[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 51 (Thursday, April 30, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3814-S3843]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Conclusion

  Mr. President, I intend to vote for the accession of the Czech 
Republic, Hungary and Poland to NATO membership.
  The enlargement of NATO does not violate any treaty between the 
United States or any NATO country and Russia, does not pose a threat to 
Russia and will not contribute to a reversal of Russia's course towards 
democratization and a market economy.
  The accession to NATO of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic does 
contribute to European stability, and does promote the spread of 
democratic values and will fulfill the democratic yearnings of their 
peoples.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am going to note the absence of a quorum 
for the purpose of the Presiding Officer having an opportunity to speak 
to this issue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Craig). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, the situation in Bosnia and the 
continued participation of U.S. soldiers in the NATO operations is an 
issue about which many Senators have very strong opinions.
  I agree with my colleague from Idaho that the decision to keep U.S. 
troops there is one that the administration did not adequately discuss 
with the Congress. The past actions of the administration on this 
question, promising twice that American soldiers would come home by a 
date certain and twice breaking that promise, rightly gives the Senate 
reason to wonder if the administration is serious about its commitment 
to withdraw U.S. soldiers from Bosnia.
  However, I want to be clear about what this amendment does. Simply, 
it punishes Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. These are three 
countries that have all met the criteria for NATO membership and have 
chosen the path of democracy and freedom after 50 years of Communist 
domination. I remind my colleagues that the troops from Poland, 
Hungary, and the Czech Republic are, as we speak, standing side by side 
with American soldiers serving in Bosnia. Earlier this year, all three 
countries publicly stated that they were willing to commit troops if 
the U.S. showdown with Iraq led to military action. I am convinced that 
Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic will be among our strongest 
allies in NATO, and preventing them now from fulfilling this role 
simply does not serve American interests.
  I support a vigorous debate on the merits of U.S. participation in 
the NATO force which is keeping peace in Bosnia, but I do not believe 
that the resolution of ratification to enlarge NATO is the appropriate 
place for this debate.
  I think Senator Craig's concern that NATO should not be reformulated 
into a peacekeeping organization is right on target. NATO is the most 
effective collective defense alliance in history, and to maintain its 
critical article V capabilities we cannot allow the NATO mission to 
drift towards peacekeeping and nation building. The amendment offered 
by Senator Kyl, however, on Tuesday, approved by a 90 to 9 vote, 
clearly states the U.S. view of what the mission of NATO should be and 
what it should not be. However, I cannot support delaying action on 
NATO enlargement until Congress has authorized the U.S. troop presence 
in Bosnia.

  My colleagues well know, in December of 1995, the Senate approved the 
Dole-McCain resolution on the deployment of U.S. forces to Bosnia by a 
vote of 69 to 30. Since then, the Senate has, on at least two 
occasions, approved appropriations to support U.S. troops in Bosnia. I 
understand that many Senators do not want U.S. forces in Bosnia, but 
the Senate has had the opportunity to speak on this issue and we will 
again in the future. Now is simply not the time, and the expansion of 
NATO ought not to be the vehicle. So I urge my colleagues to vote 
against the amendment of my friend from Idaho.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I just turned to my staff and I said, ``I'm 
going to wait to deliver my statement until Senator Craig is on the 
floor,'' not realizing Senator Craig was presiding. I am delighted he 
is here.
  (Mr. SMITH of Oregon assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. BIDEN. Let me state my opposition and why I oppose the Craig 
amendment.
  I find this debate over the last several weeks to be, in a sense, 
fascinating--fascinating in this regard. The Members of the Senate who 
express the greatest concern about the ability of Russia to veto any 
action NATO takes, the Senators who--with the exception of the 
Presiding Officer now, who expressed that concern himself--the Senators 
who have been most vocal about a NATO-Russian accord are now on the 
floor being the most vocal about their concern about how Russia is 
going to greet our expanding NATO or voting to expand NATO. So that is 
one thing I find somewhat anomalous.
  Yesterday, I found it somewhat strange that those who did not want us 
entangled in border wars in Europe, as they phrased it, or ethnic 
conflicts in Europe, were the very people who wanted to give up our 
veto power to be involved in those. That is, right now, under the 
organizational structure of NATO, if all 15 NATO nations say we should 
go in and settle this dispute here in Europe and we say no, that is it, 
we don't go. I found it somewhat anomalous that they were, yesterday, 
prepared to say: Look, let's have this new dispute resolution mechanism 
which forced us, whatever iteration it would have come out in, to give 
up our veto power over that.

[[Page S3815]]

  Now, today, Senator Craig, who has been one of the most outspoken 
opponents, to his credit, to the former Soviet Union, concerned about 
Russian interference in American affairs--I may be mistaken, but I 
think he has a very healthy skepticism about any aid to Russia--is now 
on the floor. He, I think--I know unintentionally, at least in my 
view--is on the floor unintentionally giving Russia another veto power.
  Mr. President, to reiterate, the amendment of Senator Craig would 
delay U.S. approval of the accession of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech 
Republic to NATO until Congress passes specific authorization for the 
continued deployment of U.S. forces in Bosnia. This amendment should be 
rejected because it mixes two vital questions of national security that 
deserve to be debated and decided, each on its own merits.
  On Bosnia, the U.S. has led successful IFOR and SFOR missions there 
composed primarily, but by no means exclusively, of NATO forces. The 
Senate will continue to address the question of whether and how we 
should continue our participation in the Bosnia mission just as we did 
during the emergency supplemental budget appropriation adopted prior to 
the Spring Recess.
  Today, we face an entirely different question: should we vote to 
bring three worthy countries into NATO as new allies?
  If we are using contributions to the Bosnia mission as a criterion 
for NATO membership, then all three of the applicants before us are 
highly qualified.
  Hungary provided a 400-500 troop engineer battalion to IFOR, and a 
200-250 troop group to SFOR, as well as a staging area for some 80,000 
American troops on rotation through Bosnia at one of its air bases.
  The Czech Republic has been one of the largest per capita 
contributors with an 870-person mechanized battalion for IFOR, and a 
620-person battalion for SFOR.
  Poland, with troops already deployed in half a dozen U.N. 
peacekeeping missions, contributed a 400-troop airborne infantry 
battalion to SFOR.
  All three nations provided these assets well before they were 
formally invited to accede to the North Atlantic Treaty, demonstrating 
early their willingness to share this burden with us.
  The Senate should reject this amendment. Let us decide these two 
important questions as they should be--separately, with due 
consideration for the merits of each case.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I will vote in favor of the Craig 
amendment that would require specific congressional authorization for 
the deployment of troops to Bosnia.
  However, I would like to make clear that I am supporting this 
amendment for reasons that I think differ slightly from the intentions 
of its author, the distinguished Senator from Idaho.
  As my colleagues in this Chamber know well, I have always had serious 
questions about U.S. involvement in this mission. I was the only 
Democrat to vote against the deployment of U.S. troops back in 1995, in 
large part because I did not believe the United States would be able to 
complete the mission in the time projected and for the price tag that 
was originally estimated.
  Now--more than two years later--I think I have been proven right, and 
I take no pleasure in it.
  But, regardless of my objections to the mission, I have always felt 
it is vitally important that when large-scale deployment of U.S. troops 
is involved, it is necessary to have specific congressional 
authorization for it. And I have tried on several occasions to move the 
Congress to enact such authorization. In that light, I view the Craig 
amendment as another such attempt.
  Unlike Senator Craig, however, I support the expansion of NATO and do 
not feel this amendment is inconsistent with that support.
  Unlike Senator Craig, I am not necessarily opposed to the involvement 
of NATO in peacekeeping missions.
  There may be times in the future when it would be appropriate for 
NATO to become involved in peacekeeping missions when conflicts 
threaten the security of NATO members.
  But I do agree with Senator Craig that if and when these situations 
arise, if the deployment of U.S. troops is proposed, it will be 
necessary to get specific Congressional authorization for such 
deployment.
  It is for this reason that I support Senator Craig's amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All the time available to the opponents of the 
amendment has expired. The proponent, the Senator from Idaho, has 7 
more minutes.
  The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Oklahoma.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding.
  Mr. President, I would just like to make a couple of comments, a 
couple of observations, one along the line of connections. Some people 
have said there should not be a connection between what is happening in 
Bosnia and the proposal to expand NATO to the three countries; and, 
second, as chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, how this impacts--
how Bosnia has impacted our state of readiness.
  I think in the first case, as we stood on this floor in November of 
1995 and we talked about where we were going to go and how we were 
going to stop the deployment of troops into Bosnia, where we had no 
security interests, I was somewhat in the leadership of that losing 
battle--but we only lost it by three votes.
  I think if you could single out one thing that had a major impact 
that persuaded those three more people or four more Senators to vote in 
favor of allowing our troops to be sent to Bosnia, it would be our 
commitment and our obligation to NATO. There was not a discussion on 
this floor where NATO wasn't brought out and it was said, we have to do 
this to protect the credibility of NATO; to protect our status with 
NATO and our leadership in that part of the world, it is going to be 
necessary to send our troops into Bosnia.
  We know what happened after that. We know they went over with the 
idea they were going to be back in 12 months. We were told the total 
cost would be $1.2 billion. Now our troops, 2\1/2\ years later, are 
still over there, with no end in sight. Our direct costs have exceeded 
$9 billion, and I suggest that it is actually more than double that, 
because if you take the cost of the operations in the 21 TACCOM in 
Germany, take the cost of the 86th Airlift in Ramstein--all of them 
dedicating almost their entire operation to supporting the operation in 
Bosnia--then the cost is much, much greater. So there is a relationship 
between NATO and our troops in Bosnia.
  I see this as something that is very critical, because so long as we 
are supporting the Bosnia operation, we are not in a position to be 
able to logistically support any type of a ground operation anyplace 
else in that theater.
  Let's keep in mind that theater area does include the Middle East. It 
was not long ago when it was pretty well publicized that we might have 
to do surgical airstrikes on Iraq. They are talking about that again 
today. While the general public is deceived into thinking that we can 
do this without sending in ground troops, they are wrong. There is not 
anyone that I know of, who has a background in the military, who would 
tell you that you can go in and accomplish something from the air 
without ultimately sending in ground troops. We are not in a position, 
as a result of Bosnia, to support ground troops anywhere else in that 
theater.
  If there is any doubt in anyone's mind, all they have to do is call 
the commanding officer of 21 TACCOM in Germany, and they will tell them 
there is not the capacity to send one truck to logistically support an 
operation anywhere else in the theater. It is not that they are 100 
percent occupied by Bosnia, they are 115 percent occupied with their 
support of Bosnia. So that has had a dramatic effect on our state of 
readiness.

  Second, we are using our troops at such a high OPTEMPO and PERSTEMPO 
that we are not in a position to retain these people. And the cost of 
this is incredible. Mr. President, it costs $6 million to put a guy in 
the cockpit of an F-16. These people are leaving. Our retention rate 
has now dropped below 28 percent. That is unprecedented, and that is 
exactly what has been happening.
  So I do applaud the Senator from Idaho for bringing this up and 
making

[[Page S3816]]

an issue out of this, because there is a definite connection. I think 
it is perfectly reasonable for us to have to give some type of 
approval, on an annual basis, for our troops being someplace where 
there are no national security risks at stake.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I rise in support, strong 
support, of the Craig amendment and commend the Senator for offering 
it. It is a very reasonable amendment that simply says, prior to the 
deposit of the U.S. instrument of ratification, that there must be 
enacted a law containing specific authorization for the continued 
deployment of troops in Bosnia. I don't know how--if Congress wants to 
exercise its responsibility--I don't know how anyone could object to 
the amendment. Surely, if the comments that I have heard on and off the 
floor over the past couple of years regarding the issue of troops in 
Bosnia are any indication, this vote ought to be overwhelming in 
support of the Craig amendment. I certainly don't think anyone has any 
right to complain ever again if they are not going to vote to at least 
have the opportunity to say that we ought to have a vote here in the 
Senate to put forces in Bosnia.
  I hope those who have been doing all of this complaining over the 
past couple of years will vote for the Craig amendment so that we can 
get a vote by the Congress to authorize the extension of having troops 
in Bosnia as part of the ratification process.
  When the Congress first considered the President's plan to send 
troops to Bosnia in 1995, the administration placed clear limits on the 
duration of that commitment. On every single occasion that I can think 
of, that I know of, administration officials stated that U.S. troops 
would remain in Bosnia for 1 year--1 year. That was 3 years ago. They 
are still there.
  Secretary Perry said on December 1, 1995:

       We believe the mission can be accomplished in 1 year. So we 
     have based our plan on that time line. This schedule is 
     realistic, because the specific military tasks in the 
     agreement can be completed in the first 6 months and, 
     therefore, its role will be to maintain the climate of 
     stability that will permit civil work to go forward. We 
     expect these civil functions will be successfully initiated 
     in 1 year. But even if some of them are not, we must not be 
     drawn into a posture of indefinite garrison.

  That is what Secretary Perry said on December 1, 1995. He used the 
term ``indefinite garrison.'' And 3\1/2\ years later, we are still in 
Bosnia with no end in sight, no plan to get out, and here is the 
opportunity for Congress, certainly the U.S. Senate in this case, to 
speak up.
  I hope the Senate will speak responsibly here and agree with the 
Craig amendment.
  Let me give you some more testimony. Secretary of State Holbrooke on 
December 6, 1995:

       The military tasks in Bosnia are doable within 12 months. 
     There isn't any question.

  That is a quote--

       The deeper question is whether the nonmilitary functions 
     can be done in 12 months. That's the real question. But it's 
     not NATO or U.S. force responsibility to do that. It's us on 
     the civilian side working with the Europeans. It's going to 
     be very tough. Should the military stick around until every 
     refugee has gone home, until everything else in the civilian 
     annexes has been done? No. That is not their mission.

  That was Secretary Holbrooke on December 6, 1995, and yet troops 
remain. There are still troops there sitting in the middle of a war 
zone between warring factions. Yes, holding the peace, but the 
commitment that was made to the American people and to this Congress by 
this administration in 1995 was that we were not going to keep them 
there beyond 12 months, and he said there isn't any question about 
that, we don't need to keep them there.
  Nothing has changed. There is nothing different today than there was 
3 years ago regarding that kind of comment. He says the deeper question 
is whether nonmilitary functions can be done in 12 months. That is the 
question. But the military is still there, and they are using the 
military to try to accomplish nonmilitary functions, which in and of 
itself is a real problem.
  Many of us who closely studied the conflict in Bosnia saw this, 
frankly, as an unrealistic comment. We didn't believe--I certainly 
didn't believe and I know many of my colleagues didn't believe--that 
this made sense. There was no way that you could make that kind of a 
military commitment and allow this whole situation to become resolved 
in less than 12 months. But, what choice did the American people have 
but to take the President and the Secretary of State and others at 
their word? That is what we did, we took them at their word. What do we 
have for it?

  I was disappointed, but not surprised, when right after the 1996 
elections, the President said that we are going to continue this 
military commitment for an additional 18 months, until June of 1998. I 
happen to be a veteran of the Vietnam war. This has a familiar ring to 
it, a very familiar ring to it. I can remember the McNamara charts and 
the one more battle and, ``In just another year or two, we'll wrap this 
up.'' Mr. President, 58,000 lives and about 13 years later, we got out 
of Vietnam.
  That could happen here. This is an extremely sensitive area that has 
a lot of problems that could escalate in a hurry.
  Last December, the President said that he acknowledged that our 
commitment to Bosnia is open-ended, but he is still talking about clear 
and achievable goals. If you have an open-ended policy, you don't have 
clear and achievable goals. They are two direct opposites. There is no 
clear and achievable goal. There is an open-ended policy, and as long 
as it is open-ended, we are just going to give a blank check to the 
administration to stay in Bosnia and do what? To nation build, is that 
what our troops are there for?
  This policy must come to a vote in this Congress. We have to act 
responsibly, otherwise, another Vietnam could occur. After people are 
killed or injured or maimed, it is too late to debate it. It is too 
late for those people. We need to be debating it now, and the Craig 
amendment is simply asking for a vote in the affirmative if we are 
going to continue the policy and continue to keep troops in Bosnia. I 
don't know what the policy is. The policy to me is just open-ended. 
Just keep them there, keep them there, keep them there; make another 
promise, another promise, another promise.
  The administration has had a free ride in Bosnia now for 2 years. It 
is wrong, to put it very bluntly, for this Government to conduct its 
foreign policy without the participation of Congress and the public. 
For the life of me, I don't understand how anyone could oppose the 
Craig amendment.
  The American people need to understand what is at stake and either 
agree to the commitment or not. We represent the American people, 
supposedly. The President has stated what he wants to do and he said 
why. He said, ``I want an open-ended policy in Bosnia, and I want to do 
it because I feel like I have a clear and achievable goal.'' He hasn't 
said what it is, just to keep the peace.
  War has been going on in Bosnia for a thousand years. I am not sure 
just how long we have to hold American military forces there. Under 
this open-ended policy, maybe it is another thousand years. I don't 
know. But Congress has to act. The President gave his reasons, and now 
the American people ought to hear Congress' debate on this proposal, 
and that is what this amendment is about. This is no longer a 
Presidential use of force based on his judgment of an immediate threat. 
It is nation building in Bosnia. That is what we are talking about. It 
is now a deliberate foreign policy, and it must be approved and funded 
by Congress or not.
  Mr. President, how much time is remaining in the debate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Time has expired.
  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to 
have printed in the Record a letter to me from President Clinton dated 
April 20, 1998, in which he said:

       To ensure that NATO functions as effectively in the next 
     century as it has in this one, we must preserve its ability 
     to respond quickly, flexibly and decisively to whatever 
     threats may arise.

  It is the ``whatever threats may arise'' that bothers me in this 
debate, Mr. President.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:


[[Page S3817]]




                                              The White House,

                                       Washington, April 20, 1998.
     Hon. Robert C. Smith,
     Chairman, Select Committee on Ethics,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: Thank you for your letter on United 
     States and NATO involvement in Bosnia. You raise important 
     questions about our mission and the impact of our military 
     operations in Bosnia on U.S. security interests around the 
     world.
       Since you wrote your letter, I have forwarded to Congress 
     my certification and report regarding our mission in Bosnia. 
     This document includes detailed answers to the range of 
     issues you raise in your letter and I am enclosing a copy for 
     your review.
       I strongly believe that our mission in Bosnia is critically 
     important to the security of Europe. We are making increasing 
     progress in implementing the Dayton agreement and 
     establishing conditions under which Bosnians can live 
     together in peace. In the past six months, we have seen 
     rising returns of refugees, reform and restructuring of 
     police and media, emerging anti-corruption efforts, capture 
     or surrender of more than a dozen war criminals and improved 
     cooperation among the parties. Most significant is the recent 
     installation of a pro-Dayton government in Republika Srpska. 
     SFOR's support for civilian implementation was essential to 
     achieving this result.
       We must succeed in Bosnia if we are to prevent instability 
     from spreading to other volatile parts of the region such as 
     Kosovo and Macedonia. Broader instability could threaten the 
     vital interests of NATO allies Greece and Turkey, and 
     endanger the overall security and stability of Southeast 
     Europe. Success in Bosnia also reinforces the credibility of 
     American leadership in Europe and demonstrates the capability 
     of NATO to respond with its Partnership for Peace partners to 
     the security challenges of the twenty-first century.
       The Bosnia mission also underscores NATO's value in 
     protecting the security and interests of its members, but it 
     does not signal a departure from the Alliance's enduring 
     purposes, as described by the Washington Treaty of 1949. Its 
     primary mission is, and will remain, the collective defense 
     of Alliance territory. However, as we have seen in Bosnia, it 
     is sometimes necessary for NATO to act beyond its immediate 
     borders in order to safeguard its members. To ensure that 
     NATO functions as effectively in the next century as it has 
     in this one, we must preserve its ability to respond quickly, 
     flexibly and decisively to whatever threats may arise.
       Again, thank you for your letter. I am pleased that we have 
     had the opportunity for an extensive dialogue with members of 
     Congress on the continuation of our mission in Bosnia. We 
     will continue to work with you and other members of Congress 
     in the cause of peace in this important mission.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Bill Clinton.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). The Craig amendment will now be 
temporarily laid aside.
  Under the previous order, the hour of 12 noon having arrived, the 
Senator from New York, Mr. Moynihan, is recognized to offer an 
amendment on which there shall be 1 hour of debate.
  The Senator from New York.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Chair.


                      Executive Amendment No. 2321

  (Purpose: To express a condition regarding the relationship between 
             NATO membership and European Union membership)

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I send to the desk an amendment for 
myself and Mr. Warner and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from New York [Mr. Moynihan] for himself and 
     Mr. Warner, proposes an executive amendment numbered 2321.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end of section 3 of the resolution (relating to 
     conditions), add the following:
       (  ) Deferral of ratification of nato enlargement until 
     admission of poland, hungary, and czech republic to the 
     european union.--
       (A) Certification Required.--Prior to the deposit of the 
     United States instrument of ratification, the President shall 
     certify to the Senate that Poland, Hungary, and the Czech 
     Republic have each acceded to membership in the European 
     Union and have each engaged in initial voting participation 
     in an official action of the European Union.
       (B) Rule of construction.--Nothing in this paragraph may be 
     construed as an expression by the Senate of an intent to 
     accept as a new NATO member any country other than Poland, 
     Hungary, or the Czech Republic if that country becomes a 
     member of the European Union after the date of adoption of 
     this resolution.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. In the brief period that I will be speaking, I would 
like to concentrate on the central issue: the dangers of nuclear war in 
the years ahead.
  Earlier, in an address to the 150th anniversary gathering of the 
Associated Press, I cited a comment made last autumn by Richard 
Holbrooke, the American diplomat, now temporarily in private life.
  Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the Dayton agreement regarding the 
former Yugoslavia, commented that ``almost a decade has gone by since 
the Berlin Wall fell and, instead of reaching out to Central Europe, 
the European Union turned toward a bizarre search for a common 
currency. So NATO enlargement had to fill the void.'' As if this were 
an accidental policy that derives from the unwillingness of our 
European friends--some of them our NATO allies--to engage in the more 
serious work of bringing the once more independent republics of the 
Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland into the European Union, a common 
market from which their economic development can grow, that being 
clearly the single most pressing concern they have in the aftermath of 
the half century of a Stalinist economy imposed upon them with the same 
results for them--not quite so bad, but bad enough--that Russia itself 
experienced.
  The disaster of this era for the Russians cannot be exaggerated. I 
say to my dear friend from Delaware, who has been so generous in 
letting us speak on these matters, Murray Feshbach has recently 
established that the life expectancy of Russian men dropped from 62 
years in 1989 to 57 years in 1996. There is no historical equivalent. A 
century ago, a 16-year-old Russian male had a 54 percent chance of 
surviving to age 60. Two percent less than had he been born a century 
ago. Such has been the implosion of Soviet society--in every respect, 
including the nuclear one.
  Now, earlier on in a statement, I remarked, and I will take the 
liberty of remarking once again, that the origins of NATO seem very 
distant to most Members of the Senate. That age seems like another era. 
And in a sense it was another era. But there are a few witnesses from 
that era who are still active and who still speak.
  George Kennan, who conceived the whole idea of containment, of which 
NATO was an expression and perhaps the most important one, George 
Kennan has said NATO expansion, in the aftermath of the defeat of the 
Soviet Union, he says, would be ``the most fateful error of American 
policy in the entire post-cold war era.'' ``The most fateful error.''
  Paul Nitze, who was the principal author of NSC-68, the national 
security directive written in 1950, which established the American 
policy of containment, recently wrote to me to say, ``In the present 
security environment, NATO expansion is not only unnecessary, it is 
gratuitous. If we want a Europe whole and free, we are not likely to 
get it by making NATO fat and feeble.''
  In my remarks to the Associated Press, I simply said that expanding 
NATO at this time, and particularly should we move up to include the 
Baltic States, which we are pledged to support, would put us at risk of 
getting into a nuclear war with Russia: wholly unanticipated, for which 
we are not prepared, about which we are not thinking.
  Professor Michael Mandelbaum, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced 
International Studies, said ``that is not hyperbole.'' That is what we 
are dealing with here. And the reason, NATO expansion is viewed 
throughout elements of the Russian political system as a hostile act. 
Some think of it as a hostile act they could live with; some think it 
is a hostile act they will have to defend against; and they have said 
if they have to defend their territory, they will do so with nuclear 
weapons; it is all they have left.
  Their Army has all been disintegrated--not entirely, but they remark 
in a December 17 National Security memorandum signed by Mr. Yeltsin, 
that stretches of their borders are undefended. Their Navy is rusting 
in a seaport, nominally part of the Ukraine.
  They have nuclear weapons. After all we have gone through to achieve 
rational nuclear postures: a no-first-use policy, graduated response to 
threats, only resorting to strategic nuclear weapons at the very last 
moment when no other options are available--that is gone. We are back 
to the hair trigger that we knew when I was a young person in this 
Government, in this city,

[[Page S3818]]

when we could imagine having use air-raid shelters. We could imagine 
it, because we could remember the Second World War.

  I was called back into the Navy in 1951, briefly, as it turned out, 
but found myself in Bremerhaven, in the submarine pens there that the 
Nazis had built. The British finally got a bomb through one, but never 
did during the war. We were sent on an expedition to Berlin. We had the 
practice of sending American officers on trains through Soviet-occupied 
Germany to establish the fact that we had the right to do so. I arrived 
in Berlin, and it wasn't there. Just ruined rubble; early in the 
morning, a few men stumbling out of a few bars, lost to the world.

  We knew what war meant, and we can imagine what nuclear war means. We 
just had dropped two bombs on Japan. From the time of President 
Eisenhower, we have been negotiating ways to control atomic weapons--
and we had success. Those early arms control agreements, apart from the 
agreement President Kennedy reached on atmospheric nuclear testing, 
those early agreements typically just ratified the increases in nuclear 
weapons that each side wanted, but we got the START agreement and we 
reduced our nuclear arsenals.
  The START Treaty, negotiated with the Soviet Union, was signed by 
four entirely different countries, because by the time it was finished 
the Soviet Union had disappeared. Russia has not yet ratified START II. 
The idea of START III, to reduced deployed nuclear weapons ever 
further, hasn't even begun. They haven't ratified START II, not least 
because of NATO expansion. I don't claim to know what the actual 
decisions in the Duma are, but that is what one hears, and one can 
imagine it.
  Tomorrow there will be a report by the Physicians for Social 
Responsibility, an American group, principally, that has won a Nobel 
Prize on the issue of preventing nuclear warfare. They will publish a 
report in the New England Journal of Medicine which says that the 
danger of nuclear attack continues and may even be thought to escalate. 
The New York Times reports this in the terms we have been speaking 
about on this floor, the exact same terms, with no idea that was 
coming.
  It says, ``Russia's Disarray Brings a Nuclear Risk to the U.S., Study 
Says.'' The Physicians write, ``Although many people believe that the 
threat of a nuclear attack largely disappeared with the end of the cold 
war there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Each side routinely 
maintains thousands of nuclear warheads on high alert. Furthermore, to 
compensate for its weakened conventional forces, Russia has abandoned 
its no-first use policy.''
  Madam President, that is all I and my friend from Virginia has said 
on this floor this week of debate and when the expansion of NATO was 
debated a month ago. Suddenly we have it in an article in the New 
England Journal of Medicine, saying to those who think this threat is 
behind us. Indeed, it is ahead of us, and we must be very careful, so 
careful, about what we do. That is why so many of us, starting with the 
great men--Kennan and Nitze--who conceived the strategy for the cold 
war, which we won, are saying, ``Don't do this.''
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article 
from the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 30, 1998]

    Russia's Disarray Brings a Nuclear Risk to the U.S., Study Says

                            (By Tim Weiner)

       Washington, April 29.--Russia's deteriorating control of 
     its nuclear weapons is increasing the danger of an accidental 
     or unauthorized attack on the United States, a Nobel Peace 
     Prize-winning group warned today.
       A dozen missiles fired from a Russian nuclear submarine 
     would kill nearly seven million Americans instantly, and 
     millions more would die from radiation, according to a study 
     conducted under the auspices of Physicians for Social 
     Responsibility, which won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work 
     in nuclear weapons in 1985. The study is to be published 
     tomorrow in The New England Journal of Medicine.
       Thousands of Russian and American nuclear weapons remain on 
     hair-trigger alerts, despite the end of the cold war, and 
     Russia formally abandoned its longstanding policy that it 
     would never be the first nation to use those weapons four 
     years ago, the study noted.
       Repeated assurances from President Clinton that the two 
     nations are no longer aiming their nuclear weapons at one 
     another are ``a gross misrepresentation of reality,'' said 
     Bruce Blair, an author of the study and a former Strategic 
     Air Command nuclear weapons officer. In fact, the study said, 
     Russian missiles launched without specific targets would 
     automatically aim themselves at their cold war targets: 
     American cities and military installations like the Pentagon.
       Nor are these weapons necessarily in safe hands. Russia's 
     once-elite nuclear weapons commands are suffering housing and 
     food shortages, low pay, budget cuts, deteriorating 
     discipline, desertions and suicides. Such problems are not 
     unique. The study says that about 40,000 American military 
     personnel were removed from nuclear-weapons responsibilities 
     from 1975 to 1990 for alcohol, drug or psychiatric problems.
       Neither nation has abandoned its cold war doctrine of 
     launching its missiles after receiving warning that the other 
     side is attacking. Each nation gives itself 15 minutes to 
     decide that the attack is real; both nations have experienced 
     major false alarms over the last two decades.
       The study considered what would happen if the captain and 
     crew of a Russian submarine decided to carry out an attack 
     without authorization, or went mad and fired off their 
     arsenal. This, Mr. Blair said, would require ``a conspiracy 
     of some magnitude'' between a captain and three or four 
     officers.
       The missiles could also be fired after a false alarm or an 
     unauthorized order from a political or military leader in 
     Moscow. Once launched, they would reach their targets across 
     the United States in 15 to 30 minutes.
       The blast and shock of the fireball from each of the 
     exploding warheads would kill nearly everyone within three 
     miles instantly; people living in a swath up to 40 miles long 
     and 3 miles wide would receive a lethal dose of radiation 
     within hours, the study said. It assumed that one-quarter of 
     the missiles would malfunction, and that 12 missiles would 
     reach their targets in eight American cities in the middle of 
     the night.
       In New York City, more than three million people would die 
     immediately; in San Francisco, 739,000; in Washington, 
     728,000--in all, some 6,838,000 deaths within hours of the 
     attack, the study said, which would ``dwarf all prior 
     accidents in history.'' A near-complete breakdown of systems 
     delivering food, water, electricity and medicine would follow 
     and millions more Americans would die as a consequence, the 
     study said.
                                  ____


       [From the New England Journal of Medicine, Apr. 30, 1998]

           Accidental Nuclear War--A Post-Cold War Assessment

  (By Lachlan Forrow, M.D., Bruce G. Blair, Ph.D., Ira Helfand, M.D., 
George Lewis, Ph.D., Theodore Postol, Ph.D., Victor Sibel, M.D., Barry 
    S. Levy, M.D., Herbert Abrams, M.D., and Christine Cassel, M.D.)


                                Abstract

       Background.--In the 1980s, many medical organizations 
     identified the prevention of nuclear war as one of the 
     medical profession's most important goals. An assessment of 
     the current danger is warranted given the radically changed 
     context of the post-Cold War era.
       Methods.--We reviewed the recent literature on the status 
     of nuclear arsenals and the risk of nuclear war. We then 
     estimated the likely medical effects of a scenario identified 
     by leading experts as posing a serious danger: an accidental 
     launch of nuclear weapons. We assessed possible measures to 
     reduce the risk of such an event.
       Results.--U.S. and Russian nuclear-weapons systems remain 
     on high alert. This fact, combined with the aging of Russian 
     technical systems, has recently increased the risk of an 
     accidental nuclear attack. As a conservative estimate, an 
     accidental intermediate-sized launch of weapons from a single 
     Russian submarine would result in the deaths of 6,838,000 
     persons from firestorms in eight U.S. cities. Millions of 
     other people would probably be exposed to potentially lethal 
     radiation from fallout. An agreement to remove all nuclear 
     missiles from high-level alert status and eliminate the 
     capability of a rapid launch would put an end to this threat.
       Conclusions.--The risk of an accidental nuclear attack has 
     increased in recent years, threatening a public health 
     disaster of unprecedented scale. Physicians and medical 
     organizations should work actively to help build support for 
     the policy changes that would prevent such a disaster. (N 
     Engl J Med 1998; 338:1326--31.)
       During the Cold War, physicians and others described the 
     potential medical consequences of thermonuclear war and 
     concluded that health care personnel and facilities would be 
     unable to provide effective care to the vast number of 
     victims of a nuclear attack. In 1987, a report by the World 
     Health Organization concluded, ``The only approach to the 
     treatment of health effects of nuclear warfare is primary 
     prevention, that is, the prevention of nuclear war.'' Many 
     physicians and medical organizations have argued that the 
     prevention of nuclear war should be one of the medical 
     profession's most important goals.


                  continued danger of a nuclear attack

       Although many people believe that the threat of a nuclear 
     attack largely disappeared with the end of the Cold War, 
     there

[[Page S3819]]

     is considerable evidence to the contrary. The United States 
     and Russia no longer confront the daily danger of a 
     deliberate, massive nuclear attack, but both nations continue 
     to operate nuclear forces as though this danger still 
     existed. Each side routinely maintains thousands of nuclear 
     warheads on high alert. Furthermore, to compensate for its 
     weakened conventional armed forces, Russia has abandoned its 
     ``no first use'' policy.
       Even though both countries declared in 1994 that they would 
     not aim strategic missiles at each other, not even one second 
     has been added to the time required to launch a nuclear 
     attack: providing actual targeting (or retargeting) 
     instructions is simply a component of normal launch 
     procedures. The default targets of U.S. land-based missiles 
     are now the oceans, but Russian missiles launched without 
     specific targeting commands automatically revert to 
     previously programmed military targets.
       There have been numerous ``broken arrows'' (major nuclear-
     weapons accidents) in the past, including at least five 
     instances of U.S. missiles that are capable of carrying 
     nuclear devices flying over or crashing in or near the 
     territories of other nations. From 1975 to 1990, 66,000 
     military personnel involved in the operational aspects of 
     U.S. nuclear forces were removed from their positions. Of 
     these 66,000, 41 percent were removed because of alcohol or 
     other drug abuse and 20 percent because of psychiatric 
     problems. General George Lee Butler, who as commander of the 
     U.S. Strategic Command from 1991 to 1994 was responsible for 
     all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, recently reported that he 
     had ``investigated a dismaying array of accidents and 
     incidents involving strategic weapons and forces.''
       Any nuclear arsenal is susceptible to accidental, 
     inadvertent, or unauthorized use. This is true both in 
     countries declared to possess nuclear weapons (the United 
     States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and China) and in 
     other countries widely believed to possess nuclear weapons 
     (Israel, India, and Pakistan). The combination of the massive 
     size of the Russian nuclear arsenal (almost 6000 strategic 
     warheads) and growing problems in Russian control systems 
     makes Russia the focus of greatest current concern.
       Since the end of the Cold War, Russia's nuclear command 
     system has steadily deteriorated. Aging nuclear 
     communications and computer networks are malfunctioning more 
     frequently, and deficient early-warning satellites and ground 
     radar are more prone to reporting false alarms. The saga of 
     the Mir space station bears witness to the problems of aging 
     Russian technical systems. In addition, budget cuts have 
     reduced the training of nuclear commanders and thus their 
     proficiency in operating nuclear weapons safely. Elite 
     nuclear units suffer pay arrears and housing and food 
     shortages, which contribute to low morale and disaffection. 
     New offices have recently been established at Strategic 
     Rocket Forces bases to address the problem of suicide (and 
     unpublished data).
       Safeguards against a nuclear attack will be further 
     degraded if the Russian government implements its current 
     plan to distribute both the unlock codes and conditional 
     launch authority down the chain of command. Indeed, a recent 
     report by the Central Intelligence Agency, which was leaked 
     to the press, warned that some Russian submarine crews may 
     already be capable of authorizing a launch. As then Russian 
     Defense Minister Igor Rodionov warned last year, ``No one 
     today can guarantee the reliability of our control systems. . 
     . . Russia might soon reach the threshold beyond which its 
     rockets and nuclear systems cannot be controlled.''
       A particular danger stems from the reliance by both Russia 
     and the United States on the strategy of ``launch on 
     warning''--the launching of strategic missiles after a 
     missile attack by the enemy has been detected but before the 
     missiles actually arrive. Each country's procedures allow a 
     total response time of only 15 minutes: a few minutes for 
     detecting an enemy attack, another several minutes for top-
     level decision making, and a couple of minutes to disseminate 
     the authorization to launch a response.
       Possible scenarios of an accidental or otherwise 
     unauthorized nuclear attack range from the launch of a single 
     missile due to a technical malfunction to the launch of a 
     massive salvo due to a false warning. A strictly mechanical 
     or electrical event as the cause of an accidental launch, 
     such as a stray spark during missile maintenance, ranks low 
     on the scale of plausibility. Analysts also worry about 
     whether computer defects in the year 2000 may compromise the 
     control of strategic missiles in Russia, but the extent of 
     this danger is not known.
       Several authorities consider a launch based on a false 
     warning to be the most plausible scenario of an accidental 
     attack. This danger is not merely theoretical. Serious false 
     alarms occurred in the U.S. system in 1979 and 1980, when 
     human error and computer-chip failures resulted in 
     indications of a massive Soviet missile strike. On January 
     25, 1995, a warning related to a U.S. scientific rocket 
     launched from Norway led to the activation, for the first 
     time in the nuclear era, of the ``nuclear suitcases'' carried 
     by the top Russian leaders and initiated an emergency 
     nuclear-decision-making conference involving the leaders and 
     their top nuclear advisors. It took about eight minutes to 
     conclude that the launch was not part of a surprise nuclear 
     strike by Western submarines--less than four minutes before 
     the deadline for ordering a nuclear response under standard 
     Russian launch-on-warning protocols.
       A missile launch activated by false warning is thus 
     possible in both U.S. and Russian arsenals. For the reasons 
     noted above, an accidental Russian launch is currently 
     considered the greater risk. Several specific scenarios have 
     been considered by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization 
     of the Department of Defense. We have chosen to analyze a 
     scenario that falls in the middle range of the danger posed 
     by an accidental attack: the launch against the United States 
     of the weapons on board a single Russian Delta-IV ballistic-
     missile submarine, for two reasons. First the safeguards 
     against the unauthorized launch of Russian submarine-based 
     missiles are weaker than those against either silo-based or 
     mobile land-based rockets, because the Russian general staff 
     cannot continuously monitor the status of the crew and 
     missiles or use electronic links to override unauthorized 
     launches by the crews. Second, the Delta-IV is and will 
     remain the mainstay of the Russian strategic submarine fleet.
       Delta-IV submarine carry 16 missiles. Each missile is armed 
     with four 100-kt warheads and has a range of 8300 km, which 
     is sufficient to reach almost any part of the continental 
     United States from typical launch stations in the Barents 
     Sea. These missiles are believed to be aimed at ``soft'' 
     targets, usually in or near American cities, whereas the more 
     accurate silo-based missiles would attack U.S. military 
     installations. Although a number of targeting strategies are 
     possible for any particular Delta-IV, it is plausible that 
     two of its missiles are assigned to attack war-supporting 
     targets in each of eight U.S. urban areas. If 4 of the 16 
     missiles failed to reach their destinations because of 
     malfunctions before or after the launch, then 12 missiles 
     carrying a total of 48 warheads would reach their targets.


              potential consequences of a nuclear accident

       We assume that eight U.S. urban areas are hit: four with 
     four warheads and four with eight warheads. We also assume 
     that the targets have been selected according to standard 
     military priorities: industrial, financial, and 
     transportation sites and other components of the 
     infrastructure that are essential for supporting or 
     recovering from war. Since low-altitude bursts are required 
     to ensure the destruction of structures such as docks, 
     concrete runways, steel-reinforced buildings, and underground 
     facilities, most if not all detonations will cause 
     substantial early fallout.
     Physical Effects
       Under our model, the numbers of immediate deaths are 
     determined primarily by the area of the ``superfires'' that 
     would result from a thermonuclear explosion over a city. 
     Fires would ignite across the exposed area to roughly 10 or 
     more calories of radiant heat per square centimeter, 
     coalescing into a giant firestorm with hurricane-force winds 
     and average air temperatures above the boiling point of 
     water. Within this area, the combined effects of superheated 
     wind, toxic smoke, and combustion gases would result in a 
     death rate approaching 100 percent.
       For each 100-kt warhead, the radius of the circle of nearly 
     100 percent short-term lethality would be 4.3 km (2.7 miles), 
     the range within which 10 cal per square centimeter is 
     delivered to the earth's surface from the hot fireball under 
     weather conditions in which the visibility is 8 km (5 miles), 
     which is low for almost all weather conditions. We used 
     Census CD to calculate the residential population within 
     these areas according to 1990 U.S. Census data, adjusting for 
     areas where circles from different warheads overlapped. In 
     many urban areas, the daytime population, and therefore the 
     casualties, would be much higher.
     Fallout
       The cloud of radioactive dust produced by low-altitude 
     bursts would be deposited as fallout downwind of the target 
     area. The exact areas of fallout would not be predictable, 
     because they would depend on wind direction and speed, but 
     there would be large zones of potentially lethal radiation 
     exposure. With average wind speeds of 24 to 48 km per hour 
     (15 to 30 miles per hour), a 100-kt low-altitude detonation 
     would result in a radiation zone 30 to 60 km (20 to 40 miles) 
     long and 3 to 5 km (2 to 3 miles) wide in which exposed and 
     unprotected persons would receive a lethal total dose of 600 
     rad within six hours. With radioactive contamination of food 
     and water supplies, the breakdown of refrigeration and 
     sanitation systems, radiation-induced immune suppression, and 
     crowding in relief facilities, epidemics of infectious 
     diseases would be likely.
     Deaths
       Table 1 shows the estimates of early deaths for each 
     cluster of targets in or near the eight major urban areas, 
     with a total of 6,838,000 initial deaths. Given the many 
     indeterminate variables (e.g., the altitude of each warhead's 
     detonation, the direction of the wind, the population density 
     in the fallout zone, the effectiveness of evacuation 
     procedures, and the availability of shelter and relief 
     supplies), a reliable estimate of the total number of 
     subsequent deaths from fallout and other sequelae of the 
     attack is not possible. With 48 explosions probably resulting 
     in thousands of square miles of lethal fallout around urban 
     areas where there are thousands of persons per square mile, 
     it is plausible that these secondary deaths would outnumber 
     the immediate deaths caused by the firestorms.

[[Page S3820]]

     Medical Care in the Aftermath
       Earlier assessments have documented in detail the problems 
     of caring for the injured survivors of a nuclear attack: the 
     need for care would completely overwhelm the available health 
     care resources. Most of the major medical centers in each 
     urban area lie within the zone of total destruction. The 
     number of patients with severe burns and other critical 
     injuries would far exceed the available resources of all 
     critical care facilities nationwide, including the country's 
     1708 beds in burn-care units (most of which are already 
     occupied). The danger of intense radiation exposure would 
     make it very difficult for emergency personnel even to enter 
     the affected areas. The nearly complete destruction of local 
     and regional transportation, communications, and energy 
     networks would make it almost impossible to transport the 
     severely injured to medical facilities outside the affected 
     area. After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, which 
     resulted in a much lower number of casualties (6500 people 
     died and 34,900 were injured) and which had few of the 
     complicating factors that would accompany a nuclear attack, 
     there were long delays before outside medical assistance 
     arrived.


                       from danger to prevention

       Public health professionals now recognize that many, if not 
     most, injuries and deaths from violence and accidents result 
     from a predictable series of events that are, at least in 
     principle, preventable. The direct toll that would result 
     from an accidental nuclear attack of the type described above 
     would dwarf all prior accidents in history. Furthermore, such 
     an attack, even if accidental, might prompt a retaliatory 
     response resulting in an all-out nuclear exchange. The World 
     Health Organization has estimated that this would result in 
     billions of direct and indirect casualties worldwide.

    TABLE 1. PREDICTED IMMEDIATE DEATHS FROM FIRESTORMS AFTER NUCLEAR
                    DETONATIONS IN EIGHT U.S. CITIES.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                    No. of      No. of
                     City\1\                       Warheads     Deaths
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Atlanta.........................................          8      428,000
Boston..........................................          4      609,000
Chicago.........................................          4      425,000
New York........................................          8    3,193,000
Pittsburgh......................................          4      375,000
San Francisco Bay area..........................          8      739,000
Seattle.........................................          4      341,000
Washington, D.C.................................          8      728,000
                                                 -----------------------
    Total.......................................         48    6,838,000
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The specific targets are as follows: Atlanta--Peachtree Airport,
  Dobbins Air Force Base, Fort Gillem, Fort McPherson, Fulton County
  Airport, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hartsfield Airport, and the
  state capitol; Boston--Logan Airport, Commonwealth Pier, Massachusetts
  Institute of Technology, and Harvard University; Chicago--Argonne
  National Laboratory, City Hall, Midway Airport, and O'Hare Airport;
  New York--Columbia University, the George Washington Bridge, Kennedy
  Airport, LaGuardia Airport, the Merchant Marine Academy, Newark
  Airport, the Queensboro Bridge, and Wall Street; Pittsburgh--Carnegie
  Mellon University, Fort Duquesne Bridge, Fort Pitt Bridge, Pittsburgh
  Airport, and the U.S. Steel plant; San Francisco Bay area--Alameda
  Naval Air Station, the Bay Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Moffet Field,
  Oakland Airport, San Francisco Airport, San Jose Airport, and Stanford
  University; Seattle--Boeing Field, Seattle Center, Seattle-Tacoma
  Airport, and the University of Washington; and Washington, D.C.--the
  White House, The Capitol Building, the Pentagon, Ronald Reagan
  National Airport, College Park Airport, Andrews Air Force Base, the
  Defense Mapping Agency, and Central Intelligence Agency headquarters.

     Limitations of Ballistic-Missile Defense
       There are two broad categories of efforts to avert the 
     massive devastation that would follow the accidental launch 
     of nuclear weapons: interception of the launched missile in a 
     way that prevents detonation over a populated area and 
     prevention of the launch itself. Intercepting a launched 
     ballistic missile might appear to be an attractive option, 
     since it could be implemented unilaterally by a country. To 
     this end, construction of a U.S. ballistic-missile defense 
     system has been suggested. Unfortunately, the technology for 
     ballistic-missile defense is unproved, and even its most 
     optimistic advocates predict that it cannot be fully 
     protective. Furthermore, the estimated costs would range from 
     $4 billion to $13 billion for a single-site system to $31 
     billion to $60 billion for a multiple-site system. In either 
     case, the system would not be operational for many years.
     A Bilateral Agreement to Eliminate High-Level Alert Status
       Since ballistic-missile defense offers no solution at all 
     in the short term and at best an expensive and incomplete 
     solution in the long term, what can the United States as well 
     as other nations do to reduce the risk of an accidental 
     nuclear attack substantially and quickly? The United States 
     should make it the most urgent national public health 
     priority to seek a permanent, verified agreement with Russia 
     to take all nuclear missiles off high alert and remove the 
     capability of a rapid launch. This approach is much less 
     expensive and more reliable than ballistic-missile defense 
     and can be implemented in short order. In various forms, such 
     an agreement has been urged by the National Academy of 
     Sciences, the Canberra Commission, General Butler and his 
     military colleagues throughout the world, and other experts, 
     such as Sam Nunn, former chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed 
     Services Committee, and Stansfield Turner, former director of 
     the Central Intelligence Agency. The Joint Chiefs of Staff 
     and an interagency working group are completing a detailed 
     study of de-alerting options that will be presented to 
     Defense Secretary William Cohen.
       Major improvements in nuclear stability can be achieved 
     rapidly. In the wake of the 1991 attempted coup in Moscow, 
     Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev moved quickly to 
     enhance nuclear safety and stability by taking thousands of 
     strategic weapons off high alert almost overnight. Today, 
     there are specific steps that the United States can take 
     almost immediately, since they require only the authority of 
     a presidential directive. These steps include putting in 
     storage the warheads of the MX missiles, which will be 
     retired under Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) II in 
     any case, and the warheads of the four Trident submarines 
     that will be retired under START III; placing the remaining 
     U.S. ballistic-missile submarines on low alert so that it 
     would take at least 24 hours to prepare them to launch their 
     missiles; disabling all Minuteman III missiles by pinning 
     their safety switches open (as was done with the Minuteman II 
     missiles under President Bush's 1991 directive); and allowing 
     Russia to verity these actions with the on-site inspections 
     allowed under START I. Similar measures should be taken by 
     the Russians. These steps--all readily reversible if 
     warranted by future developments or if a permanent bilateral 
     agreement is not reached--would eliminate today's dangerous 
     launch-on-warning systems, making the U.S. and Russian 
     populations immediately safer. Both nations should then 
     energetically promote a universal norm against maintaining 
     nuclear weapons on high alert.
     The Role of Physicians
       In awarding the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize to International 
     Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Nobel 
     Committee underscored the ``considerable service to mankind'' 
     that physicians have performed by ``spreading authoritative 
     information and by creating an awareness of the catastrophic 
     consequences of atomic warfare. This in turn contributes to 
     an increase in the pressure of public opposition to the 
     proliferation of nuclear weapons and to a redefining of 
     priorities. . . .'' No group is as well situated as 
     physicians to help policy makers and the public fully 
     appreciate the magnitude of the disaster that can ensue if 
     changes in the alert status of all nuclear weapons are not 
     instituted.
       The only way to make certain that an accidental (or any 
     other) nuclear attack never occurs is through the elimination 
     of all nuclear weapons and the air-tight international 
     control of all fissile materials that can be used in nuclear 
     weapons. In 1995, the World Court stated that the abolition 
     of nuclear weapons is a binding legal obligation of the 
     United States, Russia, and all signatories to the Nuclear 
     Nonproliferation Treaty, under Article 6. Preferring the term 
     ``prohibition'' to ``abolition,'' the Committee on 
     International Security and Arms Control of the U.S. National 
     Academy of Sciences concluded in its 1997 report, ``The 
     potential benefits of comprehensive nuclear disarmament are 
     so attractive relative to the attendant risks--and the 
     opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War . . . are 
     so compelling--that . . . increased attention is now 
     warranted to studying and fostering the conditions that would 
     have to be met to make prohibition desirable and feasible.''
       Leading U.S. medical organizations, including the American 
     College of Physicians and the American Public Health 
     Association, have already joined Physicians for Social 
     Responsibility, International Physicians for the Prevention 
     of Nuclear War, and over 1000 other nongovernmental 
     organizations in 75 nations to support Abolition 2000, which 
     calls for a signed agreement by the year 2000 committing all 
     countries to the permanent elimination of nuclear weapons 
     within a specified time frame. The American Medical 
     Association has recently endorsed the abolition of nuclear 
     weapons, as have the Canberra Commission, military leaders 
     throughout the world, major religious organizations, and over 
     100 current and recent heads of state and other senior 
     political leaders. Some supporters of the abolition of 
     nuclear weapons have specifically called for immediate steps 
     to eliminate the high-level alert status of such weapons, as 
     urgent interim measures. All parties should cooperate to 
     ensure that these measures are implemented rapidly.


                              conclusions

       The time, place, and circumstances of a specific accident 
     are no more predictable for nuclear weapons than for other 
     accidents. Nonetheless, as long as there is a finite, 
     nonzero, annual probability that an accidental launch will 
     occur, then given sufficient time, the probability of such a 
     launch approaches certainty. Until the abolition of nuclear 
     weapons reduces the annual probability to zero, our immediate 
     goal must be to reduce the probability of a nuclear accident 
     to as low a level as possible. Given the massive casualties 
     that would result from such an accident, achieving this must 
     be among the most urgent of all global public health 
     priorities.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I conclude by saying, I just happened 20 minutes ago to 
be speaking to our revered former majority leader, Howard Baker, who 
was in the Capitol to testify before the Finance Committee. I said I 
was coming over to offer this amendment. He and Sam Nunn, Brent 
Scowcroft, and Alton Frye have said, ``Don't do this.'' He said with 
respect to Russian nuclear weapons; they have them, but they don't know 
how many they have and they don't know who controls them. The whole 
situation of command and control is very limited and weak and 
uncertain.
  Not many years ago, after the end of the cold war, Norway put up a 
rocket

[[Page S3821]]

for purposes of research which put the Russian on nuclear alert. They 
had 15 minutes to decide whether to go to launch on warning. It was 
that close. We were that close to nuclear war. We will be closer in the 
aftermath of NATO expansion.
  Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN. I will yield to my colleague, who has somewhere to go, but 
I want to ask the Senator from New York a question. Is he aware that 
the point he is making about a hair trigger--that is, that the Russians 
have moved to a doctrine of not eschewing the doctrine of first use, 
that they are now saying they may have to rely on the first use of 
nuclear weapons? Is he aware that that doctrine which was changed in 
1992 had nothing to do with the expansion of NATO?
  In 1992, when the Russian military realized that they, in fact, had 
imploded when they were incapable of defending their borders, they did 
exactly what NATO did when we concluded we did not have the 
conventional force capacity to stop an all-out attack in Europe and 
indicated that we would use nuclear weapons if, in fact, we were 
attacked.
  I ask my friend--I am fascinated by his rendition, and I share his 
concern about the hair trigger. But is he suggesting the decision in 
1992 where Russia declared that it would not any longer abide by its 
previous policy of no first use of nuclear weapons--is he aware that 
was long before the contemplation of expansion of NATO?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Is the Senator aware of how little time I have to 
respond? He put that question on his time?
  Mr. BIDEN. I put that question on my time, and then I will yield.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes, I do. I am very much aware of that. But I am also 
aware, on December 17, in the context of NATO expansion, a formal 
document was put out saying, ``we may not have much else but we do have 
nuclear weapons.''
  Mr. BIDEN. On my own time, if I might say, that is a little bit like 
my wife deciding that she is no longer going to cook dinner because she 
is receiving her Ph.D. and is taking too much time in class, and then 6 
months later, after having made that decision, when I, in fact, do 
something she does not like, she says to me, ``I want to formally tell 
you I haven't been cooking dinner, but I want you to know the reason I 
am not cooking dinner now is because you were late coming home tonight 
because you didn't call me from Washington and we missed going to that 
play.''
  That is what it is like. It has nothing to do--she didn't cook me 
dinner before for reasons unrelated to me coming home late, but if she 
wants to make a point that I missed a play, she may very well 
reiterate, bring out of an old bag something that is already being 
used.
  That is what the Russians have done, and Mr. Kennan, a revered figure 
we both know--you know him better than I--believes this is dangerous. 
Paul Nitze thinks it is dangerous for totally different reasons. Kennan 
thinks it is dangerous because he thinks it will exacerbate the 
prospects of any democracy occurring in Russia. Nitze thinks it is 
dangerous because he is worried that NATO will get fat and flabby now 
and not be available as a significant military force, were things to go 
back in Russia.
  I think it is comparing--with all due respect to my learned friend--
apples and oranges.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if I might, on the time of the Senator 
from New York----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Oregon yield time?
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I will take the time jointly of my 
colleague from New York. I am privileged to be a cosponsor of this 
amendment. Of course, I will grant the Senator the opportunity to 
speak, and then I will follow the Senator from Oregon.
  The point is, to Senator Biden's comment on the issue of the nuclear 
weapons. The Senator from New York and I are not rattling the nuclear 
saber and trying to utilize fear as a point. There is a very logical 
argument as it relates just to the Baltics, that that is part of the 
equation if indeed they are admitted, and indeed NATO has to become a 
part of the defense system. But let's put that to one side. What the 
Senator from New York was trying to say, and did say very eloquently, 
is that since 1992 the Russian military, across the board, with the 
exception of their nuclear arsenals, has suffered severe degradation. 
How well we all know, their officer corps has no housing, their 
military enlisted no pay, and they haven't put a surface ship of any 
significant numbers to sea in a long time. The one system that 
threatens the United States, and always will, is the strategic nuclear 
system.
  Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, as the Senator knows, they are routinely 
dismantling that system under Nunn-Lugar, in the face of expansion of 
NATO. I find that fascinating, and I also find it fascinating that they 
overwhelmingly ratified the CWC in the Duma. And as recently as two 
weeks ago, the number two man in the Kremlin is here telling us--excuse 
me, the foreign minister is here in the United States saying, by the 
way, by the end of the summer we are going to ratify START II. I don't 
fail to share the concerns of my friends about the nuclear hair 
trigger.
  My point is, as we are talking about expanding NATO, what they have 
been doing is exactly the opposite of what is being implied here. They 
have continued to move forward on arms control agreement, they have 
continued to destroy their nuclear arsenal, they have continued to go 
along with the CFE arms agreement and other treaties and destroyed 
their conventional weapons, saying they will no longer abide by the 
doctrine of no first use, which occurred in 1992 when they realized 
that all they had left was their nuclear arsenal. That is my point.
  It is non sequitur to suggest that the reason why we should be 
concerned is we are expanding NATO. That has nothing to do with it. 
There is not a shred of evidence of that. Now, there may very well be a 
hardening of positions in the domestic political situation in Russia. 
It may very well be that the browns and the reds get a little more 
muscle and the nationalists gain some. I don't think so, but I 
acknowledge that it may be. But their nuclear doctrine is unrelated, 
put in place 5 years before NATO was a glint in the eye of President 
Clinton.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I say to my good friend that he is quite 
right in his recitation. There has been an active number of steps taken 
by Russia. We are still in question as to whether the Duma is going to 
move and approve the pending arms control. I do not yield that point. 
In an hour or so, I will be addressing the moratorium of 3 years. 
Russia has more or less accepted the fact that, in all likelihood, 
these 3 nations will come in. But I say to my colleague, they may draw 
the line with those 3. That is why I am going to ask this body to 
consider very carefully a time period in which to assess the impact of 
the 3 before we move forward with further consideration. We will wait 
an hour or so to address that.
  I take strong disagreement with the fact that the Russians are going 
along with everything we are doing.
  Mr. BIDEN. That is why the Senator should vote against his first 
amendment and for the second amendment.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Madam President, I find it very humbling to be 
among these giants as a newcomer to this body. I feel something like 
the student questioning the wisdom of his professor because when it 
comes to names like Pat Moynihan, John Warner, and Sam Nunn, these are 
men whom I admire and whom I have read about for years in history 
books.
  Yet, I rise to oppose this amendment for reasons that I think are 
very, very important. I wonder as we consider the feelings of the 
Russians--and I am not saying those considerations are illegitimate, 
but what are the feelings of the Pols, the Czechs, and the Hungarians? 
Do they have no right to qualify to self-determination to be a part of 
the western alliance? I have had officials from all of those countries 
tell me that if they had to choose between the EU or NATO membership, 
they would take membership in NATO; whether right or wrong, they are 
afraid of Russia. I believe they have a right to qualify to be a part 
of the west. And, yes, strong

[[Page S3822]]

economies are so important; but, frankly, they recognize that security 
precedes strong economic growth.
  Madam President, the European Union may be many things, but it is 
certainly not a substitute for U.S. leadership in Europe. The EU has 
proved time and again that it is incapable of acting together on 
matters of foreign and security policy. Its military arm, the Western 
European Union, refuses to take action when European interests are 
threatened and, instead, turns to NATO or individual member states to 
address problems on the continent of Europe.
  The political vision of the European Union extends no further than 
its trade interests, shown most recently by its rush to reengage the 
regime in Iran and its refusal to jeopardize commercial contacts by 
even mentioning the civil rights record of the Chinese government.
  In contrast, for 50 years, NATO has been the defender of freedom and 
democracy and has shown that it is willing to make the necessary 
sacrifices to assure the success of these valued principles. In its 
membership, NATO includes two countries that will apparently never be 
in the European Union--the United States and Canada. It includes 
Norway, which rejected EU membership in a public referendum, and it 
includes Turkey, whose application to the EU has been repeatedly 
rebuffed.
  How ironic it would be if we pass an amendment here that says before 
these countries can be in NATO, they must be in the EU, but, by the 
way, Turkey, which is a member of NATO, apparently will never be a 
member of the EU. Austria, Finland, and Sweden are all members of the 
EU, with continued neutrality policies. It is not just the different 
missions of NATO and the EU that made denying NATO enlargement to EU 
membership untenable, but the different membership of the two 
organizations lead it to take varying positions on issues of importance 
to both.
  Further, the economies of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are 
growing faster than almost all of the countries of the European Union. 
Consider some recent statistics that demonstrate the disparity between 
these 3 countries and the current EU members. In 1997, Italy's 
estimated economic growth rate was 1.5 percent, Germany's was 2.2 
percent, France's was 2.4 percent. Meanwhile, Poland's growth rate was 
an astounding 7 percent. Hungary's economy grew by a healthy 4 percent. 
Growth in the Czech Republic was less impressive in 1997, due to severe 
flooding in that country, but their economy is expected to rebound in 
1998. The European Union's regulation, taxes, subsidies, and labor laws 
could very well hurt the economic development and growth potential of 
Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The pursuit of membership in 
the EU should be a careful decision made by countries in Central and 
Eastern Europe and should not be a requirement for NATO membership. 
Even if these countries elect to seek EU membership, the European Union 
has made it clear that it will take years for them to conform their 
legislation to the multitude of EU laws and regulations.

  In short, the amendment of my friend from New York is a delaying 
tactic that runs counter to U.S. security interests. Therefore, I 
oppose any effort to link NATO enlargement to membership in the 
European Union, and urge my colleagues to do the same.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I want to follow along. The Senator from 
Oregon touched on the historical context of how nations are admitted 
into NATO, and there was some thought that Turkey--regrettably they are 
not a member of the EU, but we must remember that at the time Turkey 
was admitted it was really at the height of the cold war. NATO made the 
decision that it was imperative. In 1952, Europe was facing the 
pinnacle of that tragic period, and Turkey brought with them an 
enormous military strength which was proven.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. On the southern flank.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, the Senator is absolutely right. On the 
southern flank. It was in NATO's interest at that time to admit Turkey. 
Turkey, of course, throughout their participation in NATO, has been in 
the forefront of strength on the southern flank as it is today. It is 
my hope--indeed, my expectation--that someday the EU will have a 
realization of that contribution and consider their membership. But I 
don't think this argument that NATO has admitted nations without EU 
membership carries any weight in the face of the historical context in 
which Turkey was admitted.
  I wish to engage my colleague from New York. I am privileged to be a 
cosponsor.
  The struggle today of the three nations that we are considering for 
membership is not a military one. There is no threat. The 
administration candidly admits that. I think the Senator from Delaware 
would admit that there is no significant military threat. Russia today, 
in terms of its land forces, engaged them in the battle of Chechnya. 
That dragged on for an almost interminable period. It really ended by 
virtually exhaustion of both sides militarily as opposed to a military 
victory. Certainly they don't have the forces to mount any aggression 
in the context of a land attack on the three nations the subject of 
which we are discussing today. The military put it aside. It is an 
economic struggle all through the former Warsaw Pact to have their 
democracies, to have their participation in a free market system.
  Along comes the conferring of NATO membership, presumably, on these 
three nations. Immediately, in my judgment, that gives them a very 
significant advantage over the others who are waiting for admission 
into NATO and the world market. It is not unlike the Federal Deposit 
Insurance Corporation. You put your money in our bank. It is guaranteed 
by the Federal Government. They can advertise in the world market. We 
are now a member of NATO. You build your plant here. Invest your 
dollars in our countries. It is a lot safer than it would be in, say, 
Romania, Slovenia, Bulgaria, or other areas of the world. It is going 
to give them an enormous advantage economically over those nations 
patiently waiting in line. I think it will breed friction. That 
friction could, indeed, involve confrontation, hopefully not with the 
use of arms.
  But I ask my distinguished colleague if he agrees with that thought.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, with a measure of trepidation I hear 
the former Secretary of the Navy refer to me as a distinguished 
colleague, I certainly am honored to be with him in this debate, I say 
that I completely agree. Just the fact of NATO's guarantee of the 
borders of these three countries gives them an advantage over the rest 
of Eastern Europe. That is formidable, among other things.
  Could I just take a moment to agree that the idea that Turkey can't 
get into the EU is appalling. When we were fighting in Korea in the 
first real war of the cold war, the Turks were there.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I remember it well because their units 
were alongside the Marines.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. That the Senator from Virginia was in.
  Mr. WARNER. I was in the air part. I went up to the division, and I 
remember the Turkish units, and they were superb fighters.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I couldn't agree more. The EU should be extending 
membership to Turkey, in my view. Why not? When Europe was in ruins we 
went to rescue them by creating NATO. Now, by God, it would be not too 
much to hope that their precious Common Agricultural Policy might be 
adjusted to include Poland, if it costs them a little. It would cost 
them a great deal more if instability returns to Europe.
  Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield for a question on my time?
  Mr. WARNER. Yes. Of course.
  Mr. BIDEN. Does this mean that Turkey has to get out of NATO now?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. No.
  Mr. BIDEN. Good. I thank you.
  Mr. WARNER. We thank the distinguished Senator from Delaware for 
bringing up that point.
  But, if I may further engage my friend and colleague, if I had to 
list my concerns in this debate on this amendment and the others today, 
cost always comes back and rings in my ear, as well as the security of 
the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States, who in 
years forward

[[Page S3823]]

will be a part of our NATO force. But let's go to cost.
  I have said it before. The distinguished Senator from Iowa has said 
it. There is a blank check involved in these votes today. EU membership 
would be a way to evaluate the economic ability of these three 
countries to meet their financial obligations to NATO. Should those 
financial obligations fall short, Madam President, guess who is going 
to pick it up. The United States of America, in participation with 
nations and other countries, by virtue of the EU giving their 
imprimatur on these countries will be further assurance that they will 
have economic productivity and the like to generate the dollars to meet 
their requirements to pay the bill to upgrade their militaries, 
militaries which today are largely equipped with old Soviet equipment, 
which has to be replaced if you are to have interoperability with the 
NATO forces. All of that is going to be a very, very hefty bill. I 
would like to see the EU pronounce their economic viability as nations, 
which gives us a certain amount of assurance in return that the 
American taxpayer will not be picking up a greater and greater portion 
of their obligation to modernize their forces.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, it must be that I am a little slow on the 
uptake here, because it seems to me that my friends are making my case. 
Let me explain what I mean by that, and they can correct me.
  First of all, in the Foreign Relations Committee, I recall when we 
had this vote--and I say it again--in Europe, farm--f-a-r-m--policy 
always trumps foreign policy. Both have made my point. They acknowledge 
that. There is no possibility that Europe is going to do the right 
thing. They have not thus far. The reason, in my view, we must stay as 
a European power is that they have continued to demonstrate their 
immaturity over the past, and not much has changed in 50 years in terms 
of the willingness of anyone to lead.
  If we acknowledge that farm--f-a-r-m--policy always trumps foreign 
policy in Europe--I challenge anyone to give me an example where it has 
not--then I ask you: Is this not a red herring? Join EU first before 
you can get into NATO.
  The second point I will make: No one knows the history of this nation 
and Europe on this floor better than my friend from New York. As I said 
before, and I mean this sincerely, I am always uncomfortable when I am 
on the opposite side of an argument with my friend from New York.
  Let me review very, very briefly the history of NATO and its 
founding, and the relationship between the economic health of a nation 
being invited in, and the ability or the willingness of the United 
States and other NATO members to invite that nation in.
  From a policy perspective, NATO membership and EU membership--that is 
what this amendment is about, EU membership first before NATO--it is 
supposed to, and has been suggested by my two friends who are the 
sponsors of this amendment, somehow put the cart before the horse, that 
is, military alliance before economic unity, economic growth, economic 
security.
  I quote from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report of 1949, 
the document that was brought to the floor of the Senate urging us to 
sign the Washington treaty. It said:

       This treaty is designed to contribute toward the further 
     development of peaceful and friendly international 
     relationships, to strengthen free institutions of the 
     parties, and promote better understanding of the principles 
     upon which they are founded, to promote the conditions of 
     stability and well-being, and to encourage economic 
     collaboration. It should facilitate long-term economic 
     recovery through replacing the sense of insecurity by one of 
     confidence in the future.

  That was the original purpose. The original purpose was to promote 
economic stability. Nobody said then nor has--and I will quote Acheson 
and a few others in a moment. Nobody has said then or at any moment in 
our history since that time that, by the way, a condition of joining 
NATO must be economic integration first, should be economic integration 
first, must be a demonstration of a strong economy first. No one has 
ever said that, including George Kennan. George Kennan argued and 
thought this would promote economic stability as well as military 
security.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will my friend yield for a quick question?
  Mr. BIDEN. I would be delighted to yield.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Does it occur to him that that passage in the Foreign 
Relations report referred to economic cooperation between France and 
Germany, the Schuman Plan?
  Mr. BIDEN. Yes, it clearly did.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. That finally led to the iron and steel community.
  Mr. BIDEN. It clearly did.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. In time to be the European Union?
  Mr. BIDEN. It clearly did. But they needed military security----
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Oh, yes.
  Mr. BIDEN. To be able to ensure their economic stability. There is no 
question it referred to that. And there is no question that Acheson, 
referring to the relationship in 1952, said so in his testimony before 
the Foreign Relations Committee when he urged Greek and Turkish 
membership by first recalling that the two nations already joined us in 
an associate status with NATO, as do the countries we are talking about 
now, and Acheson emphasized that ``the positive action rested not on 
their military contributions to the alliance but on their advances in 
democracy, rule of law, western orientation and the likelihood that 
NATO membership would deepen this.''
  The only point I am trying to make is the obvious one we keep 
forgetting. My colleagues who oppose expansion and wish to slow it or 
change it or alter it come to the floor and argue that this was 
uniquely a military alliance; its soul purpose was to make sure the 
Fulda Gap was not wide open for Warsaw Pact units to come pouring 
through.
  That was its essential purpose. It is still its essential purpose. 
But it was not its only purpose in the beginning, in the middle, in the 
end. And so I would suggest that we tend to intentionally confuse our 
colleagues and the public when we say that we raise all these questions 
about the economic stability. The economic stability of the countries 
in question coming in is relevant in terms of whether they can pay 
their freight. That is an important question.
  But this notion of winners and losers, now, I would ask the 
rhetorical question, if in fact by bringing the Czech Republic, Poland 
and Hungary into NATO, that would in fact seriously disadvantage 
Romania, Slovenia, and all the other countries in question, does anyone 
ever stop to ask themselves the question, why is Romania ardently for 
Hungary's membership? Is it because they like being put at an economic 
disadvantage? Is it because they think this is a good idea; it will 
spur the competitive juices of our people? Is that why? If this is 
going to be so debilitating because there is going to be losers, that 
this is a zero sum game, why are they all for it? Not for it tepidly, 
not for it on the margins, but for it with an enthusiasm to the degree 
they send their Foreign Ministers to this country to importune me and 
many others. Please.

  Now, obviously, they want to get in. They want to get in in the 
future. They have no promise of getting in. They have the hope of 
getting in. But the idea that we are going to debilitate, we are going 
to worsen, we are going to put at a serious disadvantage the economy of 
our other friends seems either to suggest that our other friends are 
too stupid to know what their own economic interests are--and they 
clearly are not, in my view--or it is not debilitating to their 
economies.
  Madam President, it seems to me if you want to take a further look at 
this, in 1955, the Foreign Relations Committee report welcomed West 
Germany as ``not only a major step toward the elimination of intra-
European strife but in a broader sense these agreements provide the 
foundation for close cooperation and integration among European allies. 
The committee was impressed with particularly Secretary Dulles' 
statement on the psychological impact of this association, the 
increased effectiveness of the sense of duty, and the cohesion which 
will be brought about in Western Europe by Germany's participation in 
the Western European Union as well as NATO.''
  Again, to make the point. Spain, in 1982, bears the closest 
resemblance to the current applicants. Spain, having

[[Page S3824]]

returned to democracy only 5 years earlier, believed NATO membership 
would consolidate Spanish democracy and assist at a lesser cost, as the 
Poles believe, the process of military modernization it had to 
undertake regardless of membership. And aside from geography, Spain was 
judged to offer little in the way of military assets useful to the 
alliance in 1982 prior to the completion of its modernization. Spain 
did not enter the EU until 1986, 4 years after, 4 years after NATO.
  Madam President, historically, the economic component of the impact 
on the relationship with NATO of a new member state has been considered 
from 1949 on, and every time since, and it has been viewed consistently 
as better for the economies of the countries that have been unable to 
gain these larger economic relationships to join NATO first. That has 
been a stated purpose of bringing them in as well as the military 
component. Historically, membership in NATO has preceded membership in 
the European Common Market, or any economic grouping, in every 
instance.

  Reserving the remainder of my time by saying this--when I finish this 
one comment. Why in the Lord's name would we, unless we just were 
simply flat against expanding NATO--which I understand. If this is 
designed as a killer amendment, it is a good strategy, but the logic of 
it I am lost in trying to comprehend. I find no logic to it, other than 
it being a killer amendment. You might as well attach an antiabortion 
amendment to the treaty. That would kill it. I don't want to give 
anybody any ideas. In this place, it may generate some ideas, but not 
by any of the Members on the floor.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Hyperbole. Hyperbole.
  Mr. BIDEN. But--it is hyperbole that I am engaging in now, it was 
just pointed out by my friend from New York. But let me tell you what 
is not hyperbole. There is no historical precedent for this. There is 
no logical rationale as to why this would, in fact, facilitate NATO 
membership down the road, because we all know farm policy will prevail 
over foreign policy.
  And lastly, I respectfully suggest that it bears no relationship, no 
relationship whatsoever, to anything anyone in the past has thought was 
necessary to strengthen NATO--none, zero, none, historically, 
politically, economically, socially, in any way. It may be a good idea, 
and I have been battling the Europeans, in my capacity as the chairman 
of or the ranking member of the European Affairs Subcommittee, for 
years, to ``do the right thing. Do the right thing. Let your brothers 
in.''
  Let me point out, if tomorrow you went to the Russians and said, ``I 
have a deal for you; here is what we are going to do: All those 
European countries or former satellite states will become part of the 
EU and you will never be a member of the EU; or they will not be 
members of the EU, but they will be members of NATO, which you may be 
able to do; you choose''--there is not an economist, there is not a 
democrat, in Russia who would choose the former over the latter, in my 
humble opinion, not a one.
  So the fear--if you are worried about Russia being isolated, then 
isolate Russia economically from the rest of Europe as a condition 
before they can enter, anyone can enter, NATO.
  The Europeans may grow beyond that and show their largess and bring 
in Russian farmers and all that wheat--all that wheat, as we give them 
the technological capability and the transportation infrastructure to 
be able to transport it to Europe. You watch. You watch. I am willing 
to bet any of you anything you would like, the likelihood of the EU 
being economically generous, extending any largess to the East, is 
zero, as distinguished from this defensive military alliance that 
provides political security for Russia on her border and diminishes the 
realistic prospect that any demagoguing nationalist will be able to 
inflame people enough to think that they could, in fact, realize any 
dead dreams.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, first I ask the Parliamentarian to 
advise the Senate with regard to the balance of the remaining time, if 
the Chair would address that issue, please?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The opposition has 2 minutes remaining, and 
the Senator has 3 minutes 44 seconds.
  Mr. WARNER. Of course, I urge the proponent of the pending amendment 
to proceed with the remainder of his time. Then we have the 
distinguished Senator from New Jersey, who has been patiently waiting. 
At the appropriate moment, if the Chair will advise the Senator from 
Virginia, I will introduce my amendment, which then begins a 2-hour 
time equally divided. I am certain the leadership entrusted to us the 
management of these two amendments in such a way that we stay on 
schedule, because the Senate has a very heavy load with regard to this 
treaty for the remainder of the day. I personally said to the 
leadership--and I will stand by it--we will do everything we can to see 
that this vote, final vote on this treaty, is cast tonight in a timely 
way, hopefully earlier than later, to accommodate a number of Members.

  I yield the floor at the moment. The distinguished Senator from New 
York is seeking recognition.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, may I express my gratitude to the 
Senator from Delaware for his thoughtful comments. Might I simply 
respond that the behavior of the Western Europeans and the European 
Union has been self-interested. But perhaps, after half a century of 
our defending them, having in the first instance liberated them, we 
might hope for a more open view.
  For half a century, half the defense expenditure of the United States 
has gone to NATO. I believe that is correct--half. We have had American 
troops on the Rhine since 1944. That, Madam President, is the stuff of 
Roman Legions. But out of that commitment which we have made--an 
unparalleled act of generosity and self-interest, but informed self-
interest and extraordinary generosity--has grown a vibrant and wealthy 
European community. On Saturday, many of its members will form a common 
currency. It is not too much to ask them to do themselves and Europe 
the favor of extending membership to these newly independent nations. I 
can imagine that they will if we make the effort. We are the ones who 
first came along with the proposal to expand NATO and therefore expand 
American force. Isn't a half-century enough? I would have thought it 
was. I would not give up hope that we might see some enlightened self-
interest in Brussels. There is really reason to hope for that.
  When the Senator from Delaware mentioned the economic divisions of 
the Washington treaty as reported by the Foreign Relations Committee, 
they were talking about the Schuman Plan, an unheard of plan to have 
France and Germany unite in a common market--common production of iron 
and steel and the coal that goes with it. The disputes over Alsace-
Lorraine, which they fought over for all those years, might come to an 
end. It did. And it could happen again.
  I thank the Chair. I very much appreciate the courtesy that has been 
shown to Senator Warner and myself. I see Senator Torricelli is on the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. I yield myself 30 seconds.
  Madam President, the Treaty of Rome wasn't until the mid-1950s, and 
it was unheard of in 1949, as the Schuman Plan was. The only point I am 
making is, any cooperation in Europe was one of the purposes of NATO; 
it was to encourage that cooperation. But what they had in mind in May 
of 1949 may have been only the Schuman Plan and/or something else. The 
EU wasn't even around until the mid-1950s. That wasn't even thought of 
either.
  So the whole notion was that economic cooperation in Europe produced 
stability, enhanced democracy, and, in turn, allowed for military 
security. It is still the case.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The 30 seconds of the time has expired. The 
Senator has all the remaining time.
  Mr. BIDEN. I beg your pardon?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 1 minute 20 seconds.
  Mr. BIDEN. I yield to my friend from Texas the remainder of time on 
this amendment, if I may yield him a total of 5 minutes, whatever that 
takes off of

[[Page S3825]]

the Warner amendment--if I am able to do that?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of New Hampshire). Without 
objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, whenever the Senator from New York and the 
Senator from Virginia offer an amendment, we know it is well reasoned 
and we know it is well intended and so I think, as a result, we are 
always correct in being cautious in opposing such an amendment.
  But I am opposed to this amendment because, while I think their 
argument is well reasoned as far as it goes--it is certainly well 
intended--I think it is an amendment which does not belong in this 
legislation and which is fundamentally destructive.
  If our colleagues want to encourage the European Union to expand and 
to grant membership to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, I am 
for that. I think that EU membership expansion to Poland, Hungary, and 
the Czech Republic should occur, I strongly support it, and if we were 
voting on that issue, and that issue alone, I would vote for this 
amendment.
  I remind my colleagues that NATO membership today is not made up of 
countries that are solely members of the European economic community. 
Iceland, Norway, Turkey, Canada and the United States are not members 
of the European Union. I, for one, would support American membership in 
the European Union, but I don't think they are going to let us join.
  Might I say that while we are encouraging the European Union to 
expand its membership, we ought to start with Turkey. It is absolutely 
outrageous that the opposition of one country is preventing Turkey from 
having an opportunity to be part of the European economic community 
when Turkey has been an anchor of NATO for 46 years, when Turkey did as 
much as any other country to keep Ivan back from the gate, when Turkey 
provides the largest land army of any European NATO nation. These 
contributions ultimately helped check the Soviet expansion and through 
the power of ideas and freedom tore down the Berlin Wall, liberated 
Eastern Europe, and freed more people than any victory in any war in 
the history of mankind.
  If our objective is to start urging the European Union to expand its 
membership as a precondition for membership in NATO, let's begin by 
urging them to expand their membership to nations which are already 
part of NATO and which contributed greatly to winning the cold war.
  I think this is an arbitrary distinction that does not belong in this 
bill. If we want to do something to encourage the European Union to 
expand, I am in favor of that. I would certainly vote for a resolution 
urging them to expand, to take in Poland and Hungary and the Czech 
Republic, but I think we ought to begin with Turkey.
  But that is not what is before us today. What is before us today is a 
fundamental decision as to whether we are going to let an arbitrarily 
drawn line, a line drawn by Stalin in Europe through the Iron Curtain 
at the end of World War II, stand as a permanent division of Europe in 
terms of military alliance.
  I am not oblivious to concerns that have been raised about the cost 
of expanding NATO. I am not oblivious to other concerns with regard to 
Russia and to its response, but in the end, I am sway by the argument 
that we should not allow communism, which is now on the ash heap of 
history, to determine the composition of our military alliance in 
Europe. Therefore, I intend to vote to expand NATO, but I do not 
believe that that expansion should be conditioned on membership in the 
European Union.
  Let me also remind my colleagues that Austria, Finland, Ireland, and 
Sweden are members of the European Union, but they are not members of 
NATO.
  This is a clear-cut choice. I think this amendment is the wrong thing 
to do, and I urge my colleagues to oppose it.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, it would be a great mistake to condition the 
future of the NATO, a transatlantic military alliance of unparalleled 
success led by the United States, to actions and decisions of the 
European Union. The EU is a strictly European political-economic 
organization of which the United States is not a member and has no say. 
For this reason, it is with great regret that I stand in opposition to 
my good friend, the Senator from New York, and urge my colleagues to 
vote against this amendment.
  EU enlargement is highly desirable on its own merits. Indeed, the 
Resolution of Ratification specifically states it is the policy of the 
United States to encourage EU enlargement.
  However, as worthy as EU enlargement is, it should not be formally 
linked to NATO enlargement. Nor should EU membership serve as a 
condition for NATO aspirants. Let me emphasize three basic reasons:
  First, this amendment is inconsistent with the Washington Treaty. 
Article 10 of the Treaty states that membership in NATO is open to, and 
I quote, ``any European State in a position to further the principles 
of this treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic 
area.''
  The North Atlantic Treaty makes no mention of the European Union. 
Moreover, several NATO member states are not EU members, including the 
United States, Canada, Turkey, Iceland and Norway. Are they any less 
effective members of the Alliance because they are not part of the EU? 
The answer is unambiguously NO.
  And what if Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic decide, as Norway 
has--a founding member of NATO-- that membership in the European Union 
in not in their interests? I point this out to highlight that this 
amendment establishes an arbitrary standard that is not necessarily a 
reflection of a NATO aspirant's state of economic and political well-
being.
  Second, Mr President, by conditioning NATO membership on attainment 
of EU membership, this amendment would strip the Alliance of control 
over its own future--specifically its decisions over future 
membership--and transfer it over the European Union. The EU is not a 
transatlantic organization. It has no effective security or defense 
capability or policy for that matter. Let us not forget, it was a 
complete failure in the effort to end to the conflict in Bosnia. Do we 
really want the EU to have such significant influence over NATO?
  And, let us not over look the fact that this amendment could well 
suspend NATO enlargement indefinitely. EU enlargement is far from 
certain. It is far from clear when the EU will extend its membership to 
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. It could be a decade, if not 
more for all we know. There are still significant political forces and 
economic interests within the EU deeply opposed to EU enlargement.
  Third, this amendment would undercut U.S. leadership of NATO by 
relegating the United States--and the United States Senate for that 
matter--to a second class tier of Alliance members. Why? because NATO 
members who are not in the European Union would be denied the same 
voice and authority over the future of the Alliance that this amendment 
would reserve for those NATO countries that are members of the European 
Union.
  In one fell swoop, this amendment would: impose an unprecedented 
restriction upon the Washington Treaty; transfer key decisions over 
NATO's future to the EU, an European institution that lacks an 
effective security policy; demote the United States to a new second-
class tier of Alliance members; and, thereby weaken U.S. leadership of 
NATO.
  I am sure that these are not the intentions behind this amendment, 
but they would clearly be the consequences. My colleagues, we have no 
choice but to vote this amendment down.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, from a strictly American foreign policy 
viewpoint, requiring EU membership first is sheer folly. Why would we 
want to place such a key element of our national security 
decisionmaking in the hands of the European Union--an organization to 
which we do not belong?
  Already we are seeing the EU members disagreeing over how quickly 
those invited should be allowed in.
  To give the EU, in effect, a veto over NATO membership, might 
encourage the creation of an EU caucus within NATO, limiting the United 
States'

[[Page S3826]]

ability to advance our diplomatic and military goals in the committees 
of the Alliance.
  Moreover, advocates of this amendment have misunderstood the 
importance of NATO membership prior to EU membership, both from a 
policy and historical context.
  From a policy perspective, NATO membership in advance of EU 
membership will provide the security these countries need to continue 
their economic reforms and help to ensure a climate of confidence 
essential for continued foreign investment and economic integration.
  From a historical perspective, in all its reports on all three rounds 
of NATO enlargements that took place from 1952 to 1982, the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee cited European economic development and 
integration as one key benefit of expanding NATO's zone of stability.
  I would like to briefly quote from these Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee reports:
  1949 Report establishing NATO:

       The treaty is designed to contribute toward the further 
     development of peaceful and friendly international relations, 
     to strengthen the free institutions of the parties and 
     promote better understanding of the principles upon which 
     they are founded, to promote conditions of stability and 
     well-being, and to encourage economic collaboration. It 
     should facilitate long-term economic recovery through 
     replacing the sense of insecurity by one of confidence in the 
     future.
       The Committee believes that the [1949] North Atlantic Pact, 
     by providing the means for cooperation in matters of common 
     security and national defense, creates a favorable climate 
     for further steps toward progressively closer European 
     integration * * *

  In 1952, Secretary of State Acheson, in his testimony before the 
Foreign Relations Committee, urged NATO membership for Greece and 
Turkey first by recalling that these two nations already enjoyed an 
associate status with NATO's activities in the Eastern Mediterranean. 
It was in response to Athens' and Ankara's formal request--their belief 
that associate status was inadequate to their national defense needs--
that they were favorably considered for NATO membership. Acheson 
emphasized that positive action rested not only on their military 
contributions to the Alliance, but on their advances in democracy, rule 
of law, and Western orientation, and the likelihood that NATO 
membership would deepen this.
  It should be noted that Greece did not enter the European Union until 
nearly twenty years after its accession to NATO. Turkish membership in 
the EU remains a contentious, unresolved issue. Are we supposed to kick 
Turkey out of NATO because it doesn't belong to the EU?
  The 1955 Foreign Relations Committee report welcomed West German 
accession:

     * * * not only as a major step toward the elimination of 
     intra-European strife but in a broader sense, these 
     agreements provide the foundation for close cooperation and 
     integration among European allies . . . The Committee was 
     impressed in particular with Secretary Dulles' statement on 
     the psychological impact of this association--the increased 
     effectiveness and the sense of unity and cohesion which will 
     be brought about in Western Europe by German participation in 
     NATO and the Western European Union.

  Of all the examples, the last one--Spanish accession to NATO in 
1982--bears the closest resemblance to that of the current applicants.
  Spain, having returned to democracy only five years earlier, believed 
that NATO membership would help consolidate Spanish democracy and 
assist, at lesser cost, a process of military modernization it had to 
undertake regardless of membership.
  Aside from its geography, Spain was judged to offer little in the way 
of military assets useful to the Alliance in 1982 prior to the 
completion of its modernization.
  Nevertheless, in favorably reporting Spanish accession to NATO to the 
full Senate, the Foreign Relations Committee recorded a brief exchange 
between then-Chairman Charles Percy and then-State Department European 
Bureau Chief Larry Eagleburger explaining why Spanish accession to NATO 
was so important to broad U.S. national security interests. Because 
this exchange is so similar to our situation today, I would like to 
quote from it. Chairman Percy noted:

       At a time when NATO's cohesiveness and viability is being 
     critically questioned in the press, I find Spain's NATO 
     membership application a reaffirmation of the fundamental 
     principles of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a group 
     of sovereign nations sharing common values and aspirations 
     and committed to working together despite differences to 
     guarantee the security, prosperity, and defense of Western 
     democracy.

  Assistant Secretary Eagleburger replied:

     * * * in terms of that question of Spanish democracy, it is 
     terribly important that we do everything we can to tie Spain 
     to Western institutions, to have those people be able to deal 
     with Western parliamentarians who also have a commitment to 
     democracy * * * Every tie we can create between Spain and 
     Western Europe and the United States, institutional tie, in 
     fact, I think, strengthens the whole process of democracy in 
     Spain.

  Spain did not enter the EU until 1986, four years after accession to 
NATO.
  Historically, membership in NATO has preceded membership in European 
common market or economic integration groupings.
  It is much easier to develop habits of cooperation in common defense 
as a precursor to the much more complex negotiations leading to 
economic integration.
  If we wait for the EU to act, we may be waiting for a long time. For 
example according to recent polls, the Austrian public opposes EU 
membership for four of the five recent EU invitees.
  Finally, recent history has shown that, in European capitals, when 
presented with a choice between farm policy and foreign policy, farm 
policy always wins.
  For all these reasons, Mr. President, I oppose the Moynihan amendment 
and urge my colleagues to do so.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized to 
offer an amendment if he chooses to do so.
  Mr. WARNER. I thank the Chair.


                      Executive Amendment No. 2322

 (Purpose: To express a condition regarding the further enlargement of 
                                 NATO)

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I send to the desk an amendment on behalf 
of myself and the distinguished senior Senator from New York, Mr. 
Moynihan. We are joined by Mr. Bingaman, Mrs. Hutchison and Mr. Dorgan.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Virginia [Mr. Warner], for himself, Mr. 
     Moynihan, Mr. Bingaman, Mrs. Hutchison and Mr. Dorgan, 
     proposes an executive amendment numbered 2322.

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the appropriate place in section 2 of the resolution, 
     insert the following:
       (  ) United states policy regarding further enlargement of 
     nato.--Prior to the date of deposit of the United States 
     instrument of ratification, the President shall certify to 
     the Senate that it is the policy of the United States not to 
     encourage, participate in, or agree to any further 
     enlargement of NATO for a period of at least three years 
     beginning on the earliest date by which Poland, Hungary, and 
     the Czech Republic have all acceded to the North Atlantic 
     Treaty.

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the 
amendment by the senior Senator from New York and myself and on my 
amendment in which I am joined by the senior Senator from New York, the 
two amendments which are before the Senate at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request on both 
amendments? Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I point out in the beginning that this 
amendment does not affect the decision with respect to Poland, Hungary 
and the Czech Republic, nor does this amendment concede what I believe 
is the right thing to do in voting against the admission of those 
countries. But this amendment is sent to the desk simply because, in 
recognition of the reality, through conversations personally between 
myself and many, many Members of this Chamber, indeed, with the 
President and the Secretary of State and many others, the likelihood 
that the resolution of ratification will be approved.
  Given that reality, I think it is imperative that this body have 
before it an amendment, which has just been

[[Page S3827]]

sent to the desk, which indicates there will be a pause, so to speak, a 
strategic pause of 3 years only before our country, our President, 
whoever will be President at that point in time, can agree to accession 
of additional countries.
  Mr. President, I established in my opening statement my strong 
allegiance to NATO in the past, and now and forevermore that I am 
privileged to be a Member of this body. I said the importance of 
America to have a voice, and how this treaty for 49 years has surpassed 
the expectations of all and remains the most important military 
document apart from our own Constitution in many ways, and that is why 
I ask for these 3 years. I will recite the reasons, one, two and three.
  Should not another President duly elected by the people of the United 
States have a voice in further modifications by virtue of further 
accession of additional nations to this alliance?
  If the Good Lord gives me the strength and the breath in the 
consideration of that next Presidential election, I will do everything 
within my power to make sure that is an issue that is debated among 
those candidates seeking that high office. Regrettably, in the last 
election very little attention was given to national security policy. 
But the world is rapidly changing. The world is becoming a more 
dangerous place. Indeed, in the next election I will do my part, as I 
am sure others will likewise, to see that the security policy of our 
Nation and the free nations of the world will be a subject of 
discussion in that election.
  I think the next President should be given the opportunity to assess 
the merits and such disadvantages as may arise by virtue of the 
accession of three more nations before we leap forward under pressure, 
which will be unrelenting. That pressure will begin the day 1 year from 
now when these three nations will be accessed. That pressure will begin 
the day after. The bugles will sound. The march will begin to bring in 
other nations perhaps numbering as many as nine.
  I say to my colleagues, should not the next President be given the 
opportunity to study the record, make an assessment, and then give his 
advice or her advice, as the case may be, to the people of the United 
States?
  That is my first reason for asking for reasonable delay of but 3 
years. This amendment will avoid that stampede. This amendment in 
fairness will say to the other nations it is not only to the advantage 
of the NATO countries but, indeed, it is to the advantage of the other 
nations to let this experiment ferment for a period to determine the 
purity, or the lack thereof, of the decision.
  Then I turn to a second reason. That is the cost. Whether it is $1.5 
billion over the next 2 years or $125 billion, there will be no piece 
of evidence before this body which has sound credibility as to the cost 
associated with accession of these three nations.
  This afternoon we will have further amendments on the question of 
cost. But we are dealing from an unknown. NATO is studying the question 
of cost, and is studying the question of the degree to which these 
nations must rebuild and modernize their military. But those studies 
will not be available until later this summer. Yet our vote will be 
taken before the sun falls on this day on two very vital pieces of 
information, totally lacking. We have, therefore, a blank check. We do 
not know the cost now. We will not know for months even the opinion of 
the NATO Council, which is really the organization that can best 
evaluate these costs. But there is credible evidence on both sides. The 
range of costs go from $1.5 billion over 2 years to $125 billion.
  I want to touch a sensitive nerve among my distinguished colleagues. 
Those listening and those advising Members might just take their pencil 
and put a little asterisk by this point.
  America is in its 14th year of decline of funding to the U.S. Armed 
Forces of the United States, a collective decision by a series of 
Presidents. This is not a political argument. We have irrefutable 
evidence that our Armed Forces today are behind in their modernization 
program. They are stretched too thin. They are over committed 
worldwide. We see that in the retention rates. There is all sorts of 
mounting evidence that we are asking our military to do the same as 
they have boldly and bravely for years with less and less--less in 
dollars, less time at home with their families, and with fewer and 
fewer pieces of equipment.
  Shipbuilding: A handful of combat ships every year in the budget. We 
are rapidly approaching a Navy that could be well below the 300-plus, a 
few ships of today, in the year 2000. We, a maritime nation faced with 
that small Navy. Dollars from the American taxpayer profits have been, 
are being, and will be committed to these three nations.
  We have been contributing money regularly to the establishment and 
refurbishment of their military at the same time we are denying to our 
military what, in my opinion, are the necessary dollars to perform 
their mission. We will be taking those dollars and putting them through 
NATO into other nations, the three that are our subject, for their 
military, to help them come up so that they have the capability to take 
on a full partnership commensurate with their size in the NATO 
alliance. Think about it. You are taking from your military and giving 
to another military.
  Now, as a part of the consideration of this year's military 
authorization bill, there will be discussion, indeed, there could be 
legislation, about a future base closure. That should ring a bell--a 
future round of base closures in the United States. That should get the 
attention of some Members.
  Secretary of Defense Cohen has made an admirable and, in my judgment, 
a credible appeal to the Congress of the United States to address that 
question and address it now. If we do not, he has little alternative 
but to literally starve a base, turn off the current, transfer the 
people, and leave the buildings standing unattended because he is 
properly exercising his judgment that the dollars are needed for 
modernization, the dollars are needed for the ever-rising number of 
commitments beyond our shores rather than keeping in place a base that 
no longer contributes to our overall national security.
  Tough decision. What do you say, colleagues, when you go home to 
defend a base closing in your State, as you will do and as you are duty 
bound to, and at the same time we are contributing money to build new 
bases in these three countries, and unless my amendment passes I 
daresay in other countries in a very short period of time.
  They have to modernize more so than the United States. They have to 
take their old infrastructure which was designed for Soviet military 
tactics, take their old tanks and artillery pieces which are, by and 
large, old Soviet weaponry and modernize so they have interoperability 
as a nation with NATO.
  That is a further drain on the American taxpayer at the very time 
when in your State the next round of base closures may have a potential 
impact. And you will be fairly asked by your constituents: do you mean 
to tell me they are closing our beloved hometown base that has been 
here defending America all these years and you are helping to build 
bases abroad? Do you not have a conflict?
  Those are questions that are fairly to be asked in the not too 
distant future if we allow a stampede of three now and three in the 
next 18 months and three thereafter, up to as many as 28 nations 
potentially to join NATO.
  We are also asked to approve this measure without full knowledge as 
to the strategic concept of what NATO is and is not going to do in the 
years to come. We are operating under a 1991 doctrine today. Listen to 
the Secretary of State, as the distinguished Senator from Missouri 
pointed out yesterday, who desires to expand the missions of NATO far 
beyond the borders of their nations, to be involved in the 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. There may be some merit. 
But should we not fully have in mind before we begin to add country 
after country what is to be the mission of NATO?
  Ironically, it is not until 1 year from this month, April, at the 
summit at which these three nations will be admitted when NATO will 
finalize the doctrine for the future. Yet, we are asked to vote today 
to change the bases of this treaty by virtue of new membership not 
knowing the risks that will face the men and women of the U.S. Armed 
Forces as well as the other NATO nations. I ask you, is that the way to 
do business? Not in my

[[Page S3828]]

judgment. And that is why I say if three are a reality, then we should 
stop and study a reasonable period of time. Let another President, let 
the American people in the context of the next election, let the 
American people at that time have a careful examination of what NATO 
brings forth a year from today as to the new mission and adoption. 
Those are just reasonable requests. And time, and time alone, can 
establish the record on which those important decisions can be made. 
Three years, in my judgment, is not an unreasonable period of time.

  Lastly, I refer to Russia, not in the sense that I fear Russia, not 
in the sense that Russia--and I have said this consistently--should 
have any veto power as to any decision which is in the security 
interests of the United States of America. The Founding Act was 
established, I think, as a quid pro quo for the accession of these 
three nations. Russia signed on. But there is mounting evidence that 
you cross over and begin another three, and particularly when you get 
to the Balkans, all the arguments which we have heard in favor of 
voting yea tonight will fall. I believe this Chamber will resonate with 
deep concern as reflected by the instabilities in Russia that could 
exist in the year 2000 when they are moving on possibly to another 
political structure, another President. There is a great deal of 
uncertainty in Russia today--economically, politically, and 
militarily--in their struggle to survive as a fledgling democracy, as 
they struggle to survive in a free-market world, and I think the next 
President should be given the opportunity to make an assessment as to 
the measure of threat posed by Russia in the context of any further 
accession of new nations to this most valuable of all treaties. Time 
and time alone can achieve that purpose.
  So they should not have a veto. We do not act out of fear. But we act 
out of reality, that that is the only nation that possesses weaponry 
which poses a direct threat to the United States of America; namely, 
their strategic forces. You cannot be unmindful of that fact.
  Therefore, I think a period of 3 years is appropriate to allow 
another President, to allow the studies to be performed, to allow the 
American people to better understand the value of this NATO alliance 
and what should be done for the future, and, therefore, I respectfully 
ask my colleagues to consider to vote in favor of the Warner-Moynihan 
amendment for a 3-year moratorium.
  Mr. President, other Senators have been waiting patiently. I wish to 
continue my remarks and will do so momentarily. I know the 
distinguished Senator from New Jersey has been here for some time. 
Therefore, I yield him 10 minutes off the time under the control of the 
Senator from Virginia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey is recognized.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, I join the Senator from Virginia and, 
indeed, the Senator from New York, Mr. Moynihan, in each of their 
amendments and speak to them today.
  It is, I think, worth noting that the decision before this Senate is 
neither new nor without the apprehension that should come with historic 
experience.
  On March 31, 1939, Neville Chamberlain rose in the British Parliament 
and announced unambiguously, unequivocally, the British will defend the 
Polish frontier with the threat of war. To be certain, it was a war 
that inevitably was going to be fought and should have been fought. But 
what is instructive about the experience, as Winston Churchill later 
noted, ``Here was a decision at last taken at the worst possible moment 
and on the least satisfactory ground.''
  More than a generation later, the Senate has a chance to ask all the 
questions that were not asked in the British Parliament on that day, 
because before this Senate is the most solemn question that the 
representatives of any free people can ever ask.
  We are pledging the good name of this country to go to war, to 
consume the lives of our sons and our daughters for the defense of 
another people. That does not mean it is a pledge that sometimes should 
not be made. Maybe it should be made in this instance. But there are 
questions that should be raised that are the foundation of the 
amendments offered by the Senator from Virginia, Senator Warner, and 
the Senator from New York, Mr. Moynihan.
  Those questions are, in my judgment, whether or not, having made this 
pledge, the United States and our NATO allies genuinely have the 
military capability, in our resources, to fulfill the obligation, 
whether or not the United States and our NATO allies have the political 
will to lend credibility to this pledge, and whether or not this 
promise of defense enhances or detracts from the general security of 
the United States and the NATO alliance.
  Let me begin, Mr. President, by addressing the question of the 
military feasibility of this most expansive American pledge to defend 
other nations since the NATO alliance itself and the Japanese-American 
security agreement. Indeed, this expansion of our security guarantee is 
based on an unspoken but a very real sense of a change in historic 
realities in this Chamber. It is based on the belief that Russia is 
weakened, an historic opportunity has arisen, and that the views of 
Russia are either no longer relevant or that she is without choice in 
this question.
  Mr. President, the current state of affairs with regard to the 
military and economic power of Russia is an aberration. Russia has been 
a great power for more than 1,000 years; and it will be a great power 
again. Its affairs are part of the calculus of American security and 
cannot be discounted.
  It is a nation of nearly 150 million people with over 6.5 million 
square miles of territory. It possesses 40 percent of the world's 
natural gas reserves and rivals any power on Earth as a source of 
natural resources, including petroleum. Russia is a technological 
leader. It is a major industrial power. And it continues, in spite of 
its current economic difficulties, as the only source of military 
technology, production and power that potentially rivals the United 
States.
  So, Mr. President, there may be many things uncertain about the 
future, but this much is certain: Russia will continue in the future to 
be a great power. And yet while it may not be spoken on this floor, 
this calculation of immediately extending the American security 
umbrella to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary is based on the 
calculation that at some point Russia might be a threat to their 
frontiers, and we will provide for its defense.
  Mr. President, I know us as Americans to be an ambitious people and a 
confident people. But this is an extraordinary guarantee the people of 
the United States are extending to these three new democracies in 
Eastern Europe.
  No nation in history has been able to defend against the territorial 
ambitions of Russia when she was an imperial or in an imperialistic 
mode. It is worth noting, from Napoleon to the Third Reich, people have 
miscalculated on their abilities to deal with Russian ambitions in 
Eastern Europe.
  Russia was challenged in the borders of Poland by the Third Reich and 
162 divisions of the Wehrmacht. We are an ambitious people, Mr. 
President. The U.S. Army today, 4,000 miles from our borders, has three 
divisions.
  What military means is it by which we are going to give credibility 
to this pledge? Not next year, not 10 years, not at some point in the 
future, but the day this treaty is signed. Three divisions, half a 
world away on the borders of Russia herself?
  There is, Mr. President, another irony to this military pledge 
related to the comments of the Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm, in noting 
that in some ways the current borders of NATO are a relic of the Iron 
Curtain of Josef Stalin. Well, now, Mr. President, we are to draw a new 
line. And it may have its benefactors and its beneficiaries. But what 
of those nations not inside this new line? The great lesson of Yalta 
was that those nations that fell on the other side of the line were 
lost to a Stalinist equation and calculation that they were now in a 
new sphere of influence.
  This Senate is faced with a question of tomorrow, next month, this 
year, drawing a new line in Europe that may bring Poland and the Czech 
Republic and Hungary in, but leaves the Baltics and Romania and the 
Ukraine out. How would a future adversary, not in a democratic Russia 
but in a possible

[[Page S3829]]

successor Government, interpret this new sphere of influence? Not as a 
check on ambitions but as an invitation to ambitions?
  Equally important, I believe, Mr. President, from my first, and in 
this instance, military review of this instance, is that we are 
entering ourselves again into a military calculation that for 50 years 
we have wanted to escape. Because if we are to make this pledge of 
defending these three new democracies, and we do so with three 
divisions of the U.S. Army and no indigenous military capability 
whatsoever, we are entering into, again, something which we feared and 
have so fought to escape. The only means of defending these governments 
is through atomic weapons. We are pledging unmistakably a nuclear 
exchange to defend the Polish frontier from possible future invasion. 
It is where we were during the cold war with New York for Berlin, 
Chicago for Paris, San Francisco for Rome.
  It is easy to make the pledge, Mr. President. The question is whether 
to do so without military resources is responsible. It is not simply 
that our own resources are insufficient. My friend, the Senator from 
Delaware, has drawn a parallel between this expansion and the initial 
NATO treaty or expansions in other instances. In this instance, we are 
not joining in mutual defense with the British army or the Germans or 
the French; we are pledging to defend Poland, whose armed forces 
consist of 1,700 Soviet tanks designed for the 1950s and 1960s, a 
Hungarian air force which will contribute to its own security 50 aging 
Soviet MIG fighters, and the Czech air force whose pilots fly an 
average of 40 hours a year in training for their own self-defense.
  The Senate can make this judgment. You can decide to extend the 
American security umbrella all over Eastern Europe, even though there 
are insufficient American forces to contribute to their defense, and 
rely on indigenous forces. But at least make the decision based on the 
reality that there are no indigenous forces. It is a military pledge 
without military capability.
  Second is the issue of whether or not there is the political will in 
the United States and in Western Europe to give this promise meaning. 
The NATO treaty is the most successful military alliance in history. At 
a time when the Soviet Union had overwhelming military means, it was 
the foundation of the defense of Western Europe, but it was not based 
on the fact that the United States signed a treaty. It was based on 
historic and economic realities. Through two world wars the American 
people had demonstrated they were prepared to defend one Europe because 
they believed that the security of Western Europe and the United States 
were inseparable. Our quality of life, our security, our economic 
future could not be distinguished from Great Britain, France, in the 
first instance, Italy and Germany and other member states at other 
times.
  In a free society, the President of the United States may sign a 
treaty pledging to defend Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, but 
if the economic realities are not such that the American people believe 
that our futures are indistinguishable, it is a dangerous promise 
because it is a hollow pledge.
  The reality is today that there may be a time when each of these 
republics have sufficient economic intercourse with the United States 
and Western Europe that we believe they are part of the Western 
alliance by economic and cultural and historic definition and this 
pledge has meaning. But no one can argue--indeed, this is the 
foundation of the rationale of the amendment by Senators Moynihan and 
Warner--no one can argue that that reality is true today.
  Total economic intercourse with the Czech Republic today is .09 
percent of American exports.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 10 minutes has expired.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. Will the Senator yield 10 additional minutes?
  Mr. WARNER. I grant another minute and a half.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. Is that all the time the Senator has?
  Mr. WARNER. The Senator has other time under his control, but there 
are a number of Senators who wish to speak. Perhaps, if there is more 
time in the course of this debate, I am certain both sides would be 
happy to have the contribution of the Senator.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. I thank the Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. President, no one can argue that we have reached that state of 
economic dependency at the moment. That is the rationale of the delay, 
to allow these bonds to form and to give this pledge meaning.
  Finally, the foundation of American security in this generation and 
as far as the eye can see is the Russian-American relationship. Any 
judgment we make which enhances Russian democracy enhances American 
security. Most fundamental to this debate is the fact that Eastern 
Europe and the NATO alliance's first line of defense is the Russian 
ballot box. If Russia is democratic and capitalistic and free, Eastern 
Europe is secure. If it is not, no force on Earth is going to defend 
the Ukraine, the Baltics, or even these republics.
  I believe strongly this pledge and this NATO expansion will be 
enhanced by both of these amendments. I accept the reality that NATO is 
going to be expanded, but I believe it is a more responsible judgment 
if we address these questions, allow for this delay. I believe it would 
lead to a better expansion of NATO, and we would be pleased and proud 
that we made these exceptions.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Before the Senator from New Jersey leaves the floor, I 
want to briefly make two points. I find his argument absolutely 
fascinating that economic dependence or integration with the United 
States is a prerequisite for NATO membership. I wonder if he could 
explain to me what that dependence was we had with Norway or that 
dependence we have with Denmark or Portugal or Spain?

  As each came in, as each of these nations came in, if there is a 
notion that there is a prerequisite of an economic dependency--we have 
more invested in Poland, more in Poland now than we did at the time of 
these countries coming in.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. If the Senator will yield, I would be glad to address 
each of those.
  Mr. BIDEN. Let me make a second point.
  Mr. WARNER. Could the time be allocated?
  Mr. BIDEN. I make a point, I have the floor.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. I appreciate that, but the Senator asked a question 
that deserves to be answered.
  Mr. BIDEN. I also find this notion, and it is repeated in different 
ways but never in a more articulate fashion than just done by my friend 
from New Jersey, no force on Earth will be able to defend Poland or the 
Baltics, and he may have mentioned another country, Ukraine, if Russia 
is not a democracy.
  One of the secondary reasons why people want to expand NATO is 
because we fundamentally reject that notion, but fundamentally reject 
the notion that if things ``go south,'' to use the colloquial 
expression, in Russia, that someone will be there to never let it 
happen to Poland again, just like we defended Germany, just like we 
defended Turkey, just like we defended Norway.
  Now, I am going to, at a later point, speak at length about this iron 
ring notion my friend from Virginia and my friend from New York talk 
about and point out that there has been a border shared between Norway 
and Russia that is one of the most heavily fortified places in the 
world, and during the period when the Soviet Union was at its zenith, 
we made a judgment as a people that we would defend Norway.
  Now, I know my friend is not suggesting this, but is anyone implying 
that peace and stability in Europe is any less at issue if Poland, 
after having received their independence, were now or again to be 
invaded as compared to Norway? What are we saying here? And the notion, 
will we use nuclear weapons to defend Warsaw, do you think anybody in 
our respective constituency is going to say, yes, let's use them to 
defend Turkey, Ankara?
  I respectfully suggest that we can use rhetorical devices to make a 
point, but that they are able to be used in more than one instance. 
Maybe you are not going to get a consensus to use the requirement, the 
nuclear protection in NATO, the consultation provision where we are 
required to go to the mutual defense, I believe article V--and

[[Page S3830]]

we always used to hear, when the Soviet Union existed, how many 
Americans are prepared to trade Bonn for Washington, Bonn for New York 
City. Well, now to say how many people will be prepared to defend 
Warsaw, I suggest you might get more people to say they are prepared to 
defend Warsaw than they are prepared to defend Ankara or Oslo. That is 
my guess, because there are a heck of a lot more Polish Americans than 
there are Turkish Americans. I don't think it is a useful, in terms of 
what our national policy should be, particularly useful point to make 
because it could be made about every capital in Europe, I suspect, if 
it were put to the American people today.
  But the real question to be put to the American people is--I think 
they answer affirmatively on it--is peace and stability in Europe in 
our national interest, and it is one of those things that we either pay 
now or pay later, because Americans have good memories. They understand 
that every time chaos has reigned in Europe, we have been dragged in 
this century. And so I suggest further that to denigrate the forces of 
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, who were equally, or better 
situated than Spain and Portugal were when they came in, in terms of 
forces, or to suggest the only way to defend Poland, Hungary and the 
Czech Republic is nuclear weapons is simply militarily not accurate. 
And so I think what we are really debating here--and I will say it 
again--and I don't think people really want to speak to it directly--
and what this is really about is whether we should have NATO, period--
not whether we should expand it, but whether we should have it now. 
Because if a test as to whether or not we are going to admit Poland is 
whether or not we are going to use nuclear weapons--and it is not an 
option because there is no serious problem about conventional forces 
overrunning Poland today--none--you could scramble enough jets, 
bombers, fighters out of Germany to get to the Polish border without 
having to have them in Poland at all, to withstand any reasonable 
conventional capability that is available to the Russians or anyone 
else right now. But the question is: Would we defend Warsaw? If we 
don't believe that resoundingly the American people would say that, 
then we should not let Poland in.

  I think really what you are saying is that you have to ask the honest 
question to the folks in Salem, New Jersey, across the river from 
Delaware, and up in Trenton, and further up in Newark: Are you willing 
to go to war to save Oslo? I would be willing to make my friend a bet, 
and let my vote depend on it, that if he got more people to say, yes, 
we are willing to go to war to defend Oslo, then I will vote against 
admitting Poland. But my guess is, if you ask any capital in any city 
in any European country--say possibly London--are you willing to go to 
war to defend Oslo, I am not sure you would get much of a different 
answer, no matter where you asked. So if that is the question--and the 
Presiding Officer knows this issue well--aren't we really asking: Do we 
want NATO, period? If that is the case, why doesn't someone introduce 
an amendment, straight up, and stop all this foolishness--I take that 
back. I withdraw that statement. I don't mean that. Stop all the 
tangential attacks on expansion and get right to what this is about--
introduce an amendment saying that we no longer need NATO. We can save 
a lot of money. We spend well over $120 billion a year on the deal--
nothing to do with expansion.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, in the course of working out with the 
distinguished majority and minority leaders, and others, a time 
agreement for the amendment of the Senator from Virginia, it had been 
my hope to have an up-or-down vote. Last night, in the course of 
deliberations on time agreement, that was stated, but there may be some 
feeling--if I could get the attention of the Senator from Delaware, I 
hope that we can have an up-or-down vote on my amendment. That would be 
my hope.
  Mr. BIDEN. That was my assumption all along, to have an up-or-down 
vote.
  Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator. I say to my distinguished colleague 
from Delaware, believe me, there has been no stronger supporter of 
NATO, I say with humility, than the Senator from Virginia throughout my 
19th year in the Senate. I am sure that colleagues' comments were 
serious, but with a note of jest.
  NATO is so vital to the United States of America. It gives us the 
legitimate presence with our military in Europe. It gives us the 
legitimacy of a strong voice in Europe. Indeed, this country has 
responded, with others, in two major wars to preserve the integrity of 
Europe.
  Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. WARNER. Just one sentence and I will yield. There has been a 
historical--over a 100 years--inability of the major nations of Europe 
to live in peace with one another. Indeed that is the principal purpose 
of NATO--the U.S. presence, both with military there, with a strong 
voice so as to ensure the tranquility this treaty has preserved for 49 
years. It has exceeded every expectation of the drafters of the treaty 
and those who promoted and supported it in these 49 years. It is a 
magnificent document. I have fought hard with others to preserve the 
integrity of that document. Does the Senator wish to say a word?
  Mr. BIDEN. If I can ask a question on my time. Does the Senator 
think--and he is a strong supporter of NATO, and if he thought I was 
implying that he wasn't, I was not. There are others who believe very 
strongly that it is no longer as relevant. You and I think it is.
  Let me ask you, do you think this is a relevant question, a threshold 
question? Would the American people defend Warsaw? Do you think if that 
question were not answered in the affirmative, that that should be the 
test as to whether a nation should come in or not, or whether one 
should stay in, or we should stay in NATO or not?
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, on my time, the very short answer to that 
is that the American people will defend, under article V, the integrity 
of all the existing members. Should it be the wisdom of this body that 
if three additional members are admitted, article V becomes the very 
heart of the action that will be taken by this distinguished body 
before the close of this day.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his answer. The 
Senator from New Jersey raised a point with me. I raised three 
questions and several rhetorical questions about his comments. He 
pointed out that because I didn't want to use my time, I did not yield 
to him, and he did not think he had an opportunity to respond, and he 
wishes to respond. I am delighted to yield him a couple of minutes on 
my time at the appropriate time. I don't want to interfere with my 
friend's comments to respond to the issues I raised.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from New 
Jersey.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, like the Senator from Virginia, my 
remarks are not based on a belief that the cause and reasons for NATO 
have expired. Quite the contrary. My concern is that whatever we do in 
the expansion of NATO has real credibility. I raise the military 
question of whether or not the Polish frontier is defendable with this 
pledge, simply because of this: It never has been.
  There is not a historical basis by which the ambitions of an imperial 
Russia has ever been checked, nor will we. I, too, believe that Poland 
should be defended.
  I will vote for NATO expansion, but under the amendment offered by 
the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from New York, they are 
suggesting a strategy whereby the political and economic bounds be 
given meaning, or there be time. It is not an honest assessment of the 
situation of the people of Poland to tell them that three American 
divisions with no indigenous forces are going to be positioned to 
defend them against a revitalized, or ambitious future Russia. It is 
not an accurate situation.
  If this is worth doing, it is worth doing with real resources based 
on a real assessment of costs, based on bonds that have meaning, not 
over a period of time. It is based on that realistic military situation 
that I join with the Senator from Virginia. I, too, like the Senator 
from Delaware and the Senator from Virginia, believe the United States 
will stand by its credibility and its pledges in each of these 
instances. But it is one thing to do it; it

[[Page S3831]]

is another thing to do it contrary to historic experience, or military 
reality.
  I thank the Senator from Delaware for yielding me the time so I could 
clarify my views.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will make a geographic point. The Polish 
border, I am guessing, is about 200 miles from the Russian border, if 
you do not count Kaliningrad where there are not Russian divisions, et 
cetera. If you were to take a look--my friend says that if in fact this 
threat, any threat, to Poland from Russia, a NATO commitment to defend 
would not be credible because of three American divisions. The fact of 
the matter is Poland is on the Russian border. From the Russian border 
to the far border of Poland to Belarus is essentially the same distance 
from the main body of Russia to Poland. The number of American NATO and 
other divisions that sit in Germany are by a factor of 25 more credible 
than any force Russia now or in the near term could use to threaten 
Poland. So the idea we do not have the physical capability, which I 
understand is the point being made, the physical capability of 
defending Poland once the pledge is made is in fact, I think, 
inaccurate.
  I yield the floor.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes from the time 
controlled by the Senator from Delaware.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for 10 minutes.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.
  If I may, I would like to take the liberty of speaking both on the 
previous amendment, which would have required these three nations to 
obtain membership in the European Union before ultimately becoming 
members of NATO, and this amendment as well. I think they both spring 
from a common core, certainly have a common effect, and the effect 
would be to move the goalposts, to change the rules of the NATO 
accession game as defined in article X of the NATO treaty, to frustrate 
the hopes of the people of these three nations and the other nations of 
Central and Eastern Europe who lived for four decades under the tyranny 
of Soviet communism, to say to them now that they want to voluntarily 
assume their place in the NATO community and more broadly in the 
community of free nations that we are not ready. OK, there was plenty 
of time in the late forties after the Second World War for Stalin and 
others to carve up Europe and take you in involuntarily, but now that 
the cold war is over, no, we didn't learn the lesson. We are going to 
snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We are going to snatch the 
defeat of principle and security, freedom and democracy from the jaws 
of our victory in the cold war.
  The first amendment says to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, 
you have come this far, we have a whole procedure that we have 
developed. You have democratized your country. Go back a little bit. 
You had the courage to rise up against a powerful central government 
which subjugated you, which did not give you political freedom or 
religious freedom or economic opportunity, and you have achieved your 
independence and your freedom. You are developing a market economy and 
democracy and have met all the standards that have traditionally been 
associated with access to NATO under article X--oh, no, now you have to 
go to the European Union and be accepted there.

  As I said the other day, on the first day of this debate, to ask 
these nations to now obtain membership in the European Union before 
they do in NATO is not only unfair--in the sense that it moves the 
goalposts, it changes the rules of the game, it applies to them a 
standard not applied to other NATO members, four of whom are not now 
members of the European Union--but it puts them in a very, very 
difficult position. It says to them that all the effort they made is 
not going to be justified, and it has an effect that is extremely 
unfair and inequitable. It puts the cart before the horse. It says that 
commerce should precede the principles of freedom and security, when 
those principles are what the cold war was all about. It puts the cart 
of commerce before the sturdy horses of democracy and security. It puts 
the cart of the European Union before the horses of NATO. And that is 
not the order that is appropriate. That is why I oppose that first 
amendment and hope my colleagues will as well.
  Of course, both of these amendments, including this one now that asks 
for a 3-year moratorium, I think spring--as some of the proponents of 
the amendment have said--from a concern about the effect on Russia. Our 
Secretary of State printed an op-ed piece in the New York Times 
Wednesday, April 29, yesterday--Madeleine Albright. It is a brilliant 
piece, eloquent, right to the point. Headline: ``Stop Worrying About 
Russia.''

       The most fundamental argument the critics have put forward 
     is that the admission of even a single new ally from Central 
     Europe will harm our relations with Russia.

  Secretary Albright says:

       My first response is to wonder why some people cannot 
     discuss the future of Central Europe without immediately 
     changing the subject to Russia. Central Europe has more than 
     20 countries, and 200 million people, with its own history, 
     its own problems and its own contributions to make to our 
     alliance. Most of these countries do not even border Russia. 
     But their security is and always has been vital to the future 
     of Europe as a whole.

  Mr. President, I heard my friend and colleague from New Jersey say 
something I find very unsettling, arguing for the pause, arguing for 
the earlier amendment about European Union membership first; wondering 
whether we were true to our pledge, as part of NATO accession under 
article V, to defend member states. We wouldn't make the pledge if we 
were not sincere about it. Of course we are prepared to defend these 
nations if necessary.
  I found the references to Chamberlain in the 1930s particularly--I 
say this respectfully--inappropriate. If there was any sincerity behind 
the pledge that Chamberlain made in 1939 to defend Poland from the 
Nazis, as was stated, the history of the 1940s might well have been 
different. The lessons are clear. The best way to secure peace is to 
remain strong. And that is what this is all about, access to NATO, a 
military alliance in defense of a principle.
  The Senator from New Jersey said imperial Russia has never been 
defeated. Who is talking about imperial Russia? We, who are supporting 
the extension of NATO, believe there is a new Russia. We don't see an 
imperial Russia. We believe that these new countries, adding 200,000 
troops to NATO forces, will help us meet common threats from ethnic 
division, international conflict, in some of the emerging democracies. 
We have seen it in Bosnia. We see it in Kosovo today. And it will help 
us meet the common threats of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, 
ballistic missiles, coming particularly from the south of the NATO 
region but perhaps from elsewhere.

  Let me go to this amendment requiring a pause, a 3-year pause. The 
Senator from Virginia says we ought to let some future President decide 
this. There is a process under article X. There is nothing inevitable 
about it. We are not on automatic pilot. No other nation is 
automatically going to be admitted to NATO. There is a process. NATO 
members will consider it, presidents--administrations will decide, and 
then always the Senate will have the option of ratifying or not 
ratifying accession of anyone else to this great treaty in defense of a 
principle. So why the pause? Presumably to reassure Russia again. But 
what are the effects of that? The effects of that are destructive in 
three regards.
  First, on the other nations of Central Europe who may dream of 
membership in NATO, and, on the basis of which dreams, they are acting 
in exactly the way we would have them act to develop their democracies 
and market economies. Again, I refer to the New York Times, this time 
Sunday, April 26.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be printed in the 
Record after my remarks an article by Jane Perlez.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 1.)
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. That article makes very clear that the goal of access 
to NATO, in this case of the article in particular regard to the three 
countries we are considering today--

[[Page S3832]]

Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic--has moved those countries. The 
promise of inclusion in NATO has helped the cause of moderate 
government, the reporter says, during a tough period of economic and 
political transition. I quote Marek Matraszek, Warsaw director of the 
CEC Government Relations, a political consulting firm, who says:

       The promise of NATO has defused destabilizing forces from 
     the left and right.* * * If NATO had not been offered, Poland 
     could have been in a disastrous situation, externally and 
     internally.

  If we now slam the door closed on the dreams of every other nation in 
Central and Eastern Europe to join this family of freedom, this 
military alliance, I fear that we will set back the onward march of 
freedom and a market economy for which we fought the cold war.
  Second, it will reduce the ability of NATO and the dream and goal of 
NATO membership to resolve conflicts that now exist among various 
nations in Central and Eastern Europe. The Hungarians and the 
Romanians, because of their desire to join NATO, settled age-old 
problems. Poland and Lithuania began talks about concerns they had for 
the same reason, to put themselves in the same position. The nations in 
that region have not lost sight of the reaction of NATO to the movement 
within Slovakia toward a less open, less free government--which is to 
say that Slovakia has dropped down in the chain of those who are being 
considered for NATO membership.
  Finally, a third consequence of imposing this pause.
  Mr. President, I note you moving toward the gavel, and I ask simply 
for an additional minute, if I may, from the time of the Senator from 
Delaware.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for 1 minute.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.
  The final loss from imposing an arbitrary 3-year pause where none is 
necessary because no action is required will be on us, on the United 
States, on our credibility, on what we stand for, on the principles 
that the rest of the world now, most of it, want to emulate and aspire 
to.
  If we say to these other nations of Central and Eastern Europe, 
``Forget about it, we are more worried about Russia, we are more 
worried about a renaissance of imperialist Russia, we are more worried 
about affecting the feelings of people who may be aggressive than we 
are about honoring your dream and effort to achieve freedom and 
democracy and security,'' then we will have abandoned our principles, 
our first principles as a country. When we do that, we lose our 
strength, because ultimately those principles underlie the power of 
America in the world community.
  Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to defeat these two amendments 
and to put ourselves on the right side of history.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

               [From the New York Times, April 26, 1998]

              With Promises, Promises, NATO Moves the East

                            (By Jane Perlez)

       In the United States, the question of whether to expand 
     NATO eastward has been debated only in fits and starts, and 
     then most passionately on the issues of how the Russians feel 
     about it and whether it might cost too much.
       But another question figures in the debate too: What effect 
     has the lure of NATO membership had on the way the proposed 
     new members--Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic--govern 
     themselves and behave toward their neighbors after nearly 
     half a century under Communism?
       No one of these questions alone will decide the debate, 
     which the Senate is scheduled to resume on Monday. Opponents 
     of the Clinton Administration's proposal to expand NATO will 
     doubtless emphasize the questions of money, Russia, and how 
     many other new members this precedent will open the door to.
       Still, it is on the question of how the prospective members 
     are behaving that some of the hardest evidence is in, and it 
     adds up to this:


                          agreement on a goal

       While all three have a way to go on meeting Western 
     standards of democratic rule and stable market economies, no 
     issue has dominated the internal political behavior of the 
     three Central European countries as much as the aspiration to 
     belong to the Western security alliance.
       In all three prospective new members, former Communists and 
     anti-Communists alike have agreed on NATO membership as a 
     national goal, and as a result all have tried with varying 
     degrees of sincerity to meet the alliance's broad 
     requirements of democratic rule and free enterprise.
       In other words, the promise of inclusion in NATO has helped 
     the cause of moderate government during a tough period of 
     economic and political transition. And there is little doubt, 
     analysts say, that trying to lay the political groundwork to 
     satisfy NATO has left Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic 
     better positioned for sustained economic growth.
       Such growth, in turn, could also help these countries join 
     the European Union--another goal they share, and one they are 
     pursuing in negotiations that opened in Brussels last month 
     and that promise to be tough.
       One lesson clearly taken to heart by Poland, the Czech 
     Republic and Hungary was the elimination of Slovakia from the 
     list of potential NATO members after its Prime Minister, 
     Vladimir Meciar, became increasingly authoritarian. 
     Similarly, the European Union has cited Slovakia's lack of 
     democratic progress as a reason for its inclusion from the 
     first round of the economic union's eastward expansion.
       The new American Ambassador to Poland, Daniel Fried, who 
     helped formulate the arguments for expanding NATO when he 
     worked at the National Security Council before coming to 
     Warsaw last fall, likes to point to the way the three 
     countries have behaved toward each other. ``When Poland and 
     Hungary became more confident of their NATO membership,'' he 
     said, ``they increased their outreach to their neighbors--
     Hungary to Romania, and Poland to Lithuania.''
       A decade ago, when the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe was 
     evaporating, one worry for NATO was that old national 
     resentments would resurface in the form of border disputes 
     and mistreatment of minorities, creating instability in 
     the region. So when NATO decided it might enlarge, it made 
     it clear that aspirants to membership had to avoid that 
     kind of thing.
       Now Hungary and Romania have signed a treaty guaranteeing 
     each other's borders and respecting the right of the large 
     Hungarian minority in Romania. And tense relations between 
     Poland and Lithuania have improved to the point that they 
     have created a joint peacekeeping battalion.
       Another benchmark set down by NATO, and in particular by 
     the Pentagon, was that the military in new members had to be 
     subordinate to civilian control. This was a prickly subject 
     in Poland, where former President Lech Walesa wanted to keep 
     broad authority in the hands of his generals. Only since the 
     defeat of Mr. Walesa in elections in 1995 and the adoption of 
     a new Constitution calling for subordination of the general 
     staff to the Minister of Defense has the strong political 
     influence of the Polish military brass diminished.


                          Changes in the Brass

       Last year, to the relief of the Pentagon, President 
     Kwasniewski fired Gen. Tadeusz Wilecki, a Walesa appointee, 
     who had shown open contempt for the civilians at the defense 
     ministry.
       Now Henry Szumski, a younger general who has United Nations 
     field experience, is at the top, and Janusz Onyszkiewicz, an 
     ardent proponent of civilian control of the military, is 
     defense minister. NATO specialists say they are satisfied 
     that the Polish military is on the right track, but another 
     challenge remains: to clear out many of the Communist-era 
     holdovers in the military intelligence service.
       In another example of changing attitudes, the Hungarian 
     Government passed over Soviet-trained generals for the post 
     of chief of the general staff and reached down to the third 
     level of the military hierarchy for Lieut. Gen. Ferenc Vegh, 
     and English-speaking graduate of the United States Army War 
     College. Now 7 of the top 10 generals in Hungary are Western 
     trained.
       Last month, the Czechs appointed a new chief of the general 
     staff, Jiri Sedivy, 45, who stands out for his experience as 
     a battalion commander in Bosnia and for his choice of 
     military heroes: Eisenhower, Patton and Schwarzkopf.
       Along with elevating military officers who think like those 
     in the West, the three countries have been encouraged by NATO 
     to get serious about parliamentary oversight committees. On 
     this point, they still have a long way to go; the defense 
     committee in the lower house of Poland's Parliament has no 
     staff, and the enthusiastic members of Hungary's 
     parliamentary defense committee have little background in 
     military affairs.
       No one would argue that Poland, Hungary and the Czech 
     Republic are mature democracies with classic capitalist 
     economies. Progress toward the rule of law and the protection 
     of minority rights is far from perfect. In all three 
     countries, the judicial systems are fragile and financial 
     corruption widespread. There are still huge disparities in 
     terms of wealth between the European Union and its 
     prospective new eastern members.
       But Marek Matraszek, the Warsaw director of CEC Government 
     Relations, a political consulting firm that has worked on 
     NATO related issues, believes that without the prospect of 
     membership in NATO, Poland might easily have fallen under the 
     sway of nationalist and populist politicians. Now it seems 
     reasonable to believe that Poland, a land with 40 million 
     people and a bounding economy growing at six percent a year, 
     may reach its goal of being a middle-size Western European 
     power within the next decade.

[[Page S3833]]

       ``The promise of NATO has defused destabilizing forces from 
     the left and right.'' Mr. Matraszek said. ``If NATO had not 
     been offered, Poland could have been in a disastrous 
     situation, externally and internally.''

  Ms. MIKULSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator from 
Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I seek recognition.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. BIDEN. How much time does the Senator need?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Seven minutes.
  Mr. BIDEN. I yield 7 minutes to the Senator from Maryland.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 26 minutes remaining in 
opposition.
  Mr. BIDEN. I am sure all 7 minutes will be worth yielding.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Warner 
amendment to freeze NATO membership and, if time permits, to also 
comment on the Moynihan amendment regarding the necessity for EU 
membership for these countries before being included in NATO.
  It is very difficult--like you when you spoke earlier and said you 
had great admiration for both the Senator from New York and the Senator 
from Virginia as I do, we have such constructive relationships, and I 
admire their grasp on policy and their desire to move ahead on 
constructive foreign policy.
  As well-intentioned as the Warner proposal is, its acceptance would 
be inconsistent with the NATO treaty itself. It would unnecessarily 
limit U.S. flexibility in pursuing further enlargement should the 
United States of America determine that such enlargement would be in 
its national interest. It would also undercut the tremendous gains for 
peace accomplished over the last decade in Central Europe, including 
the historic reconciliation now underway between Russia and the West.
  Article X of the Washington treaty, which was the alliance's founding 
charter nearly 50 years ago, states that membership is open to ``any 
other European state in a position to further the principles of this 
treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.''
  NATO has been an unprecedented success in deterring conflict and 
promoting peace and stability. Toward these ends, NATO has been 
expanded three times in the past. To remain relevant and successful in 
the future, NATO must keep its doors open to those European democracies 
ready to bear the responsibilities, as well as the burdens, of 
membership.
  NATO enlargement is a policy deeply rooted in this principle, often 
driven by moral imperatives, but equally important strategic self-
interest and objective criteria concerning military readiness and 
political and economic reform.
  It is not easy to become a NATO member. This is not like signing up 
for an American Express card. New NATO members must meet stringent 
military base criteria. They must also demonstrate a commitment to 
resolve ethnic disputes and territorial disputes by peaceful means. In 
fact, the prospect of NATO membership has led newly free countries in 
Europe to settle border disputes.
  Potential NATO members must also show a commitment to promote 
stability and well-being by promoting economic liberty, social justice 
and environmental responsibility. They must establish democratic and 
civilian control of their military, a transparent military budget and 
be fit for duty, as well as using diplomacy as its first tool of 
dispute resolution.
  You have to do that in order to even be considered. So, therefore, I 
oppose the Warner amendment because it would freeze or reduce U.S. 
flexibility within the alliance and, at the same time, close the door 
that article X gave as a message of optimism and hope.
  The Warner amendment would repudiate article X and its message of 
optimism and hope, which is what a freeze on enlargement would do. It 
would be seen by reformist countries of Central Europe as a door being 
shut. Do we really want to send such a disillusioning message to those 
other countries that are working for democracy, economic reform and 
civilian control of their military?
  Article X of the Washington treaty was a source of hope to Central 
Europe during Soviet oppression. The prospect of NATO membership 
remains an important incentive for democratic and economic reform. It 
has already motivated the reconciliations between Germany and the Czech 
Republic, Germany and Poland, Romania and Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, 
and Italy and Slovenia, among others. The civil and military agreements 
between these countries have helped to consolidate peace and stability 
in Central Europe, and these things must be protected and not undercut.
  Third, a mandated pause would create a new dividing line in Europe. 
If Central European countries not invited into NATO conclude that the 
process of enlargement has not only been stalled but stopped, a key 
incentive behind their current participation in NATO's Partnership for 
Peace Program, a military partnership, would be eliminated. A key 
achievement of this program is the coordination that it now fosters 
between their defense planning and force structure development. Thus, a 
freeze on enlargement would impede, if not reverse, this remarkable 
development of European security around an alliance-determined agenda. 
This is what NATO is all about.
  Fourth, an arbitrary freeze on NATO enlargement would harm Russia's 
historic reconciliation with NATO and the United States. A freeze would 
appear to give Moscow a veto over NATO enlargement. It certainly would 
be interpreted as a victory for the hard-liners by those who still 
advocate a Russian sphere of influence over its neighbors, those who 
wish to see that Russia could deny the entry into NATO of these three 
democracies.
  Worse, it could lead others to draw the conclusion that they will 
never ever have a chance to join NATO and never ever get out of the 
Russian sphere of influence. A freeze would undercut the basic 
principles that all of Europe's states have a right to choose their own 
security arrangements--a principle that must be one of the cornerstones 
of Russia's relationships with the United States and NATO membership.
  Mr. President, the resolution of ratification passed the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations 16 to 2, and on that day that it voted, 
March 3, 1998, it explicitly addressed the concerns of those accusing 
the alliance of moving too fast on enlargement. It states:

       The United States will not support the admission of, or the 
     invitation for admission of, any new NATO member, unless . . 
     . (I) the President consults with the Senate consistent with 
     article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution of the 
     United States . . . and (II) the prospective members can 
     fulfill the obligations and responsibilities of membership, 
     and its inclusion would serve the overall political and 
     strategic interests of NATO and the United States.

  That is what the committee voted on, that we just would not have an 
open door but it would be an open door according to article X of the 
treaty we already adopted.
  Mr. President, I encourage my colleagues, no matter how well-
intentioned--no matter how well-intentioned the Warner amendment is, I 
think it would absolutely undercut peace and stability.
  Mr. President, also in terms of the Moynihan amendment, I want to 
associate myself with your remarks in which you said we could not be 
part of NATO under that, Canada could not, Turkey could not. And if we 
then would adopt the Moynihan amendment, should we then consider an 
amendment that would remove from NATO any members that are now part of 
EU?
  What would that mean? It would take us out. It would take Canada out. 
It would take Turkey out. I do not think it is logical.
  I know there are many concerns about Russia. I know my time is 
limited and others wish to speak on this amendment. Later on this 
afternoon I will give my thoughts on Russia. I wish to maintain a 
constructive relationship with Russia, but I do not think this is the 
time nor the place to then give in to the Russian hard-liners but to 
focus on the new Russia, which I believe is not an imperial Russia.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, on behalf of the Senator 
from Virginia, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from North Dakota.

[[Page S3834]]

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, to accommodate the Senate on the schedule 
that Mr. Smith and I are working on, from the standpoint of the 
proponents of my amendment, following Mr. Dorgan, it would be desirable 
to have the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Wellstone, follow for a period 
of 5 minutes, and then Mr. Smith would care for about 3 or 4 minutes. 
Now, there is time within which the opposition, of course, will want to 
intervene, and we certainly will go back and forth on this.
  We also wish to accommodate the senior Senator from Alaska. He has 
two amendments, is that correct, I say to the Senator?
  Mr. STEVENS. That is correct.
  Mr. WARNER. The time that the Senator from Alaska desires under his 
control would be how much?
  Mr. STEVENS. Well, 30 minutes. I am willing to have a time agreement 
on the amendments. It was my understanding, Mr. President, one of them 
would be accepted. That may have changed in the last few minutes. But 
in any event, I do not need more than 20 minutes myself to explain my 
two amendments.
  Mr. WARNER. Fine.
  Mr. President, I would suggest that the votes, then, on the two 
Warner amendments and the one on Senator Craig's from last night be 
deferred until the Senator from Alaska has had an opportunity to 
address his two amendments, and such time as whatever opposition there 
may be required, and then we vote on the five amendments in sequence 
thereafter, with the normal time allocated to the first vote and for 10 
minutes allocated to each of the other four votes, with a total of 
five. I would suggest that request, on my behalf, be considered by the 
distinguished ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee and 
others before it is finalized, but that is a suggestion.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  Mr. WARNER. The suggestion I made, I say to my colleague, is that the 
senior Senator from Alaska wishes perhaps 20 minutes on his two 
amendments, and such time as you have, the votes scheduled for 3 p.m. 
be deferred until his amendments are discussed by the senior Senator 
and yourself, and then we take five consecutive votes, with the normal 
time allocated to the first vote, and 10 minutes to each vote 
thereafter.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Let me say that, first of all, I do not know what the 
Stevens amendment is, so I do not want to agree to a time agreement. He 
is a very formidable adversary on these issues, and I am not about to 
agree to a time agreement on what I do not know, No. 1.
  Mr. STEVENS. Could I respond to that?
  Mr. BIDEN. Surely.
  Mr. STEVENS. The amendments have been submitted. It is 
my understanding that one of them was cleared on both sides. That may 
have changed within the last 30 minutes. The second one will be 
modified, as requested by the Secretary of Defense and the vice 
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We have modified that at their 
request to make the portion dealing with reduction in the U.S. 
contribution to NATO to be a sense of the Senate rather than mandatory. 
But there is a mandatory cap in that amendment. And it will be 
controversial, I do admit.

  Why do I need unanimous consent? I will wait my turn.
  Mr. BIDEN. No. I am not trying to be an obstructionist at all. No. 1, 
I am told by my staff--A, I don't know about the amendment, 
notwithstanding it has been filed. I have been concentrating on other 
things. No. 2, I am told by my staff--and they may be incorrect; staff 
as well as Senators often are--the fact is that I am told that Senator 
Helms has not signed off on any amendment yet.
  Mr. STEVENS. I am not asking for people to sign off on the amendment. 
I am only asking for time to debate it and have a vote.
  Mr. BIDEN. I am delighted to have time to debate it. That is why I 
think we should just go ahead, have the two amendments, vote. And then 
the Senator and I and others who wish to debate it from 3 o'clock on, 
to debate as long as you want. That is fine by me.
  Mr. STEVENS. All I am trying to do, Mr. President, is accommodate the 
Senate. I thought instead of having three votes, have five votes after 
we are finished. It is all right by me. I will wait. I want to be 
assured some time--I am leading a delegation, pursuant to the Byrd 
amendment to the supplemental bill, to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia tonight. 
I would prefer that we were going to finish this or postpone it until 
we get back, one or the other.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, every effort is being made to accommodate 
the important mission undertaken by the Senator from Alaska and to have 
the final votes on this treaty tonight. This Senator has given his 
commitment to the leadership of the Senate. I suggest that we continue 
with this debate now and that the colleagues confer on the Stevens 
amendments and then revisit the possibility of five consecutive votes.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, what is the order of business after the--
if I may, with the Senator's permission?
  Mr. BIDEN. Yes.
  Mr. STEVENS. What is the order of business after the Warner vote, 
after the three votes scheduled at 3 o'clock? Is there an agreement 
after that time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We have two pending amendments that we would 
go back to after the vote. They would have to be disposed of and then 
other amendments offered.
  Mr. WARNER. Of course, Mr. President, they could be laid aside to 
accommodate the Senator from Alaska.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent I be permitted to lay them aside 
after the scheduled votes at 3 o'clock and take up my two amendments at 
that time before I leave.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. ABRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. I do not intend to object, but I wonder, before the 
Senator from Delaware leaves the floor, prior to his arriving, the 
Senator from Virginia outlined a series of speakers who will speak in 
support of the amendment, but we did not establish a lineup for 
speakers who would speak in opposition to Senator Warner's amendment.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am delighted to yield 5 minutes to my 
friend from Michigan.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. I believe we established Senator Dorgan would speak 
next. And if we could establish as part of that unanimous consent 
that----
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, for the benefit of my colleagues, those 
wishing to speak in opposition to the amendment, that I have been told 
of, who have not yet spoken, two of them, who are here, are the Senator 
from Michigan and the Senator from Virginia, Senator Robb, with the 
possibility of the Senator from Indiana, Senator Lugar, and the Senator 
from Arizona, Senator McCain, all of whom are against the amendment, I 
believe all of whom wish to speak against the amendment, two of whom 
are here. And since I have very limited time left, the two who are here 
I am very happy to give 5 minutes to, and those who show up next I will 
give 5 minutes, and then I am out of time. It is my full intention to 
yield to the Senator from Michigan to speak in opposition.

  Mr. ABRAHAM. Fine.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request made by the 
Senator from Alaska?
  Hearing none, without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. STEVENS. One additional request, if I may. I ask that my second 
amendment be modified. I have that right without unanimous consent. And 
I send it to the desk so that it can be reproduced so all Senators have 
a copy of it when I call it up after the 3 o'clock votes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the Senator can modify a 
previously submitted amendment.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Although I have no objection--I realize we have gotten 
unanimous consent already with the Senator from Alaska going next--as 
soon as I did not object, I was informed by my Cloakroom that Senator 
Conrad, whose amendment is one of those listed as next, objected to it 
being put aside. I wanted Senator Conrad to know I did not realize he 
would object to that. I

[[Page S3835]]

just want the Record to show that I was unaware of that.
  Mr. STEVENS. I do not wish to inconvenience Senator Conrad. I would 
be perfectly willing to wait if he is the next one in line. So I can 
get in line and I know what the time is, so I can plan the day. And I 
can tell the Senator, I will not take longer than 30 minutes on my 
amendments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, at this point I ask the Chair to advise 
the Senate with regard to the remaining time under the pending 
amendment, the Warner-Moynihan 3-year moratorium.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia has 16 minutes 18 
seconds and 17 minutes 2 seconds to the opposition.

  Mr. WARNER. So the time has been consumed by this important colloquy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. WARNER. I ask unanimous consent that 10 minutes equally divided 
be restored, given that this colloquy was essential.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WARNER. I thank the Chair.
  The order is that Senator Dorgan will now proceed. If the Senator 
would limit remarks to 8 minutes in favor of the amendment, the Senator 
from Minnesota would take 5 minutes, and the Senator from New Hampshire 
takes 3 minutes, that would enable the Senator from Virginia 2 or 3 
minutes in conclusion.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to come to the floor of the 
Senate to support the amendment offered by Senator Warner. I have not 
yet been part of this debate. I have followed it closely and read a 
great deal and want to speak about the larger issue and then explain 
why I support the amendment offered by the Senator from Virginia.
  The proposal brought to this Senate to expand NATO raises a range of 
questions that will still be unanswered as we vote on this treaty later 
this evening. Let me just describe a couple of them.
  First of all, the cost. The cost estimates for the enlargement of 
NATO range from a few billion dollars to $125 billion. Our major 
European allies have made it clear that they have little intention of 
spending another lira, another franc, another pound, to pay for the 
expansion of NATO. The question, then, is: What will be the cost to the 
American taxpayer? We don't yet know.
  Further, will there be a second round to expand NATO? The NATO 
Secretary-General said that there will be a second round, possibly 
including Romania, Slovenia, and three Baltic States. If there is a 
second round, what will that cost be? And if there is a third round, 
would it include some of the 19 other members of the Partnership for 
Peace in Central and Eastern Europe? Where does NATO expansion stop? We 
don't yet know.
  The other question is: What is the threat that requires the 
enlargement of NATO? What is the threat to Poland, Hungary, and the 
Czech Republic that justifies NATO expansion? I am convinced these 
countries need economic integration into Europe rather than military 
integration into NATO.
  The Warner amendment says, let us take the time to answer these basic 
questions. Let's wait for three years before we admit any more nations 
into NATO. Let's pause and try to understand what all of this will 
cost, what exactly is the threat, and what our response should be.
  But more importantly, a three-year pause also will enable us to work 
with Russia to ensure our relations with Russia do not suffer as a 
result of the policy we seem about to endorse this evening.
  NATO expansion, make no mistake about it, will play a large role in 
determining whether we will have a cooperative or a confrontational 
relationship with Russia in the years to come. I don't say this because 
I am sensitive to the feelings of Russia. I say it because I am 
sensitive to our own security interests.
  I take a moment of the brief time that I have to describe why our 
relationship with Russia should play a role in this decision.
  I wonder how many of my colleagues are aware of an incident that 
occurred on December 3, 1997, in the dark hours of the early morning, 
north of Norway in the Barents Sea. Several Russian ballistic missile 
submarines surfaced on December 3, last year, and prepared to fire SSN-
20 missiles. Each of these missiles can carry 10 nuclear warheads and 
travel 5,000 miles--far enough to have reached the United States from 
the Barents Sea. Those submarines surfaced and launched 20 ballistic 
missiles. Roaring skyward, they rose to 30,000 feet. U.S. satellites 
tracked their path.
  Last December 3, the radar and satellites in our Space Command NORAD 
complex and elsewhere saw that at 30,000 feet those Russian missiles 
exploded, they were destroyed. Why? Because this was not a Russian 
missile attack. In fact, seven American weapons inspectors were 
watching from a ship a few miles away as the missiles were launched. 
These self-destruct launches were a quick and cheap way for Russia to 
destroy submarine-launched missiles, which it is required to do under 
the START I arms control treaty.

  Mr. President, let me present one more piece of evidence about what 
is really important. This is a hinge, and with the permission of the 
Presiding Officer, I show it to my colleagues on the Senate floor. This 
is a hinge that comes from a missile silo in the former Soviet Union. 
This belonged to a silo that housed an SS-19 with warheads poised at 
the United States. This piece of a missile silo, with a missile and 
warhead aimed at the United States, comes from a silo that doesn't any 
longer exist. This comes from a silo which this picture shows is now 
gone. Silo removed, gone. The missile is gone. The warhead is gone. And 
where a silo once stood, sunflowers are planted.
  How did that happen, that a Soviet missile was destroyed by taking it 
out of its silo? This country, with a program called Nunn-Lugar, helped 
pay for the cost of that. With that program, and under our arms control 
treaties, we help destroy the weapons of potential adversaries so they 
can never be used against us.
  Now, the question for all of us is, What does enlarging NATO do to 
our relationship with Russia? There is no one on this floor who can 
stand and tell you with certainty what it does, but there is plenty of 
evidence that this is a step backward, not forward, with respect to our 
relationship with Russia.
  One of the great lessons of this century's history is that the United 
States gains when we respect a former enemy. We have been through the 
cold war with the Soviet Union. They lost. The Soviet Union no longer 
exists.
  Russia has enough fissile material to make 40,000 nuclear weapons if 
it wanted to. That's why our relationship with Russia is critically 
important. That relationship will determine whether we will see more 
nuclear missile silos planted with sunflowers, whether we will see 
bombers having their wing cut off --as this picture shows--whether we 
will see more progress in arms reduction.
  The principal threat, in my judgment, to peace in this world is not a 
threat of a land invasion of Poland, the Czech Republic, or Hungary. 
The principal threat is the threat of nuclear weapons--loose nuclear 
weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, or proliferation of 
nuclear weapons to rogue nations, or a resumption of the nuclear arms 
race. We are on a path in this country, because of our arms control 
agreements and cooperative relationship with Russia, where both sides 
are now destroying nuclear weapons. This is very, very important 
progress for humankind.
  We now are confronted here in the U.S. Senate with a question of 
enlarging NATO, a security alliance in Western Europe, at the expense 
of, in my judgment, our relationship with Russia. I don t want to see 
our relationship with Russia deteriorate into a new cold war 
confrontation and a resumption of nuclear weapons production. In my 
judgment, we expand NATO at the potential risk of reigniting a cold war 
and impeding and retarding progress on arms reduction.
  The Senator from Virginia brings an amendment to the floor that says 
if we go to a first round of NATO enlargement, and if the vote is 
successful tonight, before we expand further let us at least pause for 
3 years to answer the

[[Page S3836]]

questions I posed at the start of my presentation. What will this cost? 
What will this cost, and who will pay the bill? What is the threat, and 
where does the threat come from? And what does this do to arms control 
agreements that now, as I speak, are resulting in the destruction of 
missiles, the retirement of delivery vehicles, the sawing off of wings 
of Russian bombers?
  What does it do to that progress, progress that comes from arms 
control treaties and a bipartisan initiative here in Congress called 
Nunn-Lugar to help implement those treaties? In the Nunn-Lugar program 
we provide money to accommodate arms control agreements, to help the 
other side destroy their nuclear weapons. These are the weapons that 
were once housed in a silo that contained this piece of metal, near 
Pervomaisk, a former Soviet missile base. What does NATO expansion do 
to the progress that this piece of metal represents?
  This piece of metal was in a silo that housed a missile with a 
nuclear warhead aimed at our country, but it is now just metal, and the 
ground is now sunflowers. That is substantial progress, in my view, for 
this world.
  The question we need to ask, all of us, is, What does this issue, 
NATO enlargement, have to do with this progress? Will it impede this 
progress? Will it retard the progress of arms control? No one here 
knows the answer for certain. Our Nation's foremost experts on foreign 
policy are sharply divided. Yet, and I say this regretfully, the Senate 
seems prepared to vote on NATO expansion without understanding its 
potential consequences.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. DORGAN. I yield the floor and thank the Senator from Virginia for 
his time.
  Mr. ABRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan is recognized.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I will speak briefly in opposition to the 
Warner amendment. I will begin by saying that I think there are clear 
lessons that can be learned, but I disagree with my distinguished 
colleague from North Dakota as to what they are.
  I think the last half of the 20th century demonstrated that when 
America did not assert itself adequately and act in its best interests 
after World War II by embracing the nations of Central and Eastern 
Europe, we in fact contributed to the development of a cold war; that 
when we in fact invested in our national security and asserted 
ourselves effectively--particularly during the 1980s--we brought the 
cold war to an end successfully. That is why I believe it is in our 
interests to move forward with expansion of NATO at this time.
  In light of these reasons, I think it is ill advised for us to set 
arbitrary limits or deadlines or pauses in considering NATO expansion. 
If it is in our best interests to expand NATO quickly, then I want to 
maintain that possibility. If it is not in our best interests to expand 
NATO beyond the three countries under consideration today, then the 
process already established in the North Atlantic Council and our own 
constitutional advice and consent ratification requirements provide us 
more than enough protection against rash action.
  Let me speak briefly and more specifically as to other reasons I 
oppose the amendment offered by my colleague from Virginia mandating a 
``strategic pause.''
  First, I believe such a pause would send exactly the wrong signal at 
this critical point in history, as it would represent a drastic change 
in U.S. policy. The United States led the charge at last year's Madrid 
summit to keep the door open for future NATO expansion. Throughout the 
general discussion on expanding NATO, we also declared that any 
possible offer of NATO membership would be dependent upon successful 
implementation of democratization and market reform programs. Taking 
away the possibility of NATO membership, even for just 3 years, may 
also take away the incentive for completion of reform.
  Second, I believe the Senate's position during any future membership 
negotiations will be protected. During Foreign Relations Committee 
hearings on this issue, both Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright 
expressed the administration's understanding of the need for 
consultation with the Senate prior to any future round of expansion. I 
believe that commitment is secure, given their scrupulous consultation 
process with the Senate that has gone on throughout the current 
expansion phase.
  Finally, I think we must look at this round of expansion in its 
historical context. Article X of the North Atlantic Treaty specifically 
provides for the expansion of NATO to any European state in a position 
to further the principles of the treaty and contribute to North 
Atlantic security. This article has been utilized over the past 50 
years for the accession of West Germany, Greece, Turkey, and Spain. 
This is not a brand new process but one we have always kept open to 
review.

  NATO's Secretary General stated at the Madrid summit:

       In keeping with our pledge to maintain an open door to the 
     admission of additional Alliance members in the future, we 
     also direct that NATO Foreign Ministers keep that process 
     under continual review and report to us. We will review the 
     process at our next meeting in 1999.

  This shows that NATO enlargement is an issue regularly reviewed by 
the North Atlantic Council, just as are the structure and requirements 
of the NATO armed forces.
  In summary, I strongly oppose any measure which will place additional 
roadblocks in the way of future NATO expansion, roadblocks that are not 
needed and will only lead to further feelings of abandonment and 
exclusion by nations wanting to join the West. A decision to enlarge 
NATO should not be based on a rigid time line; rather, it should be the 
net result of thoughtful deliberation--a process already well protected 
by both the North Atlantic Treaty and our Constitution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the 
Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, let me associate myself 
with the amendment earlier introduced by Senator Moynihan from New 
York. I have said before on the floor of the Senate--and I will say it 
again--the Senator from New York, I think, has said something very 
important with his amendment, which is that we should be using our 
prestige as a great country to really insist on membership to the EU 
for Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland. That is what is most 
important to enable them to reach their goals.
  Also, let me associate myself with the amendment of my colleague from 
Virginia, Senator Warner. I think what he is saying in this amendment 
is: Colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, please go slowly.
  Mr. President, many of us had the opportunity to serve with Senator 
Nunn. I think more of us should talk about him and his wisdom. Senator 
Nunn raised three questions about NATO expansion. The first question 
is: Will this help us in easing or dealing with the whole problem of 
proliferation of weapons that might go to Third World countries--the 
kind of cooperation we need with Russia? The answer that Senator Nunn 
gives to that question is no.
  The second question Senator Nunn asked is: What about nuclear 
threats? Is this going to help us in terms of further arms agreement 
with Russia? Is this going to move the world away from reliance on 
nuclear weapons? The answer Senator Nunn gives is no.
  The third question that Senator Nunn raised is: What about reform 
within Russia? What about the forces for democracy? What are the 
democrats--with a small ``d''--all trying to tell us? The answer, 
Senator Nunn says, is they are telling us with this NATO expansion, 
expanding the military alliance against a Soviet Union that no longer 
exists, against a military threat that no longer exists, is a huge step 
backward.
  Mr. President, I will conclude this way. Other colleagues are on the 
floor and want to speak. From Senator Sam Nunn to Senator Patrick 
Moynihan, to Senator John Warner, to George Kennan, to scholars like 
Howard Mendelbaum, to prophetic thinkers like George Kennan, and, more 
importantly, the forces for democracy in Russia, there has been an 
eloquent and powerful plea to all of us to understand that this could 
be a tragic mistake.

[[Page S3837]]

  Mr. President, I fear it will be a tragic mistake. I hope my 
colleagues will vote for Senator Moynihan's amendment. I hope they will 
vote for Senator Warner's amendments. I want to say one more time that 
I am in profound disagreement with NATO expansion. I think there will 
be fateful consequences. If we approve this, I hope and pray that I am 
wrong, but I have to speak for what I believe is right for my country 
and the world.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I have 16 minutes remaining in my control. 
For the benefit of the Senators, so I don't get myself in more trouble 
in the allocation of time, I am going to yield, in the following order: 
5 minutes to the Senator from Virginia, 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Delaware, and 5 minutes to the Senator from Arizona. That will leave me 
probably 10 seconds. I now yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Virginia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, it is not my intention today to belabor the 
points, so eloquently made by the principal proponents of this 
Resolution of Ratification--including the President, the Secretary of 
State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, and by the leadership of this body, and the Chairman and Ranking 
Members of the Foreign Relations Committee--about why enlarging NATO is 
in our national strategic interest.
  The three national security committees on which I serve have 
dedicated an extraordinary amount of time to this issue, examining the 
full ramifications of enlarging NATO in over a dozen hearings, and 
following that intensive process I remain persuaded, that we ought to 
move ahead.
  I certainly don't discount the concerns, that have been raised, by a 
number of highly respected opponents of ratification, most of whom I am 
normally in agreement with on national security matters, but I find the 
arguments advanced by the advocates more persuasive.
  I would like to focus my remarks more narrowly on the implications 
for American leadership in Europe and beyond. The critical notion in my 
mind, is not simply that NATO is inviting Poland, Hungary, and the 
Czech Republic into its ranks, but that through our leadership, we've 
played a fundamental role in casting the light of freedom across 
Europe, and are prepared in peacetime or war, to guarantee the security 
of these new democracies.
  Keeping the peace is something NATO has been doing well for 50 years. 
When an entity works as well as NATO has, in fact, the American people 
tend to either ignore it or take it for granted. Perhaps that explains 
the lack of widespread public interest in expanding NATO.
  We have come to think of Europe mostly as a market for our goods, no 
longer as a territory under Soviet threat. Public apathy aside, we 
forget the lessons of history that made the 20th Century the single 
bloodiest of all, at our peril.
  On two occasions American isolationism has led to world wars. What we 
thought was benign neglect of Europe turned out to be an abject failure 
of our leadership. Harry Truman was right when he said that if NATO had 
existed in 1914 or 1939, we never would have seen the toll in human 
lives that followed.
  Mr. President, it is an undeniable fact that NATO has contributed 
dramatically to Europe's peace, stability, and democracy the past 50 
years, and hence to our own security. The alliance was integral to the 
dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in the 1980s, to tearing down the Berlin 
Wall in 1989, and to hastening the overall demise of the Soviet Union 
and the end of the Cold War.

  Now, some wonder, if it is still relevant, and express serious doubts 
as to whether or not we should expand it.
  Mr. President, it will be decades before we know with any certainty 
whether central Europe establishes itself in toto as a model of 
democratic rule, or something less. But it is not difficult to conjure 
up images of exclusive ethnic and latent ultra-nationalism underlying 
future conflict.
  The historical legacy of the region generally is worrisome. World War 
I started with a mere gunshot in Sarejevo. And even recent history in 
the region shows that stability can't be treated as a foregone 
conclusion given the conflagration of the former Yugoslavia after Tito. 
And now Kosovo threatens to inflame the area all over again.
  NATO has performed admirably in restoring a semblance of order in 
Bosnia. Yet the job is far from finished. We face years of civil and 
political reconstruction. But NATO and American leadership have made 
the difference in resuscitating that country.
  Mr. President, Bosnia demonstrates that the stakes are far too great 
to view NATO as some kind of anachronism.
  NATO is a vibrant, meaningful, omnipresent military institution that 
helps preserve a favorable security environment. And let me emphasize 
that it safeguards American vital interests. We don't lead NATO as a 
favor to Europe.
  Mr. President, perhaps the greatest challenge, or opportunity, in all 
this lies in developing a partnership between Russia and an expanded 
NATO. The Permanent Joint Council we've established with the Russians 
secures an important role for them in the new security architecture of 
Europe.
  We should welcome their input and value their advice in charting a 
new course for the Continent. Russia, after all, has been a player in 
Europe for better than 300 years. We can, and should, pursue those 
mutual security concerns with Russia that contribute toward peace and 
stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.
  At the same time, an expanded NATO will retain the right to act 
independently, as has been the case for fifty years. Its core purpose 
will continue to be to ensure its own security through collective 
defense.
  Where there might be disagreements, Russia should not interpret NATO 
actions as trampling on its national security prerogatives.
  Rather, the aim of the alliance, in Vaclav Havel's words, ``is first 
and foremost an instrument of democracy, intended to defend mutually 
held and created political and spiritual values * * * [and is] the 
guarantor of Euro-American civilization.''
  NATO's expansion will erase the artificial lines drawn by Stalin, but 
is not and should not be perceived as a threat to Russia's security.
  It is in our interest, and we should provide tangible support to 
further develop Russia as a peaceful democracy. Expanding NATO helps 
consolidate the hard fought gains of winning the Cold War, and sets a 
useful example for Russia among its neighbors to continue with 
democratic reforms internally.
  Mr. President, the working predicate of a number of the amendments 
before the Senate seem designed to make the accession process more 
cumbersome and unwieldy. I believe we need to distinguish this 
particular matter, however, from common appropriations and 
authorization legislation we amend and consider in the Senate.
  I believe, ambiguity regarding the protocol terms of entry, for 
example, will have a corrosive effect on our ability to lead the 
organization in the future. Existing and future members begin to focus 
more on American conditions instead of affirmative American leadership.
  Mandating a multi-year pause in expansion, for example, would lead us 
into the same difficulty we encountered setting deadlines for troop 
withdrawals from Bosnia. Critical national decisions based on carefully 
reasoned and supported judgments are subjugated to an artificial time 
line that could actually end up proving harmful to our military 
interests.
  We need to be flexible rather than arbitrary about future entrants 
into NATO: If the first round goes well, the Partnership for Peace 
program will keep the door open for new members. Present and future 
security considerations will then dictate the pace and scope of 
enlargement.
  Along these same lines conditioning NATO membership on EU membership 
strikes a discomfiting parallel between two organizations whose core 
missions are fundamentally different, one being military and the other 
economic and social.
  The amendment would, in effect, allow a group of EU nations veto 
power over a critical decision affecting U.S.

[[Page S3838]]

national security: our choice of military allies in any future 
contingency.
  In all three previous rounds of NATO enlargement--Turkey and Greece 
in 1952, Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982--it was clearly understood 
that expansion presaged European economic development and integration 
as a key benefit, not the other way around. Now, inclusion in NATO will 
help establish a climate of confidence for these three countries as 
they seek foreign direct investment and pursue economic integration.
  Mr. President, strengthening NATO by expanding its ranks contributes 
to a peaceful, democratic, free and unified Europe. As the security 
landscape of central Europe rapidly changes, we ought to take advantage 
of this historic moment. A static, cautionary approach misses the 
opportunity to extend democratic principles across Europe.
  Vaclav Havel, perhaps better than anyone, has stripped away the 
layers of argument on each side, observing that ``if the West does not 
stabilize the East, the East will destabilize the West.'' Europe looks 
to the United States for leadership, and it is time for us to act.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Resolution of Ratification before 
us, and oppose burdensome amendments that would weaken an enlarged 
NATO.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. WARNER. The distinguished Senator from New York desires to speak 
on behalf of the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, in brief, a moment of history about 
Russia.
  On March 20, 1917, one of the most momentous Cabinet meetings in 
American history took place in which Woodrow Wilson and his Cabinet 
judged that German submarine warfare had reached a point which left the 
United States with no choice but to enter the war on behalf of the 
Allied Powers. In 13 days Wilson would convened Congress and speak to a 
joint session asking for recognition of the state of war with Germany. 
At the Cabinet meeting, Robert Lansing, as Secretary of State, spoke in 
favor of doing this. He captured the meeting in a memorandum in which 
he wrote: ``I said that the revolution in Russia which appeared to be 
successful had removed the one objection to affirming that the European 
war was a war between democracy and absolutism.''
  Sir, in 1917, Russia had a democratic revolution. As a schoolchild in 
New York, I can recall the head of that provisional government, Mr. 
Kerensky, would come around to our assemblies to tell us about it. That 
democratic revolution was crushed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in St. 
Petersburg. And the country lived a hideous 70 years under that regime. 
Then the Russians liberated themselves. They did it internally.
  They had to face a second coup against Mr. Gorbachev with tanks 
around the government buildings. The tanks withdrew and the forces of 
an earlier protodemocratic government prevailed. There are Russians who 
genuinely believe that they liberated their country. They now once more 
have the possibilities they had at the beginning of the century before 
the Bolsheviks took power. Why some of us here hated the Bolsheviks, 
hated Lenin and Stalin, and their successes, was not just for what they 
stood for but for what they had crushed.
  There is a belief that is growing in Russia--one learns this; one 
hears this--that they not only freed themselves of the infamous Stalin 
and Lenin but also the countries around them; and that they should be 
seen now as a partner, not as the enemy. They were under the rule of 
the their enemies.
  I hope we will see this and not expand in their direction an alliance 
that was formed against Joseph Stalin and his politburo. Give us a 
chance to bring Russia into the democratic world in which it almost 
entered and which will now be put in jeopardy, or so some of us 
believe. What a historic failure that would be.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to my friend from 
Arizona.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I would like to begin by stating my 
opposition to the Ashcroft amendment which would too narrowly limit 
NATO's freedom of action by permitting NATO missions only for 
collective self-defense, or in response to a threat to the territorial 
integrity, political independence, or security of a NATO member.
  I believe that is understandable--the concerns that have led to this 
amendment being proposed, and some valid points have been made. 
Clearly, the NATO military forces must not be used frivolously. I do 
not believe that NATO is an organization that should take on worldwide 
military missions that have nothing to do with European security.
  I think these types of problems, however, should be avoided as NATO 
makes decisions--not limitations to be placed on NATO's ability to make 
decisions. When real-world challenges arise, we need the ability to 
have free and unfettered consultations with our allies on all possible 
courses of action before a decision is reached. Article IV of the NATO 
treaty already permits this kind of unrestricted consultation, as it 
has ever since Dean Acheson first presented it to the Senate 49 years 
ago.

  The Ashcroft amendment would for the first time restrict the scope of 
such article IV consultation by preventing NATO from considering taking 
action in many cases--even if we and our allies believed that such 
action would serve our common security interests. This is an 
unwarranted restriction on our freedom to consult and take joint action 
with our allies through NATO.
  The fear that NATO might take on missions that the United States 
opposes is unfounded. We already have all the safeguards we need at 
NATO because we have a veto. There can be no NATO mission, no military 
operation, no out-of-area deployment, unless the United States 
specifically supports that decision. Mr. President, not only do we have 
a veto but the United States is a leader of NATO. Rather than our 
getting dragged into missions we do not want, the reality at NATO is 
the opposite. The United States has always been the country to take a 
strong leadership position and to seek support from our European 
allies. We are the ones who seek to spread the burdens of maintaining 
security to our allies, not the other way around. The Ashcroft 
amendment would give a powerful tool to those allies who may seek to 
dodge burden sharing, who may want to prevent an active NATO role, or 
who would otherwise oppose a strong U.S. leadership role.
  I suspect that part of the motivation behind this amendment is a lack 
of confidence that the current U.S. administration will say no to 
military operations when it has to. That is a concern I fully 
understand. But a lack of confidence in the current administration is 
one thing to be dealt with between the Congress and the White House. 
Putting a hard and fast limit on NATO, the most successful military 
alliance in history, and the best tool we have for spreading the 
burdens of common security, is quite another thing.
  Mr. President, this is a serious amendment and one that I think would 
have serious consequences on our alliance and our relations with our 
allies, as well as our ability to act in the United States vital 
national security interests.
  Finally, I oppose the Warner amendment because I believe it is an 
artificial barrier. I don't believe that we want to keep countries out 
of NATO. We can do that already because we have a veto of NATO. If the 
administration were to make a bad decision, we in the Senate could 
still withhold our consent at that time. But if we decide our own 
national security interests warrant bringing a qualified country into 
NATO in less than 3 years, this amendment would prevent us from doing 
so. I don't see why we would want to limit ourselves in this way.

  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. After consultation with the distinguished Senator from 
Virginia, in light of the fact several more Senators have asked to 
speak, I would ask unanimous consent, if the Senator is listening, for 
10 additional minutes equally divided.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, no objection.

[[Page S3839]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BIDEN. My intention in terms of the now 10 minutes total time I 
control, I will yield 5 to my senior colleague from Delaware, and then 
I will yield the remaining 5--and I think that will leave me 1 minute 
to close--to the distinguished Senator from West Virginia, just so 
people will know the order.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware is recognized.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, as well intentioned as the Warner amendment 
may be, I urge my colleagues to oppose it. To accept it would be 
inconsistent with the NATO Treaty. It would unnecessarily limit U.S. 
flexibility in pursuing further enlargement. It is constitutionally 
unnecessary. And, above all, it undercuts the tremendous gains for 
peace accomplished over the last decade in Central Europe and in our 
relationship with Russia.
  What this amendment proposes is an arbitrary freeze--or a pause--in 
the enlargement process. This, despite the fact that Article 10 of the 
Washington Treaty, the Alliance's founding charter, states clearly that 
membership is open to, and I quote, ``any other European state in a 
position to further the principles of this treaty and to contribute to 
the security of the North Atlantic area.''
  Mr. President, we all agree that NATO is an unprecedented success in 
deterring conflict and promoting peace and stability. Toward these 
ends, NATO has been expanded three times in the past. To remain vital, 
relevant, and successful in the future, NATO must remain consistent 
with Article 10 and keep its doors open to those European democracies 
ready to bear the responsibilities and burdens of membership.
  NATO enlargement is a policy rooted in this principle and driven by 
moral imperatives, strategic self-interest, and objective criteria 
concerning military readiness and political and economic reform. Any 
proposal to freeze enlargement--whether it be permanent or temporary--
subordinates these factors to an arbitrary timeline. And it opens the 
door to other significantly adverse consequences for the United States 
and the Alliance:
  First, a freeze would reduce U.S. flexibility and leverage within 
NATO. It would unnecessarily undercut our ability--and the Alliance's 
ability--to respond to the inherent uncertainty of the future.
  Second, it would send an unfortunate, and even dangerous message to 
the reformist governments of Central Europe. They would suppose--and 
not incorrectly--that the United States is slamming the door shut 
concerning their possible accession into the Alliance.
  Do we really wish to send such a disillusioning message?
  Article 10 of the Washington Treaty was a source of hope to Central 
Europeans during Soviet oppression. The prospect of NATO membership 
remains an important incentive for democratic and economic reform. It 
has motivated the reconciliations between Germany and the Czech 
Republic, Germany and Poland, Romania and Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, 
as well as Italy and Slovenia, among others. Their unprecedented 
efforts to cooperate among themselves and to jointly consolidate peace 
and security in that region must be strengthened, not undercut.
  Third, a mandated pause created by this amendment would prompt a new 
dividing line in Europe. If Central European countries not invited into 
NATO conclude that the process of enlargement has not only stalled, but 
stopped, a key incentive behind the aforementioned regional 
cooperation, including their current participation in NATO's 
Partnership for Peace program, will be seriously undercut. Thus, a 
freeze on enlargement would impede, if not reverse, the remarkable 
development of European security around an Alliance-determined agenda.
  Fourth, Mr. President, an arbitrary freeze on NATO enlargement would 
harm Russia's historic reconciliation with NATO and the United States. 
A freeze would appear to give Moscow a veto over enlargement. It 
certainly would be interpreted as a victory--proof of their own 
legitimacy--by those who still advocate a Russian sphere of influence 
over its neighbors. Worse yet, it could lead others to draw the same 
conclusion. A freeze would undercut the basic principle that all of 
Europe's states have a right to choose their own security 
arrangements--a principle that must be one of the cornerstones of 
Russia's relationships with the United States and NATO.
  While I am sure the intentions behind this amendment are admirable, 
we must recognize that its consequences would be potentially 
disastrous. It would undercut U.S. leadership and influence within the 
Alliance. It would contradict the founding document of the Alliance. It 
would threaten the historic progress we have witnessed in Central 
Europe--progress from which we all benefit. And It would reject a 
principle fundamental to establishment of a constructive relationship 
with a democratic Russia.
  I suspect, Mr. President, that one false premise behind this 
amendment is that NATO enlargement has been a rushed process. Nothing 
could be farther from the truth. The velvet revolutions that restored 
democracy and independence to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary 
took place in 1989. Nearly a decade will have passed before these three 
countries become NATO members in 1999.
  Moreover, the Senate has not rushed, and is not being rushed, into 
endorsing NATO enlargement. This chamber and its committees have been 
examining and promoting this initiative since 1993, if not earlier. 
Anyone concerned about the future enlargement process can be assured 
that the same careful study, debate, and oversight that has attended 
this past effort will attend those to come. Read the resolution of 
ratification carefully. It explicitly requires extensive consultation 
between the Senate and the President about any such initiative.
  It states that the ``United States will not support the admission of, 
or the invitation for admission of, any new NATO member, unless (I) the 
President consults with the Senate consistent with Article II, section 
2, clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States (relating to the 
advice and consent of the Senate to the making of treaties); and (II) 
the prospective members can fulfill the obligations and 
responsibilities of membership, and its inclusion would serve the 
overall political and strategic interests of NATO and the United 
States.''
  Before, I yield the floor, Mr. President, let me reiterate a key 
point to those who fear a rushed process of further NATO enlargement. 
The bottom line, is that further expansion of the Alliance will always 
be contingent on careful study, public debate, high-level 
consultations, political consensus, and the strategic interests of NATO 
and the United States. Any further expansion will also be contingent on 
Senate ratification--the difficult hurdle of securing 67 votes.
  For these and other reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote against any 
proposal that undercuts the founding document and basic principles of 
the NATO Alliance. The ratification of the accession of Poland, the 
Czech Republic, and Hungary to NATO will erase destabilizing lines, 
which are relics of the Cold War. This amendment portends only be a 
step toward new, divisive lines in Europe--and, that is something we 
should never accept.
  Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.
  Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WARNER. For purposes of informing the Senate, I ask unanimous 
consent that the following order take place and time for each vote. The 
order of votes will be that the Craig amendment which was finished last 
night would come first, the Moynihan vote second, the Warner vote 
third, that the normal time be given to the Craig amendment, that the 
second and third votes be 10 minutes each, and that they be up or down 
votes on each amendment.
  Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. KERRY. I will not object, but I would just like to ask would it 
be appropriate to include in the unanimous-consent request time for me 
to speak after the vote?
  Mr. WARNER. No objection.
  Mr. KERRY. I would so ask.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Consent has been granted to recognize Senator 
Stevens.

[[Page S3840]]

  Mr. KERRY. I would ask unanimous consent to be recognized following 
Senator Stevens.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. BIDEN. How much time remains under my control?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 6 minutes.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished 
Senator from West Virginia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator who is 
ranking member of the committee who is managing this business in the 
Chamber.


                      Executive Amendment No. 2316

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I speak with reference to the amendment 
offered by Mr. Craig that would, if adopted, require that the United 
States adopt a specific authorization for the continued deployment of 
U.S. forces now in Bosnia prior to the deposit of the U.S. instrument 
of ratification of the protocols for NATO expansion. I have long 
supported an active Congressional role regarding the ongoing U.S. 
mission in Bosnia. Congress does have a responsibility to carefully 
oversee that mission, to ensure that it stays on track and that limits 
are placed on the U.S. role there that will safeguard our troops from 
being consumed in an ever-expanding nation-building crusade. So, I 
support what I think is the Senator's intent, which is to apply 
pressure to the Administration and the Congress to fulfill their 
oversight responsibilities with respect to Bosnia.

  However, that being said, I do not believe that this amendment is 
necessary. The Fiscal Year 1999 Department of Defense Authorization 
bill is likely to be considered by the Senate within the next several 
weeks, and the corresponding appropriations bill will also be taken up 
before we adjourn. These bills are the appropriate vehicles on which to 
debate and act to place limits on the U.S. mission in Bosnia. They 
provide a vehicle for establishing policy and then backing up the will 
of Congress with the power over the purse. We do not need this 
amendment today to force us into taking action on Bosnia. We do not 
need to hold these nations--Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic--
hostage to any perceived inability or lack of will on our part to act 
independently on Bosnia.
  So I say to my colleagues that this Senator from West Virginia does 
not lack the will to work to establish a policy and a specific, 
detailed authorization for the U.S. mission in Bosnia. I do not favor 
open-ended commitments to deploy forces to Bosnia, and I do not favor 
giving this administration or any other administration a free rein to 
involve our men and women in uniform in the kind of policing actions 
that got us into such trouble in Somalia. I am already working on such 
an amendment in concert with other Senators, with the intention of 
offering it to the Department of Defense Authorization bill or perhaps 
some other vehicle. I welcome the participation of Senator Craig and 
his cosponsors in this debate. But we do not need to act on this 
amendment at this time. We do not need to leave this protocol bound and 
gagged in some dark closet until we ransom it with a debate and 
legislative action that, I assure you, will take place without a 
hostage on another occasion on another day and on another measure.
  Although I will vote against this amendment, I assure my colleague 
from Idaho, and the other supporters of his amendment, that it is not 
because I do not wish to have a concrete policy regarding Bosnia. I 
urge Senators to vote against the amendment offered by Senator Craig.
  I thank the Chair, and, Mr. President, I yield back the balance of my 
time.


                      Executive Amendment No. 2322

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. WARNER. I yield such time as the senior Senator from New York may 
desire. Could I inquire of the remainder of time on both sides, Mr. 
President?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia has 10 minutes. The 
Senator from Delaware has 2 minutes 8 seconds.
  Mr. WARNER. Does the Senator from Delaware wish to let the Senator 
from Massachusetts proceed? Is that my understanding?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware has 2 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. BIDEN. I yield 1 minute to my friend from Massachusetts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware.
  I share the concerns of many Senators with respect to the 
possibilities of future rapid expansion, and there are serious 
questions from the Congress about the control of that. But I do think 
the constitutional issues of restraint of a President before the fact 
on foreign policy are significant, and equally significant, I believe, 
that we will have ample opportunity for consultation.
  I will ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter 
from the President that I received on April 23. I call my colleagues' 
attention to one particular paragraph, which is, the President says:

       I pledge to undertake the same broad pattern of 
     consultation before making any future decisions about 
     invitations of membership to other states, or making any 
     membership commitments.

  In other words, no private membership commitments will be made 
outside of the process of the U.S. Congress consultation.
  I might also add that that consultation in the past has taken over 
several years, with a number of different resolutions of support having 
been passed previously. So I think in that light I will oppose the 
Warner amendment.
  I ask unanimous consent the full text of the letter from the 
President be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                              The White House,

                                   Washington, DC, April 23, 1998.
     Hon. John F. Kerry,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear John: In the coming days the Senate will complete 
     consideration of the proposed accession of Poland, Hungary, 
     and the Czech Republic to NATO. NATO's enlargement offers our 
     country an historic opportunity to increase America's 
     security, improve Europe's stability, and erase the vestiges 
     of the Cold War dividing line. For these reasons, I 
     appreciate the support that you and a bipartisan majority of 
     your colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee gave this 
     initiative on March 3, when the Committee voted 16-2 in favor 
     of a resolution of ratification on NATO enlargement.
       I know, however, that you and other senators have certain 
     concerns about the process of NATO enlargement. In 
     particular, I am sensitive to the questions you raised during 
     the Committee's March 3 meeting regarding future rounds in 
     the enlargement process. These same questions underlie 
     Senator Warner's proposal for a mandated pause in the 
     enlargement process after admission of these first new 
     members. Let me take this opportunity to comment on Senator 
     Warner's proposal and the issues it attempts to address.
       I have long maintained that, as part of our broader 
     strategy to make Europe more united and stable, NATO should 
     keep its door open for other qualified states that aspire to 
     membership. I was pleased that NATO adopted this position at 
     the Madrid summit last July. The Alliance also declared in 
     Madrid that it would review the process of enlargement at our 
     next summit in Washington. Neither my Administration nor NATO 
     has made any decision about when the next invitations for 
     membership should be extended, or to whom.
       Both the United States and or NATO will need to address 
     many complex questions before making decisions about the 
     admission of other new members, but I am convinced that such 
     a mandated pause is the wrong way to address these questions. 
     A mandated pause would reduce our own country's flexibility 
     and leverage in Europe, and it would fracture the open door 
     consensus we helped build within NATO. It would also 
     undermine support for reforms in the Central European 
     countries still aspiring to NATO membership and thereby 
     create a new and potentially destabilizing line across 
     Europe. In contrast, the Open Door policy retains the 
     positive incentives that have reinforced reforms and good 
     neighborly relations throughout the region over the last five 
     years.
       For these reasons, I have urged the Senate in the strongest 
     terms to reject any effort to impose an artificial pause in 
     the process of NATO's enlargement, and I hope I will have 
     your support for that position. It is not necessary for the 
     Senate to mandate a moratorium on the enlargement process to 
     ensure that future steps proceed in a careful and deliberate 
     manner. I consulted extensively with members of both chambers 
     and both parties in Congress on the full range of decisions 
     concerning NATO's enlargement, including decisions on how 
     many and which states to support for membership. I pledge to 
     undertake the same broad pattern of consultation before 
     making any future decisions

[[Page S3841]]

     about invitations of membership to other states, or making 
     any membership commitments. Of course, the admission of any 
     additional new members also would require the advice and 
     consent of the Senate.
       The end of the Cold War has given us an unprecedented 
     opportunity to help build an undivided, democratic, and 
     peaceful Europe. There are many elements in our strategy 
     designed to achieve that goal, including our efforts to make 
     further reductions in nuclear arms levels and to adapt the 
     Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty; our bilateral 
     programs to support reform in Russia, Ukraine, and the other 
     new democracies; and our work with other institutions, such 
     as the European Union and the Organization for Security and 
     Cooperation in Europe. A strong NATO remains the foundation 
     of our transatlantic security agenda and I am convinced that 
     continuation of our open door policy will advance our overall 
     interests and enhance NATO's capabilities.
       I am grateful for the support and sound advice you and 
     other senators have provided as we pursue that agenda, and I 
     look forward to continuing our work on this and other 
     national security issues in the days to come.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Bill Clinton.

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I oppose the Warner amendment that would 
mandate a pause of three years before the United States would 
encourage, participate in, or agree to any further enlargement of NATO 
after the admission of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
  At the outset, I would note that I am unaware of any rationale for 
choosing three years for a pause--it appears to be an arbitrary number 
and I think it is inappropriate to legislate on such an important 
matter on an arbitrary basis.
  Article 10 of the NATO Treaty states in pertinent part that ``The 
Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European state in 
a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute 
to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty.'' 
NATO's door has been open since the establishment of the Alliance and 
has resulted in the admission of Greece, Turkey, Germany and Spain over 
the years. To mandate a three-year pause would be inconsistent with the 
policy that has guided the Alliance since 1949.
  Mr. President, the desire to join the Alliance has been a productive 
force for candidate nations who have been seeking to establish their 
credentials for admission by perfecting their laws relating to 
democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law, and the establishment 
of market economies and by reaching accommodations with their 
neighbors. We should not do anything to discourage these developments.
  But also importantly, I am concerned that a three-year pause would 
imply too much--that after three years, the Senate would support more 
nations joining NATO. Mandating a pause is no more logical than raising 
expectations as to when the next round of NATO accessions will occur. 
Further enlargement of the Alliance should be judged by the 
circumstances that exist at the time. I am not committed to further 
enlargement of the NATO Alliance after three years and I doubt that 
most of our colleagues are so committed. I fear that, by passage of 
this amendment, we would send a false signal to those nations that 
continue to aspire to NATO membership.
  Mr. President, as noted in Foreign Relations Committee Report on NATO 
enlargement, Secretary of State Albright has committed the Executive 
Branch to keep the Senate fully informed of significant developments 
with regard to possible future rounds of NATO enlargement and seek its 
advice on important decisions before any commitments are made. More 
recently, in a letter to Senator John Kerry that was released by the 
Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on NATO 
enlargement, President Clinton wrote in part that ``I pledge to 
undertake the same broad pattern of consultation before making any 
future decisions about invitations of membership to other states, or 
making membership commitments.''
  Mr. President, those commitments and the Constitutional requirement 
for Senate advice and consent to any future amendments to the NATO 
Treaty that enlarge the Alliance are all that is necessary. I urge my 
colleagues to oppose the Warner amendment as both arbitrary and 
misleading.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I would like to point out, with regard to 
the military credibility of NATO raised by my friend from New Jersey, 
in terms of protecting Poland, I remind him, West Berlin was militarily 
indefensible but the Warsaw Pact never attacked. Why? Because the 
Soviet Union knew what would happen.
  The third point I would make is with regard to the 3-year pause.
  The clearest reason this amendment is superfluous is in the 
Resolution of Ratification itself, Section Two, Paragraph Seven. There 
it clearly states that the U.S. has not consented to invite any state 
other than the three before us today, and that many subsequent decision 
to do so would rest on that state's ability to fulfill the obligations 
of membership, as well as serve the overall political and strategic 
interests of NATO and the U.S.
  Further, Article X of the North Atlantic Treaty declares, and as the 
July 1997 Madrid NATO Summit Declaration repeats, that the door to NATO 
membership is open to other European states able to further principles 
of the treaty and to contribute the security of the North Atlantic 
area. Each applicant country will be judged on its merits.
  Moreover, in the Resolution of Ratification before us, Section 2, 
Paragraph 7(A)(iv) requires prior consultation of the Senate by the 
President before the United States can support the invitation of any 
new member, and recalls that ratification of any new NATO ally requires 
the advice and consent of this body.
  To mandate a pause would tie NATO's hands should an obviously 
qualified applicant such as Austria applies for membership. For the 
moment, it appears that the Austrian government has decided against 
applying for membership, but that could change after elections next 
year.
  In fact, Austrian public opinion is already changing. Earlier this 
month when the Austrian public was informed of NATO's Article 5 
guarantees, for the first time in a national poll a majority of 
Austrians said that Austria should abandon its neutrality and join 
NATO.
  So if the Austrian government decides to follow public opinion, would 
we then want to tell the Austrians, ``Sorry, no applications accepted 
until the year 2002''?
  As you know, many, including myself, believe that Solvenia already 
meets the criteria for NATO membership. I supported its entry in this 
first wave. There is every indication that Slovenia will be ready to 
join the Alliance within the next three years.
  To mandate a pause would take the urgency off the reform efforts that 
nations such as Bulgaria and Romania have stepped up, at great short-
term cost to their standard of living, precisely because they want to 
make themselves NATO-qualified for the next wave.
  Even Slovakia, a long-shot applicant because of its poor record on 
democratization and privatization, may have a dramatic turn-around as a 
result of national elections this fall.
  Such a decision would make NATO look like it can't be trusted to 
judiciously apply its own criteria; namely, that it cannot tell when 
and whom to invite to become new allies. This is no policy for a great 
nation like the United States or a great alliance like NATO.
  Secretary of State Albright told the Foreign Relations Committee on 
February 24 that just the possibility of joining NATO has inspired 
declared applicants to accelerate reform, to reach out to their 
neighbors, and to reject the destructive nationalism of their region's 
past.
  As one of many examples of this, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus 
signed in March a border agreement paving the way for a final 
demarcation of the 500-kilometer Baltic-Belarusian frontier.
  Given these accomplishments, Secretary Albright warned:

       A mandated pause would be heard from Tallinn to in the 
     north to Sofia in the south as the sound of an open door 
     slamming shut. It would be seen as a vote of no confidence in 
     the reform-minded governments from the Baltics to the 
     Balkans. It would diminish the incentive nations now have to 
     cooperate with their neighbors and with NATO. It would 
     fracture the consensus NATO itself has reached on the open 
     door. It would be dangerous and utterly unnecessary since the 
     Senate would, in any case, have to approve the admission of 
     any new allies.


[[Page S3842]]


  There are many foreign policy experts who share these views. But let 
me quote one concerned American who urged me to oppose this amendment.
  David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, 
wrote to me on March third, stating:

       Last June 26, we [the American Jewish Committee] observed 
     that an enlarged NATO will mean greater security and 
     stability and also hasten the political and economic 
     integration of Europe. An expanded NATO means greater 
     stability and security for Central Europe, a region that was 
     the cockpit for the two world wars that brought such horror 
     to the world--and to the Jewish people.
       For many of the same reasons we supported NATO expansion we 
     now oppose any effort to mandate a pause in initiating 
     procedures for a second round of its enlargement.
       States throughout Central Europe that hope for eventual 
     membership would feel that the open door enunciated at Madrid 
     had been slammed shut in their face.
       At a minimum these states would be discouraged, and a pause 
     might lead to instability in the region. Hardliners in the 
     Russian Federation would find vindication.

  Supporters of this amendment appear to believe that they are stopping 
a runaway train of immediate NATO membership for every state from 
Croatia to Kazakhstan.
  They seem to be unaware that not every European state has declared an 
intent to join NATO. In particular, Ukraine, at its March 26 meeting 
with NATO officials, restated its view that while it ``does not rule 
out'' joining the alliance, such a move is currently unrealistic.
  Ukraine issued three conditions for joining NATO: (1) decisive public 
opinion in favor of accession; (2) interoperability of its armed forces 
with those of NATO members; and (3) a guarantee that its accession 
would not harm relations with neighboring states, particularly Russia.
  Recognizing that we already have all the control we need over the 
speed and choice of future NATO members, I urge my colleagues to vote 
down this amendment.
  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, article 10 of the North Atlantic 
Treaty provides that NATO members, by unanimous agreement, may invite 
the accession to the North Atlantic Treaty of any other European state 
in a position to further the principles of the North Atlantic Treaty 
and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area. The 
resolution of ratification notes that only Poland, Hungary, and the 
Czech Republic have been invited by NATO members to join the Alliance. 
No other agreement or document, including the July 8, 1997 Madrid 
Summit declaration of NATO, or the Baltic Charter signed on January 16, 
1998, should be construed otherwise.
  Much has been said about these documents, but I am not certain that 
all of my distinguished colleagues have read them carefully. In Madrid, 
NATO's Secretary General stated ``In keeping with our pledge to 
maintain an open door to the admission of additional Alliance members 
in the future, we also direct that NATO Foreign Ministers keep that 
process under continual review and report to us. We will review the 
process at our next meeting in 1999.'' This is not a promise, a 
commitment, or any other guarantee that countries in Central and 
Eastern Europe will be invited to join NATO--it is merely a statement 
that enlargement is a process that should be reviewed by NATO 
regularly.
  Further, the Baltic Chapter, signed this past January by the 
Presidents of the United States, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania 
declares that the U.S. ``welcomes the aspirations and supports the 
efforts of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to join NATO. It affirms its 
view that NATO's partners can become members as each aspirant proves 
itself able and willing to assume the responsibilities and obligations 
of membership, and as NATO determines that the inclusion of these 
nations would serve European stability and the strategic interests of 
the Alliance''. Mr. President, this last statement is important--the 
Baltic Charter clearly states that including any new members in NATO 
must serve the strategic interests of the Alliance. All candidate 
countries will be evaluated on these criteria.
  The United States should not support the invitation to NATO 
membership to any further candidates unless the Senate is first 
consulted, unless any proposed candidate can fulfill the obligations 
and responsibilities of membership, and unless their inclusion would 
serve the overall political and strategic interests of the United 
States. During Foreign Relations Committee hearings, both Secretary of 
Defense Cohen and Secretary of State Albright expressed the 
Administration's understanding of the need for consultation with the 
Senate prior to any future rounds of expansion.
  I strongly oppose, however, mandating a period of time during which 
the United States is not permitted to pursue a policy of NATO 
enlargement that very well may be in our national interests. The 
decision to enlarge NATO should be based not on an arbitrary timeline, 
but should be the result of a thoughtful process--based on 
consultations with the Congress--that considers the security interests 
of NATO and the qualifications of candidate states.
  I strongly oppose the Warner Amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia has 9\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, 19 years ago when I was privileged to come 
to the U.S. Senate, the leadership had just a year or so before passed 
from one of our most distinguished Members, the senior Senator from 
Montana, Mike Mansfield. A few weeks ago in the old Senate Chamber, at 
age 95, he held forth in a magnificent review of history of the Senate 
without a flaw, without a quiver in his voice, and with an expression 
on his face that conveyed the strength and the confidence that that man 
had.
  I missed the opportunity to serve with him. But one of his major 
goals in the concluding years of his distinguished career was to come 
to this floor, time and time again, and call for reduction of our 
commitment in troop size and financial commitment to NATO, saying that 
the job had been done, it was time to come home and to apply those 
dollars to the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States.
  That was the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. I see my 
distinguished colleague from New York. He recalls those speeches very 
well.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the distinguished Senator yield?
  Mr. WARNER. Certainly.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I remind the Senate that Mike Mansfield was in the Navy 
at age 14 and the Marines at age 17.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, saying that he spoke from some 
experience--having proudly worn the uniform of all three branches, by 
the way.
  That could recur again in the minds of the American people, that we 
have spent enough, we have contributed enough, and the time has come 
for us to reduce our presence in Europe--which I think would be an 
absolute tragedy. I would fight against it, as I did in my earlier days 
in the U.S. Senate when, time and time again, Senator Jackson, Senator 
Stennis, Senator Tower, Senator Goldwater, Senator Thurmond would 
marshal the forces of those of us who had just joined the Senate on the 
floor to stop and ask the Senate not to cut NATO's budget. We felt it 
should be an orderly transition down in size. And that took place.
  I just bring up this history to say that once again the taxpayers of 
this country, when they begin to look at the cost attributed to the 
accession of these three nations, costs which will be diverted in 
dollars from our own needs of the Armed Forces today, costs for the 
refurbishment and building of new bases in these three countries at the 
very time when we are going to shrink and continue to shrink the base 
structure in the United States--all of this to say that the magnitude 
of the decision to access countries to this treaty is just an important 
one. We are acting without full knowledge as to the future mission of 
NATO. We are acting without full knowledge of the cost of having these 
three nations build their military up to where they are a positive--not 
a negative, a positive--contribution to NATO.

  I say with deep humility and respect of my colleagues, why not give 
America 3 years within which to study? Why not, I say to the leadership 
of the Senate, allow another President to give his or her wisdom to 
this question of whether additional countries should come in, preceded 
by, I hope, an active debate in the next Presidential election on the 
entire issue of the security interests of the United States using as a 
focal point NATO and the experience gained, in all probability, by 
accessing these three nations.

[[Page S3843]]

  We owe no less to that future President, for he or she will have to 
incorporate in their budgets the costs of new accessions, will have to 
incorporate in their budgets the diversion of such funds as may be 
allocated to additional nations.
  Furthermore, the changing face of Europe today from one of cold war 
to one our military leaders now refer to as instability--instability is 
the enemy in Europe and elsewhere in the world, largely because of the 
uncertainty associated with weapons of mass destruction and, in the 
wake of the new democracies, the instability as it relates to ethnic 
problems, religious problems and all those associated with these new 
nations trying to seek strength as democracies politically and strength 
economically in a one-world free market. But it is the whole range of 
instabilities and associated conflict with which we have had very 
little experience, other than Bosnia, possibly Kosovo. Should we not 
have the opportunity to study what are the requirements associated with 
these new instabilities? Learn from experience. Add up the costs in 
Bosnia. There have been many billions of dollars now contributed to 
bring about peace in that region.
  I listened to our distinguished senior Senator from West Virginia 
talk about the policy in Bosnia. In many ways, I associate myself with 
his remarks. But we need--we need--that learning curve to make such 
important decisions as would be involved in adding more nations as 
members of NATO. Indeed the other----
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will my friend yield?
  Mr. WARNER. I will yield in a moment. The other nations would like, I 
am sure, to have this period of time. This 3-year moratorium gives a 
perfectly logical, understandable tool to the current President of the 
United States, indeed a future President, to withstand the stampede 
that I predict will occur if this is not put in place. Mr. President, I 
yield.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I just ask my friend, and I know he will be aware of 
this, on January 16 this year, the President and the Presidents of the 
three Baltic States signed the U.S. Baltic Charter of Partnership, 
which states that the United States welcomes and supports the efforts 
of the Baltic States to join NATO, states that could only be defended 
by nuclear weapons.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I addressed that on the floor of the 
Senate before. I think it was an unwise movement by the President. We 
all have great compassion for those three states, the courage of their 
people, their desire to affiliate more and more with the Western World. 
But to have held out that hope which, once it is translated from the 
United States across the ocean into the states and down to the people, 
almost is equivalent to an absolute commitment to see that it is going 
to happen.
  That is precisely why I am concerned about leaving open the 
opportunity for new accessions to begin tomorrow unless the 3-year 
moratorium, which is a reasonable period for study, is put in place.
  I close with, once again, do we not have that obligation to the 
American taxpayers who pay the costs associated, do we not have that 
obligation to the men and women of our Armed Forces who will proudly 
wear their uniforms as a part of the NATO force to have  clarity with 
respect to future missions, which we will not have until 1 year hence, 
April of 1999?

  I say to my colleagues, let's just pause and take stock and think 
about the seriousness of the decisions we are about to make and 
consider that it is not unreasonable to allow 3 years of experience to 
transpire to make future decisions regarding other nations. Mr. 
President, I yield the floor and yield back my time.


                  Vote on Executive Amendment No. 2316

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 
2316 offered by Mr. Craig of Idaho.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on that 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 
2316, offered by the Senator from Idaho, Mr. Craig. The yeas and nays 
have been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. KYL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.