[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.

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