[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 70 (Wednesday, June 3, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H4030-H4032]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GLOBAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT: THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO A 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, the 11 nuclear detonations conducted
by India and Pakistan this past month demonstrated in graphic fashion
the weakness of present international efforts to control nuclear
proliferation. The tests also revealed the folly of economic sanctions
in deterring nuclear proliferation when balanced against asserted
interests of national security.
In a recent opinion editorial piece in the Washington Post, physicist
Zia Mian and professor Frank Von Hippel of Princeton University provide
an answer to proliferation that I fully support, and I want to share
this with my colleagues.
They advocate, and I quote, ``India's and Pakistan's nuclear tests
are a challenge that can be met in either of two ways. One would be to
simply recreate the nuclear status quo with two more nuclear weapon
states and accept the enormous dangers for the people of India and
Pakistan and the rest of the world. The alternative would be to take
international steps to devalue nuclear weapons' possessions by moving
the nuclear goal posts towards disarmament.
``The history of the past 50 years teaches that nuclear weapons are
unusable for rational military purposes and that their existence makes
ordinary human miscalculation or madness potentially catastrophic. Yet
the nuclear weapon states act as if they are giants in the world of
pygmies, creating imagination in many countries and a temptation for
nationalistic parties such as India's newly governing BJP.''
And I further quote from this article, Mr. Speaker. ``India is
behaving like a state that has successfully broken into the nuclear
club, and Pakistan, after hesitating over the likely ruinous price of
membership, has decided that it must join as well. Israel slipped in
long ago, thanks to the United States being willing to cast a blind eye
in its direction. Other States such as Iran and Iraq and perhaps South
Korea, Taiwan and Japan wait in the wings.
``To break this dynamic, the United States, Russia and other charter
members of the nuclear club must make it more credible that they really
intend to put the nuclear club out of business.
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``The first step would be to end the civilization endangering
practice of keeping nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert, a posture
that India and Pakistan are threatening to imitate.''
Secondly, ``The United States should also immediately ratify the test
ban treaty and thereby encourage Russia and China to ratify. Britain
and France have already done. Bringing the treaty into force is a key
first test of the world's willingness to walk away from nuclear
weapons. The United States, Russia and China should underline the
irreversibility of their commitments by shutting down their test
sites.''
Third, ``The United States should also cut back drastically its
lavish stockpile stewardship program, which has inspired fears both at
home and abroad that the United States intends to continue the arms
race alone.''
And I would note Mr. Speaker, that this $61 billion 13-year-old
program costs more annually than what the U.S. spent on major nuclear
weapons programs during the height of the Cold War. Moreover, the
enormous funding is being used to develop facilities to research and
design nuclear warheads, not just monitoring our present arsenal while
it awaits dismantlement.
Fourth, ``The United States, Russia, Britain and France should also
act on their commitment at the April, 1996, Moscow Nuclear Safety and
Security Summit to place excess fissile materials under international
safeguards as soon as possible. Russia and the United States can start
it immediately by committing to reduce their stockpiles on
unsafeguarded fissile materials to the levels required to maintain only
the 2,000 to 2,500 strategic warheads that have been agreed to for the
past START Treaty III.''
Mr. Speaker, this would be a 90 percent reduction of our arsenals
from the peak Cold War levels.
Last, the authors urge that the U.S. and Russia announce that they
intend to reduce further, on a bilateral basis and rapidly, these
warheads.
In addition to these steps, they should demonstrate the good faith of
the nuclear powers to pursue elimination of nuclear weapons as promised
and committed to under article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty. It is
important that the United States initiate multilateral talks for the
negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention.
On this matter, Mr. Speaker, I would deeply commend the gentlewoman
from California, the honorable Lynn Woolsey, for her leadership in
introducing legislation later this week that recognizes the security
interests of the United States in furthering complete global nuclear
disarmament.
I am proud to be an original cosponsor, along with several other of
our colleagues, of this measure that supports discussion in Congress of
a model nuclear weapons convention and urges the President to initiate
multilateral negotiations leading to the early conclusion of a nuclear
weapons convention.
Mr. Speaker, both India and Pakistan have called for the global
elimination of nuclear weapons by adoption of a nuclear weapons
convention with verification and compliance measures. It should be
clear to all that our Nation's continued reliance on nuclear weapons
undermines the international efforts to persuade other countries not to
acquire nuclear weapons.
Mr. Speaker, to curb the global spread of the only weapon that can
utterly destroy the United States and her people, it is vital that we
take steps now leading to the elimination and outlawing of nuclear
weapons worldwide, as we have done with chemical and biological weapons
of mass destruction; and to this, Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent
also to submit two articles that I would like to be submitted to be
made part of the Record.
The articles referred to are as follows:
[From the Wall Street Journal, May 13, 1998]
Review and Outlook
Desert Blasts
When a lawyer's client too loudly protests, ``I'm
innocent,'' it probably means he's just the opposite. So it
is with the Indian statement of bravado in Monday's nuclear
weapons tests beneath the Rajasthan desert. While New Delhi
basks in the eerie glow of ``equally'' among nuclear powers,
the tests are an indication not so much of strength among
nations, but of profound weakness at home.
That makes the gauntlet the Indian government has just
thrown down to Beijing and Islamabad even more dangerous. But
it shouldn't have come as any surprise that India wants to
join the club in which so many of its neighbors are already
members.
Optimists hope India intends to go the route of France and
China, and cap its explosive debut into the hydrogen bomb
club with a signature on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation and
Comprehensive Test Ban treaties. Pessimists fear that
steering New Delhi in such a direction would require a
sustained application of global persuasive powers that may
fail. And really deep pessimists would worry that the Indians
concluded that the Clinton Administration's policy on
exporting commercial satellite technology did in fact improve
China's missile guidance capability.
The most realistic approach may be to say that if New Delhi
can test, so can the rest of the nuclear powers--to modernize
and refine their arsenals. If India is safer with a modern
nuclear weapons programs, wouldn't we all be?
It's very well for nations like Denmark and Japan to talk
of freezing aid in protest at the tests, or for Americans to
speak of antinuclear sanctions kicking in. In the end,
though, such efforts usually dissipate or even reverse
themselves in the form of offers to pay the offender hug sums
to mend his ways. Indians may be behaving irresponsibly, but
they aren't dumb. these tests were part of a calculated plan
to call attention to themselves as big players, and the world
outrage will be taken for now as proof that the message was
received.
In a different universe, the most effective response to
Monday's explosions might have been to pretend no one
notices. As things are, what's incredible is the outpouring
of surprise, as if no one in Washington or other capitals
heard members of the Bharatiya Janata Party campaign promise
to rev up India's nuclear program. Washington's statement
that the United States--operating the World's most
sophisticated technical intelligence facilites--failed to
detect preparations for the tests may be more astonishing
than the tests themselves.
It will be awhile before India is ready to bargain, if it
ever is, so perhaps more immediate attention should be paid
to Pakistan. This erstwhile staunch U.S. ally during the Cold
War has borne the brunt of antinuclear outrage all along;
indeed, the moment its usefullness as an Afghan war ally
ended, Pakistan was socked with American sanctions on
suspicion of having a nuclear program. All the years India
got grudging respect and no slaps at all for its if-rich-big-
countries-have-nukes-then-poor-countries-can-too stance,
Pakistan was under bombardment from the antiproliferation
community for every purchase, real or imagined, of any kind
of modern weaponry.
But anything Washington can do to help persuade Pakistan
that it is safe without matching India will do a huge
service--both to Pakistan, whose long-suffering people cannot
afford and do not deserve the crushing burden of a heightened
arms race, and to all those who rightly fear nuclear warfare
in the Subcontinent.
Which bring us to China and Russia. India's old friends in
Moscow have some tough choices to make. India was a Cold War
comrade and remains a steady arms customer. But what about
Beijing, whose recent hand of friendship and multibillion-
dollar nuclear power market could be worth so much more than
anything India has to offer?
China, which India's defense minister has identified as his
country's ``potential threat No. 1,'' can't ignore New
Delhi's explosions. Beijing signed the test ban treaty in
1996 after a final series of much-criticized tests, and it
may choose now to mount the podium of generalized
international moral outrage--perhaps while delivering a more
forceful bilateral response in private. But if China wants
its claim as a force for regional stability to be taken
seriously, it must demonstrate leadership here, not merely
sit back while the feathers fly.
When the clouds settle, the BJP's decision to do openly
what India has only boasted and postured about for so long
may be seen as a good thing. Monday's tests in Rajasthan,
like France's Pacific tests of 1995-96, remind us that
nations that rely for their security or for that of their
allies on a credible nuclear deterrent have a responsibility
to be honest about their arsenal, and to make sure it works.
If nothing else, India's tests have blown away the dangerous
hypocrisy that has characterized so much of its behavior over
the years. No longer holier-than-thou, India is now revealed
as being just like everyone else.
____
[From the New York Times, May 13, 1998]
A Blast of Reality
(By Henry Sokolski)
It may be difficult to acknowledge, but India's test of
three nuclear devices on Monday morning was, among other
things, an act of impatience with failed American efforts to
stop China and North Korea from developing and spreading
strategic weapons. ``It is clear that by the time the Clinton
Administration wakes up to the danger posed by the China-
Pakistan-North Korean axis, it will be too late for India''
The Times of India, said on Tuesday.
None of this restiveness can justify India's action, which
was self-defeating. But it should sting for those still
anxious to avoid the worst. Indeed, if the United States and
its friends are to stem the spread of strategic weapons to
Pakistan and beyond, we need to recognize that Monday's event
was in no
[[Page H4032]]
small part the result of an American nonproliferation policy
so disjointed and consessionary that it was prone to be
disregarded and misread.
White House officials admit they were caught flat-footed,
that the Central Intelligence Agency failed to provide
adequate warning of the tests. To press this point, however,
is to miss the warning the Administration had months earlier:
the winter election of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party, which had long championed India's right to nuclear
weapons.
What did the White House do with this warning? It sent its
United Nations Ambassador, Bill Richardson, to India to
emphasize the importance of issues other than
nonproliferation (lest it sour relations) as well as the
chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Shirley Ann
Jackson, to emphasize our desire for expanded nuclear
cooperation.
Not surprisingly, the Indian press interpreted these visits
in the worst way possible. The United States, it argued, has
finally gotten over its preoccupation with blocking India's
rightful development of strategic technology. What's unclear
is when, if at all, American officials bothered to brief
leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party about the sanctions
that the White House would be forced to impose if India
followed through on its pledge.
What can we do now? The White House should immediately
impose the sanctions called for in the Nuclear Proliferation
Prevention Act of 1994, rather than bargain for some new
pledge of restraint.
Indian officials speculate that the United States may not
impose sanctions or that if it does they will have little
effect. We must prove them wrong. In fact, the value of the
Indian stock market had already fallen by 5 percent by
Tuesday in anticipation of sanctions. The Indian financial
market understands what sanctions will mean to the banks,
which are seriously overextended and undercapitalized.
By Indian law, at least 51 percent of the shares of every
bank are owned by the Government. Under the American
nonproliferation law, no United States bank, public or
private, can make loans or extend credit to these
institutions for at least one year. Carrying out the
sanctions would hurt. But it would strengthen the hand or
Indians who understand that their nation can best compete
against China by being economically powerful and that without
such strength, a military competition of the sort now being
undertaken will be disastrous.
Certainly, the world is watching including Pakistan (whose
financial and political institutions can even less afford an
American financial cut-off). It the White House is to have
any chance of having its commitment to nonproliferation taken
seriously, its sanctions must be seen as something more than
a bluff. Pakistan, at the least, must understand it has much
more to lose than gain by testing.
Congress and the White House must also use the Indian tests
to revise our overly generous, a la carte nonproliferation
policies. We must recognize that the case of India is related
to those of China and North Korea; our catering to both these
nations' demands for military-related technology--whether it
be for missile or nuclear goods--is a prescription for more
proliferation. Indeed, the White House has smothered these
nations and Russia with all manner of nuclear and space
assistance (actually subsidizing known proliferators like
China's Great Wall Industries, the Chinese National Nuclear
Corporation and the Russian Space Agency with licensed
American technology).
But what the United States has all too scrupulously avoided
is the use of any sticks--from enforcing sanctions against
China and Russia, to penalizing Russian investments in Iran's
oil industry, to keeping our military and diplomats from
purposeful action against Iraq, to holding North Korea
responsible for its continued violation of the global Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty. This and the continued American
export of high technology to known proliferators must end.
Finally, we need to be more confident. We always have
plenty of warning, if we are willing to act on less than
conclusive proof of a completed weapons program. And we have
plenty of options to deter proliferation, assuming we're
willing to act early enough.
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