[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 4, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5748-S5751]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE

  Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I wasn't able to get to the floor during the 
time set aside during debate on the Defend America Act, but it's an 
important topic and I would like to address it now.
  Mr. President, we all want to defend America and I yield to no one in 
my commitment to a strong national defense, but I believe the Defend 
America Act in its current form could actually reduce U.S. security. I 
reach this conclusion based on a review of four key aspects of a 
national missile defense system:
  First, the nature of the threats that the United States faces today 
and will likely face 10 years from now.
  Second, the technological implications of building a system today 
versus in the future.
  Third, the question of affordability.
  And fourth, the impact on existing arms reduction treaties.
  On all counts, the available evidence weighs against deployment of a 
national missile defense system in the near term. Consider the threat. 
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 
we have witnessed a remarkable reversal in the arms race and, as such, 
the nature of the nuclear threat to America. The Soviet nuclear 
arsenal, over 13,000 nuclear weapons strong at the height of the cold 
war, will be reduced to about 3,500 weapons under START II. By any 
measure, this adds up to a more secure America.
  Today, instead, the ballistic missile threat can be summed up in 
three scenarios: An accidental attack by land-based ICBM's from Russia 
or China, an unauthorized attack by a Russian submarine, or a very 
limited attack by a rogue nation such as North Korea or Iraq. Note, 
since we are addressing missile defenses, that I am referring to 
missile threats. This is not to suggest that other means of delivery 
are any less threatening, whether trucks, ships, aircraft, or even 
suitcases. I also consider the threat of biological or chemical attack 
as more likely if not more devastating than nuclear attack.
  The Russian and Chinese missile attack scenarios are nothing new--we 
have lived with such threats for decades. But the third threat is in my 
mind the most problematic in the long term. While worst-case United 
States intelligence estimates forecast that North Korea may be only a 
few years away from deploying ICBM's that can reach portions of Hawaii 
and Alaska, other potentially hostile nations are at least a decade 
away from such a capability. Although their direct purchase of long-
range missile components or systems is always possible, the balance of 
evidence suggests that it would be premature to commit to a near-term 
defense capability when we're not even sure when, whether, and how the 
threat will develop.
  The Defend America Act calls for deployment by 2003, or 8 years out. 
It may seem as though we're splitting hairs, but this is an important 
distinction between those trying to mandate a date certain for 
deployment, and those willing to invest responsibly and deploy after 
the technology has proven itself and the threat is closer to the 
horizon.
  Consider the technological implications of building a system today 
versus at the turn of the century or later. I

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supported funding in the eighties for what was referred to as the 
strategic defense initiative. But then as now, in the absence of a new 
and compelling threat on the order of a reinvigorated Soviet Union, 
what is the driving force to lock into today's technology? My 
Republican colleagues seem to believe that we can set a completion 
date, spend huge sums of money on the problem, and magically achieve a 
fix. How easily we forget the optimistic projections for the 
performance of the Patriot missiles in the gulf war, and of the x-ray 
laser that was inaccurately touted in the eighties as the definitive 
solution for knocking down hundreds of missiles and warheads. The 
challenge for hitting a bullet with a bullet is not less daunting today 
than in the past. We cannot simply dictate a solution.
  But even if we could achieve the technology in the near term, what 
are the costs over the long run if we buy today, discover that the 
technological window has again been broken through, and then turn 
around and buy anew in another 5 or 6 years? If we ever expect to 
achieve a balanced Federal budget, it won't be through impetuous, 
impulsive buying of an extremely expensive system.
  Which leads me to the issue of affordability. A range of numbers are 
thrown around as estimates of the costs for a national missile defense. 
CBO recently came out with an estimate of $60 billion which has been 
widely reported in the press. But we all should acknowledge the great 
uncertainties in this type of estimation. A small change in the 
assumptions about the accuracy of our sensors, or the probability of 
kill of our interceptors, or whether the threat uses decoy or 
maneuvering warheads, can change the final cost estimates by an order 
of magnitude. I'm willing to put tens of billions into an effective, 
limited national missile defense. But I cannot condone pouring billions 
of the taxpayer dollars into an unproven capability whose costs could 
explode and needlessly drain other vital defense programs.
  But for those Senators who believe the threat is imminent, and that 
the technology is achievable in the near term, and that the costs will 
be reasonable, I urge them to carefully consider what the Defend 
America Act would mean for existing and future arms control agreements. 
Many Senators today have pointed out that the act anticipates a breach 
of the ABM Treaty, and that it could undermine the START process. But 
we need to understand in more detail the value of these treaties and 
why their erosion or loss could actually decrease America's security. 
Mr. President, I would like to address this matter in some depth.
  Let's first step back to the years before the 1972 ratification of 
the ABM Treaty, when the debate over missile defenses was in full 
force. Those opposed to any kind of limits on missile defense 
deployments were highly critical of those willing to deliberately 
constrain America's ability to defend its citizens against missile 
attack. But missile defense advocates needed to meet two tests: the 
first, generally referred to as arms race stability; the second, crisis 
stability.
  Arms race stability refers to a situation between armed nations where 
there are few incentives for a vicious cycle of tit-for-tat weapons 
deployments. In an unstable setting, the deployment of a system by one 
side is met by the same or more deployments by the other side, which in 
turn is countered by more deployments by the first side, and so on ad 
infinitum.
  Historically, the nation facing an expanded threat might respond with 
new offensive capabilities, better defenses, or both. But in the case 
of missile defenses, the technologies available in the sixties and 
seventies for intercepting incoming nuclear warheads with nonnuclear 
interceptors were proving very costly. And with the introduction of so-
called MIRV'd ballistic missiles in the 1960's--where several nuclear 
warheads could be placed on a single missile and targeted 
independently--offensive nuclear forces became, by comparison, quite 
inexpensive. The cost to deploy one additional nuclear warhead on a 
MIRV'd ICBM was significantly less than the cost of the many 
interceptors and related sensors required to destroy that warhead.
  By this dynamic, it was convincingly argued by ABM Treaty proponents, 
any United States attempts to deploy costly strategic defenses would be 
met by even less costly Russian deployments of more nuclear warheads 
that could simply overwhelm the defenses. This situation would have 
been highly unstable from an arms race perspective. Assisting the 
offense in this equation was the possibility of deploying on ICBM's 
hundreds of decoys and radar-reflecting chaff along with the nuclear 
warheads to confuse the U.S. interceptors and their sensors.
  During the 1980's, technologies had advanced, improving the prospects 
for more cost-effective defenses. Particularly promising were space-
based systems which could destroy ICBM's during their early flight 
before they deployed their warheads, and lasers which showed potential 
for engaging many targets in a short period. And yet despite over $35 
billion in R&D expenditures since President Reagan launched the 
Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983, it would still appear that--at 
least in the case of Russia and perhaps China--the incremental cost for 
the offense is lower than for the defense.
  START II, still awaiting Russia's ratification, will not only reduce 
Russia's nuclear arsenal to about 3,500 warheads, but, of equal 
importance, the treaty requires the elimination of land-based MIRV'd 
systems. If the United States decides to deploy national missile 
defenses early in the next decade and the Russians want to maintain 
their ability to target the United States, they could simply deploy 
more MIRV'd ICBM's at a lower cost. Indeed, if the United States did 
decide to unilaterally deploy national defenses without first reaching 
an agreement with the Russians, it would be an entirely rational and 
appropriate response for Moscow to forgo START and retain or build more 
of its most cost-effective countermeasure--MIRV'd ICBM's. We could 
again face a Russian arsenal of over 11,000 warheads.
  We could easily push the Russians to reverse course and hold onto or 
even produce more of their most formidable MIRV'd ICBM, the SS-18--a 
missile that we spent enormous diplomatic capital to have dismantled. 
The cold war SS-18 force of over 300 ICBM's housed roughly 3,000 large, 
highly accurate nuclear warheads. Its capability to devastate the 
United States ICBM force created much anxiety during the cold war, 
primarily because it gave the Soviets an incentive to launch a 
disarming first strike in the midst of a crisis with the United States 
or NATO.
  The choice is a stark one: on the one hand, a United States national 
missile defense that could handle limited attacks from many potential 
threats, but would be incapable of defeating a major Russian attack 
because the Russians respond by maintaining a daunting arsenal of 
MIRV's; and on the other hand, a Russian devoid of its most devastating 
threat to our country--its large, MIRV'd, highly accurate ICBM's. On 
this point alone, I would oppose pushing legislation that would tell 
the Russians we plan to violate the ABM Treaty by the year 2003. This 
seems especially shortsighted since we're not even sure the technology 
will be available by then even if we double the national missile 
defense budget.
  We used to also consider the issue of arms race stability in the 
context of other potential threats today. Here national missile 
defenses show more promise.
  A single nuclear weapon can transform a minor nation into a serious 
regional power overnight. The most obvious example is Iraq. Initial 
margins of public and congressional support for the United States 
deployment to the gulf were slim. But if Saddam Hussein had possessed a 
working nuclear device when Iraq invaded Kuwait, some argue that the 
United States would have steered clear of the gulf.
  For those rogue nations considering entry into the nuclear club, the 
existence of even a limited but effective U.S. missile defense 
capability, whether for theater or national defense, creates a 
disincentive for embarking on the economically and diplomatically 
costly path of nuclear development. Granted, missile defenses will not 
stop the rogue leader from delivering a weapon via truck, ship, 
aircraft, cruise missile, or even a suitcase, but his inability to 
deliver a rapid missile strike against the United States or allied 
forces in the theater or U.S. civilians in North America helps dampen 
his enthusiasm for nuclear development, or

[[Page S5750]]

for that matter biological or chemical weapons development.
  Next, examine the nation with a fledgling or modest nuclear arsenal, 
or biological or chemical weapons. Many of these nations, such as North 
Korea or China, not only have weapons of mass destruction, but have or 
will soon have the means for delivering them to United States 
territory. A U.S. national missile defense could help deter such 
nations from pursuing and producing more longer-range ballistic 
missiles.
  As the Russian and United States nuclear inventories shrink 
dramatically under START, China could see an opportunity to become a 
peer in the nuclear superpower league by deploying a hundred or so 
MIRVed ICBM's, each with 10 or so MIRV's. The technology and costs to 
do so would not be prohibitive. But with a capable national missile 
defense, the United States could, in part, deter Beijing from pursuing 
superpower nuclear status.
  Well what about crisis stability?
  Crisis stability refers to a situation where the antagonists in a 
crisis do not have powerful military motivations--quite independent of 
their political and diplomatic incentives--to launch a preemptive 
attack. Imagine two warships sailing side by side--guns trained on each 
other--tensely anticipating the initiation of a battle. If each captain 
knows he can fire a first shot and sink the other ship before his 
opponent can even get off a shot, then the situation is unstable.
  On first inspection, missile defenses would seem to have lent 
stability to the United States-Soviet nuclear standoff during the cold 
war. Like the two warships, one side would be less inclined to attack 
the other knowing that the first attack would be diluted by defensive 
systems and then met by a destructive counterattack. But proponents of 
the ABM Treaty saw things differently. What if during that first 
strike, the attacker could not only overwhelm the opponent's defenses 
and destroy most of them, but also destroy much of his offensive 
arsenal in the process?
  In this scenario, the attacker still has his defenses in place and 
many offensive weapons that allow him to hold the opponent's cities 
hostage, while his opponent can only respond with a handful of 
surviving weapons. ABM Treaty proponents concluded that, by creating an 
inviting incentive to strike first, national missile defenses could in 
fact increase the odds for nuclear conflagration.
  Today, the advent of more capable defensive technologies suitable for 
deployment in space could only exacerbate the advantage for the first 
striker, simply because many of the large and vulnerable defensive 
assets in space would be easier to detect and destroy than the warheads 
they're meant to intercept. As long as defensive systems are vulnerable 
themselves to attack, we will incur a crisis stability problem if we 
and an opponent deploy extensive national missile defenses.
  We are now less concerned, of course, about a tense United States-
Soviet standoff, which hopefully will remain in the ashheap of 
history--assuming Yeltsin fends off a Communist revival. Other nuclear 
powers are a different story. Clearly U.S. missile defenses would play 
a useful role in controlling escalation in a crisis or conflict with a 
lesser nuclear power, who could not confidently hold a U.S. city 
hostage in the face of U.S. missile defenses.
  Another component of crisis stability involves dynamics that are 
beyond the control of rational leaders, such as an accidental or 
unauthorized launch, or an attack whose origins are unclear, or a minor 
attack that is misinterpreted as a major one. Here, too, missile 
defenses can add to crisis stability by providing the option to defeat 
these limited attacks before a commitment is made to launching a major 
counterstrike.
  On balance, the Defend America Act gets a mixed review from an arms 
race and crisis stability standpoint. My overriding concern, however, 
is that the advantages of a national system--even in the context of a 
rogue nation, accidental, or unauthorized attack--do not outweigh the 
consequences of undermining START and engendering extensive Russian 
MIRVed ICBM redeployments.
  The Russians have made it very clear that unilateral United States 
abrogation of the ABM Treaty, as anticipated by the Defend America Act, 
will force Moscow to forgo START II ratification. This is not mere 
rhetoric. Russia's heavy MIRVed ICBMs give Moscow its best ``bang for 
the buck.'' The Russian military is strapped for cash and can barely 
afford modernization of its strategic nuclear forces. If Russia's 
strategic position vis-a-vis the United States is undermined, it would 
be perfectly rational as I stated earlier for Moscow to renege on 
START.
  In light of these concerns, I cannot support the Defend America Act 
in its current form. We should not pass legislation which mandates 
deployment of a national missile defense by 2003, and requires the 
President to renegotiate the ABM Treaty to ease its restrictions on the 
development of such a system. As my Democratic colleague from Ohio has 
noted, we can no more dictate the development of an unproven technology 
than to mandate a cure for cancer. And we cannot unilaterally 
renegotiate a major treaty.
  I believe a more measured approach is needed. First, we need to 
continue basic research on national missile defenses at the requested 
level and in compliance with the ABM Treaty. This means no space-based 
systems or space-based tracking in an ABM mode.
  Second, we should continue to vigorously pursue programs, such as 
Nunn-Lugar, that will reduce the proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction and related technologies. The return on the dollar of these 
programs is self-evident and I will not advocate them further here. Let 
me just add that we should not lose sight of an equally troubling 
delivery system, such as a truck, ship, aircraft or suitcase, that 
could be used to transport a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon to 
or near our territory or military forces. If we are not balanced in our 
responses to all means of delivering weapons of mass destruction, we 
invite a hostile regime to take the path of least resistance and simply 
bypass our multibillion dollar missile defenses. I applaud Senator 
Nunn's initiative to broaden the scope of the national missile defense 
legislation to consider all strategic weapons and means of delivery.
  Third, we need to continue to achieve a theater missile defense 
capability quickly, but avoid spreading ourselves too thinly. We're 
spending a great deal of money on several theater systems when in 
reality nothing will be fielded for years, and we're uncertain if one 
or more approaches will ever fully work or be highly cost-effective. I 
was skeptical of the optimistic estimates of Patriot performance prior 
to the gulf war, and not surprised when we learned that early news 
reports had grossly overstated its performance during the war.
  My fourth recommendation, therefore, is to expend considerable 
resources on the most mature theater system, PAC-3, to demonstrate that 
we can achieve a basic capability against a moderate threat. By 
moderate threat I mean a limited attack by missiles that were not 
specifically designed to defeat our defenses with decoys, maneuvering 
reentry vehicles, and the like. If we successfully conclude this mini-
Manhattan Project, we can accelerate the other technologies to achieve 
the kind of layered defenses that would greatly improve overall missile 
defense performance.
  Fifth, we should create an architecture that could be expanded into 
space at a later date if merited by the threat, but stick to ground and 
airborne systems for now. This means that as we make decisions on the 
optimal technologies for national defense interceptors, sensors, and 
communications systems, we ensure that they are compatible with future, 
more robust technologies and systems.
  Sixth, we need to work with the Russians to amend the ABM Treaty to 
allow for mutual tiered expansion of missile defense systems. In other 
words, after we've proven a basic system that fits within the treaty's 
constraints, and after we've achieved key research milestones on a more 
expansive system, we should then be able to approach the Russians for 
joint approval of testing or deployment of the next tier of defenses.
  The Russians might decide to go along with the next phase even if 
they have not reached the same capability, or ask for a delay in the 
joint approval to give them time to reach some sort of parity in 
defensive capability. We

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might even want to permit asymmetries in a modified ABM Treaty or START 
III, where the Russians would be allowed relatively more offensive 
capabilities as the United States deploys national defenses.
  At each step, we could consider any requests by the Russians for 
assistance to improve their own defenses. Although I am not convinced 
such assistance would be in our best interests, this might be a small 
price to pay if we want to deploy national defenses and keep the ABM 
and START Treaties alive.
  A good initial step, as proposed by Senator Nunn in the context of 
his substitute amendment, is for both sides to agree to rescind the 
1974 Protocol to the ABM Treaty, which reduced the number of national 
missile defense sites allowed by the original treaty from two to one. 
If we try to deploy a ground-based national defense system constrained 
to one site, we are looking at an inordinate inefficient and therefore 
expensive system.
  Allowing for space-based tracking in an ABM mode also makes sense if 
each side is interested in a more capable and cost-effective limited 
national defense. Another area that could prove win-win for both sides 
is construction of jointly manned, ground-based missile launch 
detection centers near each other's ICBM fields.
  Finally, we have to engage the Chinese sooner rather than later on 
their growing nuclear arsenal. According to press accounts, China has 
deployed CSS-3 and CSS-4 ICBMs, the latter of which are capable of 
reaching most of the continental United States. China has also 
reportedly tested the CSS-4 missile armed with MIRVs. Most recently, 
the Washington Times reports that the Chinese are acquiring technology 
from the Russian SS-18. It would not require an inordinate amount of 
resources for China to deploy dozens of additional ICBMs with MIRVs, 
meaning possibly hundreds of new warheads that could rain down on 
United States cities.
  Now is the time to discourage the Chinese from embarking on an 
ambitious, and highly destabilizing, nuclear arms build-up. That is 
why, Mr. President, it is crucial that the United States pursue 
trilateral negotiations with Russia and the People's Republic of China 
on MIRVed ICBMs. I have drafted a Sense of the Senate resolution 
related to this matter, and may offer it during consideration of the 
fiscal year 1997 Defense Authorization Act.
  With that, Mr. President, I reiterate my opposition to the Defend 
America Act, urge a more measured approach and yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Colorado is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Brown and Mr. McCain pertaining to the 
introduction of S. 1830 are located in today's Record under 
``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

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