[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 29 (Tuesday, March 17, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2099-S2104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             NATO EXPANSION

  Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, the letter got lost in the mail. It never 
made it to President Yeltsin. It never made it to the radar crews in 
Russia. As a result, within minutes, Russian President Boris Yeltsin 
was brought a black nuclear command suitcase and for several minutes, 
wild confusion reigned in Russia, as Russia's command and control 
system was operating in a combat mode.
  The letter was from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and it was 
routine. It informed the Russians and other surrounding countries that 
a joint United States and Norwegian research rocket would be launched 
to study the northern lights. As I say, it was a foulup, a bureaucratic 
foulup, and it prompted a hair-trigger war scare, a nuclear war scare, 
only 3 years ago.
  Mr. President, I rise today to focus on this incident, because I 
believe it is

[[Page S2100]]

the kind of discussion that we should carefully consider as we move to 
the debate on NATO and NATO expansion and the kind of debate that has 
not received much, if any, public attention.
  I encourage my colleagues to read two articles that appeared in the 
Washington Post, Sunday the 15th of March and Monday the 16th. Those 
two articles focus on areas that I feel the United States should be 
most concerned about: United States-Russia relations and the status and 
the direction of the Russian nuclear forces and their command and 
control. The two articles, entitled ``Cold War Doctrines Refuse To 
Die'' and ``Downsizing a Mighty Arsenal,'' are a two-part series by 
David Hoffman and paint a very discouraging picture.
  The first article describes the January 25, 1995, launch, as I have 
indicated, of a joint Norwegian-United States research rocket off of 
Norway's northwest coast. For a brief period of time, the Russians 
actually mistook this launch as one from a U.S. submarine and a 
possible threat to Russia. Some analysts say that day we came as close 
as we ever have come to a counterlaunch by the Russians. The article 
further discusses the deteriorating state of the Russian command and 
control systems and early warning systems.
  The second article discusses the impact of the economic problems on 
the Russian strategic weapons system. The author outlines the sad 
material and operational shape of the nuclear armored submarine and 
rocket forces. He states that the economic weaknesses of Russia will, 
outside of any bilateral agreements, drive the number of operational 
warheads to below START II levels.
  I suppose many could be saying, ``So, what's the problem? That's what 
we want, fewer weapons systems and nuclear warheads, right?'' Well, 
it's not that easy. Certainly, the wanted downsizing should be a 
controlled, systematic, consistent process and not one that is as 
chaotic as the article certainly portrays.
  My purpose today is to highlight this problem and to urge that the 
administration be more concerned and that the Congress be more 
concerned about United States-Russia relations. Opponents of NATO 
enlargement say our actions have resulted in a delay in the Duma's 
ratification of START II. They further state that because of the 
increased military capability of an enlarged NATO, Russia must depend 
on nuclear weapons as a first-use capability since their conventional 
forces are so weakened. Proponents of enlargement pretty much scoff at 
these assertions and state that although Russia does not like NATO 
enlargement, they need to ``get over it.'' My concern is not to guess 
which camp is right but to say in our relations with Russia, we need to 
go slow, we need to ensure we fully understand the long-term 
implications of our actions.
  My bottom-line concern and fear is that this administration has no 
long-range, overarching strategy in our relations with Russia. 
Unfortunately, I believe this is a hallmark in the President's foreign 
policy, just as we have seen in his policy in Bosnia and just as we 
have seen in his policy in Iraq. Where is the end game?
  Russia is a huge country that does exist and does still have tens of 
thousands of nuclear warheads. They will play a major role in the 
future of Europe. Our choice, Mr. President, is to continue to treat 
them as a defeated foe--and too many in the Congress certainly have 
that view--or to work with them to continue to develop their form of 
government and their military consistent with our common values.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these two articles be 
printed in the Record. I understand the Government Printing Office 
estimates it will cost $1,616 to have these two articles printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 15, 1998]

 Cold-War Doctrines Refuse to Die--False Alert After '95 Rocket Launch 
                  Shows Fragility of Aging Safeguards

                           (By David Hoffman)

       Moscow.--At dawn on the morning of Jan. 25, 1995, a four-
     stage Norwegian-U.S. joint research rocket, Black Brant XII, 
     lifted off from an island off Norway's northwest coast. 
     Ninety-three seconds after launch, the fourth stage burned 
     out, hurling the rocket and its payload nearly straight up.
       The rocket was designed to study the Northern Lights, but 
     when it rose above the horizon, it turned into another kind 
     of experiment--a test of the hair-trigger posture that still 
     dominates the control of Russian and United States nuclear 
     weapons.
       The rocket was spotted by Russian early-warning radars. The 
     radar operators sent an alert to Moscow. Within minutes, 
     President Boris Yeltsin was brought his black nuclear-command 
     suitcase. For several tense minutes, while Yeltsin spoke with 
     his defense minister by telephone, confusion reigned.
       Little is known about what Yeltsin said, but these may have 
     been some of the most dangerous moments of the nuclear age. 
     They offer a glimpse of how the high-alert nuclear-launch 
     mechanism of the Cold War remains in place, and how it could 
     go disastrously wrong, even though the great superpower 
     rivalry has ended.
       Russia and the United States still rely on a doctrine that 
     calls for making rapid-fire decisions about a possible 
     nuclear attack. If a Russian president wants to retaliate 
     before enemy missiles reach his soil, he has about eight 
     minutes to decide what to do.
       Yet, in the Norway episode, the information needed for such 
     a momentous decision was unclear. Although eventually the 
     Norwegian rocket fell into the ocean, it triggered a 
     heightened level of alert throughout the Russian strategic 
     forces, according to testimony to the U.S. Congress, and 
     other sources, and market the first time a Russian leader had 
     to use his nuclear briefcase in a real alert.
       Now that the superpower tensions have eased, so have the 
     chances of a misunderstanding leading to nuclear war. But 
     some Western experts say the Norway rocket episode may not be 
     the last.
       The reason is that Russia's system of early warning of a 
     possible attack, and command and control of nuclear forces, 
     is suffering many of the same problems plaguing the entire 
     military. Russia inherited from the Soviet Union a system of 
     radars and satellites, but after the Soviet break-up, many 
     are no longer on Russian soil. Russia's six-year economic 
     depression has led to hardship for many officers, including 
     many who work in nuclear command installations, who receive 
     low pay and lack permanent housing. The radar-and-satellite 
     system is vulnerable because there are gaps in the network, 
     which will grow more serious this year as yet another Russian 
     radar station is closed in Latvia.
       The prospect of a mistake ``has become particularly 
     dangerous since the end of the Cold War,'' Vladimir Belous, a 
     retired general and leading Russian strategist, wrote 
     recently. He added that ``a fateful accident could plunge the 
     world into the chaos of a thermonuclear catastrophe, contrary 
     to political leaders' wishes.
       The degradation of Russia's early-warning system comes as 
     its strategic forces are also shrinking. The forces made up 
     of nuclear-armed submarines, long-range bombers and 
     intercontinental ballistic missiles built by the Soviets 
     during the Cold War are declining dramatically in both 
     numbers and quality. Within a decade, experts predict, Russia 
     will have a nuclear arsenal just one-tenth the size of the 
     Soviet Union's at the peak of the superpower rivalry, because 
     of arms control treaties, looming obsolescence and Russia's 
     economic depression.
       The process is posing painful questions for Russia's 
     political and military elite. They want to preserve Russia's 
     place as a global power but cannot support the colossal 
     forces and intricate systems that made up the Soviet nuclear 
     deterrent.
       What makes the radar and satellite gaps worrisome is that 
     Russia still adheres to nuclear doctrines of the Soviet era. 
     The overall deterrence concept is known as Mutual Assured 
     Destruction, under which each side is held in check by the 
     threat of annihilation by the other. One part of this cocked-
     pistols approach is ``launch-on-warning,'' in which both 
     sides threaten that if attacked they will unleash massive 
     retaliation, even before the enemy warheads arrive. The idea 
     is that such a hair-trigger stance will discourage either 
     from attempting to strike first.
       Russia also inherited from the Soviet Union a second, 
     related approach, which is to preserve the ability to launch 
     a retaliatory strike even after the enemy's warheads have 
     hit. This is called ``launch-on-attack.'' In Moscow, massive 
     underground bunkers and a secret subway were built to protect 
     the Soviet leadership so they could launch a retaliatory 
     strike.


                        lost in the bureaucracy

       The message from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry was 
     routine. On Dec. 21, 1994, it sent out a letter to 
     neighboring countries, including Russia, about the impending 
     launch of the Black Brant XII, a four-stage research rocket, 
     between Jan. 15 and Feb. 10, depending on weather conditions.
       But the letter got lost in the Russian bureaucracy and 
     never made it to the radar crews, as had past notifications. 
     Norway had launched 607 scientific rockets since 1962. But 
     the Black Brant XII was bigger than any of those. The rocket 
     was a cooperative effort with the U.S. National Aeronautics 
     and Space Administration, and was built with surplus U.S. 
     rocket engines.
       According to Peter Pry, a former CIA official who 
     chronicles the episode in a coming book, ``War Scare,'' the 
     rocket ``resembled a U.S. submarine-launched, multiple-stage 
     ballistic missile.'' Theodore A. Postol, a professor at MIT, 
     said that the Norwegian rocket

[[Page S2101]]

     may well have looked to the radar operators like a multistage 
     missile launched from a Trident submarine. The launch 
     occurred in a region considered, during the Cold War, to be a 
     likely corridor for an incoming ballistic missile attack.
       Anatoly Sokolov, the commander of the Russian radar forces, 
     recalled shortly afterward that ``what happened was an 
     unscheduled training exercise. . . . We all found ourselves 
     under stress.'' He said, ``An officer on duty reported 
     detecting a ballistic missile which started from the 
     Norwegian territory. What kind of missile is it? What is its 
     target? We were not informed. . . . If it had been launched 
     on an optimal trajectory, its range would have been extended 
     to 3,500 kilometers [2,175 miles], which, in fact, is the 
     distance to Moscow.''
       ``The thing is,'' he added, ``the start of a civilian 
     missile and a nuclear missile, especially at the initial 
     stage of the flight trajectory, look practically the same.''
       The Black Brant XII triggered a tense chain reaction in 
     Russia. According to Nikolai Devyanin, chief designer of the 
     Russian nuclear ``suitcase,'' the radar operators were under 
     crushing pressure. They remembered how Mathias Rust, a German 
     youth, flew a small plane through Soviet air defenses in 1987 
     and landed it in Red Square, shaking the Soviet hierarchy to 
     its foundations. Moreover, in five or six minutes, the 
     Norwegian missile could hit the Kola Peninsula, where 
     Russia's nuclear-armed submarines are based.
       Devyanin has said the radar operators could be reprimanded 
     for sending  out a false, panicky signal. But they also 
     feared it was a real threat. So they decided to issue an 
     alert that it was an unidentified missile, with an unknown 
     destination.
       The alert went to a general on duty. He, too, decided that 
     it was better to send on the alert to the highest levels, 
     than to be blamed for a disaster. One factor, Western 
     officials said later, might have been fear that the lone 
     missile would release a huge, debilitating electromagnetic 
     pulse explosion to disarm Russia's command-and-control 
     system, as a prelude to a broader onslaught.
       At that point, the Russian electronic command-and-control 
     network known as Kazbek, had come to life.
       The duty general received his information from the radar 
     operator on a special notification terminal, Krokus. He then 
     passed it to the Kavkaz, a complex network of cables, radio 
     signals, satellites and relays that is at the heart of the 
     Russian command and control. From there, it caused an alert 
     to go off on each of the three nuclear ``footballs'' in the 
     Russian system: one with Yeltsin, one with then-Defense 
     Minister Pavel Grachev and a third with the chief of the 
     General Staff, then Mikhail Kolesnikov. The black suitcases 
     were nicknamed Cheget.
       The command-and-control system ``was now operating in 
     combat mode,'' Devyanin said. Yeltsin immediately got on the 
     telephone with the others holding the black suitcases, and 
     they monitored the rocket's flight on their terminals. (The 
     actual launch orders are not given from the suitcase, only 
     the permission to fire. The launching process, including 
     ciphers, is controlled by the military's General Staff, 
     which, in some circumstances, is authorized to act on its 
     own.)
       Devyanin noted a strange irony. The Cheget suitcase was a 
     product of the final phrase of the Cold War, during the tense 
     early 1980s, when Soviet leaders feared a sudden attack 
     launched from Europe or nearby oceans. They needed a remote 
     command system to cut down reaction time.
       The suitcases were put into service just as Mikhail 
     Gorbachev took office. Gorbachev, however, never used them in 
     a real-time alert, officials said. The first serious alert 
     came only after the end of the Cold War, on Yeltsin's watch.
       Devyanin said that at the time he was disturbed by the way 
     a misplaced document led to such high-level confusion. ``The 
     safety of mankind should not depend on anyone's 
     carelessness,'' he said.
       The day after the incident, Yeltsin announced that he had 
     used the nuclear briefcase for the first time. Many in Russia 
     dismissed his comment as a bit of bravado intended to divert 
     attention from the debacle of the Chechen war, then just 
     beginning to unfold.
       Even today, Russian officials brush aside questions about 
     the incident, saying it has been overblown in the West. 
     Vladimir Dvorkin, director of the 4th Central Research 
     Institute, a leading military think tank, said he saw no 
     danger from the Norwegian alert, ``none at all.''
       He added, ``It's very difficult to make a decision'' to 
     launch, ``maybe even impossible for civilized leaders. Even 
     when a warning system gives you a signal about a massive 
     attack, no one is ever going to make a decision, even an 
     irrational leader alarmed that one missile has been fired. I 
     think this is an empty alarm.''
       But the incident did set off alarms. Former CIA director R. 
     James Woolsey told Congress in 1996 that the Russians went on 
     ``some sort of'' alert, ``not a full strategic alert, but, at 
     least, a greater degree of strategic inquisitiveness.''
       Bruce Blair, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution 
     in Washington who has written extensively on the Soviet and 
     Russian command-and-control systems, said a signal was sent 
     to the Russian strategic forces to increase their combat 
     readiness, but the crisis then ended. Blair said the 
     significance of the episode was the confusion that marked the 
     period during which Yeltsin would have had to make a real 
     ``launch-on-warning'' decision. Blair pointed out that the 
     Soviet Union and Russia have been through coup, rebellion and 
     collapse over the last decade, and a leader may well be 
     called on to make crucial decisions at a time of enormous 
     upheaval.
       Postol said, ``The Norwegian rocket launch is an important 
     indicator of a serious underlying problem. It tells us 
     something very important: People are on a high state of 
     alert, when there is not a crisis. You can imagine what it 
     would be like in a high state of tension.''
       Pry said that there have been other false alarms in the 
     nuclear age, but none went as far as Jan. 25, 1995, which he 
     described as ``the single most dangerous moment of the 
     nuclear missile age.''


                       ``partially blind'' russia

       The first radar-blip warning of the Norwegian rocket came 
     from the early-warning system built around the periphery of 
     the Soviet Union. The concept of ``launch-on-warning''--a 
     quick-draw response to nuclear attack--depends on swift, 
     reliable warning.
       ``Get it right, it makes no difference to us what kind of 
     missile it is, meteorological, testing or combat,'' Sokolov, 
     the Russian radar forces commander, said after the Norwegian 
     episode. He said the radars are the ``eyes and ears of the 
     president.''
       But the Soviet collapse has muffled those sensors. The 
     Soviet radar system was being modernized when the country 
     fell apart. One of the new replacement radars, in Latvia, was 
     torn down in May 1995. Russia won a temporary reprieve 
     against closing two older radars in Latvia, but that 
     agreement expires in August. Latvia recently announced it 
     will not let Russia renew. The radar is one of those covering 
     the critical northwestern direction.
       Meanwhile, other radars used by Russia have been left in 
     Ukraine, at Mykolayiv and Mukacheve; in Azerbaijan, at 
     Mingacevir; and Kazakhstan, at Balqash. Some are functioning, 
     but there have been disputes over finances and personnel. 
     Russian authorities hope to complete an unfinished radar in 
     Belarus to compensate for the loss in Latvia, but the 
     prospects are uncertain.
       Overall, only about half the original radars remain inside 
     Russia. In addition, the system of satellites used for 
     detecting missile launches is also depleted. There are two 
     groups of satellites. One group in a high elliptical orbit 
     monitors U.S. land-based missile fields, but cannot see 
     missiles launched from the ocean. Russia has two other 
     geostationary satellites but they do not provide complete 
     coverage of the oceans, where U.S. Trident submarines patrol.
       Postl has calculated that Russia has serious 
     vulnerabilities in its early-warning network, especially 
     given the highly accurate Trident II sea-launched ballistic 
     missile system. For example, Russia could entirely miss a 
     missile launched toward Moscow from the Pacific Ocean near 
     Alaska because of radar gaps, he said.
       ``Russia is partially blind--that's absolutely correct,'' 
     said a former air defense officer.


                         admonished by yeltsin

       In January 1997, a group of workers at a small state-owned 
     institute near St. Petersburg went on strike. The workers at 
     the Scientific Production Corp. Impuls said they had not been 
     paid for eight months.
       The strike touched a nerve among those who knew about 
     Impuls. Its founder, Taras Sokolov, pioneered the Russian 
     nuclear command system, known as Signal. The workers at 
     Impuls said they were fed up and would not go back to work 
     until paid.
       Within days, Defense Minister Igor Rodionov took an 
     extraordinary step. He too was frustrated. He had devoted his 
     career to the conventional army, but it was disintegrating 
     before his eyes. Yeltsin was ill, and Rodionov could not 
     reach him on the phone. Finally, he wrote an alarming letter 
     to Yeltsin. He said the command-and-control systems for 
     Russia's nuclear forces--including the deep underground 
     bunkers and the early-warning system--were falling apart.
       ``No one today can guarantee the reliability of our control 
     systems,'' Rodionov said. ``Russia might soon reach the 
     threshold beyond which its rockets and nuclear systems cannot 
     be controlled.''
       A retired colonel, Robert Bykov, who had worked in some of 
     the military's electronic command systems until 1991, echoed 
     Rodionov's comments in an article he wrote for a mass-
     circulation newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. Bykov said 
     Rodionov was ``absolutely correct.'' He added, ``Even in my 
     period of service, the equipment ceased functioning properly 
     on more than one occasion, or certain parts of it 
     spontaneously went into combat mode. You can imagine what is 
     happening now.''
       In a lengthy interview, Bykov said he was the subject of an 
     investigation by the Federal Security Service after the 
     article appeared. Recalling his experiences, he said that 
     periodically the central command system went into a ``loss of 
     regime'' mode, which he described as a neutral position, 
     where it could not send out commands. He said there were also 
     a few incidents in which individual missile silos or 
     regiments would report to the center that they were in 
     ``combat mode,'' but he said the main system could prevent 
     any accidental launch.
       Bykov's article had an impact outside Russia. It was picked 
     up in a CIA report outlining Rodionov's concerns about 
     nuclear command and control. The Washington Times

[[Page S2102]]

     disclosed the report on the day Rodionov arrived in 
     Washington in May 1997 for a visit.
       Rodionov recalled in an interview that he eventually had a 
     meeting with Yeltsin. ``You shouldn't have said that,'' 
     Yeltsin admonished him, he said.
       Rodionov said he drew up a plan for army reform that 
     included drastic cuts in nuclear weapons, but never got a 
     chance to take it out of his briefcase. He was dismissed and 
     replaced by Igor Sergeyev, the head of the strategic rocket 
     forces--a move crystallizing the new emphasis on nuclear 
     deterrence.
       Russian officials have repeatedly denied that the strategic 
     forces command system is weakening. They say it has rigid 
     controls against an accidental launch or theft. The U.S. 
     strategic forces commander, Gen. Eugene Habiger, visited 
     Russian command centers last fall and said they were ``very 
     much geared to a fail-safe mode'' in which any command level 
     ``can inhibit a launch'' of a missile.
       But Sergeyev has acknowledged the system is growing old; 
     most of the command posts were built more than 30 years ago. 
     The rocket forces are also suffering shortages of trained 
     personnel and severe social problems such as a lack of 
     housing for 17,000 officers. A well-informed Russian expert 
     on the command system said, ``Today it's not dangerous but 
     tomorrow it might be. It is going down. It has not reached 
     the critical point. But the trends are down--days when 
     designers are not paid, when money is not allocated for 
     upkeep.''
       In the coming decade, Russia is to move toward a 
     drastically curtailed nuclear force, one that will be just 
     larger than those of China or of France and Britain combined. 
     Some Russian strategists are already rethinking the Cold War 
     doctrines that called for Moscow to deploy vast weapons 
     systems carrying thousands of warheads for attack on the 
     United States. With fewer weapons, limited finances, gaps in 
     early warning, and the dissipation of Cold War rivalry, some 
     analysts have urged Russia and the United States to take 
     nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.


                           Lowering the Risk

       Blair, the Brookings analyst, has been the chief proponent 
     of ``de-alerting,'' which he said ``means we increase the 
     time needed to launch forces from the current minutes to 
     hours, days, weeks or longer, through a variety of measures 
     like taking the warheads off the missiles.'' He added, ``It 
     would take them out of play, so there is a much lower risk of 
     their mistaken use.''
       But in Russia, there is no clear sense of direction. If 
     anything, analysts here said they think Russia may drift away 
     from launch-on-warning. This is driven by necessity: The 
     warning system is deteriorating. ``Basically, the shift is 
     being made already,'' said the Kremlin defense strategist.
       However, others said the change is not certain. The Russian 
     military elite was trained to think in global terms but now 
     faces the reality of becoming a second-class power at a time 
     of overwhelming American superiority. Russia may be reluctant 
     to give up the threat of a launch-on-warning, at least 
     formally.
       ``I think there will be some kind of transition period, 10 
     to 15 years,'' said Anatoly Diakov, director of the Center 
     for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies here. 
     ``Russia will save the opportunity to return to launch-on-
     warning, just in case. This is some kind of hedge against 
     adverse developments. But the main priority will be a 
     transition from launch-on-warning to a retaliatory'' posture.
       Asked whether Russia should give up launch-on-warning, 
     Dvorkin said, ``On even days, I think we should reject it. On 
     odd days, I think we should keep it.''
       ``Why?'' he asked. ``Because how is launch-on-warning 
     dangerous? It's dangerous with a possible mistake in making 
     the decision to launch.'' But, he added, ``making this 
     mistake in peacetime, a time like now, the likelihood is 
     practically zero. Because the situation is quiet. Only if 
     there is some increase in tension between countries, then the 
     likelihood of a mistake increases.''
       Just the fact of having launch-on-warning, he said, would 
     discourage both countries from returning to Cold War 
     tensions. ``We must sit quietly,'' he added, ``like mice in 
     our nook.''
                                                                    ____


               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 16, 1998]

 Downsizing A Mighty Arsenal--Moscow Rethinks Role As Its Weapons Rust

                           (By David Hoffman)

       Moscow.--Russia's strategic forces, the vast phalanx of 
     nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and intercontinental 
     ballistic missiles built during the Cold War by the Soviet 
     Union, are suffering a dramatic decline because of arms 
     control treaties, the Soviet breakup, looming obsolescence 
     and Russia's economic depression.
       Regardless of whether the United States and Russia move 
     ahead on bilateral arms-control treaties, a decade from now 
     Russia's forces will be less than one-tenth the size they 
     were at the peak of Soviet power, according to estimates 
     prepared in Russia and in the West. Ten years from now, if 
     current economic trends continue, Russia may have a strategic 
     nuclear force just larger than that of China, and somewhat 
     larger than Britain's and France's combined.
       This slide has enormous implications for Russia and the 
     West that are only now beginning to emerge. For Russia, the 
     decline has raised painful dilemmas about its place in the 
     world, underscoring yet again the erosion of its superpower 
     status.
       At the same time, while the nuclear shield is shrinking, 
     Russian leaders have decided to rely on the deterrent power 
     of the nuclear weapons more than ever--to compensate for 
     their even weaker and more chaotic conventional forces. 
     President Boris Yeltsin recently signed a new national 
     security doctrine that enshrines this idea. Russia also has 
     dropped its pledge not to be the first to use nuclear 
     weapons.
       ``All we have is the nuclear stick,'' said Lev Tolkov, a 
     prominent Russian military strategist. ``Of course, we should 
     all together decrease this nuclear danger. But right now, we 
     have nothing else. We're naked. Can you imagine that?''
       Some Russian strategists are beginning to look for an exit 
     from the arms-race mentality of the Cold War, a way that 
     would preserve Russia's membership in the nuclear club, 
     perhaps even its Great Power status, but without the enormous 
     drag on its resources. One recent proposal is for Russia 
     simply to abandon the bilateral arms-control process with the 
     United States and go its way with a small, independent 
     nuclear force.
       In Moscow, leading politicians and military experts are 
     also looking, nervously, not at the West, but at Russia's 
     long, sparsely populated southern and eastern borders, toward 
     China and the Islamic world, where they see the real future 
     threats to Russian interests.
       In the West, too, the decline of Russia's strategic forces 
     could have serious repercussions, raising questions about 
     sizes and posture of U.S. forces. Some see it as a chance for 
     the United States to pursue still-deeper cuts in nuclear 
     weapons, including a new strategic arms agreement, that would 
     keep Washington and Moscow at approximate balance, ``locking 
     in'' the lower Russian levels with formal treaties. Also, 
     some experts say both sides should remove the still-tense 
     nuclear-alert posture of the Cold War.
       But there is also resistance from those who urge caution. 
     For example, in the 1994 nuclear posture review, the Clinton 
     administration decided to create a ``hedge'' of warheads 
     against the prospects of future uncertainty in Russia and to 
     preserve the existing U.S. structure of land-sea-air forces. 
     Some argue that, as the only global superpower, the United 
     States does not need to match the steep Russian decline. And 
     Russia's woes may embolden backers of building a ballistic 
     missile defense system.
       Only a decade ago, when the Soviet arsenal hit its peak, 
     the Pentagon warned that a parade of new weapons systems was 
     being deployed, including the SS-18 Satan missile, the 
     supersonic Blackjack bomber, and the giant Typhoon ballistic-
     missile submarine. The Pentagon's annual ``Soviet Military 
     Power'' tract declared that ``the most striking feature of 
     Soviet military power today is the extraordinary momentum of 
     its offensive strategic nuclear force modernization.''
       Today, that momentum has stopped. The Typhoons, Satans and 
     Blackjacks are doomed. Russia, the sole heir of the Soviet 
     nuclear forces, still has thousands of warheads. But the 
     mechanical leviathans needed to carry them are deteriorating.
       The Russian landscape is littered with stark evidence of 
     this decline. At Russia's Northern and Far Eastern ports, 
     nuclear-powered submarines are piling up in watery junkyards. 
     The largest group of Blackjack bombers is rusting away in 
     Ukraine. Even the core of the Russian strategic deterrent, 
     the missile force, is expected to shrink dramatically in the 
     years ahead, although Russia is trying to deploy a new class 
     of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. But so 
     far, only two rockets have been put on duty, three years 
     behind schedule.


                     silent factories and shipyards

       Moreover, most of the huge factories and shipyards that 
     rolled out the giant Soviet arms buildup in the 1980s have 
     fallen silent. In many cases the experts who built them have 
     simply disappeared.
       Like the United States, Russia has a three-legged structure 
     of nuclear forces: a triad of land, sea and air weapons. But 
     Russia's triad may cease to exist over the next decade. Most 
     likely, experts say, the long-range bombers, which have 
     always been the least significant leg of the Russian triad, 
     will become obsolescent, leaving a diminished submarine fleet 
     and land-based rocket forces to carry the nuclear deterrent.
       How far and how fast the Russian forces decline depends on 
     whether the now-moribund economy can recover. But independent 
     estimates by authoritative Russian and Western experts show 
     the same outcome in the next 10 to 15 years--movement toward 
     a drastically reduced nuclear force. The result is being 
     decided today; weapons take decades to design and build but 
     almost none are in the works, and existing programs are 
     starved for money.
       According to the estimates, Russia's nuclear forces are 
     shrinking even faster than the START II treaty will require. 
     The treaty, which called for both sides to have between 3,500 
     and 3,000 warheads, was signed five years ago but has yet to 
     be ratified by the lower house of the Russian parliament, the 
     State Duma.
       Even more striking, Russian and Western specialists now 
     estimate that, if the economy remains flat, Russia probably 
     cannot even sustain the level of nuclear weapons envisioned 
     just a year ago for a follow-on treaty, START III. In a 
     meeting at Helsinki last

[[Page S2103]]

     March, Clinton and Yeltsin set the target for this treaty as 
     2,000 to 2,500 warheads on each side. Both treaties would be 
     implemented by 2007 but warheads would be deactivated by 
     2003.
       More likely, Russian and Western specialists said, Russia 
     will wind up with an arsenal of 1,000 to 1,500 warheads a 
     decade from now. However, it could fall to half that if the 
     economy does not recover. That would put Russia in a league 
     with China, which is estimated to have 400 warheads today--or 
     roughly equivalent to the total by Britain, with 260, and 
     France, with 440.
       Volkov, the Russian military analyst, recently estimated 
     that even with robust economic growth, Russia will have only 
     700 warheads a decade from now. Sergei Kortunov, a top 
     Kremlin defense aide, has written that ``with a lot of 
     effort'' Russia might reach 1,000 warheads by 2015.
       By contrast, according to the Natural Resources Defense 
     Council in Washington, the Soviet Union in 1990 had 10,779 
     strategic nuclear warheads. (This does not include the 
     estimated 6,000 to 13,000 nonstrategic, smaller nuclear 
     charges Russia also still possesses, which have never been 
     covered by arms control treaties.)
       The U.S. strategic forces are relatively modern. The land-
     based Minuteman missiles, Trident submarines and B-52 bombers 
     are expected to remain in service for a long-time. Gen. 
     Eugene Habiger, commander of the U.S. strategic forces, said 
     recently, ``I do not see the United States even thinking 
     about having to modernize any of our forces until the year 
     2020.''


                       nuclear-age ``graveyards''

       Boris Yeltsin has always been unpredictable while abroad, 
     and last Dec. 2 he popped another surprise. On a visit to 
     Stockholm, he declared: ``I am here making public for the 
     first time that we, in a unilateral manner, are reducing by 
     another third the number of nuclear warheads.''
       Yeltsin's press secretary, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said he 
     was referring to a future START III arms control treaty with 
     the United States. But later back in Moscow, a senior Russian 
     defense strategist shook his head at Yastrzhembsky's 
     explanation.
       ``To tell you the truth, I was bewildered,'' he said. 
     Yeltsin's comment captured perfectly what is happening to 
     Russian strategic forces, he added.
       The decline was set in motion by the START I treaty, now 
     being implemented. Russia has made cuts mostly by eliminating 
     missiles it inherited from Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. 
     Looming are deeper cuts in the forces now inside Russia, 
     mandated by START II. But even more important than the 
     treaties, the ebb of Russia's strategic forces is being 
     driven by a simple fact: They are running out of steam, out 
     of money, and out of time.
       For example, in its 1989 report on Soviet military power, 
     the Pentagon warned about the deployment of the Blackjack 
     bomber, the Russian supersonic Tu-160. With low-mounted, 
     swept-back wings and a long pointed nose, the plane was the 
     most powerful combat aircraft in the Soviet air force, and 
     was deployed with nuclear-armed AS-15 cruise missiles. 
     Although the Soviet Union had planned to build 100 
     Blackjacks, only 25 were deployed. They had many 
     malfunctions, but the biggest problem came on the day the 
     Soviet Union fell apart: Most of the Blackjacks were not in 
     Russia.
       Nineteen Blackjack bombers were parked in Ukraine, where 
     they remain. Years of negotiation between Russia and Ukraine 
     for repurchase of the bombers by Russia have gone nowhere. 
     According to Jane's Intelligence Review, the planes have 
     practically lost their combat value.
       Russia has only six Blackjacks, built in 1991, currently 
     deployed at the Engels air base in the Volga region, but a 
     Russian military source said only four of them are combat-
     ready. There are a few more Blackjacks partially finished or 
     being used as trainers. Russia also has a fleet of older Tu-
     95 Bear bombers.
       Russia's submarine fleet is the least vulnerable leg of the 
     strategic triad--while the submarines are hidden under the 
     ocean. But the navy is also in trouble. A.D. Baker III, 
     editor of Combat Fleets of the World, said that at the 
     present rate of decline, Russia's strategic-missile submarine 
     fleet ``will be virtually extinct within a decade.'' At the 
     end of 1997, he said, for the first time since the 1930s, the 
     Russian navy had fewer operational submarines of all types 
     than did the U.S. Navy.
       Of 62 strategic submarines deployed by the Soviet Union in 
     1990, the Russian navy currently has only 28, and by some 
     recent reports, as few as 23 are operational. Most of the 
     rest have been junked or are waiting to be.
       At a peak of the Cold War tensions, 20 to 22 submarines 
     were at sea. Today, there are usually two, and they do not go 
     far.
       One of the fearsome symbols of Soviet power was the 
     Typhoon, the largest submarine ever built--each accommodating 
     20 missiles with 10 warheads apiece. The six Typhoons 
     completed between 1980 and 1989 could, in the event of a 
     nuclear attack, send 1,200 nuclear warheads aloft.
       But today only half the Typhoons are working. Three of the 
     huge boats have been taken out of service. A new missile 
     planned for them has yet to materialize, and it is unclear 
     whether they will ever sail again.
       Russia started construction in November 1996 on a new 
     generation of strategic submarine, the Borey class, at the 
     Severodvinsk shipyard in the north. But according to Baker, 
     only 1 percent of the first submarine has been completed in 
     15 months of work, and the new missile planned for it has 
     failed four times.
       In addition to preserving its strategic submarine fleet, 
     the navy is facing other pressing financial obligations. One 
     of the most persistent headaches is that submarines have a 
     service life of 25 to 30 years, but most undergo an interim 
     overhaul every seven or eight years. For lack of financing 
     for these repairs, many vessels are being retired early.
       So far, 152 submarines have been retired officially and 
     more are unofficially in line to be retired. A huge backlog 
     of nuclear-powered vessels awaiting dismantling is building 
     up in the Northern and Far Eastern ports, which 
     environmentalists and others have warned has the potential 
     for a naval disaster similar to that at the Chernobyl nuclear 
     power plant in 1986.
       ``We have whole graveyards of nuclear weapons and we don't 
     know what to do with them,'' Said Georgi Arbatov, a prominent 
     strategist and adviser to Soviet leaders.
       The core of Russian strategic forces is the land-based, 
     continent-spanning missiles. But the clock is ticking for 
     them, too.
       Most of the missiles built in the 1970s and '80s are due to 
     be retired or decommissioned if the START II treaty is 
     ratified. This includes the 10-warhead ``heavy'' missile, the 
     SS-18, which embodied the destabilizing threat of multiple-
     warhead missiles. Russia's force of SS-19 six-warhead 
     missiles would also be reduced, and fixed with only one 
     warhead each. The abolition of multiple warheads was the 
     chief accomplishment of the START II treaty.
       Some Russian politicians have threatened that Moscow could 
     return to multiple-warhead missiles if it had to, but 
     military experts pour cold water on the idea. It would be 
     ``senseless from the military point of view and impossible 
     from the economic point of view,'' Said Vladimir Dvorkin, 
     director of the 4th Central Research Institute, the once-
     secret think tank for the Russian rocket forces.


                      a brick wall of obsolescence

       If START II is not ratified, the Russian missile forces 
     will nonetheless hit a brick wall of obsolescence in the next 
     decade. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, chief of the strategic rocket 
     forces, said recently that 62 percent of Russia's missiles 
     are already beyond their guaranteed service life. For the 
     Russian military, this is often flexible. But there are 
     serious problems: As the factories that made the missiles 
     grind to a halt, and the workers and designers leave for 
     other jobs, the problem of maintenance becomes acute. 
     Scavenging for spare parts is common.
       ``They have to decide,'' said a Western diplomat, ``what is 
     the risk? And, what choice do they have?''
       The Russian military has repeatedly test-fired old rockets 
     to see if they still work. They usually hit their targets. 
     But last spring, according to one source, when a Typhoon 
     attempted to fire 20 older rockets as part of a destruction 
     routine, only 19 missiles came out. One failed to launch.
       Volkov said: ``Everything ends. In 22 or 23 years, a moment 
     comes when everything starts to collapse or fall apart. Each 
     piece of equipment has a moment when the construction simply 
     get old. You can change the equipment, you can change small 
     things. But when the silo, the container, the body of the 
     missile, when they are corroded, fungus eats through the 
     metal, things start to grow on it--God knows what.''
       Dvorkin said there is an expensive, labor-intensive drive 
     to stretch out missile-service life. ``But of course, we 
     can't hope that we can do it endlessly,'' he said. ``Not a 
     single builder or scientist can tell you right now how long 
     we can extend it. ``He added that eventually it becomes more 
     costly to fix the rockets than to buy new ones.
       The Strategic Rocket Forces are already struggling to 
     deploy a new missile, the three-stage Topol-M, to be the core 
     of Russia's future deterrent. That missile, both road-mobile 
     and silo-based, is built entirely within Russia and designers 
     have said its payload contains still-secret means for 
     slipping through antimissile defenses.
       The main question about the Topol-M is not so much 
     technology as money and time. In December, the first two 
     rockets were installed in an old SS-19 silo near Saratov, on 
     the Volga River. Yakovlev said Russia hopes to deploy 10 
     missiles this year, but needs another $600 million before 
     production can start. In the Soviet era, the Votkinsk 
     factory, which builds the missiles in the central Urals 
     mountains, made about 80 rockets a year. But now there are 
     doubts about whether Russia can afford just 10 a year.


                          Looking for an Exit

       For Russian strategic planners, the choices are painful. 
     The Cold War is over but its immense and destructive hardware 
     remains in place. Russia hungers for global prestige; many 
     see the nuclear arsenal as its last remaining calling card as 
     a great power. But Russia can't afford to sustain it any 
     longer.
       Some prominent military and political analysts have begun 
     to talk about finding a way out of the cocked-trigger nuclear 
     embrace with the United States, if only because Russia's 
     dwindling forces demand it.
       ``The model of nuclear deterrence that existed during the 
     Cold War must of course be radically changed,'' Dvorkin said, 
     ``since it is senseless right now to deter the United States 
     from an attack, nuclear or conventional, on Russia.''

[[Page S2104]]

       Sergei Rogov, director of the USA-Canada Institute and a 
     leading strategic analyst, said Russia and the United States 
     have settled their long ideological struggle, but not even 
     begun to wind down the nuclear threat. The 1994 agreement by 
     Clinton and Yeltsin that missiles will not be targeted at 
     each other was ``a step back from this trigger-happy 
     situation,'' he said, but it was ``a gimmick, because it's 
     reversible in one or two minutes.'' In fact, according to a 
     Russian specialist, the Russian missiles can be re-targeted 
     in 10 to 15 seconds.
       Rogov said both countries still preserve intact the 
     doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, a Cold War legacy 
     under which both sides threaten to respond to an attack by 
     wreaking massive damage on the other. ``You don't threaten 
     your `strategic partner' with assured destruction 24 hours a 
     day,'' Rogov said, ``We need to abandon the Mutual Assured 
     Destruction conditions with the United States.''
       But the traditional arms control process is at an impasse. 
     The Duma has refused to ratify the START II agreement. 
     Without it, the United States has refused to begin formal 
     negotiations on deeper cuts in a START III treaty. Many of 
     Russia's top military strategists are eager to move ahead 
     with deeper, joint reductions that would match the looming 
     obsolescence of their forces.
       At the same time, there is a new line of thinking that 
     Russia should abandon bilateral negotiations with the United 
     States and instead create a small and ``sufficient'' nuclear 
     force, not unlike France's independent nuclear posture.
       In an article just published in a Russian academic journal, 
     Kremlin defense aide Kortunov and Vladimir Bogomolov, of the 
     rocket forces, suggested Russia keep an independent force of 
     1,000 warheads. They argued that this would ``allow Russia to 
     choose and adopt her own nuclear strategy.'' They said Russia 
     could do this unilaterally and ``there will be no need for 
     new talks'' with the United States.
       Among Russia's military and political elite there is also a 
     strong consensus that the West is no longer Russia's 
     strategic adversary--and that the nuclear face-off is 
     burdensome, diverting resources from other real problems. 
     Many have concluded that Russia, with a long, sparsely 
     populated southern border, needs to deter potential threats 
     from the south and east--from the Islamic world and China--
     over the coming decade.
       ``I don't think Russia will have to worry about its western 
     borders,'' said a top Kremlin security specialist. ``This 
     will give us more time to pay attention to the southern 
     borders.''


    Russia's Dwindling Arsenal--Russian Strategic Weapons, 1990-2012

       The level of Russia's forces could change depending on the 
     country's economy and how Russia decides to structure its 
     forces. These estimates for future years are based on 
     interviews by The Washington Post with Russian and Western 
     experts. Levels will be even lower if the Russian economy 
     does not recover.

                             TOTAL WARHEADS                             
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                        
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1990.................................................             10,779
1997.................................................              6,260
2007.................................................              1,200
2012.................................................                700
Start-2 level........................................              3,500
Start-3 level........................................        2,000-2,500
------------------------------------------------------------------------


                               RUSSIAN OPERATIONAL STRATEGIC NUCLEAR FORCES, 1998                               
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                               No.              Range     Total 
                     Type                           NATO  designation       deployed    Year   (miles)  warheads
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bombers:                                                                                                        
    Tu-95M...................................  Bear-H6....................        29     1984    7,953       174
    Tu-95M...................................  Bear H16...................        35     1984    7,953       560
    Tu-160...................................  Blackjack..................         6     1987    6,835        72
Intercontinental ballistic missiles:                                                                            
    SS-18....................................  Satan......................       180     1979    6,835     1,800
    SS-19....................................  Stiletto...................       165     1980    6,214       990
    SS-24....................................  M1/M2 Scalpel..............     36/10     1987    6,214       460
    SS-25....................................  Sickle.....................       360     1985    6,524       360
Sea-launched ballistic missiles:                                                                                
    SS-N-18..................................  M1 Stingray................       192     1978    4,039       576
    SS-N-20..................................  Sturgeon...................        80     1983    5,157       800
    SS-N-23..................................  Skiff......................       112     1986    5,592       448
      Total..................................  ...........................     1,205  .......  .......     6,240
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: ``Taking Stock, Worldwide Nuclear Deployments, 1998,'' by William Arkin, Robert S. Norris and Joshua    
  Handler, Natural Resources Defense Council, 1998.                                                             


               RUSSIAN SUBMARINE PATROLS PER YEAR, 1991-96              
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                        
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1991.................................................                 55
1992.................................................                 37
1993.................................................                 32
1994.................................................                 33
1995.................................................                 27
1996.................................................                 26
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, released under FOIA to       
  Princeton Center for Energy and Environmental Studies.                

  Mr. ROBERTS. I yield the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. KENNEDY pertaining to the introduction of S. 1789 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')

                          ____________________