and raising tensions in the region. While the
missile's third stage failed, the test confirmed that North Korea's
program for long-range missiles is advancing towards an ICBM capability
that could ultimately--and I stress ultimately--threaten the United
States, as surely as its shorter range missiles threaten our troops and
our allies in the region today.
A 1999 national intelligence estimate on the ballistic missile threat
found that in addition to the continuing threat from Russia and China,
the United States faces a developing threat from North Korea, Iran, and
Iraq.
In addition to the possibility that North Korea might convert the
Taepo Dong-1 missile into an inaccurate ICBM capable of carrying a
light payload to the United States, the report found that North Korea
could weaponize the larger Taepo Dong-2 to deliver a crude nuclear
weapon to American shores, and it could do so at any time, with little
warning. The NIE also found that, in the next 15 years, Iran could test
an ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear weapon to the United States--and
certainly to our allies in Europe and the Middle East--and that Iraq
may be able to do the same in a slightly longer time frame.
The picture of the evolving threat to the United States from
ballistic missile programs in hostile nations has changed minds in the
Senate about the necessity of developing and testing a national missile
defense. It has changed my mind about what might be appropriate to
think about and to test and develop.
If Americans in Alaska or Hawaii must face this threat, however
uncertain, I do not believe someone in public life can responsibly tell
them: We will not look at or take steps to protect you.
But as we confront the technological challenges and the political
ramifications of developing and deploying a national missile defense,
we are compelled to take a closer look at the threat we are rushing to
meet. I believe the missile threat from North Korea, Iran, and Iraq is
real but not imminent, and that we confront today much greater, much
more immediate dangers, from which national missile defense cannot and
will not protect us.
To begin, it is critical to note that both the Rumsfeld Commission
and the National Intelligence Estimate adopted new standards for
assessing the ballistic missile threat in response to political
pressures from the Congress.
The 1995 NIE was viciously criticized for underestimating the threat
from rogue missile programs. Some in Congress accused the
administration of deliberately downplaying the threat to undermine
their call for a national missile defense.
To get the answer that they were looking for, the Congress then
established the Rumsfeld Commission to review the threat. Now, that
commission was made up of some of the best minds in U.S. defense
policy--both supporters and skeptics of national missile defense. I do
not suggest the commission's report was somehow fixed. These are people
who have devoted their lives in honorable service to their country. The
report reflects no less than their best assessment of the threat.
But in reaching the conclusions that have alarmed so many about the
immediacy of the threat, we must responsibly take note of the fact that
the commission did depart from the standards that we had traditionally
used to measure the threat.
First, the commission reduced the range of ballistic missiles that we
consider to be a threat from missiles that can reach the continental
United States to those that can only reach Hawaii and Alaska.
I think this is a minor distinction because, as I said earlier, no
responsible leader is going to suggest that you should leave Americans
in Hawaii or Alaska exposed to attack. But certainly the only reason to
hit Hawaii or Alaska, if you have very few weapons measured against
other targets, is to wreak terror. And insomuch as that is the only
reason, one has to factor that into the threat analysis in ways they
did not.
Secondly, it shortened the time period for considering a developing
program to be a threat from the old standard which measured when a
program could actually be deployed to a new standard of when it was
simply tested.
Again, I would be willing to concede this as a minor distinction
because if a nation were to be intent on using one of these weapons, it
might not wait to meet the stringent testing requirements that we
usually try to meet before deploying a new system. It could just test a
missile, see that it works, and make plans to use it.
These changes are relatively minor, but they need to be acknowledged
and factored into the overall discussion.
But the third change which needs to be factored in is not
insignificant because both the Rumsfeld Commission and the 1999 NIE
abandoned the old standard of assessing the likelihood that a nation
would use its missile capacity in favor of a new standard of whether a
nation simply has the relevant capacity for a missile attack,
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with no analysis whatsoever of the other factors that go into a
decision to actually put that capability to use.
This is tremendously important because, as we know from the cold war,
threat is more than simply a function of capability; it is a function
of attention and other political and military considerations. Through
diplomacy and deterrence, the United States can alter the intentions of
nations that pursue ballistic missile programs and so alter the threat
they pose to us.
This is not simply wishful thinking. There are many examples today of
nations who possess the technical capacity to attack the United States,
but whom we do not consider a threat. India and Pakistan have made
dramatic progress in developing medium-range ballistic missile
programs. But the intelligence community does not consider India and
Pakistan to pose a threat to U.S. interests. Their missile capacity
alone does not translate into a threat because they do not hold
aggressive intentions against us.
Clearly, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are hostile to us, and our
ability to use diplomacy to reduce the threat they pose will be
limited. But having the capacity to reach us and an animosity towards
us does not automatically translate into the intention to use weapons
of mass destruction against us.
In the 40 years that we faced the former Soviet Union, with the raw
capability to destroy each other, neither side resorted to using its
arsenal of missiles. Why not? Because even in periods of intense
animosity and tension, under the most unpredictable and isolated of
regimes, political and military deterrence has a powerful determining
effect on a nation's decision to use force. We have already seen this
at work in our efforts to contain North Korea's nuclear and missile
programs. We saw it at work in the gulf war when Saddam Hussein was
deterred from using his weapons of mass destruction by the sure promise
of a devastating response from the United States.
During the summer of 1999, intelligence reports indicated that North
Korea was preparing the first test-launch of the Taepo Dong-2. Regional
tensions rose, as Japan, South Korea and the United States warned
Pyongyang that it would face serious consequences if it went ahead with
another long-range missile launch. The test was indefinitely delayed,
for ``political reasons,'' which no doubt included U.S. military
deterrence and the robust diplomatic efforts by the United States and
its key allies in the region.
Threatening to cut off nearly $1 billion of food assistance and KEDO
funding to North Korea should the test go forward, while also holding
out the possibility of easing economic sanctions if the test were
called off, helped South Korea, Japan and the United States make the
case to Pyongyang that its interests would be better served through
restraint. An unprecedented dialogue between the United States and
North Korea, initiated by former Secretary of Defense William Perry
during the height of this crisis, continues today. It aims to
verifiably freeze Pyongyang's missile programs and end 50 years of
North Korea's economic isolation.
Acknowledging that these political developments can have an important
impact on the threat, the intelligence community, according to a May 19
article in the Los Angeles Times, will reflect in its forthcoming NIE
that the threat from North Korea's missile program has eased since last
fall. And if it has eased since last fall, indeed, we should be
thinking about the urgency of decisions we make that may have a
profound impact on the overall balance of power.
In short, even as we remain clear-eyed about the threat these nations
pose to American interests, we must not look at the danger as somehow
preordained or unavoidable.
In cooperation with our friends and allies, we must vigorously
implore the tools of diplomacy to reduce the threat. We must redouble
our efforts to stop the proliferation of these deadly weapons. We
cannot just dismiss the importance of U.S. military deterrence.
Only madmen, only the most profoundly detached madmen, bent on self-
destruction, would launch a missile against U.S. soil, which obviously
would invite the most swift and devastating response. One or two or
three missiles fired by North Korea or Iraq would leave a clear address
of who the sender was, and there is no question that the United States
would have the ability to eliminate them from the face of this planet.
All people would recognize that as an immediate and legitimate
response.
My second major concern about the current debate over the missile
threat is that it does nothing to address equally dangerous but more
immediate and more likely threats to U.S. interests.
For one, U.S. troops and U.S. allies today confront the menace of
theater ballistic missiles, capable of delivering chemical or
biological weapons. We saw during the gulf war how important theater
missile defense is to maintaining allied unity and enabling our troops
to focus on their mission. We must continue to push this technology
forward regardless of whether we deploy an NMD system.
The American people also face the very real threat of terrorist
attack. The 1999 State Department report on Patterns of Global
Terrorism shows that while the threat of state-sponsored terrorism
against the U.S. is declining, the threat from nonstate actors, who
increasingly have access to chemical and biological weapons, and
possibly even small nuclear devices, is growing. These terrorist groups
are most likely to attack us covertly, quietly slipping explosives into
a building, unleashing chemical weapons into a crowded subway, or
sending a crude nuclear weapon into a busy harbor.
An NMD system will not protect American citizens from any of these
more immediate and more realistic threats.
Finally, on the issue of the missile threat we are confronting, I
remain deeply concerned about Russia's command and control over its
nuclear forces. Russia has more than 6,000 strategic missiles armed
with nuclear warheads. Maintaining these missiles on high alert
significantly increases the threat of an accidental or an unauthorized
launch. In 1995, the Russian military misidentified a U.S. weather
rocket launched from Norway as a possible attack on the Russian
Federation. With Russia's strategic forces already on high-alert,
President Yelstin and his advisors had just minutes to decide whether
to launch a retaliatory strike on the United States. And yet, in an
effort to reassure Russia that the proposed missile defense will not
prompt an American first strike, the administration seems to be
encouraging Russia to, in fact, maintain its strategic forces on high
alert to allow for a quick, annihilating counterattack that would
overwhelm the proposed limited defense they are offering.
In effect, in order to deploy the system the administration is
currently defining, they are prepared to have Russia, maintain with a
bad command-and-control system weapons on hair trigger or targeted in
order to maintain the balance.
In sum, the threat from rogue missile programs is neither as imminent
nor is as mutable as some have argued. We have time to use the
diplomatic tools at our disposal to try to alter the political
calculation that any nation might make before it decided to use
ballistic missile capacity.
Moreover, the United States faces other, more immediate threats that
will not be met by an NMD. To meet the full range of threats to our
national security, we need to simultaneously address the emerging
threat from the rogue ballistic missile program, maintain a vigorous
defense against theater ballistic missiles and acts of terrorism, and
avoid actions that would undermine the strategic stability we have
fought so hard to establish.
Let me speak for a moment now about the technology. In making his
deployment decision, the President will also consider the technological
readiness and effectiveness of the proposed system. Again, I have grave
concerns that we are sacrificing careful technical development of this
system to meet an artificial deadline, and, may I say, those concerns
are shared by people far more expert than I am. Moreover, even if the
proposed system were to work as planned, I am not convinced it would
provide the most effective defense against a developing missile threat.
Let's look for a moment at the system currently under consideration.
The
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administration has proposed a limited system to protect all 50 States
against small-scale attacks by ICBMs. In the simplest terms, this is a
ground-based, hit-to-kill system.
An interceptor fired from American soil must hit the incoming missile
directly to destroy it. Most of the components of this system are
already developed and are undergoing testing. It will be deployed in 3
phases and is to be completed by about 2010, if the decision to deploy
is made this year. The completed system will include 200, 250
interceptors deployed in Alaska and North Dakota, to be complemented by
a sophisticated array of upgraded early-warning radars and satellite-
based launch detection and tracking systems. I have two fundamental
questions about this proposed system: Will the technology work as
intended, and is the system the most appropriate and effective defense
against this defined threat?
There are three components to consider in answering the first
question: The technology's ability to function at the most basic level,
its operational effectiveness against real world threats, and its
reliability.
I do not believe the compressed testing program and decision deadline
permit us to come close to drawing definitive conclusions about those
three fundamental elements of readiness.
In a Deployment Readiness Review scheduled for late July of this
year, the Pentagon will assess the system, largely on the results of
three intercept tests. The first of these in October of 1999 was
initially hailed as a success because the interceptor did hit the
target, but then, on further examination, the Pentagon conceded that
the interceptor had initially been confused, it had drifted off course,
ultimately heading for the decoy balloon, and possibly striking the
dummy warhead only by accident. That is test No. 1.
The second test in January of 2000 failed because of a sensor coolant
leak.
The third test has not even taken place yet. The third test,
initially planned for April 2000, was postponed until late June and has
recently been postponed again. It is expected in early July, just a few
weeks before the Pentagon review.
To begin with, after two tests, neither satisfactory, it is still
unclear whether the system will function at a basic level under the
most favorable conditions. Even if the next test is a resounding
success, I fail to see how that would be enough to convince people we
have thoroughly vetted the potential problems of a system.
On the second issue of whether the system will be operationally
effective, we have very little information on which to proceed. We have
not yet had an opportunity to test operational versions of the
components in anything such as the environment they would face in a
real defensive engagement. We are only guessing at this point how well
the system would respond to targets launched from unanticipated
locations or how it would perform over much greater distances and much
higher speeds than those at which it has been tested.
Finally, the question of reliability is best answered over time and
extensive use of the system. Any program in its developing stages will
run into technical glitches, and this program has been no different.
That does not mean the system will not ever work properly, but it does
mean we ought to take the time to find out, particularly before we do
something that upsets the balance in the ways this may potentially do.
That is one more reason to postpone the deployment decision, to give
the President and the Pentagon the opportunity to conduct a thorough
and rigorous testing program.
This recommendation is not made in a vacuum. Two independent reviews
have reached a similar conclusion about the risks of rushing to
deployment. In February of 1998, a Pentagon panel led by former Air
Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Welch, characterized the truncated
testing program as a ``rush to failure.'' The panel's second report
recommended delaying the decision to deploy until 2003 at the earliest
to allow key program elements to be fully tested and proven. The
concerns of the Welch Panel were reinforced by the release in February
2000 of a report by the Defense Department's office of operational test
and evaluation (DOT).
The Coyle report decried the undue pressure being applied to the
national missile defense testing program and warned that rushing
through testing to meet artificial decision deadlines has
``historically resulted in a negative effect on virtually every
troubled DOD development program.'' The Report recommended that the
Pentagon postpone its Deployment Readiness Review to allow for a
thorough analysis and clear understanding of the results of the third
intercept test (now scheduled for early July), which will be the first
``integrated systems'' test of all the components except the booster.
The scientific community is concerned about more than the risks of a
shortened testing program. The best scientific minds in America have
begun to warn that even if the technology functions as planned, the
system could be defeated by relatively simple countermeasures. The 1999
NIE that addressed the ballistic missile threat concluded that the same
nations that are developing long-range ballistic missile systems could
develop or buy countermeasure technologies by the time they are ready
to deploy their missile systems.
Just think, we could expend billions of dollars, we could upset the
strategic balance, we could initiate a new arms race, and we could not
even get a system that withstands remarkably simple, inexpensive
countermeasures. Now, there is a stroke of brilliant strategic
thinking.
The proposed national missile defense is an exo-atmospheric system,
meaning the interceptor is intended to hit the target after the boost
phase when it has left the atmosphere and before reentry. An IBM
releases its payload immediately after the boost phase. If that payload
were to consist of more than simply one warhead, then an interceptor
would have more than one target with which to contend after the boost
phase.
The Union of Concerned Scientists recently published a thorough
technical analysis of three countermeasures that would be particularly
well suited to overwhelming this kind of system, chemical and
biological bomblets, antisimulation decoys, and warhead shrouds. North
Korea, Iran, and Iraq are all believed to have programs capable of
weaponizing chemical and biological weapons which are cheaper and
easier to acquire than the most rudimentary nuclear warhead.
The most effective means of delivering a CBW, a chemical-biological
warfare warhead on a ballistic missile, is not to deploy one large
warhead filled with the agent but to divide it up into as many a
s 100
submunitions, or bomblets. There are few technical barriers to
weaponizing CBW this way, and it allows the agents to be dispersed over
a large area, inflicting maximum casualties. Because the limited NMD
system will not be able to intercept a missile before the bomblets are
dispersed, it could quickly be overpowered by just three incoming
missiles armed with bomblets--and that is assuming every interceptor
hit its target. Just one missile carrying 100 targets would pose a
formidable challenge to the system being designed with possibly
devastating effects.
The exo-atmospheric system is also vulnerable to missiles carrying
nuclear warheads armed with decoys. Using antisimulation, an attacker
would disguise the nuclear warhead to look like a decoy by placing it
in a lightweight balloon and releasing it along with a large number of
similar but empty balloons. Using simple technology to raise the
temperature in all of the balloons, the attacker could make the balloon
containing the warhead indistinguishable to infrared radar from the
empty balloons, forcing the defensive system to shoot down every
balloon in order to ensure that the warhead is destroyed. By deploying
a large number of balloons, an attacker could easily overwhelm a
limited national missile defense system. Alternately, by covering the
warhead with a shroud cooled by liquid nitrogen, an attacker could
reduce the warhead's infrared radiation by a factor of at least 1
million, making it incredibly difficult for the system's sensors to
detect the warhead in time to hit it.
I have only touched very cursorily on the simplest countermeasures
that could be available to an attacker with ballistic missiles, but I
believe this discussion raises serious questions about
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a major operational vulnerability in the proposed system and about
whether this system is the best response to the threats we are most
likely to face in the years ahead. I don't believe it is.
There is a simpler, more sensible, less threatening, more manageable
approach to missile defense that deserves greater consideration. Rather
than pursuing the single-layer exo-atmospheric system, I believe we
should focus our research efforts on developing a forward-deployed,
boost phase intercept system. Such a system would build on the current
technology of the Army's land-based theater high altitude air defense,
THAAD, and the Navy's sea-based theaterwide defense system to provide
forward-deployed defenses against both theater ballistic missile
threats and long-range ballistic missile threats in their boost phase.
The Navy already deploys the Aegis fleet air defense system. An
upgraded version of this sea-based system could be stationed off the
coast of North Korea or in the Mediterranean or in the Persian Gulf to
shoot down an ICBM in its earliest and slowest stage. The ground-based
THAAD system could be similarly adapted to meet the long-range and
theater ballistic missile threats. Because these systems would target a
missile in its boost phase, they would eliminate the current system's
vulnerability to countermeasures. This approach could also be more
narrowly targeted at specific threats and it could be used to extend
ballistic missile protection to U.S. allies and to our troops in the
field.
As Dick Garwin, an expert on missile defense and a member of the
Rumsfeld Commission has so aptly argued, the key advantage to the
mobile forward-deployed missile defense system is that rather than
having to create an impenetrable umbrella over the entire U.S.
territory, it would only require us to put an impenetrable lid over the
much smaller territory of an identified rogue nation or in a location
where there is the potential for an accidental launch. A targeted
system, by explicitly addressing specific threats, would be much less
destabilizing than a system designed only to protect U.S. soil. It
would reassure Russia that we do not intend to undermine its nuclear
deterrent, and it would enable Russia and the United States to continue
to reduce and to secure our remaining strategic arsenals. It would
reassure U.S. allies that they will not be left vulnerable to missile
threats and that they need not consider deploying nuclear deterrents of
their own. In short, this alternative approach could do what the
proposed national defense system will not do: It will make us safer.
There are two major obstacles to deploying a boost phase system, but
I believe both of those obstacles can and must be overcome. First, the
technology is not yet there. The Navy's theaterwide defense system was
designed to shoot down cruise missiles and other threats to U.S.
warships. Without much faster intercept missiles than are currently
available, the system would not be able to stop a high speed ICBM, even
in the relatively slow boost phase. The THAAD system, which continues
to face considerable challenges in its demonstration and testing
phases, is also being designed to stop ballistic missiles, but it
hasn't been tested yet against the kinds of high speeds of an ICBM.
Which raises the second obstacle to deploying this system: the
current interpretation of the ABM Treaty, as embodied in the 1997
demarcation agreements between Russia and the United States, does not
allow us to test or deploy a theater ballistic missile system capable
of shooting down an ICBM. I will address this issue a little more in a
moment, but let me say that I am deeply disturbed by the notion that we
should withdraw from the ABM Treaty and unilaterally deploy an ABM
system, particularly the kind of system I have defined that may not do
the job. In the long run, such a move would undermine U.S. security
rather than advance it. It is possible--and I believe necessary--to
reach an agreement with Russia on changes to the ABM Treaty that would
allow us to deploy an effective limited defense system such as I have
described. In fact, President Putin hinted quite openly at the
potential for that kind of an agreement being reached. I commend the
President for working hard to reach an agreement with Russia that will
allow us both to deploy in an intelligent and mutual way that does not
upset the balance.
I want to briefly address the issue of cost, which I find to be the
least problematic of the four criterion under consideration. Those who
oppose the idea of a missile defense point to the fact that, in the
last forty years, the United States has spent roughly $120 billion
trying to develop an effective defense against ballistic missiles. And
because this tremendous investment has still not yielded definitive
results, they argue that we should abandon the effort before pouring
additional resources into it.
I disagree. I believe that we can certainly afford to devote a small
portion of the Defense budget to develop a workable national missile
defense. The projected cost of doing so varies--from roughly $4 billion
to develop a boost-phase system that would build on existing defenses
to an estimated $60 billion to deploy the three-phased ground-based
system currently under consideration by the Administration. These
estimates will probably be revised upward as we confront the inevitable
technology challenges and delays. But, spread out over the next 5 to 10
years, I believe we can well afford this relatively modest investment
in America's security, provided that our research efforts focus on
developing a realistic response to the emerging threat.
My only real concern about the cost of developing a national missile
defense is in the perception that addressing this threat somehow makes
us safe from the myriad other threats that we face. We must not allow
the debate over NMD to hinder our cooperation with Russia, China, and
our allies to stop the proliferation of WMD and ballistic missile
technology. In particular, we must remain steadfast in our efforts to
reduce the dangers posed by the enormous weapons arsenal of the former
Soviet Union. Continued Russian cooperation with the expanded
Comprehensive Threat Reduction programs will have a far greater impact
on America's safety from weapons of mass destruction than deploying an
NMD system. We must not sacrifice the one for the other.
Let me go to the final of the four considerations the President has
set forward because I believe that a unilateral decision to deploy a
national missile defense system would have a disastrous effect on the
international strategic and political environment. It could destabilize
our already difficult relationships with Russia and China and undermine
our allies' confidence in the reliability of the U.S. defensive
commitment. It would jeopardize current hard fought arms control
agreements, and it could erode more than 40 years of U.S. leadership on
arms control.
The administration clearly understands the dangers of a unilateral
U.S. deployment. President Clinton was not able to reach agreement with
the Russian President, but he has made progress in convincing the
Russian leadership that the ballistic missile threat is real. To be
clear, I don't support the administration's current proposal, but I do
support its effort to work out with Russia this important issue. The
next administration needs to complete that task, if we cannot do it in
the next months.
While simply declaring our intent to deploy a system does not
constitute an abrogation of the ABM Treaty, it surely signals that the
U.S. withdrawal from the treaty is imminent.
Mr. President, the first casualty of such a declaration would be
START II. Article 2 paragraph 2 of the Russian instrument of
ratification gives Russia the right to withdraw from START II if the
U.S. withdraws from or violates the 1972 ABM Treaty. Russia would also
probably stop implementation of START I, as well as cooperation with
our comprehensive threat reduction program. I don't have time at this
moment to go through the full picture of the threat reduction problems.
But suffice it to say that really the most immediate and urgent threat
the United States faces are the numbers of weapons on Russian soil with
a command and control system that is increasingly degraded, and the
single highest priority of the United States now is keeping the
comprehensive threat reduction program on target. To lose that by a
unilateral statement of our intention to proceed would be one of the
most dramatic losses of the last 40 to 50 years.
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So continued cooperation with Russia on these arms control programs
is critical. Furthermore, no matter how transparent we are with Russia
about the intent and capabilities of the proposed system, Russia's
military leadership will interpret a unilateral deployment as a direct
threat to their deterrence capacity. And while Russia doesn't have the
economic strength today to significantly enhance its military
capabilities, there are clear examples of Russia's capacity to wield
formidable military power when it wants. We must not allow a unilateral
NMD deployment to provoke the Russian people into setting aside the
difficult but necessary tasks of democratization and economic reform in
a vain effort to return to Russia's days of military glory.
Finally, with regard to Russia, a unilateral deployment by the United
States would jeopardize our cooperation on a whole range of significant
issues. However imperfect it is, U.S.-Russian cooperation will continue
to be important on matters from stopping Teheran's proliferation
efforts and containing Iraq's weapons programs to promoting stability
in the Balkans.
While the impact of a limited U.S. system on Russian security
considerations would be largely perceptual, at least as long as that
system remains limited, its impact on China's strategic posture is real
and immediate. China today has roughly 20-plus long-range missiles. The
proposed system would undermine China's strategic deterrent as surely
as it would contain the threat from North Korea. And that poses a
problem because, unlike North Korea, China has the financial resources
to build a much larger arsenal.
The Pentagon believes it is likely that China will increase the
number and sophistication of its long-range missiles just as part of
its overall military modernization effort, regardless of what we do on
NMD. But as with Russia, if an NMD decision is made without
consultation with China, the leadership in Beijing will perceive the
deployment as at least partially directed at them. And given the recent
strain in U.S.-China relations and uncertainty in the Taiwan Strait,
the vital U.S. national interest in maintaining stability in the
Pacific would, in fact, be greatly undermined by such a decision made
too rashly.
Nobody understands the destabilizing effect of a unilateral U.S. NMD
decision better than our allies in Europe and in the Pacific. The steps
that Russia and China would take to address their insecurities about
the U.S. system will make their neighbors less secure. And a new
environment of competition and distrust will undermine regional
stability by impeding cooperation on proliferation, drug trafficking,
humanitarian crises, and all the other transnational problems we are
confronting together. So I think it is critical that we find a way to
deploy an NMD without sending even a hint of a message that the
security of the American people is becoming decoupled from that of our
allies. In Asia, both South Korea and Japan have the capability to
deploy nuclear programs of their own. Neither has done so, in part,
because both have great confidence in the integrity the U.S. security
guarantees and in the U.S. nuclear umbrella that extends over them.
They also believe that, while China does aspire to be a regional power,
the threat it poses is best addressed through engagement and efforts to
anchor China in the international community. Both of these assumptions
would be undermined by a unilateral U.S. NMD deployment.
First, our ironclad security guarantees will be perceived by the
Japanese, by the South Koreans, and others, as somewhat rusty if we
pursue a current NMD proposal to create a shield over the U.S.
territory. U.S. cities would no longer be vulnerable to the same
threats from North Korea that Seoul and Tokyo would continue to face.
And so they would say: Well, there is a decoupling; we don't feel as
safe as we did. Maybe now we have to make decisions to nuclearize
ourselves in order to guarantee our own safety.
China's response to a unilateral U.S. NMD will make it, at least in
the short term, a far greater threat to regional stability than it
poses today. If South Korea and Japan change their perceptions both of
the threat they face and of U.S. willingness to protect them, they then
could both be motivated to explore independent means of boosting their
defenses. Then it becomes a world of greater tensions, not lesser
tensions. It becomes a world of greater hair-trigger capacity, not
greater safety-lock capacity.
Our European allies have expressed the same concerns about decoupling
as I have expressed about Asia. We certainly cannot dismiss the
calculations that Great Britain, France, and Germany will make about
the impact of the U.S. NMD system. But I believe their concerns hinge
largely on the affect a unilateral decision would have on Russia,
concerns that would be greatly ameliorated if we make the NMD decision
with Russia's cooperation.
Finally, much has been made of the impact a U.S. national missile
defense system would have and what it would do to the international
arms control regime. For all of the reasons I have just discussed, a
unilateral decision would greatly damage U.S. security interests. I
want to repeat that. It will, in fact, damage U.S. security interests.
The history of unilateral steps in advancing strategic weapons shows
a very clear pattern of sure response and escalation. In 1945, the
United States exploded the first atomic bomb. The Soviets followed in
1949. In 1948, we unveiled the first nuclear-armed intercontinental
bomber. The Soviets followed in 1955. In 1952, we exploded the first
hydrogen bomb. The Soviets followed 1 year later. In 1957, the Soviets
beat us, for the one time, and launched the first satellite into orbit
and perfected the first ICBM. We followed suit within 12 months. In
1960, the United States fired the first submarine-launched ballistic
missile. The Soviets followed in 1968. In 1964, we developed the first
multiple warhead missile and reentry vehicle; we tested the first MIRV.
The Soviets MIRVed in 1973, and so on, throughout the cold war, up
until the point that we made a different decision--the ABM Treaty and
reducing the level of nuclear weapons.
The rationale for testing and deploying a missile defense is to make
America and the world safer. It is to defend against a threat, however
realistic, of a rogue state/terrorist launch of an ICBM, or an
accidental launch. No one has been openly suggesting a public rationale
at this time of a defense against any and all missiles, such as the
original Star Wars envisioned, but some have not given up on that
dream. It is, in fact, the intensity and tenacity of their continued
advocacy for such a system that drives other people's fears of what the
U.S. may be up to and which significantly complicates the test of
selling even a limited and legitimately restrained architecture.
Mr. President, in diplomacy--as in life--other nations and other
people make policies based not only on real fears, or legitimate
reactions to an advocacy/nonfriend's actions, but they also make
choices based on perceived fears--on worst case scenarios defined to
their leaders by experts. We do the same thing.
The problem with unilaterally deployed defense architecture is that
other nations may see intentions and long-term possibilities that
negatively affect their sense of security, just as it did throughout
the cold war. For instance, a system that today is limited, but
exclusively controlled by us and exclusively within our technological
capacity is a system that they perceive could be expanded and
distributed at any time in the future to completely alter the balance
of power--the balance of terror as we have thought of it. That may
sound terrific to us and even be good for us for a short period of
time--but every lesson of the arms race for the last 55 years shows
that the advantage is short lived, the effect is simply to require
everyone to build more weapons at extraordinary expense, and the
advantage is inevitably wiped out with the world becoming a more
dangerous place in the meantime. That is precisely why the ABM treaty
was negotiated--to try to limit the unbridled competition, stabilize
the balance and create a protocol by which both sides could confidently
reduce weapons.
The negotiation of the ABM Treaty put an end to this cycle of
ratcheting up the strategic danger. After 20 years of trying to outdo
each other--building an increasingly dangerous, increasingly unstable
strategic environment in the process--we recognized that deploying
strategic defenses, far from
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making us safer, would only invite a response and an escalation of the
danger. There is no reason to believe that a unilateral move by the
United States to alter the strategic balance would not have the same
affect today as it had for forty years. At the very least, it would
stop and probably reverse the progress we have made on strategic
reductions. And it will reduce our capacity to cooperate with Russia on
the single greatest threat we face, which are the ``loose nukes''
existing in the former Soviet Union.
Under START I levels, both sides agree to reduce those arsenals to
6,500 warheads. Under START II, those levels come down to 3,500
warheads. And we are moving toward further reductions in our
discussions on START III, down to 2,000 warheads. With every agreement,
the American people are safer. A unilateral withdrawal from the ABM
Treaty would stop this progress in its tracks. No NMD system under
consideration can make us safe enough to justify such a reckless act.
I strongly disagree with my colleagues who argue that the United
States is no longer bound by our legal obligations under the ABM
Treaty. No president has ever withdrawn us from the Treaty, and
President Clinton has reaffirmed our commitment to it. We retain our
obligations to the Treaty under international law, and those
obligations continue to serve us well. It would never have been
possible to negotiate reductions in U.S. and Soviet strategic forces
without the ABM Treaty's limit on national missile defense. The
Russians continue to underscore that linkage. And since, as I've
already argued, Russia's strategic arsenal continues to pose a serious
threat to the United States and her allies, we must not take steps--
including the unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty--that will
undermine our efforts to reduce and contain that threat.
However, the strategic situation we confront today is worlds apart
from the one we faced in 1972, and we must not artificially limit our
options as we confront the emerging threats to our security. Under the
forward-deployed boost-phase system I have described, the United States
would need to seek Russian agreement to change the 1997 ABM Treaty
Demarcation agreements, which establish the line between theater
missile defense systems that are not limited by the Treaty and the
strategic defenses the Treaty proscribes. In a nutshell, these
agreements allow the United States to deploy and test the PAC-3, THAAD
and Navy Theater-Wide TMD systems, but prohibit us from developing or
testing capabilities that would enable these systems to shoot down
ICBMs.
As long as we are discussing ABM Treaty amendments with Russia, we
should work with them to develop a new concept of strategic defense. A
boost-phase intercept program would sweep away the line between theater
and long-range missile defense. But by limiting the number of
interceptors that could be deployed and working with Russia, China, and
our allies, so that we move multilaterally, we can maximize the
transparency of the system, we can strike the right balance between
meeting new and emerging threats without abandoning the principles of
strategic stability that have served us well for decades.
The most important challenge for U.S. national security planners in
the years ahead will be to work with our friends and allies to develop
a defense against the threat that has been defined. But how we respond
to that threat is critical. We must not rush into a politically driven
decision on something as critical as this; on something that has the
potential by any rational person's thinking to make us less secure--not
more secure.
I urge President Clinton to delay the deployment decision
indefinitely. I believe, even while the threat we face is real and
growing, that it is not imminent. We have the time. We need to take the
time to develop and test the most effective defense, and we will need
time to build international support for deploying a limited, effective
system.
I believe that support will be more forthcoming when we are seen to
be responding to a changing security environment rather than simply
buckling to political pressure.
For 40 years, we have led international efforts to reduce and contain
the danger from nuclear weapons. We can continue that leadership by
exploiting our technological strengths to find a system that will
extend that defense to our friends and allies but not abrogate the
responsibilities of leadership with a hasty, shortsighted decision that
will have lasting consequences.
I hope in the days and months ahead my colleagues will join me in a
thoughtful and probing analysis of these issues so we can together make
the United States stronger and not simply make this an issue that falls
prey to the political dialog in the year 2000.
I thank my colleagues for their time. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
Maine is recognized for 30 minutes.
Ms. SNOWE. I thank the President.
I want to begin my remarks by commending our Chairman, Senator John
Warner, who has provided extraordinary leadership in crafting this
measure which supports our men and women in uniform with funding for
the pay, health care, and hardware that they need and deserve. I can
think of no one with greater credibility on these issues or a wider
breadth of knowledge, and I thank him for his outstanding efforts.
I also want to thank the distinguished ranking member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin, who also has made invaluable
contributions to the development of this reauthorization.
This critical legislation which we are considering here today, with
our distinguished chairman, and the bipartisan support of the ranking
member, Senator Levin, the senior Senator from Michigan, represents the
committee's response to legitimate concerns and recognizes the
sacrifices of those who are at the heart of the legislation--the men
and women who serve in our Nation's Armed Forces.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee and chair of the Seapower
Subcommittee, I know we must never forget that the men and women in
uniform are the ones who make our Nation's defense force the finest and
strongest in the world, and I salute each of them for their unwavering
service.
We are honor bound to ensure that they are provided the very best
equipment, afforded the highest respect, and compensated at a level
commensurate with their remarkable service to this Nation. And I
believe this bill reflects those principles.
Since the end of the cold war we have reduced the overall military
force structure by 36 percent and reduced the defense budget by 40
percent--a trend that this bill reverses.
And let me say that comes not a moment too soon. Because while the
size of our armed services has decreased, the number of contingencies
that our service members are called on to respond to has increased in a
fashion that can only be described as dramatic.
In fact, the Navy/Marine Corps team alone responded to 58 contingency
missions between 1980 and 1989, while between 1990 and 1999 they
responded to 192--a remarkable threefold increase in operations.
During the cold war, the U.N. Security Council rarely approved the
creation of peace operations. In fact, the U.N. implemented only 13
such operations between 1948 and 1978, and none from 1979 to 1987. By
contrast, since 1988--just twelve years ago--38 peacekeeping operations
have been established--nearly three times as many than the previous 40
years.
As a result of the challenges presented by having to do more with
less, the Armed Services Committee has heard from our leaders in
uniform on how our current military forces are being stretched too
thin, and that estimates predicted in the fiscal year 1997 QDR
underestimated how much the United States would be using our military.
I fully support this bill which authorizes $309.8 billion in budget
authority, an amount which is consistent with the concurrent budget
resolution. For the second year in a row--we recognize the shortfall
and reverse a 14-year decline by authorizing a real increase in defense
spending. This funding is $4.5 billion above the President's fiscal
year 2001 request, and provides a necessary increase in defense
spending that is vital if we are to meet the national security
challenges of the 21st century.
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This bill not only provides funds for better tools and equipment for
our service men and women to do their jobs but it also enhances quality
of life for themselves and their families. It approves a 3.7-percent
pay raise for our military personnel as well as authorizing extensive
improvements in military health care for active duty personnel,
military retirees, and their families.
As chair of the Seapower Subcommittee, I was particularly interested
in an article that I read this morning in Defense News titled ``U.S.
Navy: Stretched Too Thin?'' by Daniel Goure. I ask unanimous consent
that this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Defense News, June 12, 2000]
U.S. Navy: Stretched Thin?--Surging Demands Overwhelm Shrinking Force
(By Daniel Goure)
The term floating around Washington to describe the current
state of the U.S. armed forces is overstretched. This means
the military is attempting to respond to too many demands
with too few forces.
Clear evidence of this overstretch was provided by the war
in Kosovo. In order to meet the demands posed by that
conflict, the United States had to curtail air operations in
the skies over Iraq and leave the eastern Pacific without an
aircraft carrier.
The number of missions the U.S. military has been asked to
perform has increased dramatically in the last decade--by
some measures almost eight-fold--while the force posture has
shrunk by more than a third.
In testimony this year before Congress, senior Defense
Department officials and the heads of the military services
revealed the startling fact that by their own estimates the
existing force posture is inadequate to meet the stated
national security requirement of being able to fight and win
two major theater wars.
Nowhere is the problem worse than for the Navy. This is
due, in large measure, to the Navy's unique set of roles and
missions. Unlike the other services which are now poised to
conduct expeditionary warfare based on power projection from
the continental United States, the Navy is required to
maintain continuous forward presence in all critical regions.
The Armed Forces Journal reported that in September 1998,
Adm. Jay Johnson, chief of naval operations, told the Senate
Armed Services Committee that ``On any given day, one-third
of the Navy's forces are forward deployed. . . . In addition,
it must ensure freedom of the seas and, increasingly, provide
time-critical strike assets for operations against the
world's littorals under the rubric of operations from the
sea.''
It should be remembered that the 1999 military strikes
against terrorist sites in Afghanistan, which is land-locked,
and Sudan, which has coastline only on the Red Sea, was
accomplished solely by cruise missiles launched from U.S.
Navy ships.
Naturally, naval forces are in demand during crisis and
conflict and have made significant, and in some instances,
singular contributions to military operations in the Balkans
and Middle East.
In fact, since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has
responded to some 80 crisis deployments, approximately one
every four weeks, while struggling to maintain forward
presence in non-crises regions.
So far, the Navy has been able to perform its missions and
respond to crises. This is unlikely to remain true in the
future. The size of the navy has shrunk by nearly half during
the last decade. From a force of well over 500 ships at the
end of the Cold War, the navy is reduced to some 300 ships
today.
The mathematics of the problem are simple: A force half the
size attempting to perform eight times the missions has an
effective 16-fold increase in its required operational tempo.
This increased burden results in longer deployments, reduced
maintenance, lower morale and less time on-station.
Ultimately, it means that on any given day, there will not be
enough ships to meet all the requirements and cover all the
crises.
The Navy understands the problem. In testimony before the
House of Representatives this year. Vice Adm. Conrad
Lautenbach, deputy chief of naval operations, stated that
``it is no secret that our current resources of 316 ships is
fully deployed and in many cases stretched thin to meet the
growing national security demands.''
This is not merely the view from the headquarters. Adm.
Dennis McGinn, commander Third Fleet, stated in an appearance
before Congress in February that ``force structure throughout
the Navy is such that an increased commitment anywhere
necessitates reduction of operations somewhere else, or a
quality of life impact due to increased operating tempo.''
Vice Adm. Charles Moore, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet,
operating in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, told the House
Armed Services procurement subcommittee Feb. 29 that
``Although I am receiving the necessary forces to meet Fifth
Fleet obligations, the fleet is stretched, and I am uncertain
how much longer they can continue to juggle forces to meet
the varied regional requirements, including the Fifth
Fleet's.
``I am uncertain that we have the surge capability to a
major theater contingency, or theater war. Eventually, the
increased operational tempo on our fewer and fewer ships will
take its toll on their availability and readiness.''
The reality is that numbers matter, particularly for naval
forces. This is due in part to the tyranny of distance that
is imposed on every Navy ship, whether or not it is steaming
in harm's way. Deployments to the Persian Gulf, 8,000 miles
from the Navy's home ports on both coasts, mean ships must
travel from 10 to 14 days just to reach their forward
deployed positions.
Even deployments from Norfolk, Va., to the Caribbean take
several days. The conventional wisdom is that in order to
provide adequate rotation and maintain a tolerable
operational tempo, an inventory of three ships is required
for every one deployed forward.
However, when the time required for steaming to and from
global deployment areas, maintenance and overhaul, and
training and shakedowns are included, the ratio rises to
four, five and even six ships to one.
As a result of recent events such as Kosovo, in which U.S.
naval forces in the western Pacific were stripped of their
aircraft carrier in order to support naval operations in the
Adriatic, public and congressional attention was focused on
the inadequacy of the Navy's inventory of aircraft carriers.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff published an attack submarine study
that concluded the nation requires 68 attack boats instead of
the 50 they had been allowed.
Attention is particularly lacking on the Navy's surface
combatants. These are the destroyers and cruisers, the
workhorses of the Navy. Not only do they protect aircraft
carriers and visibly demonstrate forward presence, but due to
the advent of precision strike systems and advanced
communication and surveillance, increasingly are the
principal combat forces deployed to a regional crisis.
A recent surface combatant study concluded that the Navy
required up to 139 multimission warships to satisfy the full
range of requirements and meet day-to-day operations.
Instead, the navy has been allowed only 116. At least a
quarter of these are aging frigates and older destroyers that
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