[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 65 (Wednesday, May 20, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H3593-H3595]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HALTING THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega) is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, last week India, the world's largest
democracy, conducted five nuclear weapons tests setting off a barrage
of international criticism led by our own Nation. It is feared that a
South Asian nuclear arms raise with Pakistan shall have global
implications, encouraging North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and others to
pursue nuclear ambitions.
Days ago, former President Jimmy Carter addressed the issue of
India's nuclear tests in commencement speeches he delivered at Trinity
College at the University of Pennsylvania. I found President Carter's
remarks, as reported by the news wires, to be very enlightening and
wanted to share them with my colleagues.
President Carter, the last American President to visit India, noted
that the United States, a country that possesses thousands of nuclear
weapons, fails to ratify a comprehensive test ban treaty and continues
to deploy land mines is hardly one that has the right to demand the
opposite from other nations such as India.
Pointing out the hypocrisy of U.S. nuclear policy, Mr. Carter stated,
``It is hard for us to tell India you cannot have a nuclear device,
while maintaining we will keep our nuclear weapons, 8,000 or more
nuclear bombs, and we are not ready to reduce them yet.''
Mr. Carter continued, ``We claim we are for a comprehensive test ban
to prevent all testing of nuclear weapons, but we still have not
ratified the treaty. We claim we want to reduce nuclear arsenals,''
said Mr. Carter, ``but many years later the START II treaty is still
not in effect with Russia.''
In expressing concern about India's nuclear tests, Mr. Speaker,
President Carter further states, ``People look to the United States
with great admiration but also for guidance. We have not been fair in
trying to keep people from developing nuclear weapons.''
President Carter concluded, ``If the United States wishes to halt the
global arms raise, they must lead by example and not by condemnation.''
Mr. Speaker, President Carter's points are well taken. Many around
the world are starting to conclude India's nuclear tests are in great
part a direct result of the failure of the United States and the other
four members of the nuclear club to seriously move forward towards
nuclear disarmament.
{time} 1845
Yesterday, at the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan stated
that, ``Our senses have been lulled a little bit with regard to the
nuclear danger, but I think what has happened in India has woken
everybody up.'' In discussing India and Pakistan, Annan said the five
self-declared nuclear powers, the United States, Britain, France,
Russia, and China, must take stock of their positions because, and I
quote, ``You cannot have an exclusive club who have nuclear weapons and
are refusing to disband it and tell them now not to have it. The
nuclear powers need to set an example for other nations.''
[[Page H3594]]
Mr. Dan Plesch, the director of the British-American Security
Information Council, an arms control group, has asked, ``How much
longer can we hang on to our own nuclear weapons while trying to
prevent others from getting them? Either we say nuclear deterrence is
goods for all, or we carry out a realistic program to ban nuclear
weapons.''
Mr. Speaker, in a world discriminating between nuclear haves and
have-nots, there will always be the temptation for nuclear
proliferation. Clearly, global nuclear disarmament is the only real
solution to this madness.
In 1975, the international community, including the nuclear powers,
outlawed the development, production, stockpiling and the use of
biological agents for warfare through the Biological and Toxin Weapons
Convention. In 1977, the international community supported the coming
into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which likewise
prohibited the development, production and use of chemical weapons
throughout the world.
Mr. Speaker, because of their horrific and destructive nature,
biological and chemical weapons have been declared immoral and
illegitimate, and are not to be tolerated. However, Mr. Speaker, there
is no weapon of mass destruction that is more horrific, more
destructive or more deadly than nuclear weapons. The argument for the
elimination of this incomprehensibly monstrous force that threatens the
world's inhabitants and our very planet is self-evident.
It is time, Mr. Speaker, that the nuclear powers negotiate a nuclear
weapons convention that requires the phased elimination of all nuclear
weapons within a time frame incorporating verification and enforcement
provisions. We cannot afford to squander the dangerous wake-up call
sent by India's recent nuclear tests.
Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record two news articles regarding this
topic:
[The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 1998]
Hypocrisy Is the Hallmark of the Nuclear Flap
(By George Melloan)
At the wind-up of the G-8 summit in Birmingham Sunday,
French President Jacques Chirac issued a stern warning to
Pakistan: If you dare to test a nuclear weapon, the G-8 will
use a communique ``exactly identical to the one we put out on
India.''
By ``exactly identical,'' which probably sounds less
redundant in French, he meant that the G-8 would ``express
our grave concern.'' That's what the G-8 lashed India with,
so Pakistan had better watch out. No doubt the Paks reacted
privately with the same degree of amusement that the Indians
were unable to suppress over the posturing by the leaders of
``the world's eight leading nations'' in response to India's
tests.
There is of course nothing funny about nuclear weapons, but
the grandstanding in Birmingham had elements of comedy. The
assemblage--relying no doubt on the same superb intelligence
that had keep them all in the dark about India's testing
plans--at one point was led to believe that even during their
debate Pakistan had exploded a bomb somewhere. Had someone
not set them straight, they might have fired that exactly
identical ``grave concern'' communique at Karachi
prematurely. The Paks were doing their best, with differing
statements from different officials, to confuse the world
about whether they in fact will match the tests by their
neighboring archenemy.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin was among the summiteers
expressing ``grave concern.'' He has been allowed to join the
Group of Seven (G-7) leading member nations of the
International Monetary Fund, so it now is routinely called
the G-8. He can't mix in economic deliberations because
Russia is on the IMF dole, but his country still is taken
seriously as a military power. That may be because it has 877
nuclear ICMBs, able to strike anywhere in the world. That
statistic is from that latest ``Military Balance'' published
by London's International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS) and doesn't begin to cover Russia's total capability.
Many of its missiles have multiple warheads and it also has
452 submarine-based nukes. Mr. Yeltsin's grave concern
apparently doesn't extend to preventing Russian nuclear and
missile technology from leaking to would-be nuclear states,
if U.S. suspicions are correct.
The world's most populous nation, China, has more than 17
intercontinental and more than 38 intermediate-range nukes,
according to the IISS estimate. It also has been accused by
the U.S. of selling missile technology to Pakistan among
others. And it also has tested its nukes when it pleased,
thumbing its nose at the world at large. But Bill Clinton is
so friendly with the Chinese that in 1996 he was willing to
overrule State Department objections to letting them launch
U.S.-made space satellites despite the danger of giving them
valuable missile technology, according to reports in the New
York Times over the weekend. He also seems to have been less
than assiduous about preventing the Chinese from insinuating
themselves into the U.S. political process through violations
of the U.S. campaign finance laws, judging from testimony by
erstwhile go-between and frequent White House visitor Johnny
Chung made public last week.
Given the way the American president treats the two big
non-NATO nuclear powers, should it be any surprise that
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee decided to go
public with India's nukes? His BJP Hindu nationalist party
leads a shaky new governing coalition and he smelled added
popularity from showing that Indian can ``stand up,'' as Mao
would have put it. He may have been right. TV footage showed
Indians dancing in the streets on hearing the news. Beware of
TV scenes, which often are staged, but it is not unbelievable
that Indians might think that becoming the world's sixth
declared nuclear nation will finally win them some respect.
It hasn't so far, of course. Mr. Clinton's reaction was to
slap on sanctions, cutting off U.S. direct aid and
threatening to veto further help from the IMF and the World
Bank. But it's early times, and Mr. Vajpayee is smart enough
to know that a cutoff of outside aid might be just the thing
to help him with the politics of installing policies, such as
opening the country up to more foreign investment, that will
allow India to develop on its own. Just being noticed by
those big-time guys in Birmingham, and the folks next door in
China, he might figure, is almost worth the cost of losing
handouts from the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia and Germany,
the countries that have applied sanctions.
What truly upset the folks in Birmingham, and Mr. Clinton
especially, was not the fear that India will now shoot
nuclear missiles at its neighbors. Two of those neighbors,
China and Russia, could annihilate India in response and
Pakistan, probably, could at least retaliate in kind. What
troubles the leaders, and much of the global intellectual
community, is this further evidence that arms control
treaties do not control the spread of modern arms. The two
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties of the Cold War were full
of holes and the Russian parliament has not ratified the
successor, START II. In the CFE deal limiting conventional
weapons in Europe, the U.S.S.R. got a loophole excluding
``naval'' troops, of which it turned out to have had quite a
number who had never set foot on a ship. Iraq has not been at
all inhibited by chemical and biological weapons limitations.
Attempting to apply nuclear controls internationally has
run afoul of realities. We live in a world of nation states.
Those states that do not feel threatened, do not want the
expense of nukes and want to enjoy a pretense of virtue, have
readily signed onto the antiproliferation and test-ban
treaties. India and Pakistan, living in a rough neighborhood
unprotected by NATO or other alliances, have put national
security ahead of niceties. It's too bad, but that's the way
it is.
Bill Clinton had every right to be shocked at this latest
mugging by reality. He heads what some choose to call the
world's most powerful nation. But it has no defense against
nuclear missiles. In the harsh equation of war, the U.S.'s
very wealth works against it should it ever be threatened by
a poor country with nuclear missiles. It would have a lot
more to lose, and even if it suffered a limited attack it
would be reluctant to use its vast might against the
impoverished masses of the attacking country. Maybe Mr.
Clinton should think more about U.S. security.
____
[From the New York Times, Tues., May 19, 1998]
Keeping Nuclear Arms in Check
India's nuclear weapons test threaten to undo 35 years
worth of work by the United States and other countries to
limit the spread of nuclear arms. Instead of abandoning those
efforts and improvising new approaches, a course recommended
by some arms control experts, Washington and its allies
should redouble their commitment to make the international
control system work effectively.
As difficult as it may be, India and Pakistan must be
persuaded to sign and abide by the 1996 test ban treaty that
has now been signed by 149 nations. By joining the treaty,
India and Pakistan would bind themselves to refrain from any
future testing. Their inclusion would also make it easier to
detect violations by permitting the installation of
monitoring equipment at their nuclear test sites.
Enlisting India and Pakistan would be easier if the Senate
ratified the test ban treaty, now irresponsibly held up by
Senator Jesse Helms. Once again, the capricious chairman of
the Foreign Relations Committee is holding the nation's
interest hostage to his ideological whims. Ratification would
allow Washington to participate in a review conference next
year that will develop diplomatic strategies for bringing
holdout nations into the treaty. Without American leadership,
the treaty itself and the conference will be empty exercises.
The performance of American intelligence agencies should
also be improved so that future test preparations by any
country can be spotted in advance, giving diplomats the
chance to intervene. The White House was given no warning
about the Indian underground explosions. Some of the $400
million a year the Energy Department now spends on
[[Page H3595]]
nuclear weapons detection research ought to be used to
develop sensitive seismic measuring devices that can monitor
low-yield tests from afar.
Non-nuclear countries are more easily dissuaded from
developing atomic weapons when nuclear states restrain their
own arsenals. Progress in this area has been slowed in recent
years. Russia's parliament should long ago have ratified the
nuclear missile cuts negotiated more than five years ago by
George Bush and Boris Yeltsin.
If Bill Clinton does not want nuclear anarchy to be his
foreign policy legacy, he must galvanize the Senate to act on
the test ban treaty and use American influence to strengthen
the world's arms control mechanisms. Without them, this
planet would be a far more dangerous place.
____________________