[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 118 (Wednesday, September 9, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10112-S10113]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I want to commend to my colleagues the
exceptionally thoughtful lead editorial in yesterday morning's
Washington Post. It is entitled ``The Test Ban and Arms Control,'' and
it makes some cogent points about the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty and
a Senate where few objections are raised to the Treaty itself, but most
Republicans still cast symbolic votes against it.
The Post notes correctly that leading Senate Republicans seem to
assume that a national missile defense is the only answer to the
problems of nuclear proliferation and the risk of nuclear war.
As the Post concludes, however, treaties like the Chemical Weapons
Convention and the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty ``are capable of
serving American requirements well.'' Whatever one's views on national
missile defense, those treaties ``would strengthen the American
position in the world.''
I would note two areas in which I disagree with the Post editorial.
First of all, the Test-Ban Treaty was signed 2 years ago, rather than
``earlier this year.'' The Treaty was submitted to the Senate nearly a
full year ago, and has languished because the Republican leadership is
afraid to let it come up.
I do not accept the Post's pessimistic view, moreover, of the Test-
Ban Treaty's chances on the floor. In last week's vote, moderate
Republicans could support their Leader without doing any tangible harm.
When the Test-Ban Treaty finally comes up for a vote on ratification,
however, I am confident that at least 67 members will support it, just
as they supported the Chemical Weapons Convention last year.
With those two caveats, I strongly urge my colleagues to read
Tuesday's Post editorial and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed
in the Record.
[[Page S10113]]
There being no objection, the editorial ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 8, 1998]
The Test Ban and Arms Control
An early Senate vote on funds for implementation of the
comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty indicates that the two-
thirds majority needed to ratify the test ban may be lacking.
There would be some votes from the Republican majority for a
treaty, but at this moment the dominant blocking position of
the party leadership looks strong. The evident resistance to
ratification is attributed not simply to dissatisfaction with
some of the treaty's terms--there isn't all that much
dissatisfaction--but to a fundamental and wrongheaded quarrel
with the premises of arms control itself.
Modern arms control was invented during the Cold War to
restrict the nuclear armories of the then-two great powers
and, if not to bring something deserving of the name of peace
between them, then to lessen the risks and costs of their
preparing for nuclear war. There were ups and downs, and
their ultimate worth can be argued, but there is no denying
that at a certain point Ronald Reagan demolished arms control
as everyone had known it.
From being a policy aimed at producing nuclear parity or
stalemate in a condition of reduced but continuing political
hostility, arms control became under President Reagan a bold
program to end Soviet-American nuclear competition and beyond
that, to close out the Cold War itself by seeing to the
transformation of the Soviet Union. Many other hands,
especially Mikhail Gorbachev's, shared in this task. But
Ronald Reagan was a leading contributor to the different
state of affairs we enjoy with Russia to this day.
Since the Cold War's demise, the urgency has gone out of
classical arms control. The United States, far from deterring
Russia and preserving a balance of terror, is helping Russia
dismantle its excessive and expensive nuclear capability,
concentrating on the specter of ``loose nukes''--weapons
under uncertain official control and vulnerable to private
theft and misuse. Still, the weapons that most trouble the
United States and Russia are those in the hands, or in the
aspirations, of third countries. Nonproliferation or counter-
proliferation is at the heart of post-Cold War arms control.
This is the context in which the comprehensive test ban
treaty, which was decades in the making, finally was signed
earlier this year. This arms-control perennial had changed
from being a check on Russian and American arms programs into
a restraint on the spread of weapons of mass destruction
among assorted regimes around the world. This is the test
ban's 21st century mission: to give the multitude of nations
an additional lever with which to press Iran and Iraq, North
Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel--and rogues elsewhere--to
abandon or slow their nuclear urges.
Leading Senate Republicans perversely persist in blaming
the test ban, and by extension the whole updated post-Cold
War framework of arms control, for nuclear and chemical and
other programs being pursued by various countries. These
naive senators seem to believe that arms-control measures are
magically self-enforcing. They fail to understand that the
signatories of arms-control agreements must take upon
themselves the burdens of observing their terms and of
enforcing compliance to others' formal pledges of self-
denial. If the signatories fall short, the responsibility
falls on them, not on the agreements.
The senators also profess to rely on American power and
American technology alone--especially on a new national
missile defense--to ensure the security of the United States.
Such a missile defense is in the works, but questions remain
about its strategic purpose, efficacy and cost. The pace of
pondering these questions has itself become a sharp political
issue. Meanwhile, some senators carelessly would throw away
the increments to American security that could be added by
cooperation with other friendly countries in matters such as
the chemical weapons treaty, the nuclear nonproliferation
treaty and the test ban.
These are imperfect instruments, but they are capable of
serving American requirements well. Even if a missile defense
of minimal cost, deadly accuracy and reliability were ready
today, which it is not, those instruments would strengthen
the American position in the world.
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