[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 87 (Monday, July 6, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7348-S7351]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND SANCTIONS

  Mr. GLENN. Madam President, if we go back in history, we see that the 
development of weapons of war have become more and more hideous as time 
goes on.
  One of the biggest steps forward in that direction--or steps 
downward, depending on how you look at it--was the development of 
nuclear weaponry near the end of World War II. I was involved in World 
War II and in the Korean war. I have been through combat. I know what 
it is like. When I came to the Senate, I could not imagine anything 
more horrible than the use of nuclear weaponry in future wars, if they 
ever came up. The horrors of conventional war are bad enough without 
imposing nuclear weaponry into that scenario.
  My desire to do something in this area motivated much of my work here 
in the Senate, and I have taken a leading position on this issue 
through the years. Some of it has been very controversial. There have 
been various approaches to this issue. I want to discuss just a few of 
those today.
  We have been hearing much talk in this body lately about the use and 
the value of sanctions, which is one of the tools we have applied to 
prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to more and more countries around 
the world. This tool has been applied in many other foreign policy 
contexts as well, and I am the first to agree with those who say that 
we may have gone too far in the application of some of these 
instruments of foreign policy--some of them. There have been successes 
and there have been failures. It has been a rather spotty record all 
the way through.
  When you consider this whole issue, it seems to revolve mainly around 
two questions: First, in our international relationships, where do we 
use carrots and where do we use sticks, to put it in those terms. Where 
do we use enticements to people, to try and entice them into a certain 
behavior we would like to see, and where do we use sticks? Where do we 
threaten the punishments that they may consider ahead of time that 
might cause them not to go into certain areas of behavior we would like 
to see them avoid?
  Second, what role should sanctions play as an expression of 
disapproval or punishment in cases where it is manifest that behavior 
will not be significantly altered as a result of the imposition of 
sanctions?
  Now, the debate in Congress and in most of the think tanks around 
town and across the country has been most

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curious because they seem to want it both ways. They want sanctions in 
some areas and not in others, but not necessarily with regard to 
nonproliferation.
  If we consider some other areas, for example, probably the most 
salient example of the failure of sanctions from every perspective is 
the drug war. Now, all of us are against drug use. We want to cut out 
drug use, whether by cutting the flow from abroad or at our borders or 
within our communities or whatever. We have those sanctions on, but no 
one in Congress is standing up to proclaim that sanctions against 
persons or countries which are contributing to the illegal use of drugs 
ought to be eliminated. We want to keep those sanctions on. Why? In 
part, because the drug war is politically popular. The war against 
drugs is politically popular, and its effect on commercial activity by 
American business is mixed. We have some businesses in this country 
actually flourishing because of the drug war--manufacturing of 
equipment used in surveillance, construction of jails, so on. So those 
people are not about to go to the National Association of Manufacturers 
or the Chamber of Commerce to complain about unilateral U.S. 
sanctions. But the complaints about sanctions are now legion when 
sanctions are applied in other contexts, like the one I am addressing 
today--nonproliferation. This is not to say that the critics of 
congressionally mandated sanctions have no case. I agree with some of 
the points that they make. But there are extremists who take the 
position that sanctions are never effective and are therefore always 
inappropriate. There are also extremists who insist on taking a 
punitive approach to every vexing foreign policy problem. These folks 
never saw a sanction they didn't like, and any approach to an issue 
that doesn't take the hardest line is denounced as some sort of 
appeasement. I might add that quite often there are political points as 
much as public policy points trying to be made by some of the tacks 
that these people seem to take.

  Well, as the author of numerous pieces of legislation on nuclear 
proliferation that have included both carrots and the sticks of 
sanctions as tools for achieving certain nonproliferation objectives, I 
have tried to forge a balanced approach to the proliferation problem. 
Most recently, my 1994 legislation, which has been referred to as the 
Glenn amendment, was used by President Clinton to impose a variety of 
economic sanctions against both India and Pakistan because of their 
recent nuclear tests. Those sanctions were tough. We didn't pull any 
punches with those sanctions. Those sanctions mandated that military 
sales and any aid programs had to stop. It said we would block credits 
and loan guarantees by U.S. Government agencies. We would oppose any 
loans or cooperation with those countries under sanction from the World 
Bank, or IMF, the so-called IFITs, International Financial Institution 
Transactions. We would also block credit from private banks, and we 
would prohibit the export of dual-use technology to those countries 
which might be used for military purposes.
  Now, that is tough legislation. We didn't give a waiver authority at 
all. We had rather spotty experiences with Presidents in the past and 
we said we were going to make this tough; the President could delay the 
imposition of those sanctions for 30 session days if he wanted, but the 
President didn't have the authority to waive those sanctions, as is the 
case with some other legislation. That was done very intentionally. 
These sanctions now require congressional legislation in order to 
remove them.
  Let's look at the history behind the 1994 legislation--I think it is 
important to know--in order to understand why this legislation took the 
form that it did. It is tied up with the history of the cold war and 
U.S. nonproliferation policy. We could go back to the days of Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki. Most people realized since those days that we needed to 
prevent a nuclear holocaust by somehow, some way reducing nuclear 
weapons. Now, that has remained through the years a long-term 
objective. And through many of those years it was very disappointing to 
see the spread of nuclear weapons go on, or nations trying to gain 
nuclear weapons capabilities.
  While nuclear reductions and ultimately nuclear disarmament remained 
our long-term objective, it would become even more difficult if more 
and more nations developed a nuclear weapons capability. And with that 
long-time objective in mind, we passed legislation over a period of 
more than 20 years trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, while 
at the same time holding out the hope for eventual weapons control.
  In 1978, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, which I coauthored, was 
enacted. It provided for carrots on nuclear cooperation for countries 
that adhered to certain nonproliferation principles, and it provided 
the stick of sanctions--cutoffs of nuclear cooperation for countries 
engaged in dangerous nuclear activities related to bomb making, 
including nuclear detonations. The Presidential waiver was provided 
within that legislation. A year earlier than that--in 1977--I authored 
an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act that provided for cutoffs of 
economic and military assistance to countries that received or exploded 
a nuclear device, or were engaged in--and this is important--either the 
import or export of dangerous nuclear technologies involving plutonium 
production and separation--either import or export, either way, whether 
the country was supplying the stuff or receiving it.
  I provided a Presidential waiver in this case also. This legislation, 
along with the so-called Symington amendment on nuclear enrichment 
technology transfers, resulted in a cutoff of economic and military 
assistance for Pakistan in 1979. While the Glenn amendment could have 
been waived, the Presidential waiver attached to the Symington 
amendment was impossible to exercise; only congressional action could 
remove the Symington sanction. Then we came to Afghanistan. After the 
Afghanistan war erupted--which coincided almost very similar in time to 
the installation of a new administration--the Reagan administration 
decided they could not provide military assistance to the mujahedin in 
Afghanistan without lifting the ban on assistance to Pakistan. The 
reason was that the material had to flow to Afghanistan through 
Pakistan. We could hardly get them to transport material through the 
Pakistani border area and across their territory to Afghanistan if we 
had sanctions on against Pakistan. So there was a waiver.
  The Administration went to Congress and asked for a repeal of the 
Symington amendment, but Congress wasn't willing to do that. We were 
unwilling to give the Pakistanis total relief from pressure to halt 
their evident nuclear weapons development program, so a compromise was 
struck. Congress agreed to a legislated 6-year waiver of the Symington 
sanctions, but at the same time passed an amendment that I offered to 
remove the ability of the President to waive a cutoff of economic and 
military assistance to any nonweapon state like Pakistan that explodes 
a nuclear device.
  In effect, the line in the sand on sanctions had been pulled back. My 
purpose in removing the waiver was simple. I didn't know how long in 
fact the Afghanistan war would proceed. I believed that just as long as 
it went on, the Pakistanis would count on the Reagan administration not 
to put nonproliferation policy ahead of cold-war policy. My amendment 
did provide for a possible 30-session-day delay of sanctions by the 
President following a detonation, but no waiver without congressional 
action.
  Now, turn over the calendar a little bit. In 1985, when it was clear 
that the Pakistanis were still going for the bomb--something we had 
known for a long time--which they consistently denied at all levels of 
their government, Congress moved the line in the sand a bit closer by 
passing the Pressler amendment, which also carried no Presidential 
waiver. It mandated a cutoff to Pakistan, unless the President 
certified that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device. 
Note the wording: The President could not certify they did not possess 
a nuclear explosive device. It was under this amendment that Pakistan 
was cut off from economic and military assistance in 1990, after the 
Afghanistan war ended--and I should add about 3 years after the 
Pakistanis actually had made the bomb that we knew they were working on 
all that time.

[[Page S7350]]

  But other international developments were going on all through this 
same period. In terms of world events at this point, we were witnessing 
the demise of the cold war and the beginning of the collapse of the 
Soviet Union. This brought new hope for really, truly, and finally at 
least gaining control of nuclear weaponry, after going through years 
upon years upon years of what we call MAD--mutually assured 
destruction--on both sides if anybody set off a nuclear weapon. Those 
were long years where we thought that nuclear nonproliferation was dead 
and wasn't something with which we really were going to succeed. But 
finally, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, this brought new hope 
for really gaining control of nuclear weaponry. In a comparatively 
short period of time there was real optimism that control over these 
weapons could be gained. I was one of those who changed my views on 
this completely during that time period, because I had been very 
pessimistic through the years. Even though I am the author of much 
legislation, as I just recounted, on this, I didn't feel that we were 
really gaining much in the world, and we were starting to move in 
place. And other nations were really trying to get nuclear weaponry. So 
we weren't really accomplishing much.

  But all at once I began to feel very optimistic at this time, because 
at the end of the cold war and the agreement with the Soviet Union we 
saw missiles being taken out of silos; weapons being taken down; 
fissile material being taken out; the cores of nuclear weapons being 
taken out and used for other purposes, for stockpile, or whatever. But 
they were no longer in the weapons aimed at each other halfway around 
the world. Real progress was being made. I began to feel pretty good 
about this.
  With U.S. leadership, we then worked to obtain progress on arms 
control and nonproliferation. Over a period of time we had 185 nations 
sign up under the nonproliferation treaty. Progress was being made on 
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, also, which currently has 149 
signatories. If anyone had come to me and told me a few years ago that 
we would have that many signatories, that we would have 185 sign up 
under NPT and 149 for CTBT, I would have told them they were crazy to 
even contemplate such a thing. But that is what has happened. So things 
are moving in the right direction.
  Indeed, so much progress was being made on the test ban treaty and so 
much progress had been made on computer simulation of nuclear weapon 
tests that it was unclear whether any further nuclear explosions would 
have to take place anywhere.
  Back in the old days it was quite apparent that if a nation was going 
nuclear they didn't say they were a nuclear nation unless they had gone 
out and really tested a weapon. They couldn't just say their 
engineering was good, that they will rely on engineering and claim they 
were a nuclear state and that they knew the thing would go off. That 
wasn't the way it went. You had to take it out and test it. And if you 
didn't, you couldn't rely on nuclear weapons. What has happened with 
the supercomputer and supercomputer simulation is that the need for 
testing is no longer clear. The way it is now is we think probably you 
could have a nuclear weapons capability without doing any testing.
  So the hope was at that point--the hope we had in 1994--that much 
tougher sanctions would put the final nail in the coffin for nuclear 
tests. There wouldn't be any nuclear testing if we could just make this 
a tough law. So although the circumstances in 1994 were much different 
than those of 1981, the Glenn amendment of 1981 was updated with tough 
sanctions. It became the Glenn amendment of 1994. I thought it was 
working. And it was working until just a few months ago. Unfortunately, 
the hope on which the amendment was based went down the drain when 
India's extreme Hindu Nationalist Party overrode what most of the world 
thought should have been more responsible behavior and set off a 
nuclear weapon. And Pakistan responded in kind with their demonstration 
also to make sure they were not left out of things, too.
  So we are now faced with a situation which will test the mettle of 
our diplomacy in south Asia like few times in history, I guess we could 
probably say like never before. The sanctions that are being imposed 
because of the Indian and Pakistani tests will fall on both of them, 
and may help us--I hope it does--move the Indians and Pakistanis toward 
more responsible behavior in the aftermath of the tests.
  We must admit that the sanctions did fail in their primary purpose, 
which was to prevent a test in the first place. But I look at this as a 
setback, not the end of our efforts. One could only speculate if this 
failure was due to the sanctions' unilateral nature or whether the 
Indians would have tested under any circumstance. This is not to say 
that unilateral sanctions are never to be imposed as nonproliferation 
threats. Quite the contrary. For example, the threat of such sanctions 
was helpful in the special cases of Taiwan and South Korea, when both 
of those countries were taking steps toward proliferative activity some 
years ago. We could also indicate that there were other nations that we 
thought were moving perhaps in that direction, too, and who ultimately 
gave up their programs--like Argentina and Brazil, and South Africa.
  But anyway, to go back to Taiwan and South Korea, both of those 
countries were heavily dependent on the United States. So unilateral 
sanctions worked, and they worked well. I think our sanctions also 
worked for a while in maybe holding back some of Pakistan's advance in 
their nuclear weapons program, because we made it more difficult for 
other nations to cooperate with Pakistan as they were trying to achieve 
their nuclear weapons capability.
  But in general I believe it has been increasingly clear that with the 
dramatic expansion of the world community--sources of information, 
sources of equipment, sources of trade around the world--I believe that 
sanctions become really effective only if they have multilateral 
support.
  Let me repeat that because that is the basis of some of these things 
that I want to elaborate on just a little bit further. Sanctions become 
really effective only if they have multilateral support, whether 
through our allies or through the United Nations. Unilateral sanctions 
are not as effective as we would like to see them. That is the 
understatement of the day. And there are situations where the 
imposition or continuation of mandated unilateral sanctions may make a 
problem even worse.
  So I have come to believe that except in very special circumstances, 
such as those we faced in 1981, sanctions legislation that give the 
President no role in their implementation or continuation should be 
avoided, and laws which have been constructed in such fashion should be 
amended. That is the reason I am here on the floor today.
  In my 1994 legislation, the President has no role in the process of 
implementation or the continuation of sanctions. And the Congress, 
because of the tradition of no limit on Senate debate, can be hamstrung 
by a determined minority of Senators who wish to retain sanctions 
because of considerations that may have nothing to do with the original 
transgression. So we don't want to permit that to happen, either.
  So, accordingly, on June 26, just before the recess, I introduced the 
Sanctions Implementation Procedures Act of 1998, which is labeled 
Senate bill 2258, which, if passed, will be applicable to all country 
sanctions laws that do not contain a Presidential waiver which the 
President may exercise on the grounds of protecting the national 
interest. I want to, in order to give the President more leeway, get 
multilateral support, which is what I would like to see happen either 
with our major allies or through the United Nations. This bill would 
give the President the option of delaying any imposition of 
congressionally mandated sanctions for a period not to exceed the 
combination of 45 calendar days, followed by 15 session days of 
Congress. The President, if he chooses to delay the sanctions, must 
provide a report to Congress no later than the end of the 45-day period 
in which he discusses the objectives of the sanctions, the extent of 
multilateral support for the sanctions, and the estimated costs and 
benefits, both tangible and intangible.
  If in this report the President recommends that we don't go ahead 
with the sanctions--he recommends nonimplementation of the sanctions--
then

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expedited procedures are triggered for 15 session days in both the 
Senate and the House of Representatives--both Houses of Congress--for 
the purpose of approving or disapproving the President's 
recommendation--in other words, expedited procedures which provide for 
no filibuster. We take it up in preference to other legislation. We 
give it priority. So it could not be delayed.
  Equally important, if the sanctions go into effect--let's say that 
the Congress says, ``OK. Yes. Mr. President, we think this should go 
into effect,'' or if the President just chooses to put it into effect 
and says, ``Yes, we do have multilateral support, and, yes, we do have 
enough support to make the sanctions really bite to make them 
meaningful''--if the sanctions go into effect, they remain so for two 
years and then this procedure is repeated on the sanctions' second 
anniversary, and each anniversary thereafter. In other words, there 
would be a time certain after every sanction in which the 
administration would have to consider the effectiveness of it, a report 
to the Congress, and Congress then would either take appropriate action 
as they saw fit at that time or we let the sanctions continue on for 
another year.
  For sanctions already in effect at the time of enactment of this 
bill, this procedure is triggered at the next anniversary of the 
sanction if it has been in place for 2 years or more, or at the second 
anniversary for sanctions less than 2 years old.
  So this proposed legislation is retrospective and prospective both. 
We are trying to set down rules here that would apply and make sense on 
how we will operate in the future with existing sanctions that are in 
there now and ones that might be applied in the future under current 
and future laws of our land.
  Madam President, this bill does not give the President carte blanche 
to waive congressionally mandated sanctions, as some bills do, and does 
not allow a minority of the Senate to prevent sanctions from being 
lifted as is the case with some of our laws.
  We have worked on this very hard, and I believe this bill provides a 
balance of responsibilities between the President and the Congress. We 
do not cut the President out of the equation. We do not cut the 
Congress out of the equation. We recognize our constitutional 
responsibilities at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. This would apply 
in the imposition and removal of sanctions, and I urge the support of 
my colleagues for this bill.
  I know that a task force has been formed to look at some of the 
sanctions legislation, and I will be presenting this to that task force 
also for its consideration. There are several bills that will address 
this particular problem, but I think this bill really establishes a 
balance, and I hope I can rely on my colleagues for support when this 
subject comes to a vote.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BOND. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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