[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.

[[Page H4031]]

  ``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.

                          ____________________