[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 30 (Wednesday, March 18, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2190-S2196]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Privilege of the Floor
Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, if the Senator will yield for a request,
I ask unanimous consent that Mark Tauber, a State Department Pearson
Fellow on my staff, be accorded floor privileges for the duration of
the consideration of the Protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949
on Accession of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, Treaty
Document 105-36.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I would like to first thank my friend
from Virginia. We have reached across the aisle to collaborate on two
amendments which we will offer at the appropriate time. Today we are
engaged in just some preliminary observations.
I will begin with the current event of one of the more interesting
aspects of life in Moscow at this moment, which is that it is in so
many ways much more open than the United States. Their archives are
open, and their national security plans are open. I do not doubt there
are closed elements as well. But on December 17, the Russian Federation
issued Presidential edict, No. 1300, entitled ``The Russian National
Security Blueprint.''
This is the kind of document that we would not have gotten from
Moscow in the past. We can think of the famous NSC-68, which was
drafted early in 1950 and was so powerfully influential in our affairs
for many years. NSC-68 remained secret for 30 years. By contrast, the
Presidential edict, No. 1300, was published in Moscow's official
gazette on December 26, 9 days after it was issued. It is a disturbing
document; yet, in many ways it is an admirable one in the clarity with
which it sets forth the exceptional difficulties facing the Russian
Federation at this point. It speaks in its first paragraph that:
The Russian Federation National Security Blueprint is a
political document reflecting the aggregate of officially
accepted views regarding the goals and state strategy in the
sphere of assuring the security of the individual and the
state from external and internal threats of a political,
economic, social, military, manmade, ecological,
informational, or other nature in the light of existing
resources and potential.
It speaks of internal threats in the context of the convulsions that
have occurred in that country within the past decade. The forces which
played such a fundamental role in breaking up the Soviet Union and the
Warsaw Pact. It is a sober assessment of the threats to Russian
security.
Madam President, in this debate it should be recorded that the
national security document, the guiding principles of the Russian
Federation, states right up front:
The prospect of NATO expansion to the east is unacceptable
to Russia since it represents a threat to its national
security.
That was drafted, or agreed to, on December 17 and published December
26. It is a formidable document and an extraordinarily candid one. It
speaks to the ethnic problems, it speaks to the economic decline, it
speaks to poverty, it speaks to unemployment, and it speaks to the
nature of the Russian defense forces.
They acknowledge that large portions of their borders are undefended.
They acknowledge that their traditional conventional weapons systems
are deteriorated, if not in fact disfunctional. And they say--and this
is the most difficult part--that they do have nuclear weapons and, if
necessary, they will use them.
This is not the type of posture that we had hoped for, after the long
arms control efforts from President Eisenhower's time to START II. I
was one of the Senate observers to the START II talks and the present
Russian Ambassador to the United States, who wrote a very important
article recently in the Washington Post, was one of the negotiators
then. With START, for the first time we agreed to build our nuclear
forces down. Previous agreements had really legitimated the respective
nations' plans to increase their nuclear forces. We reached that
historic moment, and have been able to build on that important
achievement. Since then, other historic treaties have also been
achieved, allowing eminent Senators, such as the Senator from Delaware,
to bring to this floor the Chemical Weapons Agreement, a very powerful,
far-sighted document.
But now the Russian government says, under the circumstances, we have
nothing left but nuclear weapons. We are in serious difficulty. The
prospect of NATO expansion to the east is unacceptable. The term is
``unacceptable.'' It is not a calculating document.
May I make this point twofold? I would like to go back just a bit.
There is not one of us in this body who has not paid some heed to the
affairs of the Soviet Union over time and the world of communism over
time. Yet rather early on it began to occur to some of us that all was
not well in that arrangement and that it was not going to remain
permanent as was often presumed.
Just a short while ago, Arkady Shevchenko documented--and his
obituary appeared in the principal national papers. Arkady Shevchenko
was the second ranking official at the United
[[Page S2191]]
Nations during the time when I had the honor to be our Permanent
Representative to the United Nations. Shevchenko was a protege of
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko. He was on anyone's short
list to succeed Gromyko. He held one essentially attractive position
after another. There he was, the Under Secretary General responsible
for the Security Council, about as important a position as you will get
in any diplomatic service and particularly in that of the Soviet Union.
Whilst I was at that post in New York, Shevchenko defected to the
United States. It was a very closely held matter. He simply passed a
note in a book in the General Assembly library, that he was thinking of
defecting. He was a man at the top of his form. In the manner of the
espionage craft, we established that he had defected and then left him
in place for some two and one half years, where he remained in his
position as Under Secretary General whilst providing us information.
In Moscow they began to sense something was the matter and they began
to think a defector was in place. It even got to the point where the
Soviet Ambassador here in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, another person
of great stature in the Soviet system, came under suspicion as the
source of the security leaks. Finally, they worked it out. That is not
too hard. You give three messages to three different people and you see
which one the United States gets. Shevchenko had to defect. He later
moved to Washington, where I got to know him. I had known him somewhat
at the United Nations, but I got to know him better here.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the obituary for Arkady
N. Shevchenko be printed in the Record, which is a way of saying
goodbye to someone who chose democracy.
There being no objection, the obituary was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, March 11, 1998]
Arkady N. Shevchenko, 67, A Key Soviet Defector, Dies
(By David Stout)
Washington, March 10--Arkady N. Shevchenko, who stunned the
world two decades ago when he became the highest-ranking
Soviet diplomat to defect to the United States, died on Feb.
28 in obscurity in his suburban home in Bethesda, Md. He was
67.
Mr. Shevchenko's death was announced in a brief statement
by his church, St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox
Cathedral in Washington. By the time the world began to learn
of his death today, he had been buried for three days.
Mr. Shevchenko's body was discovered in his home by a
daughter, who had gone to check on her father when she could
not reach him by telephone, the Montgomery County police
said, adding that there was no sign of foul play.
The manner of his death could not have been in more stark
contrast to the fanfare that greeted his defection to the
United States in April 1978. His decision to stay in the
United States and spurn his own country caused a major
diplomatic dust-up: the Administration of President Carter
was at that time engaged in sensitive disarmament talks with
the Soviet Union and, as one American official put it at the
time, ``This is the last thing we need right now.''
Mr. Shevchenko was Under Secretary General of the United
Nations at that time, and apparently on course to have a
brilliant career in the Government of the Soviet Union. He
was a protege of the stone-faced Soviet Foreign Minister,
Andrei A. Gromyko, and some diplomatic observers thought he
had a shot at one day succeeding his mentor.
As events would reveal, he was also a figure of
contradictions, a man who wore different faces for different
occasions and different people.
One West European diplomat at the United Nations called him
``a faceless functionary'' whose habit of poking harmless fun
at Soviet officialdom did not detract from the fact that he
was a hard-line, doctrinaire Communist with a built-in
suspicion of all things Western.
Only a handful of people at the Central Intelligence Agency
knew that Mr. Shevchenko had been providing information to
the American Government for some two and a half years before
his defection.
One C.I.A. official who did know was F. Mark Wyatt, who
held various high posts in the C.I.A. before his retirement.
His specialty was shepherding Soviet agents who wanted to
help the United States.
``Arkady was a friend of mine,'' Mr. Wyatt said tonight.
``I am grieved.''
Mr. Wyatt and other C.I.A. officials agree that, while Mr.
Shevchenko did not provide sensational details of secret
weapons or war plans, he furnished valuable insights into the
thinking of people at the highest level of the Soviet
Government, many of whom he knew personally.
There really were people in the Kremlin who thought that
the United States was controlled by a cabal of Wall Street
capitalists in league with oafish Pentagon types with stars
on their shoulders, he told his debriefers--first at a secret
C.I.A. ``safe house'' on East 64th Street in Manhattan and,
after his defection became public, in more relaxed settings
in New York City and Washington.
Mr. Wyatt said he came to respect Mr. Shevchenko greatly,
convinced that his decision to turn his back on his country
was not based on greed but simply on his conviction, as an
educated Soviet citizen, that the United States was a better
place to live with a better system of government.
On the eve of his defection, Mr. Shevchenko told his aides
he had to go back to the Soviet Union to visit his gravely
ill mother-in-law. Instead, he had told a few Americans of
his decision to abandon his country and his career. As Under
Secretary General, he was second only to Kurt Waldheim at the
United Nations.
``God, we got a big fish!'' Mr. Wyatt recalls one C.I.A.
colleague exclaiming at the time. Indeed, Mr. Shevchenko was
considered the C.I.A.'s top trophy of the 1970's. An irony in
the case was that one C.I.A. agent who debriefed him was
Aldrich Ames, who would later betray the United States by
selling secrets to the Soviets.
His first wife, Leongina, eventually committed suicide
after returning to the Soviet Union. He later married an
American, but she soon died of cancer, Mr. Wyatt said. Mr.
Shevchenko is survived by his third wife, Natasha, a son and
daughter and a stepdaughter.
In his first life, Arkady Nikolayevich Shevchenko, a native
of Ukraine, studied at the Moscow State Institute of
International Relations, earning a doctorate in 1954, two
years before joining the Foreign Ministry.
His second life was more erratic. In 1978, a Washington
call girl charged publicly that she had been paid by the
C.I.A. to provide sex for him. The publicity was shattering
to him, Mr. Wyatt recalled tonight.
But his book ``Breaking With Moscow'' (Knopf, 1985) brought
him fame and prosperity, and earned money on the lecture
circuit and as a consultant to research organizations.
Mr. Shevchenko complained at first that some of his C.I.A.
handlers were insensitive to the trauma of defection. But he
made peace with his new country and became an American
citizen. ``I was at the ceremony,'' Mr. Wyatt said. ``He was
very happy.''
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, if I could say to my friend from
Delaware, that is when I became convinced the Soviet Union would not
last through the 20th century. When a person of Arkady N. Shevchenko
stature defects, it means the system is not working. And it did not
work. But when it came apart, there is a proposition in which Owen
Harries, in a very fine article in The National Interest, cites British
historian Martin Wight who observed that ``Great Power status is lost,
as it is won, by violence. A Great Power does not die in its bed.''
Of all the extraordinary events of the 20th century, nothing is more
important, more striking than the fact that the Soviet Union and that
whole world empire died in bed. There was virtually no bloodshed. The
only bloodshed that really took place occurred within the remaining
Russian Federation, with its many different languages and regions, when
you began to get things like Chechnya and the appearance of a Russian
army that clearly was not capable of fairly elementary military
operations.
I say that is a beleaguered and troubled society. And one that could
have resisted, in the first instance, the Polish defection. They could
have resisted others. They had an army; they had an air force; they had
nuclear strategic and tactical weapons. They did not, Owen Harries
argued--a man, I must say, of impeccable conservative credentials--that
there was an implicit understanding that we would not take advantage of
what the Soviet Union was allowing to happen to their empire. They gave
up everything they had hoped for from 1917. They collapsed. And they
recognized their failure.
Again, we had been picking up things like that in the mid-1970s.
Murray Feshbach, a distinguished demographer here at the Bureau of the
Census, noted that life expectancy for Soviet males was declining. It
wasn't working. It was all a lie.
If I could relate one more event as a bit of an anecdote but not
without some interest. Our distinguished Ambassador at the time has
related it as well. In 1987, I was in Moscow on a mission of possible
importance. It had to do with the infiltration of our new Embassy with
listening devices and things like that. We were treated with great
courtesy. We were presented a wreath at the tomb of the unknown
soldier. We visited Lenin's tomb. We were shown
[[Page S2192]]
Lenin's apartment. I was struck; behind Lenin's desk there were four
bookshelves, two shelves of English books and two of French. Now, I
expect they were put there for the delectation of George Bernard Shaw
and Lady Astor in the 1930s, but still there they were. And I
recognized that I had met three of those authors. I can not say I was
intimate with them, but I had met them.
Two days later we called on Boris Yeltsin, who was then a candidate
member of the politburo. This was August, and he had the duty to stay
in town in August while the rest were off in the Crimean. To be
friendly, I said, well, we were in Lenin's apartment looking over his
books and I knew three of those people. Isn't that interesting? And it
was very clear, as the U.N. Ambassador said, that Yeltsin had never
heard of any of these authors and could care less; he hadn't read a
book since he had left technical school. There was not a person left in
the politburo who believed any of that.
I say to my friend from Delaware, Yeltsin said to me, ``I know who
you are. I know where you are from. And what I want to know is how am I
supposed to run Moscow with 1929 rent controls?'' This was the level of
ideological discourse.
It was a sick society, wounded. It collapsed, died. And what is left
is fragile, and they have just formally proclaimed both their
vulnerability and their determination that if NATO is expanded, the no-
first-use principle, which saved mankind in the 20th century, is over
because all they have to defend themselves are nuclear weapons. It is a
curiously ironic outcome that at the end of the cold war we might face
a nuclear Armageddon.
I leave it there. I have nothing more to add at this moment.
But I ask, Madam President, if I might have excerpts printed from the
Russian National Security Blueprint in the Congressional Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Excerpts From Russian National Security Blueprint
(Moscow Rossiyskaya Gazeta in Russian 26 Dec 97)
[``Russian Federation National Security Blueprint''
approved by Russian Federation presidential edict No. 1300
dated 17 December 1997]
`FBIS Translated Text] The Russian Federation National
Security Blueprint (hereinafter the Blueprint) is a political
document reflecting the aggregate of officially accepted
views regarding goals and state strategy in the sphere of
ensuring the security of the individual, society, and the
state from external and internal threats of a political,
economic, social, military, man-made [tekhnogenyy],
ecological, informational, or other nature in the light of
existing resources and potential.
The Blueprint formulates key directions and principles of
state policy. The Blueprint is the basis for the elaboration
of specific programs and organizational documents in the
sphere of ensuring the national security of the Russian
Federation.
1. Russia Within the World Community
At present the situation in the international arena is
characterized primarily by the strengthening of trends toward
the formation of a multipolar world. This is manifested in
the strengthening of the economic and political positions of
a considerable number of states and their integration-
oriented associations and in the improvement of mechanisms
for multilateral control of international political,
economic, financial, and informational processes. While
military force factors retain their significance in
international relations, economic, political, scientific and
technical, ecological, and informational factors are playing
an increasing role. At the same time international
competition to secure natural, technological, and
informational resources and markets is intensifying.
The formation of a multipolar world will be a lengthy
process. Relapses into attempts to create a structure of
international relations based on one-sided solutions of the
key problems of world politics, including solutions based on
military force, are still strong at the present stage of this
process.
The growing gap between developed and developing countries
will also affect the pace of and directions in the formation
of a new structure of international relations.
The present period in the development of international
relations opens up for the Russian Federation new
opportunities to ensure its security, but entails a number of
threats connected with the change in Russia's status within
the world and the difficulties in carrying out internal
reforms.
The preconditions for demilitarizing international
relations and strengthening the role of law in settling
disputed interstate problems have been created and the danger
of direct aggression against the Russian Federation has
decreased. All this opens up fundamentally new opportunities
to mobilize resources to solve the country's internal
problems.
There are prospects of broader integration of the Russian
Federation with the world economy, including international
credit and financial institutions--the International Monetary
Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development. A trend toward increased cooperation between
Russia and a number of CIS member states has emerged.
There has been an expansion in the commonality of Russia's
interests with many states on problems of international
security such as countering the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction, settling and preventing regional conflicts,
countering international terrorism and the drugs business,
and solving acute global ecological problems, including
nuclear and radiation security. This significantly increases
the opportunity to ensure Russia's national security by
nonmilitary means--by means of legal treaty, political,
economic, and other measures.
At the same time Russia's influence on resolving cardinal
questions of international life which affect our state's
interests has decreased significantly. In these conditions
the desire of a number of states to weaken Russia's positions
in the political, economic, and military spheres has
increased.
The process of creating a model of general and all-
embracing security for Europe on the basis of principles
advanced in many respects on Russia's initiative entails
considerable difficulties. The prospect of NATO expansion to
the East is unacceptable to Russia since it represents a
threat to its national security. Multilateral mechanisms for
maintaining peace and security at both the global (United
Nations) and regional (OSCE, CIS) levels are still
insufficiently effective, which limits our potential when
using such mechanisms to ensure Russia's national security
interests by political and legal means. Russia is in a
certain degree of isolation from the integration processes
under way in the Asian and Pacific region. All this is
unacceptable to it as an influential European-Asian power
with national interests in Europe, the Near East, Central
and South Asia, and the Asian and Pacific region.
The positive trends in the internal development of the
state and society are still not stable enough. The main
reason for this is the preservation of crisis phenomena in
the Russian economy. Production has declined and its
structure has deteriorated in comparison with the pre-reform
period. Investment and innovation activity is declining.
Russia is lagging increasingly far behind developed countries
in terms of science and technology. Dependence on imports of
food, consumer goods, equipment, and technologies is
increasing. The external and internal state debt is growing.
There is an exodus of skilled personnel form the sphere of
material production and from the scientific sphere. The
number of man-made emergencies is increasing. The property
stratification of society is increasing, and the living
standards of much of the population are declining. The level
of crime and corruption is still high.
The country's economic, scientific, and demographic
potential is declining. The markets and raw material
infrastructure of Russian industry have shrunk. Despite the
unprecedented increase in the share of GNP accounted for by
foreign trade, Russia's integration with the world market
often takes place on terms that are not to our country's
advantage.
Social accord has not been achieved, and the process of
establishing a unifying national idea that defines not only
the philosophical basis but also the long-term goals of the
development of multinational Russian society and the main
ways and means of achieving them has not been completed.
The former defense system has been disrupted, and the
creation of a new one is proceeding slowly. Long unprotected
sections of the Russian Federation state border have
appeared.
At the same time Russia has all the preconditions for
maintaining and consolidating its position as a power capable
of ensuring its people's prosperity and playing an important
role in world processes. Russia possesses a considerable
economic and scientific and technical potential which
determines the country's capacity for stable development. It
occupies a unique strategic position on the Eurasian
continent and possesses considerable reserves of raw
materials and resources. The main institutions of democratic
statehood and a mixed economy have been established in the
country. Measures are being taken to stabilize the economy
and create the preconditions for production growth on the
basis of the structural restructuring of industry. Russia is
one of the biggest multinational states and has an age-old
history and culture and its own national interests and
traditions.
All these factors, bearing in mind that the Russian
Federation has a powerful nuclear force potential, create the
preconditions for ensuring reliable national security for the
country in the 21st century.
II. Russia's National Interests
* * * * *
The Russian Federation's national interests in the
international sphere require the implementation of an active
foreign policy course aimed at consolidating Russia's
positions as a great power--one of the influential
[[Page S2193]]
centers of the developing multipolar world. The main
components of this course are: the formation on a voluntary
basis of an integration-oriented association of CIS member
states; the development of equal partnership with the other
great powers--the centers of economic and military might; the
development of international cooperation in combating
transnational crime and terrorism; the strengthening of those
mechanisms of collective management of world political and
economic processes in which Russia plays an important role,
and first and foremost the strengthening of the UN Security
Council.
An undoubted priority in Russia's foreign policy course is
and will remain activities to ensure the inviolability of
borders and the territorial integrity of the state and to
protect its constitutional system against possible
encroachments by other states.
The realization of Russia's national interests in the
international sphere is largely determined by the nature of
relations with the leading powers and integration-oriented
associations of the world community. The development of equal
partnership relations with them accords with the Russian
Federation's status and its foreign policy interests and is
intended to strengthen global and regional security and
create favorable conditions for our country's participation
in world trade and in cooperation in the scientific-technical
and credit and financial spheres.
* * * * *
iii. threats to the national security of the russian federation
A geopolitical and international situation that is new to
Russia, negative processes in the country's economy, the
deterioration in interethnic relations, and the social
polarization of Russian society create a direct threat to the
country's national security.
The critical state of the economy is the main cause of the
emergence of a threat to the Russian Federation's national
security. This is manifested in the substantial reduction in
production, the decline in investment and innovation, the
destruction of scientific and technical potential, the
stagnation of the agrarian sector, the disarray of the
monetary and payments system, the reduction in the income
side of the federal budget, and the growth of the state debt.
An undoubted threat is posed by the increase in the share of
the fuel and raw materials sector and the formation of an
economic model based on the exportation of fuel and raw
materials and the importation of equipment, food, and
consumer goods, which could lead to the conquest of Russia's
internal market by foreign firms.
These threatening phenomena are characterized by an
increase in the exportation from Russia of foreign currency
reserves and strategically important raw materials along with
extremely inefficient or criminal utilization of the profits,
an increase in the exodus of skilled personnel and
intellectual property from Russia, uncontrolled outflow of
capital, growth in the country's dependence on foreign
producers of high-tech equipment, underdeveloped financial,
organizational, and information support for Russian exports,
and an irrational structure of imports.
The decline in the country's scientific and technical
potential leads to Russia's loss of its leading positions in
the world, a fall in the quality of research in strategically
important areas of scientific-technical progress, the decay
of high-tech production facilities, a decline in the
technical standard of physical production, an increase in the
probability of man-made disasters, Russia's becoming
technologically dependent on the leading Western countries,
and the undermining of the state's defense potential, and
makes it hard to achieve a radical modernization of the
national technological base.
A particular threat is created by the low level of large-
scale investment in the Russian economy. The economic revival
of Russia is impossible without major capital investments in
the strategic spheres of the economy.
A threat to Russia's security in the social sphere, in
consequence of the critical condition of the economy, is
posed by the increase in the proportion of the population
living below the poverty line, the stratification of society
into a small group of rich citizens and the vast bulk of
poorly-off citizens, and the escalation of social tension.
* * * * *
The negative processes in the economy exacerbate the
centrifugal tendencies of Russian Federation components and
lead to the growth of the threat of violation of the
country's territorial integrity and the unity of its legal
area.
The ethnic egotism, ethnocentrism, and chauvinism that are
displayed in the activities of a number of ethnic social
formations help to increase national separatism and create
favorable conditions for the emergence of conflicts in this
sphere. Apart from increasing political instability, this
leads to the weakening of Russia's single economic area and
its most important components--manufacturing, technological,
and transportation links, and the financial, banking, credit,
and tax systems.
The factors intensifying the threat of the growth of
nationalism and national and regional separatism include mass
migration and the uncontrolled reproduction of human
resources in a number of regions of the country. The main
reasons for this are the consequences of the USSR's breakup
into national-territorial formations, the failures of
nationalities policy and economic policy both in Russia and
in the CIS states, and the spread and escalation of conflict
situations based on national and ethnic grounds.
Other factors are the deliberate and purposeful
interference by foreign states and international
organizations in the internal life of Russia's peoples, and
the weakening of the role of Russian as the state language of
the Russian Federation.
* * * * *
The threat to the nation's physical health is perturbing.
Its sources lie in virtually all spheres of the state's life
and activity and are manifested most graphically in the
critical state of the systems for health care and the
population's social protection and in the rapid rise in the
consumption of alcohol and narcotics.
The consequences of this profound systemic crisis are the
drastic reduction in the birth rate and average life
expectancy, the deterioration in people's health, the
distortion of the demographic and social composition of
society, the undermining of manpower resources as the basis
for the development of production, and the weakening of the
fundamental cell of society--the family.
This development of demographic processes is causing a
reduction in society's spiritual, moral, and creative
potential.
Threats to the Russian Federation's national security in
the international sphere are manifested via the attempts of
other states to counter Russia's consolidation as an
influential center of the multipolar world that is taking
shape. This is reflected in actions aimed at destroying the
Russian Federation's territorial integrity, including actions
involving the use of interethnic, religious, and other
internal contradictions, and also in territorial claims
involving allusions in individual cases to the lack of the
precise registration of state borders in treaties. By their
policy these states are seeking to reduce the Russian
Federation's importance in the solution of key problems of
the world community and in the activity of international
organizations. As a whole this could lead to the limitation
of Russia's influence, the infringement of its most important
national interests, and the weakening of its positions in
Europe, the Near East, the Transcaucasus, and Central Asia.
The threat of the emergence or aggravation in the CIS
states of political, ethnic, and economic crises capable of
delaying or destroying the integration process is acquiring
special importance for our state. These countries'
establishment as friendly, independent, stable, and
democratic countries is extremely important to the Russian
Federation.
Despite the positive changes in the world, threats to the
Russian Federation's national security remain in the defense
sphere. Considering the profound changes in the nature of the
Russian Federation's relations with other leading powers, it
can be concluded that the threat of large-scale aggression
against Russia is virtually absent in the foreseeable future.
At the same time we cannot rule out attempts at power rivalry
with Russia. The most real threat to Russia in the defense
sphere is posed by existing and potential hotbeds of local
wars and armed conflicts close to its state border.
The proliferation of nuclear and other types of weapons of
mass destruction and the technologies for their production
and means of delivery poses a serious threat, primarily in
countries adjacent to Russia or regions close to it.
At the same time the spectrum of threats connected with
international terrorism, including with the possible use of
nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction, is
expanding.
The conservation or creation by major powers (and their
coalitions) of powerful groups of armed forces in regions
adjacent to Russia's territory remains a threat to Russia's
national security in the defense sphere. Even when there are
no aggressive intentions with regard to Russia, these
groupings present a potential military danger.
NATO's expansion to the East and its transformation into a
dominant military-political force in Europe create the threat
of a new split in the continent which would be extremely
dangerous given the preservation in Europe of mobile
strike groupings of troops and nuclear weapons and also
the inadequate effectiveness of multilateral mechanisms
for maintaining peace.
The technological upsurge of a number of leading world
powers and the buildup of their potential for creating new-
generation arms and military equipment could lead to a
qualitatively new stage in the development of the arms race.
Threats to the Russian Federation's national security in
the defense sphere also lie in the incomplete nature of the
process of the reform of the state's military organization,
the continuing gulf between political aims and their
implementation in military and military-technical policy,
inadequate financing for national defense the lack of
elaboration of modern approaches toward military
organizational development, and the imperfection of its
normative legal base.
At the present state this is manifested in the extremely
acute nature of social problems in the Russian Federation
Armed Forces and other troops and military formations and
organs, the critically low level of operational and combat
training of the troops (forces) and staffs, the intolerable
decline in the level of provision of the troops (forces) with
modern and promising types of
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weapons and military equipment and in general in the
reduction of the state's potential for safeguarding the
Russian Federation's security.
* * * * *
iv. safeguarding the russian federation's national security
* * * * *
The main aim of safeguarding the Russian Federation's
national security is the creation and maintenance of an
economic, political, international, and military-strategic
position for the country which creates favorable conditions
for the development of the individual, society, and state and
rules out the danger of the weakening of the Russian
Federation's role and importance as a subject of
international law and the undermining of the state's ability
to implement its national interests in the international
arena.
The most important tasks for safeguarding the Russian
Federation's national security are: the boosting of the
country's economy and the pursuit of an independent and
socially oriented economic course; the improvement of Russian
Federation legislation, the consolidation of law and order
and the sociopolitical stability of society, Russian
statehood, federalism, and local self-management; the
formation of harmonious interethnic relations; the
safeguarding of Russia's international security through the
establishment of equal partnership with the world's leading
states; the consolidation of the state's security in the
defense and information spheres; the safeguarding of the
population's vital activity in a technogenically safe and
environmentally clean world.
The basic principles for safeguarding the Russian
Federation's national security are: the observance of the
Russian Federation Constitution and Russian Federation
legislation while implementing activity to safeguard national
security; the unity, interconnection, and balance of all
types of security and the alteration of their priority
depending on the situation; the priority of political,
economic, and information measures to safeguard national
security; the feasibility (considering available resources,
forces, and facilities) of the proposed tasks; the observance
of norms of international law and Russian laws when
implementing measures of an enforced nature (including those
involving the use of military forces); the combination of
centralized management of forces and facilities for
safeguarding security with the transfer of some of the
powers in this field, in accordance with Russia's
federative structure, to the organs of state power of the
Russian Federation components and the organs of local
self-management.
* * * * *
The implementation of the idea of national and social
accord will enable our country to enter the new age as a
power which has achieved economic and spiritual progress and
enjoys a high growth potential based on democratic principles
of state structure, internal harmony of social relations, and
responsibility for the maintenance of global stability and
stable development of panhuman civilization.
The strengthening of Russian statehood and the improvement
and development of federalism and local self-government are
most important tasks whose solution will lead to the ensuring
of the Russian Federation's national security. The main
objective in this sphere is to elaborate and implement a
comprehensive approach toward the solution of legal,
economic, social, and ethnopolitical problems while ensuring
that the interests of the Russian Federation and its
components are observed.
The implementation of the constitutional principle of
people's power, under which the multiethnic people exercise
their power both directly and through organs of state power
and organs of local self-government, requires the ensuring of
coordinated functioning and collaboration by all organs of
state power, a rigid vertical structure of executive power,
and unity of Russia's judicial system. This is ensured
through the constitutional principle of the separation of
powers, the introduction of a more clear-cut functional
distribution of powers among state institutions, and the
strengthening of Russia's federal structure by improving its
treaty relations with Russian Federation components within
the framework of their constitutional status.
The strengthening of Russian statehood presupposes the
enhancement of the state's role in the basic spheres of
social life, the improvement of Russian Federation
legislation as the universal basis of state activity in the
conditions of building a rule-of-law state, the ensuring of
the supremacy of the Russian Federation Constitution and
federal laws over other legal acts, the formation and
development of organizational and legal mechanisms to prevent
breaches of the laws, and the adoption and execution of state
decisions in crisis situations.
The building of a rule-of-law depends largely on the
correct definition and clarification of the extent of the
responsibilities and powers of organs of state power, the
specific categories and status of promulgated normative legal
acts, the procedure for their amendment or repeal, the
improvement of the mechanism and procedures for mutual
relations between state and society, and the procedure for
taking into account the interests of Russian Federation
components.
The protection of Russian federalism includes purposeful
activity to block any encroachments on the country's state
integrity, the system of organs of state power, and the unity
of Russia's legal area.
The main objective of the protection of Russian federalism
is to prevent the transformation of federal relations into
confederal ones.
The main avenues for the protection of Russian federalism
are: ensuring the supremacy of federal legislation and, on
this basis, improving the legislation of Russian Federation
components; elaborating organizational and legal
mechanisms to protect the state integrity, the unity of
the legal area, and the national interests of Russia;
developing and implementing a regional policy which
ensures the best possible way of taking federal and
regional interests into account; improving the mechanism
for preventing the emergence of political parties and
public associations pursuing separatist and
anticonstitutional objectives and for blocking their
activity; pursuing a considered and balanced nationalities
policy.
The efforts of society and the state in the struggle
against crime must be aimed at creating an effective
counteraction system to ensure reliable protection of the
interests of the individual, society, and the state.
The following tasks are paramount: to enhance the state's
role as guarantor of national security and to create the
legal basis necessary for this purpose and the mechanism for
its application; to strengthen the system of law enforcement
organs; to involve state organs, within the limits of their
powers, in activity to prevent illegal actions.
Glasnost is the most important condition for a successful
struggle against all manifestations of crime. Society is
entitled to know about the decisions and measures adopted by
organs of state power in this sphere. They must be open,
specific, and comprehensible to all citizens, they must be
preventive, they must ensure the equality of all before the
law and the inevitability of punishment, and they must rely
on society's support.
* * * * *
A most important role in the preservation of traditional
spiritual values is played by the activity of the Russian
Orthodox Church and the churches of other confessions. At the
same time, it is necessary to take into account the
destructive role played by sundry religious sects which
inflict considerable damage on Russian society's spiritual
life and pose a direct threat to the life and health of
Russia's citizens, and are often used as cover for illegal
activities.
Society's spiritual rebirth is impossible without enhancing
the role of the Russian language. Its proclamation as state
language and the language of international contacts between
the peoples of Russia and of CIS member states is a most
important factor for unifying the people of multiethnic
Russia.
* * * * *
Russia will firmly and consistently honor its commitments
in the sphere of reduction and elimination of weapons of mass
destruction and conventional armaments, will implement
measures to strengthen confidence and stability and to ensure
international monitoring of deliveries of military
technologies and dual-purpose technologies, and will assist
in the creation of zones free from weapons of mass
destruction.
The Russian Federation will also direct its efforts in
ensuring national security in the foreign policy sphere into
resolving problems of international and economic cooperation,
first and foremost from the viewpoint of strengthening its
position in international financial and economic
organizations.
Ensuring the Russian Federation's national security in the
defense sphere is a most important area of state activity and
an object of constant public attention. The main aim of the
practical activity of the state and society in this sphere is
to improve the military organization of the Russian
Federation in order to ensure the potential for an
appropriate response to the threats that could arise in the
21st century, in conjunction with rational levels of
expenditure on national defense.
The nature of these threats requires the clarification of
the tasks of the Russian Federation Armed Forces and other
troops, military formations, and organs, the optimization of
their structure and composition, the expansion of their
professional nucleus, and the improvement of the legal bases
and planning mechanism for military organizational
development and the formulation of up-to-date approaches to
economic and financial support for it in the light of the
need to form a collective security system within the CIS
framework.
Russia does not seek to maintain parity in arms and armed
forces with the leading states of the world, and is oriented
toward the implementation of the principle of realistic
deterrence, at the basis of which is the determination to
make appropriate use of the available military might to avert
aggression. In seeking to avert war and armed conflict, the
Russian Federation gives preference to political, economic,
and other nonmilitary means. However, until the nonuse of
force becomes the norm in international relations, the
Russian Federation's national interests require the existence
of a military might sufficient for its defense.
The Russian Federation Armed Forces are the basis of the
state's military organization. They play the main role in
safeguarding the Russian Federation's national security by
means of force.
The most important task for the Russian Federation Armed
Forces is to ensure nuclear deterrence in the interests of
preventing both nuclear and conventional large-
[[Page S2195]]
scale or regional wars, and to implement alliance
commitments.
In order to perform this task the Russian Federation must
have nuclear forces with the potential to guarantee the
infliction of the required damage on any aggressor state or
coalition of states.
The protection of the state's national interests requires
comprehensive counteraction of military threats on a regional
and local scale. The Russian Federation Armed Forces in their
peacetime combat composition should be capable of ensuring
the reliable defense of the country against air and space
attack and the performance of tasks to rebuff aggression in a
local war, and of deploying a grouping of troops (forces) to
perform tasks in a regional war. At the same time the Russian
Federation Armed Forces must ensure the Russian Federation's
implementation of peacekeeping activity both in its own right
and within international organizations.
The interests of ensuring Russia's national security and
the evolution of the geopolitical situation in the world
predetermine, in certain circumstances, the need for Russia's
military presence in certain strategically important regions
of the world. The stationing of limited troop contingents
(military bases) there on a treaty basis and on the
principles of partnership should demonstrate the Russian
Federation's readiness to fulfill its alliance commitments,
promote the formation of a stable military-strategic balance
of forces in the regions, and give the Russian Federation the
potential to react to a crisis situation at the initial
stages of its emergence.
* * * * *
A most important area in ensuring the Russian Federation's
national security in the defense sphere is the clarification
and optimization of the tasks of the system of ensuring
national security. In performing tasks in preventing and
countering internal threats to the Russian Federation's
national security, priority belongs to the Russian Federation
Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Russian Federation Federal
Security Service, and the Russian Federation Ministry for
Civil Defense, Emergencies, and Natural Disasters, which must
have the appropriate forces, resources, and organs capable of
fulfilling specialized tasks.
* * * * *
The Russian Federation examines the possibility of using
military force to safeguard its national security on the
basis of the following principles: Russia reserves the right
to use all the forces and systems at its disposal, including
nuclear weapons, if the unleashing of armed aggression
results in a threat to the actual existence of the Russian
Federation as an independent sovereign state; the utilization
of the Russian Federation's Armed Forces must be effected in
a decisive, consistent, and planned manner until conditions
beneficial to the Russian Federation for the conclusions of
peace are created; the utilization of military force must be
effected on a legal basis and only when all nonmilitary
measures for resolving the crisis situation have been
exhausted or proved ineffective; the utilization of military
force against civilians to achieve domestic political
objectives is not permitted. At the same time, joint actions
by individual formations of the Armed Forces and other
troops, troop formations, and organs against illegal armed
formations posing a threat to the national interests of the
Russian Federation is permitted in accordance with the
Russian Federation Constitution and federal laws; the
participation of the Russian Federation Armed Forces in wars
and conflicts of different intensity and scale must be
effected in order to resolve priority military-political and
military-strategic tasks meeting Russia's national interests
and also its commitments as an ally.
* * * * *
In current conditions of universal computerization and the
development of information technology the significance of
safeguarding the Russian Federation's national security in
the information sphere is growing sharply.
The most important tasks here are: the establishment of the
requisite balance between the need for the free exchange of
information and permissible restrictions on its
dissemination; the improvement of the informational
structure, the acceleration of the development of new
information technologies and their widespread utilization,
and the standardization of systems for the retrieval,
collection, storage, processing, and analysis of information
taking account of Russia's becoming part of the global
information infrastructure; the formulation of an appropriate
statutory legal base and the coordination--with the Federal
Government communications and Information Agency Under the
Russian Federation President playing the leading role--of the
activity of federal organs of state power and other organs
resolving information security tasks; the development of the
Russian telecommunications and information systems industry
and the priority dissemination of these systems on the
domestic market in comparison with foreign counterparts; the
protection of state information assets [resurs], primarily in
federal organs of state power and at defense complex
enterprises;
* * * * *
The Russian Federation intends to resolutely and firmly
strengthen its national security on the basis of both
historical experience and the positive experience of the
country's democratic development. The legal democratic
institutions that have been created, the structure of Russian
Federation organs of state power that has become established,
and the extensive participation of political parties and
public associations in formulating the strategy for
safeguarding national security make it possible to safeguard
the Russian Federation's national security and progressive
development in the 21st century.
As Russia continues to develop and a new system of
international relations based on equal partnership is formed
and strengthens, individual provisions of the Russian
Federation National Security Blueprint will be augmented,
clarified, and concretized in the Russian Federation
president's annual messages to the Russian Federation Federal
Assembly.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. May I finally thank my friend from Delaware for the
civility with which this debate is taking place. If David Broder is
watching, I am sure he is relieved--he wrote this morning that there
are things more important than renaming airports--that this debate has
commenced. And let it continue in this mode and we will see how it
comes out.
Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. BIDEN. While the Senator from New York is in the Chamber--and I
have said this privately but also sometimes it is worth saying in
public--there quite literally is no one for whom I have greater respect
than the Senator from New York. I think he is the single most erudite,
single brightest and the single most informed person serving in the
Senate. I must tell you only he has made me wonder even for a moment,
after 5 months of debating this with myself, whether the resolution I
have reached with expansion is correct. Only he has given me a twinge
in his opposition. I mean that sincerely. He was kind enough, after
meeting with some of our colleagues, to call me at my home a couple
weeks ago and to sort of forewarn me--that was not the purpose of the
call--but forewarn me that he may be settling on the position he has,
and I made my plea over the phone with him. I kept him on the phone for
about 15 minutes making my arguments why I thought we should expand.
And I got off the phone, and I turned to my son, who knows of my
admiration for the Senator, and I said, I have been around this place a
long, long time. Here I am on the phone trying to--and I say this very
respectfully--educate the most informed man I know about a position
that I thought he was wrong on. I was certain of my assertions on the
phone. And I hung up and I thought for a brief moment, if he thinks
that way, I must be wrong. But I quickly overcame that, and I would
just suggest that it is one of the rare occasions I have disagreed with
the Senator. So it is not hard to be civil when you admire someone as
much as I do the Senator. I promise I will not resort again to such
personal references, but I mean it sincerely when I say to my friend
that I listen to everything he has to say. I disagree with him on this.
I would make one comment--I know he has to leave the floor--and then
I will yield the floor to my friend from Rhode Island, because I have
had plenty of occasion to speak already today.
With regard to the document my friend references, it does reference
expansion of NATO. But I would respectfully suggest that, like many
times in human endeavors, the same conclusion would have been reached
had expansion not been contemplated. I assert that the demise of the
Soviet--I doubt whether my friend would disagree with me--the demise of
not only the Soviet Union and the Soviet Army but the Russian military
had nothing to do with the expansion of NATO.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. No.
Mr. BIDEN. And I would further argue, although I have not read the
document, that if the document is complete, which it is asserted to be
and I believe it to be, that the strategic judgment made to rely upon
nuclear weapons was arrived at in the same way that NATO arrived at a
similar judgment 30 years earlier when we concluded that we were not
prepared or able to keep 40 or 50 or 60 divisions in Europe to meet a
conventional attack by our Warsaw Pact enemies.
That is a long way of saying that, were we to announce that we were
ceasing and desisting from an effort to expand NATO at this moment and
went on record, the strategic planners in
[[Page S2196]]
Moscow, in my view, would be compelled to reach the conclusion that
they reached in the document that was posited on the Senate floor for
the Record today.
I do not in any way underestimate the impact of damaged psyches on
national policy. I do not in any way, in any sense, underestimate that
feelings of isolation on the part of the Russian military, the
Russians, might produce an extension of a position that otherwise would
have been reached anyway. But I would conclude by saying I do not
believe that the strategic document that the Senator spoke to today is
as a consequence--notwithstanding that it mentions the expansion of
NATO--of the talk of expanding with the inclusion of Hungary, the Czech
Republic, and Poland into NATO.
But my friend from Rhode Island has another urgent meeting he wishes
to attend. I am happy to yield the floor.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I, too, yield.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Faircloth). The Chair recognizes the
distinguished Senator from Rhode Island.