Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, also known as the New START treaty, which was signed by…
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, also known as the New START treaty, which was signed by President Obama and Russian President Medvedev on April 8, 2010, and would replace the START treaty that expired on December 5, 2009.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I have had the opportunity to review the implications of this treaty over the course of five hearings and multiple briefings. I am convinced that ratification of this treaty is essential to the security of the United States, and not simply in the context of our relationship with Russia but also in our efforts to counter nuclear proliferation throughout the world.
As a starting point to consider this treaty, it is important to recognize that since December 5, 2009, when the START treaty expired, we have not had inspectors on the ground in Russia to monitor their nuclear weapons complex. It wasn't until December 2008 that the Bush administration and Russia agreed they wanted to replace START before it expired but acknowledged that the task would have to be left to the Obama administration, leaving them 1 year before the treaty was set to expire so they could begin these negotiations.
The reality is that we have not had a verification regime in place or inspectors on the ground in Russia for over a year, and every day that goes by without this treaty in place is another day that the United States lacks the ability to verify effectively and inspect Russia's strategic nuclear forces.
If the Senate rejects this treaty, it may be many years, if ever, before we once again have American inspectors on the ground in Russia.
President Obama stated:
In the absence of START, without the New START treaty being
ratified by the Senate, we do not have a verification
mechanism to ensure that we know what the Russians are doing
. . . . And when you have uncertainty in the area of nuclear
weapons, that's a much more dangerous world to live in.
The bottom line is this: If you don't trust the Russians, then you should be voting for this treaty because that is the only way we are going to get, in a timely, effective way, American inspectors back on the ground looking at their nuclear complex.
There is another aspect. Without the New START treaty in place, there is additional strain on our intelligence network to monitor Russia's activities.
In his testimony to the Armed Services Committee, GEN Kevin Chilton, commander of STRATCOM, stated:
Without New START, we would rapidly lose some of our
insight into Russian strategic nuclear force developments and
activities . . . we would be required increasingly to focus
low-density/high-demand intelligence collection and analysis
assets on Russian nuclear forces.
These intelligence assets include our satellites, which are already in high demand, particularly in our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in emerging threat locations such as Yemen, Somalia, and the Pacific. Furthermore, these national technical means can never supplant the quality of intelligence gathered from onsite inspections by American weapons experts in verifying the quantity, type, and location of Russia's nuclear arsenal.
Dr. James Miller, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, remarked:
Onsite inspectors are a vital complement to the data that
the United States will receive under New START. They provide
the boots-on-the-ground presence to confirm the validity of
Russian data declarations and to add to our confidence and
knowledge regarding Russian strategic forces located at
facilities around the country.
The failure to ratify may present a significant operational cost to our efforts in the war on terrorism. To compensate for the lack of a treaty, our satellite assets could be shifted to maintain some coverage of Russia, which, in the short run, would deny the capability of looking at other places, such as Sudan or Yemen, where we know al-Qaida and its affiliates are establishing sanctuaries. In the longer term, we may consider putting up new satellites--a tremendous cost that would be difficult to bear in a continuing budget crisis and one that would not give us the same kind of information as having inspectors on the ground.
Let me emphasize this again. If this treaty goes unratified, if we don't have inspectors on the ground, then we must rely on our national technical means of verification, which is significantly satellites. Those are, as General Chilton said, high-demand assets. If they are being flown over Russia, I cannot conceive, if we let this treaty elapse over several years, that military commanders will feel confident in not putting more and more satellites over Russia. That takes away from efforts right now to monitor troubled spots around the globe, and it is a real cost to the failure to ratify this treaty.
Ratifying this treaty is also a vital part of our relationship with Russia. It is the essential element in the process of controlling nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia.
I wish to quote my esteemed colleague and manager on the other side, Senator Lugar, who has long been not only a leader in this effort but someone whose vision and actions already--particularly through his work with Senator Sam Nunn--have made this world a much safer place and one whose debt we are all in nationally. I thank him for that.
Senator Lugar stated:
We should not be cavalier about allowing our relationship
with Moscow to drift or about letting our knowledge of
Russian weaponry atrophy.
He is right, as he has been on so many issues with respect to national and international policy.
This process has had a long history of bipartisan support--from the first formal agreements with the Soviet Union under the Carter administration that limited nuclear offensive and defensive weapons, through both terms of President Reagan's administration, which produced the original START treaty, to the overwhelming support of the Senate to ratify these important agreements. All of these agreements had strong, bipartisan support.
This treaty is an important part of renewing our relationship with Russia and will provide the foundation for future negotiations on other nuclear issues.
Ellen Tauscher, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, stated:
It's my calculation that we need to get this done now
because every day that we don't is a day that not only don't
we have boots on the ground, but it's also a day that we
can't move on to other parts of the agenda. This was the New
START Treaty, but it was also the start of the reset of the
relationship, and it is a very big agenda.
We have other issues to consider, such as tactical nuclear devices, which the Russians may have and former countries of the Soviet Union may have. We have a whole set of issues. We have issues with respect to Iran and North Korea. If we can ratify this treaty, we now have momentum to move forward on these other issues.
We all know the proliferation of nuclear weapons threatens more than the security of just Russia and the United States. Indeed, this treaty is central to the continuing need for a worldwide effort to control nuclear weapons. It is every President's worst nightmare that somewhere in the world a nuclear accident will occur, that a rogue state will attain nuclear capability or a nuclear weapon or materials will fall into the hands of a terrorist group. This treaty is an important step toward reducing the number of nuclear weapons around the world and demonstrates to the international community that the United States and Russia are committed to this goal.
If we don't ratify this agreement and don't continue this 40-year process of working with Russia on limiting nuclear weapons, how can we get them to assist us effectively in addressing the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran? What credibility will we have among the international community to restrain Iran's development of nuclear weapons if it is perceived that we have abandoned our longlasting, long-term, and mutually beneficial attempts with the Russians to limit our nuclear weapons?
We must do everything possible to counter proliferation through protection, containment, interdiction, and a host of different programs.
I again quote Senator Lugar:
This process must continue if we are to answer the
existential threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction.
Every missile destroyed, every warhead deactivated, and every inspection implemented makes us safer. Russia and the United States have a choice whether to continue this effort, and that choice is embodied in the New START treaty.
We also understand, too, that as long as we have nuclear weapons, we have to have an effective nuclear arsenal. In its fiscal year 2011 budget, the Obama administration requested $7 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration--NNSA--which overseas the U.S. nuclear complex. This request is about 10 percent more than the previous year's budget. That is a significant increase for any department in this government, particularly as we face challenging economic times and an increased deficit.
Indeed, Linton Brooks, the former NNSA Administrator under President George W. Bush, said: ``I'd have killed for that budget and that much high-level attention in the administration.''
So the issue of dealing with our nuclear arsenal is being addressed with more energy and more resources and more attention than it was in the preceding administration, and I don't think that argument can be used as an attempt to delay the ratification of this treaty.
Many have argued that before we consider this treaty, we must commit to substantial funding increases in the future budgets to modernize the nuclear infrastructure. We are doing that. While I support the need to ensure a safer, more reliable nuclear arsenal--and I applaud the Obama administration's efforts to commit significant resources to do so--we have to recognize this is a recent change. In fact, the Obama administration is not only bringing this treaty to the Senate, it also is bringing to the Congress a level of commitment that was lacking previously. I think both of those are necessary, both of those mutually reinforce one another and, together, are strong support for the ratification of this treaty.
During an Armed Services Committee hearing in July, I asked Directors of the national labs about the significant commitment of resources this administration has made to the nuclear enterprise. Dr. George Miller, the Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, responded:
It is clearly a major step in the right direction. The
budget has been declining since about 2005 . . . and this
represents a very important and very significant turnaround.
The Obama administration has also outlined an $85 billion, 10-year plan for NNSA's nuclear weapons activities, which includes an additional $4.1 billion in spending for fiscal years 2012 through 2016. The $85 billion represents a 21-percent rise above the fiscal year 2011 spending level. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in his preface to the April 2010 Nuclear Posture Review:
These investments, and the NPR's strategy for warhead life
extension, represent a credible modernization plan necessary
to sustain the nuclear infrastructure and support our
Nation's deterrent.
Ratifying this treaty presents us with the opportunity to recommit ourselves to preserving and reinvesting in our nuclear enterprise, including the highly trained workforce, which is so necessary. But again, ratifying this treaty is such an essential part of our national security that it both complements and, in some cases, transcends simply reinvesting in our modernization efforts. But we are doing that, and that should give comfort, I think, to those who see that as an issue, which may--and I don't think so--present some inhibition in ratifying this treaty.
In all the discussions we have had on the content of this treaty, we have often failed to note the caliber and professionalism of the American negotiators who have worked tirelessly on this treaty. This elite cadre of experts have devoted their lives to serving our Nation in promoting nuclear arms control and doing it from very wise, very experienced, and I think very critical notions of what is necessary to protect the United States because that is their first and foremost responsibility.
This impressive team consisted of State Department negotiators, representatives from the Department of Defense's Joint Staff, and from STRATCOM, our military command that is responsible for all these nuclear devices. Most of them took part in the development of START I and the subsequent treaties. They have had the experience of years and years of dealing with the Russians, of understanding the strengths and the weaknesses of our approaches. They captured the lessons learned on what we need to know about the Russian nuclear enterprise and the best means of achieving our national strategic objectives.
This was not the labor of amateurs, this was the work of people who have devoted their lifetime to try to develop an effective nuclear regime involving inspections and verification, and they know more about what the Russians do and vice versa than anyone else. They were at the heart of these negotiations. Many of the principles behind these treaties are, as a result, complex and nuanced. Most Americans, frankly--and, indeed, many of our colleagues--don't have the means to invest the time to become versed in the technical aspect of launchers, telemetry, and verification regimes. These individuals have spent their lives doing that. We are quite fortunate they have committed themselves to this enterprise and that they have produced this treaty.
Furthermore, former Secretaries of State and Defense from both Republican and Democratic administrations and military commanders, including seven previous commanders of STRATCOM these are the military officers whose professional lives have been devoted to protecting America and commanding every unit that has a nuclear capability--have all urged us to support this START treaty. That is a very, I think, strong endorsement as to the effectiveness of this treaty and the need for this treaty. All of them understand this is in our best national security interest.
Again, all the commanders, all the individuals who have spent every waking hour and, indeed, probably sleepless nights, thinking about their responsibilities for nuclear weapons and their use, consider this treaty essential. That, I think, should be strong evidence for its ratification.
As I mentioned before, the New START treaty builds upon decades of
diplomacy and agreements between the United States and Russia. The New START treaty is appropriately structured to address the present conditions of our nuclear enterprise and national security interests, while building on the lessons we have learned from decades of previous treaty negotiations, from decades of implementing past treaties, of finding out what works on the ground, and setting nonproliferation goals for the future. It is important to understand how we got to this point today.
The United States and the Soviet Union signed their first formal agreements limiting nuclear offensive and defensive weapons in May 1972. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks--known as SALT--produced two agreements--the Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms and the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems. In 1979, these agreements were followed by the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty-- known as SALT II--which sought to codify equal limits on U.S. and Soviet strategic offensive nuclear forces. However, President Carter eventually withdrew this treaty from Senate consideration due to the Soviet's invasion of Afghanistan.
Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan administration participated in negotiations on the development of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces--INF--Treaty, which was ultimately signed in 1988. At the negotiations, the Reagan administration called for a ``double zero'' option, which would eliminate all short- as well as long-range INF systems, a position that, at the time, was viewed by most observers as unattractive to the Soviets.
President Reagan also worked extensively to reduce the number of nuclear warheads, which led to the signing by President George Herbert Walker Bush of the initial START treaty in 1991. Again, the work of President Reagan, and the work of President George Herbert Walker Bush all led to the historic START I treaty. It limited long-range nuclear forces--land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles--ICBMs submarine-launched ballistic missiles--SLBMs and heavy bombers. START also contained a complex verification regime. Both sides collected most of the information needed to verify compliance with their own satellites and remote sensing equipment--known as the national technical means of verification.
But the parties also used data exchanges, notifications, and onsite inspections to gather information about forces and activities limited by the treaty. Taken together, these measures were designed to provide each nation with the ability to deter and detect militarily significant violations. The verification regime and the cooperation needed to implement many of these measures instilled confidence and encouraged openness among the signatories.
The original START treaty was ratified by the Senate in October 1992 by a vote of 93 to 6. We are building literally on the pathbreaking work of President Ronald Reagan and President George Herbert Walker Bush in limiting these classes of systems, using a national means of technology, and putting inspectors on the ground. I find it ironic that we might be at the stage of turning our back on all that work, of walking away from a bipartisan consensus--93 to 6. I don't think that would be in the best interest of this country.
In January 1993, the United States and Russia signed START II, which would further limit warheads. After some delay, the treaty eventually received approval by the Senate in January 1996, but it never entered into force, mainly because of the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in June 2002. But, once again, there was another effort along these same lines to limit the numbers of launchers and warheads, and in that same spirit today we have this New START treaty before us.
During a summit meeting with President Putin in November 2001, President George W. Bush announced that the United States would reduce its operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads during the decade. He stated the United States would reduce its forces unilaterally without signing a formal agreement. However, President Putin indicated Russia wanted to use a formal arms control process, emphasizing the two sides should focus on ``reaching a reliable and verifiable agreement'' and a ``legally binding document.'' Yet the Bush administration wanted to maintain the flexibility to size and structure its nuclear forces in response to its own needs and preferred a less formal process.
The United States and Russia ultimately did sign the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, also known as the Moscow Treaty, on May 24, 2002. The Senate ratified the treaty on March 6, 2003, by a vote of 95 to 0; and the Russian Duma approved the treaty also. Once again, a high-level arms treaty negotiated by President George W. Bush with the Russians came to this floor and was unanimously approved.
In mid-2006, the United States and Russia began to discuss their options for arms control after START. However, the two countries were unable to agree on a path forward. Neither side wanted to extend START in its original form. Russia wanted to replace START with a new treaty that would further reduce deployed forces while using many of the same definitions and counting rules in START. The Bush administration initially did not want to negotiate a new treaty but would have been willing to extend some of the START monitoring provisions. President Bush and President Putin agreed at the Sochi summit in April 2008 they would proceed with negotiating a new, legally binding treaty. As I mentioned before, it wasn't until December 2008 that the two sides agreed to replace START before it expired but acknowledged this task would fall to the Obama administration. This administration took that work seriously and diligently and produced a treaty and now it is not only our opportunity but I think our obligation to ratify the treaty.
Some of my colleagues have already described measures in the New START treaty. Let me suggest some of the important details.
Under the New START treaty, the United States and Russia must reduce the number of their strategic arms within 7 years from the date the treaty enters into force. This treaty sets a limit of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. All warheads on deployed ICBMs and deployed SLBMs count toward this limit and each deployed heavy bomber equipped for nuclear armaments counts as one warhead toward the limit. This limit is 74 percent lower than the limit of the 1991 START treaty.
Again, let me stop and say, I think if you asked every American the question: Would we be safer with fewer nuclear warheads in the strategic forces of Russia and the United States, the answer would be yes. I think people all recognize the potential danger of the existence of more than enough nuclear weapons to wreak havoc if they were somehow launched.
The New START treaty also sets a limit of 800 deployed and nondeployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers--which are warheads but also launching systems--puts separate limits on deployed ICBMs and deployed SLBMs and deployed heavy bombers. The limit, again, is less than half the limit established by the 1991 START treaty for deployed delivery vehicles. The sooner we ratify this treaty, the sooner these limitations will be in place and can be enforced.
We are at a point, I think, where we can continue the progress that began--the breakthrough, really, that began with President Reagan, President George Herbert Walker Bush, and, to a degree at least in spirit, carried on with the Moscow Treaty by President George W. Bush, and now can be ratified with legally binding terms in this New START treaty. Once ratified, the new START treaty will be in force for 10 years unless superseded by a subsequent agreement, and of course the United States and Russia have the option to extend the treaty for a period of no more than 5 years and there are withdrawal clauses if we believe our national security requires such a withdrawal. Furthermore, the 2002 Moscow Treaty will terminate with the adoption of this START treaty.
Like the first START treaty, the New START treaty establishes a complex verification and transparency regime that will guard against cheating and will enable the United States to monitor Russia's compliance with the treaty's terms.
The treaty's verification measures build on the lessons learned during the 15 years of implementing the 1991 START treaty and adds new elements tailored to the limitations of this treaty and to the application of this treaty.
Indeed, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, the head of the U.S. negotiating delegation, stated, ``Much was learned over the 15 years in which the START treaty verification regime was implemented, and the United States and Russia sought to take advantage of that knowledge in formulating the verification regime for the new treaty-- seeking to maintain elements which proved useful, to include new measures where necessary, improve those measures that were an unnecessary drag on our strategic forces, and eliminate those that were not essential for verifying the obligations of the New START treaty.''
These verification measures include onsite inspections--which we do not have at the moment--data exchanges--which we do not have at the moment--and notifications as well as provisions to facilitate the use of national technical means for treaty monitoring. To increase confidence and transparency, the treaty also provides for the exchange of telemetry information.
Under the terms of the treaty, the parties are required to exchange data on the numbers, locations, and technical characteristics of deployed and nondeployed strategic arms that are subject to the treaty. The parties also agreed to assign and exchange unique identification numbers for each deployed and nondeployed ICBM, SLBM, and nuclear- capable heavy bomber. We literally now will have the serial numbers with which we can monitor their systems. The treaty also establishes a notification regime to track the movement and changes in status of strategic arms. Through these notifications and the unique identification numbers, the United States will be better able to monitor the status of Russian arms throughout their life cycle.
The New START treaty will also allow each nation up to 18 onsite inspections each year. These inspections will include deployed and nondeployed systems at operating bases, as well as nondeployed systems at storage sites, test ranges, and conversion/elimination facilities. These onsite inspections will help verify and confirm the information provided in the data exchanges and notifications, ensuring that Russia is staying within the numbers of the treaty.
Some have asked why have a treaty if Russia is allowed to cheat? It is important to remind ourselves of several points. First, because of its commitment under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Russia has already been operating under tighter constraints than the United States. They are signatories to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In 1996, President Clinton and President Yeltsin signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Russian Duma approved the treaty in 2000, but we have yet to ratify the treaty, so Russia, indeed, is operating under more constraints with respect to comprehensive testing than we are.
Second, over a year has passed since the expiration of the original START treaty. Again, since that time there have been no verifications, no inspections, no process in place to work with Russia.
It seems ironic to me that people who are worrying about signing a treaty and having the Russians cheat are not preoccupied with what the Russians are doing today, since we can't verify. It does not seem to me to make sense to say the way you can eliminate the treaty is eliminate the laws so they cannot cheat.
Again, I think the logic as well as the history as well as the details of this treaty are so compelling and persuasive that we have to ratify this treaty.
Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher stated also:
The urgency to verify the treaty is because we currently
lack verification measures with Russia. The longer that goes
on, the more opportunity there is for misunderstanding and
mistrust.
There is a letter to Senator Kerry addressing concerns about cheating from Secretary Gates. Let me at this point commend the Senator from Massachusetts for his extraordinary leadership on this issue. No one knows more about the details of this treaty, the ramifications, the nuances than Senator Kerry. No one has been more articulate, no one has talked with more wisdom, more experience, and more compelling logic than the Senator from Massachusetts when it comes to ratification of this treaty. For his leadership, I thank him. Thank you, Senator.
But Secretary Gates wrote to Senator Kerry to remind him that:
[T]he survivable and flexible U.S. strategic posture
planned for New START will help deter any future Russian
leaders from cheating or breakout from the treaty, should
they ever have such an inclination.
Finally, ratifying the New START treaty will actually provide the right incentive structure to prevent cheating rather than to encourage it.
Let me conclude. Let me again remind my colleagues that this treaty will provide a significantly increased degree of certainty in a very uncertain world. It will continue our relationship with Russia, one that we forged over decades and one that we must use--not just for our mutual benefit but to act against even more pressing threats such as North Korea, such as Iran, and such as thousands of other emerging threats over the next several years.
This treaty will allow us to advance our counterproliferation initiatives across the globe. As such, I urge my colleagues to support ratification of the New START treaty.
I yield the floor.