[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 40 (Monday, March 15, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2625-S2646]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE ACT OF 1999

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of S. 257, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 257) to state the policy of the United States 
     regarding the deployment of a missile defense system capable 
     of defending the territory of the United States against 
     limited ballistic missile attack.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi is recognized.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, the National Missile Defense Act of 
1999 will make it the policy of the United States to deploy an 
effective missile defense system to defend against a limited ballistic 
missile attack as soon as technologically possible. Today, American 
citizens are completely vulnerable to ballistic missile attack.
  Last year, when the Senate debated similar legislation, some 
suggested that our bill was premature, that there was not yet any 
reason to suspect that we were confronted with a ballistic missile 
threat. Now, however, there is no disagreement about the nature of the 
threat. Consider these recent developments:
  (1) In 1997, the Director of Central Intelligence said, ``Gaps and 
uncertainties preclude a good projection of when `rest of the world' 
countries will deploy ICBMs.''
  (2) Last year, both Pakistan and Iran successfully tested new medium-
range missiles, each based in some degree on a newly deployed North 
Korean missile, the No Dong.
  (3) Also last year, in July, the bipartisan commission headed by the 
former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, reported its unanimous 
conclusions that foreign assistance to missile programs was a pervasive 
fact and that new ICBM threats to the United States might appear with 
``little or no warning.''
  (4) A few weeks after the Rumsfeld report, North Korea launched the 
Taepo Dong 1, successfully demonstrating a multiple-staging capability, 
and using a solid-fuel third stage. According to the National 
Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear Systems, instead of 
having the expected 2,000-kilometer range, the Taepo Dong 1 can attack 
targets up to 6,000 kilometers away, which puts Alaska and Hawaii 
within its range. The Taepo Dong 2 is expected to be able to reach the 
entire United States.
  (5) The Secretary of Defense announced in January that the ballistic 
missile threat to the United States was no longer in question. He said, 
``We have crossed that threshold.''
  These recent events have answered the question about the threat. The 
question today is whether we intend to defend ourselves against that 
threat. The National Missile Defense Act is the appropriate answer to 
that question. It will send a clear message--to our adversaries, our 
allies, and our own citizens--that the United States will not leave 
itself vulnerable to weapons of mass destruction delivered by long-
range ballistic missiles.
  Some may suggest instead a continuation of our old policy of mutual 
assured destruction. That was the policy of deterrence we used to deal 
with the threat from the former Soviet Union. Former Defense Secretary 
William Perry warned us about using this policy with a new class of 
rogue states that may be ``undeterrable'' in the sense that we 
understand that concept.
  The fact is, we do not need to be at the mercy of a policy of mutual 
assured death or destruction. Assistant Secretary of Defense Edward 
Warner said in January,

       I believe that we are unlikely to turn back to the point 
     where we will rely only on deterrence. I think over time we 
     will rely on a combination of deterrence by threat of 
     retaliation and this limited type of national missile 
     defense. . . . 

  The passage of this bill by the Senate will also send an important 
message to those who are working to develop our missile defenses. The 
development program has suffered from the lack of a commitment to 
deploy the system. No other acquisition program has been handled by the 
Defense Department without an endpoint of deployment to aim for and 
reach.
  The National Missile Defense Act will put an end to this uncertainty 
by telling the talented people building this system that it will be put 
in the field just as soon as they can get it ready. The NMD 
contractor's program manager testified in the Armed Services Committee 
last month that passage of this legislation would be a major motivation 
for those building the system, saying, ``It would make them feel better 
about the mission they are being asked to carry out than any one thing 
I can think of [and that] people are much more motivated by knowing 
that the Government is truly behind this. . . .''
  Finally, passage of this bill will tell America's citizens that its 
Government is meeting its first and most important constitutional 
duty--providing for the common defense. One legacy of the cold war may 
be the absence of a defense against a massive and deliberate strategic 
attack from the former Soviet Union. But vulnerability to attack by 
everyone who desires to threaten America does not have to continue, and 
our Government would be irresponsible if it were to let it continue.
  Madam President, there is no purpose in this bill other than to 
clearly establish, as a matter of policy, that the United States will 
deploy, as soon as technologically possible, an effective national 
missile defense system which is capable against limited threats. There 
are no ulterior motives, no hidden goals; there is only an intent to 
correct a defense policy that leaves us vulnerable to a serious and 
growing threat.
  On the subject of missile defense, there are other things the Senate 
could legislate, such as system architecture, schedule, costs, or ABM 
Treaty issues. These issues will have to be dealt with in due course. 
But none of them has to be resolved in this bill, and we should not let 
this legislation become an effort to answer all of the questions 
related to missile defense.
  The question this bill addresses is not a simplistic one, as 
suggested by an administration spokesman; it is more fundamental: Will 
we, or will we not, commit in a meaningful way to defending ourselves 
against limited ballistic missile attack? Will we tell the world the 
United States will not be subject to blackmail by ballistic missile? 
Will we tell our citizens they will not be hostages to the demands of 
those nations who seek to coerce the United States?
  We have heard many statements made to reassure us about the 
willingness of the United States to defend itself, but there is always 
an ``if'' attached--``if'' the threat appears, ``if'' we can afford it, 
``if'' other nations give us their permission. With all of these 
``ifs,'' these qualifiers, we should hardly be surprised that the world 
doubts the United States is serious about defending itself from 
ballistic missile attack. And no one should be surprised that, in the 
face of this doubt, the threat continues to grow.
  The National Missile Defense Act of 1999 will put an end to those 
doubts. It will tell the world that there is no question of ``if,'' and 
as soon as it is able, the United States will deploy a system to defend 
itself against limited ballistic missile attack. I urge all Senators to 
support this bill.


                            Amendment No. 69

  (Purpose: To clarify that the deployment funding is subject to the 
            annual authorization and appropriation process)

  Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, to make it crystal clear that this 
legislation is a statement of policy and not an effort to circumvent 
legislative and appropriations committees of jurisdiction, I send an 
amendment to the desk and ask that it be stated.

[[Page S2626]]

  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Cochran], for himself, 
     Mr. Inouye, Mr. Lieberman, and Mr. Warner, proposes an 
     amendment numbered 69.
       On page 2, line 11, insert before the period at the end the 
     following: ``with funding subject to the annual authorization 
     of appropriations and the annual appropriation of funds for 
     National Missile Defense''.

  Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, I will state for the Record that the 
cosponsors of the amendment are Senators Warner, Lieberman, and Inouye.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I share the goal of providing the 
American people with effective protection against the emerging long-
range missile threat from rogue states.
  I support developing an operationally effective, cost-effective 
limited national missile defense, and making an effort to negotiate 
with Russia, for a reasonable period of time, any appropriate 
modifications to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that might be 
necessary to permit deployment of a limited national missile defense 
system. That is why, Madam President, I support the Defense 
Department's National Missile Defense Deployment Readiness Program to 
develop a limited NMD system to protect the United States against such 
a developing threat.
  But that is not what this bill before us does.
  This bill says we are going to deploy a national missile defense 
system ``as soon as technologically possible.'' No other factors are to 
be considered. Don't consider if the system is operationally effective.
  Those are important words to the military, ``operationally 
effective.'' But we are not supposed to consider that under this bill.
  Don't consider if it is cost-effective. Don't consider whether it 
ends the elimination of thousands of nuclear weapons in Russia under 
the START process. Don't consider whether it increases the threat of 
the proliferation of these terrible weapons to rogue states interested 
in getting them by any means possible. This bill says to heck with all 
of these considerations--we are going to deploy a national missile 
defense system as soon as it is technologically possible, no matter 
whether it is operationally effective, no matter if it increases the 
threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons, no matter what it costs.
  The fundamental question that we should ask ourselves is whether 
passing this bill will make us more secure or less secure.
  That is truly the fundamental question that all of us must address.
  I agree with the President's senior national security advisors that 
enacting this bill will make us less secure. It puts at risk our 
decades-long efforts to reduce strategic offensive nuclear weapons in 
Russia and increases the likelihood that these weapons will proliferate 
to rogue states.


                   concerns of the uniformed military

  And where is the support of our uniformed military leaders for this 
bill, Madam President? The answer is, there isn't any. I have not heard 
any of our senior military leaders say they support this legislation. 
Our military leaders tell us that we are not ready yet to make a 
decision to deploy a national missile defense system. They are worried 
that if we make a hasty and head-long rush to deployment, we will be 
less able to deal with other very real--and unfortunately more likely--
threats to our security, including the proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction and their use by terrorists.

  General Shelton, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified 
before the Armed Services Committee in January that the decision to 
deploy a national missile defense system should be made only after 
considering a number of critical factors:

       There are two aspects of the National Missile Defense 
     [issue] that we have to be concerned with. No. 1 is: is the 
     technology that allows us to deploy one that is an effective 
     system, and within the means of this country money-wise? 
     Second is the threat and whether or not the threat, when 
     measured against all the other threats that we face, 
     justifies the expenditure of that type of money for that 
     particular system at the time when the technology will allow 
     us to field it?
       Right now it is not a matter of whether or not we should 
     field one because the technology has not reached the point 
     that we have the capability. It is a 12-year system that we 
     have been trying to do within 3 years. It is a high risk 
     program which has yet to prove that we will be able to make a 
     bullet hit the bullet. Certainly we need to continue to 
     pursue this technology, and DOD has that within their program 
     right now to pursue it. They are also putting money into the 
     program so that at the time that we have the technology, that 
     if in fact the threat justifies it, then we in fact could go 
     ahead with the fielding. If not, then we need to continue 
     with the R&D that will develop a system that could provide 
     missile defense.

  Listen to just a few of the factors that General Shelton says that we 
ought to be concerned with; that is, that the technology, one, is 
effective. Is it within the means of this country moneywise? Assess the 
threat. Measure the threat against all the other threats that we face, 
and then see whether or not that justifies the expenditure of that type 
of money for that particular system at the time the technology will 
allow us to field it. And he points out that it is a high-risk program.
  Lieutenant General Lester Lyles, the Director of the Ballistic 
Missile Defense Office, made similar points in January:

       We've always stated within the National Missile Defense 
     program that a decision to deploy is based essentially on 
     four basic things. One, whether or not we have a valid 
     threat; two, whether or not we have the right amount of 
     dollars budgeted for deployment; three, whether the issue 
     with the treaty has been addressed; and four, are we 
     technically ready, is the technology ready in order to make 
     such a decision and to support the deployment.

  That is the Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Office who says 
four basic things must be considered. This bill considers one. Is it 
technologically possible? The Director of the Missile Defense Office in 
charge of this program, who surely is interested in securing this 
Nation as much as anybody against an attack, says there are four 
factors that need to be considered.
  General Lyles says that these four factors are essential. At least we 
surely should not limit General Lyles, General Shelton, and the 
Secretary of Defense to considering the sole criterion of 
``technologically possible,'' as this bill does.
  The Joint Chiefs have expressed reservations about the commitment now 
to deploy a national missile defense system; they have raised these 
concerns in many ways and at many times.
  Last September, Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer told the 
Armed Services Committee: ``I think we need to have something that's 
practical; has a degree of success. I think it also has to be balanced 
against other priorities.''
  The question of other priorities--other threats--is a major concern 
of the Joint Chiefs. In an interview last month, General Shelton 
pointed out: ``There are other serious threats out there in addition to 
that posed by ballistic missiles. We know, for example, that there are 
adversaries with chemical and biological weapons that can attack the 
United States today. They could do it with a briefcase--by infiltrating 
our territory across our shores or through our airports.''
  Does the bill we are debating today address any of these concerns 
raised by our senior military leaders? The answer is, Madam President, 
it does not. And that is one of the many reasons we do not see our 
senior military leaders supporting this bill.
  If this legislation would advance--even by one day--the development 
of an operationally effective and cost effective NMD system suitable 
for deployment, then maybe our military leaders would support it. But 
this bill doesn't do that.
  It doesn't advance by one day the development of an operationally 
effective, cost-effective national missile defense system.
  The bill simply says that we are going to deploy a national missile 
defense system as soon as it is technologically possible, without 
regard to operational effectiveness, without regard to cost, without 
regard to the impact on nuclear weapons reduction in Russia, without 
regard to proliferation of nuclear weapons that could result. If this 
legislation said that we should stop any further reductions of nuclear 
weapons on Russian soil, I do not think many Members of this Senate 
would support it.

[[Page S2627]]

  That may not be what the language of this bill says, but that will be 
the likely outcome of the policy in this bill. And here is why. At the 
Helsinki summit on March 21, 1997, President Clinton and President 
Yeltsin issued a joint statement on the ABM Treaty, on the Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty, which began as follows:

       President Clinton and President Yeltsin, expressing their 
     commitment to strengthening strategic stability and 
     international security, emphasizing the importance of further 
     reductions in strategic offensive arms, and recognizing the 
     fundamental significance of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty 
     for these objectives, as well as the necessity for effective 
     theater missile defense systems, consider it their common 
     task to preserve the ABM Treaty, prevent circumvention of it, 
     and enhance its viability.

  That is a summit statement. That is not some casual comment to a 
reporter. That is a joint statement that was issued at the highest 
level by the two Presidents of the United States and Russia.
  Defense Secretary Cohen has made it clear that both pursuing a 
limited national missile defense program and maintaining the ABM Treaty 
are in our national interests and can both be accomplished. During his 
press conference in January, Secretary Cohen stated his view on the 
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as follows:

       I believe it's in our interest to maintain that. I think we 
     need to modify it to allow for a national missile defense 
     program that I've outlined, but the ABM Treaty, I think, is 
     important to maintain the limitations on offensive missiles. 
     To the extent that there is no ABM Treaty, then certainly 
     Russia or other countries would feel free to develop as many 
     offensive weapons as they wanted, which would set in motion a 
     comparable dynamic to offset that with more missiles here.

  The bill before us, S. 257, states that we will deploy a national 
missile defense system as soon as it is technologically possible 
despite our treaty commitment to Russia and the ABM Treaty and its 
importance to strategic stability and future nuclear arms reductions in 
Russia. The bill before us will jeopardize our recently begun effort to 
reach a negotiated agreement with Russia on possible changes to the ABM 
Treaty that may be necessary to permit deployment of a limited national 
missile defense system. We cannot, and we will not, give Russia or any 
other nation a veto over our national missile defense requirements or 
programs.
  I want to repeat that so it is not misunderstood. We cannot and we 
should not give any nation, including Russia, a veto over our decision 
whether or not to deploy a national missile defense. But making a 
decision now to deploy a national missile defense system before we 
attempt to negotiate changes to the ABM Treaty, before the military and 
civilian leadership of the Defense Department say that the Nation can 
responsibly make such a decision, will likely reduce Russia's 
willingness to continue reducing nuclear weapons under the START 
process, likely lead Russia to retain thousands of nuclear weapons that 
it would otherwise eliminate, and thereby dramatically increase the 
threat of nuclear proliferation.

  The Committee on Armed Services has previously recognized the 
importance of a cooperative approach on missile defense and the ABM 
Treaty. Last year, the committee included a provision in the National 
Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1999 that encouraged the 
United States to work in a cooperative manner with Russia on issues of 
missile defense. The conference report for that bill said the 
following:

       The conferees believe that a cooperative approach to 
     ballistic missile defense could lead to a mutually agreeable 
     evolution of the ABM Treaty, i.e., either modification or 
     replacement by a newer understanding or agreement that would 
     clear the way for the United States and Russia to deploy 
     national missile defenses each believes necessary for its 
     security. If implemented in a cooperative manner, the 
     conferees do not believe that such steps would undermine the 
     original intent of the ABM Treaty, which was to maintain 
     strategic stability and permit significant nuclear arms 
     reduction.

  That was from the conference report on our 1999 defense authorization 
bill. And how different it is from the bill before us, when the 
conferees said that a cooperative approach, cooperative approach to 
ballistic missile defense, could lead to a mutually agreeable evolution 
of the ABM Treaty.
  None of that is in the bill before us. Instead, S. 257 is 
inconsistent with this understanding of the importance of a cooperative 
approach toward the ABM Treaty, to maintaining strategic stability and 
permitting large reductions in nuclear weapons because it threatens a 
unilateral breach of the ABM Treaty.
  Passing this bill would make it much more difficult for the 
administration to maintain the continuing benefits of the ABM Treaty 
and the cooperative approach to nuclear arms reduction under the START 
process. Russia's Foreign Minister Ivanov recently noted the following:

       We believe further cuts in strategic offensive weapons can 
     be done only if there is a clear vision for preserving and 
     observing the ABM Treaty.

  There is no such vision or attempted vision, no reference to 
modification of the ABM Treaty here as being desired, to allow us to 
cooperatively move toward the deployment of national missile defense, 
nothing in the bill before us other than the statement, ``We're going 
to deploy this system as soon as technologically possible.''
  And so by making the deployment decision now, S. 257, the bill before 
us, would be giving the Russians an ultimatum: We are going to deploy a 
national missile defense system regardless of the ABM Treaty. That kind 
of ultimatum will make it more difficult to negotiate possible changes 
to the ABM Treaty before the scheduled deployment decision in June of 
2000.
  Some are going to say that we move forward with NATO expansion in the 
face of Russian opposition. Why not move forward this legislation to 
commit to deploy a national missile defense system in spite of Russia's 
objection.
  There is a critical difference. When we expanded NATO, we were not 
taking an action that explicitly violated a bilateral treaty with 
Russia such as the ABM Treaty. In all likelihood, the unilateral 
deployment of a national missile defense system that is truly an 
effective system to defend all 50 States would violate the ABM Treaty. 
How different from the expansion of NATO. NATO was not a treaty with 
Russia that we were violating by expanding it.
  The ABM Treaty is a treaty with Russia that we would almost certainly 
be violating with deployment of a 50-State national missile defense.
  There is another difference that has to go to the relationship 
between us and Russia. Russia may be economically extremely weak and 
militarily weak at the moment, but, nonetheless, Russia is still a 
power that has huge numbers in military capability and nuclear 
capability and will someday surely be even more powerful than it is 
now.
  But what did we do before we expanded NATO? All of the NATO members, 
including the United States, worked with Russia to explain that NATO 
expansion was not aimed at Russia. Indeed, the alliance entered into 
the NATO-Russia Founding Act and, as a result of those efforts, Russia 
has worked constructively with NATO on a number of issues. That is what 
we are trying to do now with the ABM Treaty. We are trying to negotiate 
with Russia right now to amend the ABM Treaty, to allow both the United 
States and Russia to retain this important treaty and the nuclear arms 
reduction benefits that it has brought us while still moving forward 
with the development and deployment of a limited missile defense. This 
bill will make that much more difficult.
  The President's National Security Advisor, on February 3, 1999, wrote 
us that:

       If S. 257 were presented to the President in its current 
     form, his senior national security advisors would recommend 
     that the bill be vetoed.

  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this 
letter be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 1.)
  Mr. LEVIN. I will just read a few other portions of Mr. Berger's 
letter, where he explains the basis for the position of the President's 
senior national security advisors recommending that this bill be vetoed 
if it is passed:

       The Administration strongly opposes S. 257 because it 
     suggests that our decision on deployment of this system 
     should be based solely on a determination that the system is

[[Page S2628]]

     ``technologically possible.'' This unacceptably narrow 
     definition would ignore other critical factors that the 
     Administration believes must be addressed when it considers 
     the deployment question in 2000, including those that must be 
     evaluated by the President as Commander-in-Chief.
       We intend to base the deployment decision on an assessment 
     of the technology (based on an initial series of rigorous 
     flight-tests) and the proposed system's operational 
     effectiveness. In addition, the President and his senior 
     advisors will need to confirm whether the rogue state 
     ballistic missile threat to the United States has developed 
     as quickly as we now expect, as well as the cost to deploy.

  Then Mr. Berger went on to say the following:

       A decision regarding NMD deployment must also be addressed 
     within the context of the ABM Treaty and our objectives for 
     achieving future reductions in strategic offensive arms 
     through START II and III. The ABM Treaty remains a 
     cornerstone of strategic stability and Presidents Clinton and 
     Yeltsin agree that it is of fundamental significance to 
     achieving the elimination of thousands of strategic nuclear 
     arms under these treaties.

  Madam President, senior Defense Department officials have stated 
repeatedly that the Department of Defense is already developing a 
national missile defense system as fast as is technically possible. 
Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre testified to the Armed Services 
Committee on October 2, 1998, that the national missile defense 
program:

       . . . is as close as we can get in the Department of 
     Defense to a Manhattan project. We are pushing this very 
     fast.

  And General Joe Ralston, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, testified at the same hearing:

       I know of no other program in the Department of Defense 
     that has had as many constraints removed in terms of 
     oversight and reviews just so that we can develop and deploy 
     it as quickly as possible.

  As the Department of Defense has made clear on numerous occasions, 
adding more money will not accelerate the program because we are moving 
this program, the development program, as quickly as is possible, and 
there are no resource constraints on that development. In addition, on 
January 20, Defense Secretary Cohen announced four steps, demonstrating 
the commitment to develop an operationally effective national missile 
defense as quickly as possible, achieving the option to deploy, not 
only as quickly as possible, but also in a way consistent with 
continuing nuclear arms reductions.
  First, Secretary Cohen announced the Defense Department would be 
budgeting the funds--and they now have $6.6 billion--in the Future 
Years Defense Program for possible deployment of a limited national 
missile defense system. This funding will permit deployment if the 
decision is made to deploy. This would bring the total national missile 
defense funding for 1999 through 2005 to $10.5 billion.
  Second, Secretary Cohen affirmed that the administration expects that 
the threat of ballistic missiles from rogue nations will continue to 
grow and will pose a threat to the U.S. territory in the near future.
  Third, Secretary Cohen announced that the administration is seeking 
possible changes to the ABM Treaty with Russia in the event that 
deployment would require modification.
  I was particularly glad to hear that because I had been urging the 
administration to take this step myself for many, many months. 
Secretary Cohen also noted that if we cannot agree on changes to the 
treaty, the United States can exercise its right to withdraw from the 
treaty under the ``supreme national interest'' clause of the treaty, if 
necessary for our national security.
  Finally, Secretary Cohen announced that the earliest anticipated 
deployment date for the national missile defense system was going to be 
2005 instead of 2003, because of concerns about the technology of the 
system and because certain critical tests will not occur until 2003.
  Secretary Cohen's announcement clearly demonstrates the 
administration's commitment to moving forward as quickly as possible 
with the development of an operationally effective national missile 
defense program. The Department of Defense policy, unlike the bill 
before us, permits consideration of a number of relevant factors, 
including operational effectiveness and cost, and permits us to pursue 
planned negotiations on possible ABM Treaty modifications before making 
a deployment decision next year, in the year 2000.
  The national missile defense program is a high-risk program. It faces 
numerous technical challenges. The integration of all the component 
parts into a system that can demonstrate its capability is still years 
away. The first integrated system test using a production interceptor 
is not scheduled to take place until the year 2003. Prior to that time, 
tests will rely on surrogate components for some of the most critical 
pieces of hardware. But S. 257 will make the deployment commitment now, 
prior to any demonstration of the capability of the system, prior to 
any ability to evaluate whether it is operationally effective--key word 
``operationally''--and able to meet its system requirements. As the 
Defense Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff have pointed out, if we 
were to commit to deployment of an NMD system ``as soon as 
technologically possible,'' we might be committing ourselves to 
building a system that is not as effective as we would need or desire 
to counter the evolving threat.
  In 1997, General John Shalikashvili, then-Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, testified to the committee that the earliest possible 
system may not provide the necessary capability:

       If a decision is made to deploy an NMD system in the near 
     term, then the system fielded would provide a very limited 
     capability. If deploying a system in the near term can be 
     avoided, DOD can continue to enhance the technology base and 
     the commensurate capability of the NMD program system.

  That is why General Shalikashvili stated at the same time that the 
National Missile Defense Readiness Program of the administration is the 
program that ``optimizes the potential for an effective national 
missile defense system.''
  The normal Department of Defense acquisition process for major 
weapons systems requires a rigorous review of numerous technical 
performance and cost considerations at each major decision point in the 
development or acquisition process. The Department of Defense has 
mandatory procedures for major defense acquisition programs that 
provide that ``threat projections, system performance, unit production 
cost estimates, life cycle costs, cost performance tradeoffs, 
acquisition strategy, affordability constraints and risk management 
shall be major considerations at each milestone decision point.''
  S. 257 would make a deployment decision now while ignoring all of 
those critical requirements that have been applied, I think, with one 
exception where we paid a huge price, to the acquisition of every major 
system.
  Secretary Cohen's announcement that the actual deployment date is 
expected no sooner than 2005 is designed to reduce the risk of failure, 
but in mandating deployment ``as soon as technologically possible,'' 
the bill before us could undermine the Department's efforts to ensure 
that the national missile defense system is operationally effective, 
emphasis on the ``operationally.''
  For example, it may be ``technologically possible,'' with a 1 in 20 
success rate for a specific system to hit an incoming missile under 
certain circumstances, but do we really want to make a deployment 
commitment now to a national missile defense system under those 
conditions?
  The Joint Chiefs of Staff and our warfighting commanders certainly do 
not want a system that is not operationally effective. Gen. Howell 
Estes, the then-Commander in Chief of the North American Aerospace 
Defense Command, testified before the Armed Services Committee in March 
of 1997 that, from his perspective, ``it is vitally important that any 
ballistic missile defense system we ultimately deploy must be 
effective.''
  The bill before us also ignores the issue of cost-effectiveness. If a 
system does not provide us with a capability at a cost that can be 
justified in light of other high priority national security 
requirements, then, it seems to me, we are missing an opportunity, 
indeed, a requirement, that a logical factor be considered as part of 
the decision process, because what happens then is that we will be 
saying, regardless of the cost, it makes no difference whether

[[Page S2629]]

this is cost-effective or not, in light of whatever its capability is, 
regardless of whether it is operationally effective, if it is 
technologically possible, to heck with the cost, to heck with the 
operational effectiveness, and to heck with the impact on nuclear arms 
reductions.
  This cost-effectiveness issue is one of the four crucial factors that 
Secretary Cohen and National Security Advisor Berger have said that the 
administration will take into account in its deployment decision review 
in June of next year. We should not disregard cost-effectiveness 
completely, as this bill does.
  Madam President, Secretary Cohen has testified that the 
administration will make the decision in June of 2000 on whether to 
deploy a limited national missile defense system, after taking into 
account the threat, the operational effectiveness of the national 
missile defense system, the cost-effectiveness of the system, and the 
impact of deployment on nuclear arms reductions and arms control. This 
bill ignores these factors and reduces the issue to one--what is 
technologically possible and, when that is shown, then we are going to 
deploy regardless of what those other factors indicate.
  The bill would undermine the current effort of the administration to 
reach a negotiated agreement on any changes to the Anti-Ballistic 
Missile Treaty that may be necessary to permit deployment of a limited 
national missile defense system. Again, the summit statement of the two 
Presidents, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, in March of 1997, 
underscores the continuing importance of this treaty between us and the 
Russians for strategic stability and for further reductions in 
strategic offensive nuclear weapons. It pledges both parties to 
``consider it their common task to preserve the ABM Treaty, prevent 
circumvention of it, and enhance its viability.'' This bill would throw 
that pledge into the wastepaper basket.
  As Secretary Cohen has made clear, we will not negotiate any needed 
changes to the ABM Treaty forever. There may come a time when we 
determine that we must withdraw from the treaty under the supreme 
national interest clause. That would be a very serious step, but it is 
not one that we need to take now or should take now before we have a 
system developed, before we have tried to modify the ABM Treaty to 
allow both the United States and Russia to move toward defenses against 
limited ballistic missile threats.

  Making a decision to deploy an NMD system before we even attempt to 
negotiate changes to the ABM Treaty and before the Department of 
Defense says that the Nation can responsibly make such a decision will 
almost surely reduce Russia's willingness to cooperate with us on 
reducing nuclear weapons on her soil under the START process, and 
likely will lead Russia to retain thousands of nuclear warheads it 
would otherwise eliminate, and would, thereby, dramatically increase 
the threat of nuclear proliferation. The most likely threat that we 
face isn't an intercontinental ballistic missile strike with a return 
address guaranteeing our massive destruction of the sender. The most 
likely threat is a terrorist using weapons of mass destruction.
  This bill increases that threat by significantly increasing the odds 
that Russia will end the reduction of nuclear weapons, which the treaty 
that this bill would violate has led to, and for no good reason, 
because this bill would not accelerate the national missile defense 
development by a single day. It increases the proliferation risk from 
thousands of nuclear weapons that would otherwise be eliminated through 
the START process for no tangible benefit to this program.
  This bill reduces our security by increasing the threat of 
proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states, and that is one of 
the many reasons why this bill has no support among our military 
leaders.
  Next week, the Prime Minister of Russia is coming to Washington for 
an important series of meetings. Senate adoption of this bill 
effectively says we are going to deploy a national missile defense 
system in violation of an important treaty that we have with Russia. 
The message that we are sending to Russia with this bill is we do not 
care about our treaty commitment. We do not care about cooperation on 
nuclear weapons reduction. I just wonder how the U.S. Senate would 
react if, on the eve of an American President's visit to Moscow, the 
Russian Duma passed legislation that undermined one of the basic 
foundations of U.S.-Russian relations. You can bet it would cause one 
heck of an uproar here, and I think Congress would be leading the 
chorus.
  Those of us who say that this bill will contribute to our national 
security have to answer the question: why don't our senior military and 
senior civilian defense and security leaders in this administration 
support the bill? Where are the senior military leaders supporting this 
bill? Why don't General Shelton and the Joint Chiefs of Staff support 
this bill? Why doesn't General Lyles, the Director of the Ballistic 
Missile Defense Office, support this bill? Why doesn't the Secretary of 
Defense Bill Cohen, who is a proponent of national missile defense now 
and when he served in the Senate, support this bill? They don't support 
this bill because they know it will not contribute to our national 
security.
  Secretary Cohen's national missile defense plan has the strong 
support of General Shelton, has the support of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff. We should stick with it and vote against this bill.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1


                                              The White House,

                                     Washington, February 3, 1999.
     Hon. Carl Levin,
     Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. 
         Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Levin: I understand the Senate Armed Services 
     Committee will consider tomorrow S. 257--The National Missile 
     Defense Act of 1999.
       I want to underscore that the Administration shares with 
     Congress a commitment to ensuring the American people are 
     provided effective protection against the emerging long-range 
     missile threat from rogue states. That is why we have since 
     1996 diligently pursued a deployment readiness program to 
     develop a limited National Missile Defense (NMD) system 
     designed to protect against such threats. We have now 
     budgeted $10.5 billion between FY 1999-2005 for this program, 
     including the funds that would be necessary during this 
     period to deploy a limited NMD system.
       Secretary Cohen has recently made clear that the 
     Administration will address the deployment decision in June 
     2000. The Administration strongly opposes S. 257 because it 
     suggests that our decision on deploying this system should be 
     based solely on a determination that the system is 
     ``technologically possible.'' This unacceptably narrow 
     definition would ignore other critical factors that the 
     Administration believes must be addressed when it considers 
     the deployment question in 2000, including those that must be 
     evaluated by the President as Commander-in-Chief.
       We intend to base the deployment decision on an assessment 
     of the technology (based on an initial series of rigorous 
     flight-tests) and the proposed system's operational 
     effectiveness. In addition, the President and his senior 
     advisors will need to confirm whether the rogue states 
     ballistic missile threat to the United States has developed 
     as quickly as we now expect, as well as the cost to deploy.
       A decision regarding NMD deployment must also be addressed 
     within the context of the ABM Treaty and our objectives for 
     achieving future reductions in strategic offensive arms 
     through START II and III. The ABM Treaty remains a 
     cornerstone of strategic stability, and Presidents Clinton 
     and Yeltsin agree that it is of fundamental significance to 
     achieving the elimination of thousands of strategic nuclear 
     arms under these treaties.
       The Administration has made clear to Russia that deployment 
     of a limited NMD that required amendments to the ABM Treaty 
     would not be incompatible with the underlying purpose of the 
     ABM Treaty, i.e., to maintain strategic stability and enable 
     further reductions in strategic nuclear arms. The ABM Treaty 
     has been amended before, and we see no reason why we should 
     not be able to modify it again to permit deployment of an NMD 
     effective against rogue nation missile threats.
       We could not and would not give Russia or any other nation 
     a veto over our NMD requirements. It is important to 
     recognize that our sovereign rights are fully protected by 
     the supreme national interests clause that is an integral 
     part of this Treaty. But neither should we issue ultimatums. 
     We are prepared to negotiate any necessary amendments in good 
     faith.
       S. 257 suggests that neither the ABM Treaty nor our 
     objectives for START II and START III are factors in an NMD 
     deployment decision. This would clearly be interpreted by 
     Russia as evidence that we are not interested in working 
     towards a cooperative solution, one that is in both our 
     nations' security interests. I cannot think of a worse

[[Page S2630]]

     way to begin a negotiation on the ABM Treaty, nor one that 
     would put at greater risk the hard-won bipartisan gains of 
     START. Our goal would be to achieve success in negotiations 
     on the ABM Treaty while also securing the strategic arms 
     reductions available through START. That means we need to 
     recognize the address the interrelationship between these two 
     tracks.
       The Administration hopes the Senate will work to modify S. 
     257 to reflect the priority that we believe must be attached 
     to the ABM and START objectives I have outlined above. But if 
     S. 257 were presented to the President in its current form, 
     his senior national security advisors would recommend that 
     the bill be vetoed.
           Sincerely,

                                             Samuel R. Berger,

                                        Assistant to the President
                                    for National Security Affairs.

  Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi is recognized.
  Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. COCHRAN. I am happy to yield to my friend.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
privilege of the floor be granted to David Auerswald of Senator Biden's 
staff.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, I, likewise, ask unanimous consent for 
the Senator from Michigan, Mr. Abraham, that Bill Adkins, a legislative 
fellow on his staff, be granted the privilege of the floor during the 
Senate's consideration of S. 257.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, it is interesting to hear the comments 
of my good friend from Michigan. It reminds me, though, of someone who 
has heard what this bill is about but really hasn't read the fine print 
yet. That is one reason why when the bill was reported I was hopeful 
that we could start off by reading the bill. It is very short. Unlike 
the legislation that was debated last year in the Senate, this bill has 
really a very small operative section. It is so small and clear and 
concise that I could almost recite it. I am sure I would leave out 
something. But the operative words are that it will be the policy upon 
the passage of this legislation for the United States to deploy a 
missile defense system--an effective missile defense system--that would 
be capable of defending the United States against limited ballistic 
missile attack as soon as technologically possible, and that that 
attack would include missiles that were launched either intentionally, 
accidentally or unauthorized. That is the bill that we are debating 
here.
  The suggestion that we are insisting on the passage of this bill that 
the administration immediately deploy a system that may not be 
workable, that may not be operationally effective, ignores the clear 
wording of the legislation. It describes the missile defense system 
that we are directing be deployed as an effective ballistic missile 
system. So that is taken care of.
  The amendment that has been submitted, which I hope will be adopted 
by the Senate on a voice vote--it certainly is not controversial or it 
should not be controversial--says that the deployment would be subject 
to the authorization of appropriations and the appropriation of funds 
by the committees of jurisdiction of the Congress.
  Like any other defense system or new acquisition of weapons system by 
the Department of Defense, the deployment of a national missile defense 
system will be subject to the review of the committees with 
jurisdiction over that subject in the Congress, and bills to authorize 
the deployment and to fund the deployment will have to be passed and 
they will have to be signed by the President.
  The suggestion that the passage of this bill is the final step in the 
process misses the point completely. It is the first step in the 
process. We are trying to correct an outdated, outmoded, irrelevant 
policy of wait and see--wait and see if a threat to the security 
interests of the United States develops from ballistic missiles.

  We have waited, and we have seen. We have seen the testing of a 
multistage rocket by North Korea which they said was launched for the 
purpose of putting a satellite in orbit. Our analysts have been 
reported as saying that missile system used a solid fuel in its last 
stage. It would be capable of striking the territory of Hawaii and 
Alaska, and the last time I checked, they were part of the United 
States.
  At the present time, we have no defense against such a ballistic 
missile attack from a rocket like that or from a missile. The design or 
possible uses are virtually the same.
  We are also puzzled over the fact that the Senator seems to suggest 
in his statement that our relationship with Russia is going to be put 
at risk if we adopt this bill, the first step in a process to correct 
an outdated policy. This is our policy. This is our policy to defend 
the security interests of the United States and American citizens who 
might be at risk from a ballistic missile attack and weapons of mass 
destruction that could be delivered by long-range, speedier missiles.
  We have known for some time that our administration has been trying 
to negotiate a so-called demarcation agreement with Russia, 
distinguishing between theater missile defense capability and other 
kinds of missile defense capabilities. It has been an excruciating 
process to watch, and we basically have watched in the Congress as the 
administration has reached agreements or suggestions of agreements 
reduced to memoranda of understanding, not submitted to the Senate for 
ratification as amendments to the ABM Treaty, but changes, nonetheless, 
in the definition of what is permissible and possible for us to do as a 
matter of our own national security interests with respect to theater 
defensive missiles. It limits the speed at which our interceptors can 
be tested against targets.
  The point of this is, this administration has gone to great lengths 
to try to manage the relationship with Russia so as not to ruffle any 
feathers, not to upset Russia. Ask Mr. Primakov when he comes to the 
United States why hasn't his government, his government 
parliamentarians, ratified START II.
  This is an effort to reach an agreement and an arrangement with 
Russia to reduce and limit strategic arms, missiles systems and nuclear 
weapons capabilities. We ratified that agreement 3 years ago in the 
Senate. Russia has not kept its part of the bargain by ratifying that 
agreement.
  My point in saying this is that the relationship between the Russians 
and the United States is of great importance to us, to me, to this 
Senate. We cannot ignore the fact that Russia remains heavily armed 
with nuclear weapons and missile capabilities like no other country in 
the world, other than the United States. We do have concerns about that 
relationship. We should take care to try to reach understandings with 
the Russians on these matters, and I think we will continue to work 
closely with our administration officials as they negotiate, discuss 
and try to reach understandings about what are our intentions.
  We are not trying to upset the strategic balance between the United 
States and Russia on missile capability or nuclear weapons or the like. 
We are trying to change a policy about our relationship with other 
States that are developing weapons that are capable of threatening our 
security where we do not have a history of much success.
  North Korea is an example. There are other nation states that are now 
engaged in developing missile capabilities where their missiles can go 
much farther and much faster than they have in the past, and we have to 
take that into account. We would be derelict in our duty if we did not.
  We think this administration is behind the curve on the policy 
decisions with respect to ballistic missile defense, and it is putting 
the security interests of the United States at risk. That is what we 
are trying to correct.
  We are not trying to answer every question that can be raised or 
every issue involved in ballistic missile defense in this one bill. It 
just cannot be done. But that is the test that my good friend is trying 
to measure this bill against. Does it answer every question? Does it 
answer the question of whether or not a system will be adequately 
tested? No. But before the Congress will authorize the deployment of a 
system, it is bound to insist that there be some indication that it is 
workable, that it is effective. That is why we use the phrase 
``effective ballistic missile defense system'' in this bill. We also 
want to make sure it is ``technologically feasible or possible'' for us 
to

[[Page S2631]]

field a system. And that is why we use that phrase in this bill.
  What we are hoping to accomplish is to make this administration 
recognize that there is a legitimate concern. The threat exists today 
to the security interests because of developments we have seen over the 
last several years. Senators will remember that our subcommittee had 2 
years of hearings analyzing the problems of proliferation of missile 
technology, other technologies, computer technology, the proliferation 
of weapons of mass destruction, the easy access that some countries 
have to information here in the United States, over the Internet, at 
universities, at laboratories--we have heard a lot about that 
recently--at laboratories here in the United States. You can get 
information from those sources, and you can use them then if you are a 
country that needs to upgrade its missile capability or nuclear weapons 
capability. There are suggestions that that has been happening. Are we 
to just close our eyes to that? Are we to ignore that and say, ``Well, 
let's wait and see what happens''?
  We have been waiting, and we have seen what has happened in North 
Korea, in Iran, in China, in other countries as well. All of these 
facts now convince us, the authors and the sponsors of this 
legislation, that it is time to change our policy. That is what the 
passage of this bill will do. It will put an end to the outdated wait-
and-see policy of the Clinton administration on this issue, and it will 
say that as a matter of national policy we will deploy an effective 
ballistic missile defense system as soon as technologically possible to 
defend our country against limited ballistic missile attack--whether 
unintentional, unauthorized, or deliberate.
  I suggest we keep in mind that we dedicated that proliferation report 
from our 2 years of hearings to the 28 U.S. servicemen who were killed 
in the gulf war with a Scud missile. That was several years ago. We 
have 8 years of experience to build on from that event. But that got 
the attention of the American people and the families of those soldiers 
who were killed that the United States is vulnerable and its service 
men and women and its citizens and its embassies all around the world 
are very vulnerable to missile attack and other attacks by weapons of 
mass destruction.
  This bill does not solve all those problems but it states as a matter 
of national policy that we are not going to sit back and wait and see 
any longer. We are going to move, and as quickly as technologically 
possible, we are going to deploy a national missile defense system.
  I am convinced that that is the right policy. We are not going to 
disregard our obligations to work toward improving relationships with 
Russia or China or other countries. That is a part of our 
responsibility, too. But neither are we going to sacrifice the security 
of our citizens to those relationships. We are, first of all, going to 
protect the security interests of this country. That is the highest 
priority we have as Members of this body.

  We have every reason to believe that there are clear and present 
dangers to the security of American citizens and our country. This is a 
step, a first step, toward changing that policy and doing what has to 
be done to fully protect our security interests.
  Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of New Hampshire). The Senator from 
Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, just a couple of additional brief points. 
First, there is one thing we do agree on, I hope unanimously, in this 
body, which is that our highest priority is to defend the security 
interests of the United States. I do not know of anybody in this body 
who would disagree with that premise. The question is, Is our security 
advanced or is it harmed by making a statement that we are going to 
deploy a system that violates a treaty with Russia, without first 
trying to at least negotiate a modification in that treaty so that we 
can do so jointly without a unilateral breach?
  The stakes here are huge. We should make no mistake about it. The 
stakes are that Russia has been reducing the number of nuclear weapons 
on its soil. Indeed, we have been helping to dismantle those weapons so 
that we are safer. And what they have told us is that the reason they 
have done that is because they have a treaty with us which has 
permitted them to do that called the ABM Treaty, and that without that 
treaty in place--indeed, without that treaty enhanced--those reductions 
are going to end.
  We want fewer nuclear weapons on Russian soil. The fewer weapons they 
have on their soil, the more secure we are. We have a treaty which has 
permitted a significant reduction of those weapons on Russian soil, and 
other states in the former Soviet Union. The fewer weapons they have, 
the less the chance of proliferation.
  I think most of us would agree that the greatest threat that we 
face--security threat that we face--is the proliferation of weapons of 
mass destruction. And the leakage of even one of those weapons from 
Russian soil to a rogue state or a terrorist organization would create 
a greater threat to the security of this Nation than any Soviet threat 
we face, because a rogue nation could use it against us, where the 
Soviets would have been committing suicide and would have cared about 
committing suicide if they started an attack.
  The proliferation threat against us is real. We keep talking about it 
in this body. We keep saying the greatest emerging threat is the 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Before we take any step 
which would lead Russia to stop reducing the number of nuclear weapons 
on its soil, surely we ought to sit down and negotiate with Russia to 
see if we cannot do two things: One, accomplish a national missile 
defense here, assuming we can come up with one which is operationally 
effective; and, two, keep those reductions of nuclear weapons flowing. 
Those goals are not incompatible. We are seeking both of them right 
now. We are negotiating with the Russians in terms of a modification of 
the ABM Treaty, and we are developing national missile defense as 
quickly as is possible to develop.
  There is no wait-and-see approach that has been going on here. The 
uniformed military have told us this is a high-risk development 
program. We are trying to do in a few years what usually takes us over 
10 to develop. So we are engaged as quickly as we can in what Deputy 
Secretary Hamre called the closest thing to a Manhattan project as 
exists in the Defense Department. We are trying to develop a national 
missile defense.
  I think most if not all Members of this body are in favor of that 
development.
  The issue here in this bill is whether we commit to deploy that 
system before it is developed, before it is shown to be operationally 
effective, with no consideration to cost and without considering the 
need to try, if possible, to negotiate a modification in a treaty with 
the Russians which has allowed us and them to significantly reduce the 
number of nuclear weapons on their soil.
  We can accomplish all those things, hopefully, but not if we perceive 
to tell the Russians, in advance of these negotiations being completed 
or at least proceeding, that we are pulling out of this treaty in order 
to deploy a system. There is not the slightest awareness in this 
resolution of the desirability of modifying the ABM Treaty with Russia 
so that we can continue to see reductions in nuclear weapons on their 
soil.
  For heaven's sake, aren't we more secure if they have fewer nuclear 
weapons on their soil and if the ones that are being reduced are 
dismantled, ``defanged,'' so they no longer threaten us? Shouldn't we 
ask ourselves, Why is it the senior military leadership of this country 
does not support this bill, people who spend their lives and have 
dedicated their lives to the security of this Nation--our top military 
officials--do not support this bill. Shouldn't we ask ourselves why?
  There is no use invoking the question of Scud missiles. The defense 
against Scud missiles does not violate a treaty between us and Russia. 
The Patriot antimissile system, which we continue to support I think 
unanimously in this body and continue to seek to improve it, is a 
defense against theater ballistic missiles, the missiles such as the 
Scud missile. There is no issue about that. I think everybody in this 
body has for decades supported a theater missile defense system. That 
is not a violation of the ABM Treaty. A limited national missile 
defense system probably will violate that treaty.

[[Page S2632]]

  Before we commit to do as this bill does, we should seek to modify a 
treaty between us and Russia so that we can do two things at once: 
Deploy a system, assuming we can get one that is operationally 
effective against the rogue states, at the same time that we continue 
to obtain and achieve the reduction of nuclear missiles on Russian 
soil. Those goals are compatible, they are both desirable, they are 
both achievable. At least we hope they are both achievable. Surely we 
ought to explore whether they are both achievable without committing 
ourselves to a course of action which tells the Russians, on the eve of 
the visit of Prime Minister Primakov we are going to do something, like 
it or not, whether it violates a treaty between us or not. I must again 
ask this question: If the Russian Duma had taken an action 1 week 
before our President went to Moscow, which tore at the basic 
fundamental security relationship between us and Russia, what would our 
reaction be in this Senate?
  What troubles me the most is it is so needless. We are not advancing 
by 1 day the development of a national missile defense system in this 
bill; not by a day. I think everybody in this body wants to develop a 
national missile defense system as quickly as can be done. The money is 
in the budget to do so and has been there. The Congress has added some 
hundreds of millions dollars, by the way, over the years for broad 
support in order to make sure we do develop a national missile defense 
as quickly as we possibly can. The President's budget has the money in 
there to deploy such a system--assuming we can develop it. We are not 
advancing by 1 day the development of a national missile defense with 
this bill.

  What we are doing is jeopardizing the reductions of nuclear weapons 
on Russian soil for no gain in terms of the development of national 
missile defense. That commitment to deploy, which this bill represents, 
gains us nothing in terms of developing more speedily the system which 
we all want to be developed, but jeopardizes the reduction of nuclear 
weapons on Russian soil which is so important to the security of this 
Nation.
  My good friend from Mississippi surely speaks for all of us when he 
says that is our top priority as a Senate. I couldn't agree with the 
Senator more. There are very strong differences, however, as to whether 
or not that priority is achieved with this bill, which ignores one-half 
of a very important issue, which is the relationship between the 
deployment of a national missile defense and the reduction of nuclear 
weapons on Russian soil and the proliferation problem that is increased 
when we act in a way that reduces the prospects of those continuing 
reductions.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. HELMS. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, in addition 
to being sort of a jawbreaker of a title, is exceedingly significant 
legislation which takes the first step toward protecting the American 
people from the growing threat of attack from ballistic missiles 
carrying nuclear, chemical, or biological warheads.
  Now, I am gladly a cosponsor because this establishes the 
unmistakable policy of the U.S. Government emphasizing the need to 
defend the American people from missile attack. This policy is clear, 
it is unequivocal.
  However, it is only the first step. Ultimately, the President must 
agree or be compelled to agree by an overwhelming congressional 
override of his veto to begin immediately the building and deploying of 
a national missile defense.
  The construction of a meaningful defense will take time, obviously--
time that, given North Korea's recent missile test--we may not have. I 
am among those who have become increasingly frustrated as the Clinton 
administration has squandered month after month, year after year, 
dithering and delaying, and otherwise reacting in ostrich-like fashion 
to the fast-approaching threat of missile attack by a rogue regime.
  I have long regarded as beyond belief that the Clinton administration 
still refuses to commit to the immediate deployment of a national 
missile defense. I wonder, given the fact that North Korea now has a 
three-stage intercontinental ballistic missile capable of dropping 
anthrax on U.S. cities in Alaska and perhaps Hawaii, how much 
indifference could so dictate such a perilous do-nothing attitude by 
the President and his advisors. Nero fiddled as Rome burned--and the 
crowd in charge on Pennsylvania Avenue may wake up one morning and 
realize that they have been playing with the safety of the American 
people and playing fast and loose.
  I trust I am very clear on this point: it is an absolute, irrefutable 
fact that a hostile tyrant today possesses missiles capable of 
exterminating American cities.
  Mr. President, North Korea is not our only concern. The Islamic 
fundamentalists in Iran continue their crash missile program. The 
Rumsfeld Commission has warned that Iran has everything it needs to put 
together an ICBM within a few years. And because the Clinton 
administration has fooled around in its do-nothing mode for so long, 
Iran may very well be able to deploy an ICBM before America has a 
missile defense to counter it, even if the United States breaks ground 
on construction tomorrow morning.
  Perhaps most troubling, however, is Communist China's nuclear missile 
program. China fields dozens of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 
hundreds of warheads on heavy bombers, roughly 24 medium and long-range 
ballistic missiles, and has several crash modernization initiatives in 
progress this very moment.
  Further, Red China has begun deploying several new types of ballistic 
missiles. And most troubling, it is now clear that China has stolen 
America's most sensitive nuclear secret--technical data for the W-88 
warhead. Theft of that warhead design, coupled with the multiple-
satellite dispenser that China developed working with United States 
satellite companies, will enable the PRC to deploy MIRVed weapons far 
sooner than expected.
  In other words, China is on the verge of tripling or quadrupling, the 
number of warheads pointed at our cities, and this, Mr. President, is 
the same country that flexed its military might by firing missiles in 
the Strait of Taiwan in an effort to intimidate a longstanding and 
peaceful ally of the United States. The People's Republic of China--
that is to say, Communist China--also is the same nation that engaged 
in a bit of nuclear blackmail by threatening a missile strike against 
Los Angeles.
  Obviously, Mr. President, with these hostile threats emerging, it 
would be assumed that the United States would already have deployed a 
system to protect the American people against this danger; and it would 
be assumed that the Clinton administration surely is working, in 
cooperation with a bi-partisan majority in Congress, to make certain 
that the United States will never be exposed to a missile attack by a 
terrorist regime.
  Well, such assumptions have been woefully wrong. The do-nothing 
Clinton administration has aggressively blocked every effort by 
Congress to implement a national missile defense system to protect the 
American people. More than 3 years have already been lost in deploying 
a missile defense system because of the President's veto, in December, 
1995, of critical legislation designed to protect the American people. 
The President's people, in fact, are out there right now lobbying 
against the pending business of the Senate today, the National Missile 
Defense Act of 1999, of which I am a cosponsor.
  Indeed, China, North Korea, and Iran can today hold the American 
people hostage to missile attack because of the do-nothing attitude of 
the President of the United States who, here in Washington, has 
consistently refused to build, or even consider building, the strategic 
missile defenses necessary to protect the American people from such an 
attack.
  For years, liberals have tut-tutted that no long-range missile threat 
existed to necessitate a missile defense. But now, in the wake of the 
Rumsfeld Commission's report and North Korea's missile launch, even the 
most zealous arms control advocates have been forced to admit that 
their critical lapse of judgment and foresight has put our nation at 
heightened risk.
  Though these people now admit the existence of a serious threat, just 
the

[[Page S2633]]

same, they cannot bring themselves to agree to the deployment of a 
shield against missile attack. Why, Mr. President?
  I'll tell you why. It is because of an incredible and dumb devotion 
to an antiquated arms control theory. Critics of the National Missile 
Defense Act of 1999 claim that Henny Penny's sky will fall because even 
the most limited effort to defend the American people will scuttle 
strategic nuclear reductions. One Senator, for example, declared in a 
recent press release that, if S. 257 is passed, ``Russia would likely 
retain thousands of nuclear warheads it would otherwise eliminate under 
existing and planned arms reduction treaties.''
  Mr. President, if this is the last, best argument that can be 
mustered against deploying a national missile defense, opponents of the 
pending National Missile Defense Act of 1999 had better go back to the 
drawing board in search of logic. While they are at it, they 
should ponder the fact that Russia has been threatening to block 
ratification of START II since almost the day it was signed. For more 
than 6 years, the United States has been waiting for the Russian 
Government to put this treaty into force; in the meantime the American 
people have been subjected to a barrage of Russian threats and demands 
for concessions on a bewildering array of issues, largely unrelated to 
the treaty.

  For the benefit of Senators, and the American people, I ask unanimous 
consent that a document, cataloging just a few of these Russian demands 
regarding START II, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

  An Ever-Growing Number of Russian Excuses For Not Ratifying Start II

       The United States and Russia signed the START II Treaty on 
     January 3, 1993. The Senate provided its advice and consent 
     to ratification on January 26, 1996. Since then, Russia has 
     used START II ratification as a pretext to hold hostage an 
     ever-changing number of issues. As the Chairman of the Duma's 
     International Affairs Committee said on March 14, 1998, the 
     Duma contains people ``who are ready to use any pretext in 
     order to delay consideration of this issue.''
       Threat Number 1: No START II unless the U.S. Gives in to 
     Russian demands on the CFE Treaty.
       In 1994, Defense Minister Grachev declared that CFE treaty-
     limits on Russia's conventional armed forces were 
     unacceptable and demanded their revision. No action on START 
     II would be possible, according to Grachev, until this issue 
     was resolved. So what did the Clinton Administration do? The 
     U.S. dutifully changed the treaty to meet the Russian 
     demands. We are, by the way, now changing it yet again to 
     meet more Russian demands.
       Threat Number 2: No START II unless the U.S. ratifies the 
     treaty first.
       In 1995, the Russian foreign minister, Mr. Primakov--now 
     the Prime Minister--demanded that the U.S. must first ratify 
     START II as a sign of good faith. We did that in January, 
     1996, and we are still waiting.
       Threat Number 3: No START II if the U.S. Does not pay for 
     Russian implementation of START I.
       Then the Russians complained that they could not afford to 
     meet their obligations under the START I agreement and 
     threatened not to move on START II unless the U.S. taxpayer 
     paid to dismantle all of Russia's obsolete missiles (to make 
     room for the deployment of far more modern systems). So what 
     did the Clinton Administration do/ It has shelled out 
     billions of dollars in Cooperative Threat Reduction funding 
     to meet this demand.
       Threat Number 4: No START II unless the U.S. makes 
     concessions on the ABM Treaty.
       As negotiations to clarify the ABM Treaty's demarcation 
     line between strategic and theater missile defenses dragged 
     on, the Russians insisted that tissue had to be resolved 
     before they could ratify START II. The United States agreed 
     to a series of concessions that resulted in a demarcation 
     agreement which did not clarify the distinction between 
     theater and strategic defenses but which did impose new 
     restrictions on theater missile defense systems.
       Threat Number 5: No START II unless the U.S. makes more 
     foreign aid concessions.
       In 1996 the Chairman of the Duma's Defense Committee, 
     Sergei Yushkov, tied START II ratification not just to the 
     ABM Treaty, but to ``the provision of adequate funds for the 
     maintenance of Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal.''
       Threat Number 6: No START II unless the U.S. makes other 
     concessions.
       In September, 1997, Ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, 
     who controls a sizeable bloc of Duma votes, declared that 
     START II should not be ratified until ``a favorable moment'' 
     and that Russia should hold out for more U.S. concessions. 
     According to Zhirinovsky, ``We have created a powerful 
     missile complex, and we must use it to get certain 
     advantages.''
       Threat Number 7: No START II if the U.S. strikes against 
     Saddam Hussein.
       In connection with the U.S. military build-up in the 
     Persian Gulf, the Deputy Speaker of the Duma declared that 
     START II would never be approved if the United States were to 
     use force against Iraq.
       Threat Number 8: No START II unless the U.S. agrees to 
     allow continued Russian violation of the START Treaty.
       Most recently, U.S. arms control negotiators were told that 
     their refusal to shelve U.S. concerns over repeated Russian 
     violations of the START Treaty would jeopardize START II 
     ratification.
       Bottom line: The Russian threat over deployment of a U.S. 
     missile defense is just one in a long, tired litany of ever-
     changing excuses for not ratifying START II.

  Mr. HELMS. The bottom line, Mr. President, is that it is prima facie 
ridiculous to still insist that the United States must forgo defending 
itself against missile attack in order to ensure that Russia ratifies 
START II. The United States has already paid a dozen ransom notes to 
Russia in an effort to secure START II's ratification--to no avail. 
This latest price demanded by Russia is simply too high.
  Now, I believe that START II may still be in the United States' 
national security interests, but it is not of such overriding interest 
that we must forgo the defense of the American people in order to 
salvage START II. What will happen if START II is not ratified? 
Strategic forces are expensive to maintain, as both the United States 
and Russia have rediscovered. That is why the Clinton administration is 
seeking permission to fall below START I levels regardless of whether 
the Russians honor their START II obligations--because it wants the 
money that would be spent on strategic nuclear forces to be used for 
other, neglected requirements like readiness.
  And what of Russia, Mr. President? The truth is that Russia's 
strategic force levels are going to plummet far past the levels 
mandated by START II regardless of whether there is any agreement in 
force. The strategic missiles Russia (then the Soviet Union) deployed 
in the 1980s are reaching the end of their useful life, and cannot be 
replaced. Russia has neither the money nor a reason, to replace them.
  In fact, last year the Russian Minister of Defense told Russia's 
Security Council that even the new SS-27 Topol ICBM currently being 
deployed, Russia will be unable to field more than 1,500 warheads by 
the year 2010, which, at the rate things are going, might be about the 
time the Duma finally gets around to ratifying START II.
  The truth is that arms control agreements are not controlling force 
levels. Fiscal and strategic realities are. Why is Russia allowing its 
forces to fall to historically low levels? I will tell you. For the 
same reason as is the United States. We no longer live in a cold war 
world in which huge nuclear arsenals are our top spending priority. The 
notion that limited ballistic missile defenses will somehow set off a 
new arms race--or forestall further reductions--is absurd.
  Mr. President, the truth of the matter is that the arguments about 
START II are really a cover for those who continue to worship the arms 
control doctrine of mutually-assured destruction. No amount of policy 
sophistry or arms control rhetoric by the Clinton administration can 
alter the fact that the United States is vulnerable to nuclear-tipped 
missiles fielded by China, or any one else. Rectifying this dangerous 
deficiency requires leadership and action. It is an all the more 
pressing issue because the current course charted by the administration 
fails to recognize the inherent danger in China's pursuit of an 
advanced nuclear arsenal, based--as we have learned in recent days--
around the W-88 warhead.
  Mr. President, any further delay in the development by the United 
States of a flexible, cost-effective national missile defense is 
unconscionable. I am honored to cosponsor the National Missile Defense 
Act of 1999 and I urge Senators to support this legislation to make 
certain that the United States Government will finally adopt a policy 
to protect the American people from attack by ballistic missiles.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut is recognized.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I rise today to support S. 257, the National Missile 
Defense Act

[[Page S2634]]

of 1999, and, in doing so, I rise to support development and deployment 
of a limited national missile defense.
  Colleagues have said that this debate has begun today, and I am sure 
each Member of the Senate believes, because we have no greater 
responsibility under the Constitution than to provide for the common 
defense of our Nation. That is one of the fundamental reasons people 
form governments, to provide for their common defense. It is a duty we 
must fulfill with intellectual honesty and with thoughtful attention to 
the world in which we reside.
  Let us look honestly at the world today. The cold war is over, 
thankfully. Democracy triumphed over communism. The bipolar strategic 
tension of the world--two armed camps living in a strange balance of 
terror where each threatened to destroy the other if the first acted--
is over, thankfully over. And in that sense we enjoy today the benefits 
of that victory. Everybody around the globe--people here in the United 
States, those in Russia, and certainly those who lived under the 
tyranny of the Soviet Union, three peoples of which so proudly and 
joyously joined NATO just this past weekend. Though the existential 
threats we faced are not there, the threats to our very existence are 
not there, as the operating tempo of our military makes clear, we face 
a remarkable series of threats to our security around the world. And we 
face something like threats we have faced before, but with an intensity 
and a breadth that are unparalleled; and that is the potential of 
threats to our homeland, to the United States of America, shielded as 
we have been by geography, by two oceans. Although we have worried in 
the past and we have been at war and conflict about threats to our 
homeland, we have never faced them, I fear, to the same extent we will 
in the years ahead. And this is a reflection not only of the dispersion 
of power, the breakup of the two armed camps that dominated and defined 
the cold war, it is a reflection of what history tells us, which is 
that whenever there are developments in the nonmilitary world, in the 
industrial, or, in our time, the technological world, they work their 
way into the military.
  Today, even as nationalism rears its head with a new intensity in 
places like the Balkans, national boundaries in the conventional sense 
are seamless and less dominant. We communicate with each other through 
television and now, dramatically, in two-way communication over the 
Internet, jumping over traditional national boundaries. We have a 
growing number of assets, defense and civilian related, which exist in 
space that affect our lives, civilian and military, in very, very 
fundamental ways. We have increasing capacity through technology to 
deliver weapons of mass destruction against other peoples and to fear 
and face the potential of their delivery against us.
  So it is not surprising that, within the community of those who worry 
about our national security, and particularly, of course, within the 
Department of Defense, there is new concern, new thinking, talk of new 
organization, to deal with homeland defense, the defense of the United 
States of America; that the very technology that has enabled us to 
reach across national boundaries, to have international commerce at 
enormous volume and worth with remarkable speed, also begins to subject 
us in our homes, businesses, neighborhoods, communities, and States to 
attack.

  I don't mean to suggest a panic, but, to be intellectually honest and 
thoughtful about it, the fact is that we have in our time already seen 
ourselves subject to terrorist attack here in our homeland, some of 
which has been inspired from outside, that we know we face a risk of 
attack to our information systems, which dominate and on which we 
depend for so much in the lives that we lead so well today.
  Another element of that new vulnerability that our homeland faces is 
from missile attack. We faced it during the cold war when the Soviet 
Union and the United States were two armed camps with intercontinental 
ballistic missiles aimed at each other, in which we reached a kind of 
bizarre agreement, ``rationality'' in the midst of irrationality, that 
neither would push the button for fear of what damage that would do to 
the one who pushed the button. Today, we are facing a threat of a 
different order. Though it is limited, it is coming from people who 
will not, we fear, bind to the same rationale of a system of mutual 
assured destruction.
  That is what motivates this bill. I see it as a response not just to 
the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass 
destruction, but as part of a broader, growing concern that we in the 
Senate and the American people will have to face to raise our defenses 
once again here at home.
  In the very near future--perhaps within a few months--erratic 
leaders, tyrants of rogue regimes, will control ballistic missiles 
possibly armed with weapons of mass destruction that can reach our 
national territory. One or more rogue states may have the technology to 
do so today. Equally unsettling is the fact that criminal or insurgent 
elements from countries in turmoil could also have access to those 
weapons.

  So the threat is real and it is current, and everything we know about 
the rapid dissemination of technological information and the commercial 
proliferation of ballistic missile technology and weapons of mass 
destruction tells us that the threat will get worse faster than we had 
previously thought.
  Until this past year, most observers, intelligent observers, 
thoughtful observers, believed that the emergence of such a threat was 
way over the horizon, a problem for the future. A national intelligence 
estimate written in 1993 and revised in 1995 concluded that no country 
other than the declared nuclear powers would develop or otherwise 
acquire ballistic missiles that could reach the 48 contiguous United 
States within the next 10 to 15 years. But in July of 1998, a 
commission of distinguished experts, chaired by former Secretary of 
Defense Rumsfeld, concluded that this earlier estimate was far too 
optimistic.
  The Rumsfeld Commission report found that North Korea, Iran, and Iraq 
were engaged in concerted efforts to build or acquire ballistic 
missiles. The panel also found that North Korea and Iran could use 
these missiles to inflict major damage on the United States within 5 
years of a decision to do so. Iraq, a rogue state that has constantly 
challenged its neighbors, the United States, and the international 
community militarily for two decades now, so the Rumsfeld Commission 
said, could inflict major damage on the United States within 10 years. 
The Commission warned that the ability of our intelligence community to 
provide timely and accurate warning of attempts to produce ballistic 
missiles was eroding.
  So a problem is growing, with the capacity of the intelligence 
community to warn us of its forward movement eroded. And then the 
Rumsfeld Commission predicted prophetically, as it turned out, that 
Iran would soon deploy a Shahab-3 missile on the way to developing 
intercontinental ballistic missile capability and that North Korea 
would soon have a missile capable of hitting Alaska or Hawaii.
  Well, unfortunately, the Rumsfeld Commission was right on target. 
Within a month of its report, Iran did flight test the Shahab-3 
missile, and 1 month later North Korea launched its Taepo Dong 
missiles. We had long known North Korea had strong missile technology. 
Analysts were broadly surprised that the Taepo Dong was a three-stage 
missile with enough range to hit parts of the United States of America.
  The Iranian and North Korean missile tests validated two of the 
Rumsfeld Commission's findings. First, that rogue states are in 
possession of missiles that threaten American territory; and, second, 
that these states have developed this capability far more rapidly than 
we had assumed possible and with very little warning.
  Recent events in places such as North Korea and Iran have contributed 
to a revision and updated a speeding up of the administration's 
approach to missile defense, and I appreciate that acceleration very 
much. Just a few months ago, in January of this year, Secretary of 
Defense Cohen announced that the administration would seek $6.6 billion 
over 5 years to field a limited national missile defense.
  Secretary Cohen explained:

       We are affirming that there is a threat and the threat is 
     growing, and that it will pose a danger not only to our 
     troops overseas but also to Americans here at home.

[[Page S2635]]

       The Taepo Dong I test was another strong indicator that the 
     United States will, in fact, face a rogue nation missile 
     threat to our homeland against which we will have to defend 
     the American people.

  The bill before us today, S. 257, is designed to respond to that very 
real threat that rogue states and organizations with missile technology 
pose to our Nation. S. 257 states what I think we all believe, which is 
that we should take action to protect ourselves against this threat. We 
would be derelict in our duty if we did not. I view S. 257 as a 
statement of policy, a statement of policy that it is the intention of 
the United States of America, the administration, executive branch, 
Members of Congress, shoulder to shoulder together, to develop a 
defense to this threat which could be a cataclysmic threat that we all 
seem to agree we are now facing.
  So I must admit that I am disappointed by the disagreement that still 
exists over this measure. The statement of policy that came from the 
Clinton administration in January of this year seems to me to be 
reflected in and consistent with the simple statement embodied in S. 
257. And yet, there is opposition. I hope that the debate and 
discussion that we are having today and the days ahead will lead us to 
find a way to express what I believe we all feel: The threat is real 
and we have to do something about it as quickly as possible.
  As I understand the concerns of the administration and my colleagues 
in the Senate who oppose S. 257, they are as follows: They argue that 
this bill considers only technological feasibility in making a 
commitment now to deploy a national missile defense without taking into 
account the actual threat, the operation, the effectiveness of the 
system against a threat, the affordability of the system, including the 
balance of other critical defense needs, and the impact of the policy 
stated in this bill on nuclear weapons reductions and arms control 
efforts particularly with Russia.
  I know that some are also concerned that S. 257 contradicts the 
administration's policy of not deciding on deployment until June of 
2000 after a series of tests. Some also fear that this bill will make 
it less likely that the Russians would continue arms control 
negotiations. Some still feel that since the administration has 
budgeted $6.6 billion for national missile defense development and 
deployment, S. 257 is not necessary and will not advance the deployment 
deadline, as the effort is technology constrained, not policy or 
resource constrained. And there are others who say that this response 
does not help defend against the most likely methods of delivery such 
as maritime vessels.
  Of course, the most likely methods of delivery, if they are in fact 
the most likely methods of delivery such as maritime vessels, if I may 
start with the last argument, should only lead us to want to accelerate 
the development of a limited defense because delivery from the water, 
from the oceans may speed up the date by which the United States will 
be vulnerable to this attack.
  Let me try to respond to some of the arguments that have been made. 
First, while it is true that S. 257 does state that the United States 
should deploy a limited national missile defense when technologically 
feasible, that is a broad statement of policy which does not preclude 
consideration of other important factors. It simply says--and I hope 
when I join with Senator Cochran, Senator Inouye and others, that it 
would be a broad enough statement of policy--that it would lead a broad 
bipartisan majority to feel comfortable coming to its support.
  The fact is that we will consider questions of affordability and 
other questions each year, as we in Congress carry out our 
responsibility to authorize and appropriate with regard to a limited 
national missile defense and other defense programs, to decide how to 
proceed and how much money to devote to the program. To me, that is 
implicit in the bill, because it is inherent in the legislative 
process. A policy statement saying that it is our intent to deploy a 
national missile defense when technologically feasible doesn't mean it 
will happen automatically or overnight, it doesn't mean that Congress 
will be precluded from participation in the program and that the 
Ballistic Missile Defense Office will essentially be given a blank 
check. Quite the contrary. Each year we will authorize--which this bill 
does not do; it is a policy statement--and we will appropriate, which 
this bill most certainly does not do.
  Though I think that is clear from the wording in S. 257, I am very 
pleased to be a cosponsor of the amendment which has been laid down by 
the Senator from Mississippi which makes clear that this policy that we 
would declare in S. 257 is subject to the annual authorization and 
appropriations process.
  As to the question of the administration's policy or plan to make a 
judgment about deployment in June of 2000 based on some tests that will 
be done by then--four tests, I believe, that would be done by then--to 
me the bill before us neither negates nor endorses that policy. In 
fact, under the bill before us, it is possible that the decision to 
deploy would not be made until well after June of 2000, because the 
threshold of technological feasibility, technological possibility, 
would not have been reached. But the fact that we are not ready now to 
deploy a system surely cannot mean that we should not now declare our 
policy to deploy such a system, to get ready to defend our territory 
and our people as soon as possible. In fact, we should declare that 
policy unequivocally, and I think this bill, S. 257, gives us the 
opportunity to do that.
  Let me now talk of the concerns about the impact that passage of this 
bill will have on our relations with Russia and particularly on arms 
control negotiations that are going on with Russia. I have long 
supported those negotiations, they are so clearly and palpably in our 
national security interests. They have run into obstacles along the 
way--START agreements ran into political difficulties in the Russian 
Duma. But of course we are part of a process in which we are trying to 
move those forward in our national security interests.
  But I must say, I fail to see how passage of this measure, in which 
we in the U.S. Senate would be declaring our intention to develop a 
limited national missile defense, should be stopped by our concern 
about what I believe is a misunderstanding or misapprehension, if in 
fact it exists, in Russia, about our intentions here. In all the debate 
and discussion I have heard about the development of a national missile 
defense, a limited national missile defense, I have not heard anybody--
certainly I have not, Senator Cochran has not, Senator Inouye has not--
suggest that the country we are developing this defense against is 
Russia.
  The countries we are developing this defense against are rogue 
nations, subnational groups that may attempt to inflict harm, 
intimidate us, leverage us to extract compromises on our national 
security from our leadership--not Russia. In fact, I believe the 
administration has spoken these words to the Russians.

  We have common enemies here in these rogue states. This system is not 
being developed against the nations of the former Soviet Union or 
Russia. This is not star wars. Star wars was aimed at--speaking 
simplistically, if I may--putting a security umbrella over the United 
States to protect us from a massive ICBM attack from the Soviet Union. 
This is a highly limited system aimed at trying to preserve a measure 
of security for our people against limited missile attack from rogue 
nations.
  So I am puzzled and troubled about why we should not simply state our 
policy to develop a defense of our homeland against rogue nations 
because there may be some in Russia who misunderstand our intention. We 
understand that doing so will compromise the ABM Treaty, negotiated in 
a very different context for very different reasons more than a quarter 
of a century ago at the height of the cold war. That is why top level 
officials of our administration have already begun to speak with the 
Russians about our intention. It is clearly evident from the policy 
that Secretary Cohen articulated in January, clearly evident from the 
additional billions of dollars that President Clinton has put into the 
defense budget in the coming years to accelerate our development of a 
national missile defense. But I, for one, would feel irresponsible--put 
it another way. I would feel we had not worked hard enough to reassure 
the Russians that this national missile defense that we state in

[[Page S2636]]

this measure that we intend to build is not aimed at them. It is aimed 
at common enemies that they and we have.
  The fact is, in some measure the content of S. 257 is an honest 
expression to the leadership in Russia, with whom we are working on so 
many different matters, that this has now become a matter of American 
national policy--self defense. And, as much as we value good relations 
with Russia, as much as we adhere to our treaty obligations, we are 
saying to them here that we have made a judgment in our own national 
self-interest and self-defense that we must develop a limited national 
missile defense and therefore we must begin, as we have, to renegotiate 
the ABM Treaty. But to not go ahead with this policy statement for fear 
of the way it will be misread in Russia seems to me to be an 
underestimation of both our relationship and of our ability to speak 
truth to the Russians and of their ability to understand it.
  So, mindful as I am, respectful as I am of the importance of ongoing 
arms control negotiations with the Russians, I think we do not serve 
our national interests if we yield to that misapprehension when we know 
that this system is not being developed to defend against hostile 
action by them.
  Mr. President, we need the national missile defense. We face a real 
and growing threat that cannot be countered by our conventional forces 
and which will not be deterred by the threat of retaliation. Remember, 
Russia, on whom we are focused in our judgment on this measure--and 
some are focused to the extent that they will oppose it because of 
concerns in Russia--we and the Russian-dominated Soviet Union reached 
this meeting of minds during a cold war that we were each rational 
enough to be deterred by the threat of massive retaliation. Deterrence, 
after all, requires rationality. By definition, accidental, 
unauthorized, or rogue acts are not the acts of rational leaders and 
cannot be reliably deterred.
  Thus, we have a choice: Either we will endure the possibility of 
limited missile attack on our country with weapons of mass destruction, 
or we will commit ourselves, with all that we have in us, and will 
state so honestly in this measure, that we are going to do everything 
we can to defend against such an attack.
  I don't agree that this measure is not needed. It is needed. It is a 
clarion statement of policy about a critical national security 
vulnerability at an important transitional period in our national 
history. The fact is, its very existence has already acted as a 
catalyst in moving this debate forward, the debate about the threat. 
After all, congressional concern about this led to the Rumsfeld 
Commission, which led to the report, which predicted the North Korean-
Iranian action, which now has led to a coming closer together between 
congressional opinion and administration policy.
  Mr. President, both sides in this debate are, after all is said and 
done, separated by very little. A critical national security decision 
such as this should not be partisan. The amendment that Senator Cochran 
and I and others, I believe Senators Warner and Inouye, put down, which 
makes clear what was implicit before, that S. 257 will naturally be 
subjected to the annual authorization and appropriations process, makes 
clear that Congress each year will consider the affordability, the 
extent of the threat, the impact funding of this system has on other 
defense needs, and even the impact of the level of funding on our 
relations with Russia and other arms control negotiations.
  I think that defending against limited missile attacks is something 
that all of us, both parties, 100 strong, clearly want to do. I take it 
that the disagreement is how to do it and what we should express, if 
anything, in a statement of policy. This is such an important matter 
and at such a critical moment that I hope in this debate we will listen 
to each other, that we will reason together, and that we will 
ultimately come up with a proposal here that a broad bipartisan 
majority can support.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hutchison). The Senator from Mississippi.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
privilege of the floor be extended to John Rood and Gordon Behr, who 
are legislative fellows from the staff of Senator John Kyl.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I have sought recognition to support 
the pending legislation. I am listed as a cosponsor, and I believe that 
it is an important statement of U.S. policy which we ought to adopt. 
This is one of the most direct bills that I have seen in my tenure in 
the Senate, providing:

       It is the policy of the United States to deploy, as soon as 
     is technologically possible, an effective national missile 
     defense system, capable of defending the territory of the 
     United States against limited ballistic missile attack, 
     whether accidental, unauthorized or deliberate.

  The most basic purpose of government is to protect its citizenry. The 
most basic purpose of the Government of the United States of America is 
to protect the people of the United States from foreign and domestic 
dangers. We have focused a great deal of attention on the threat of 
weapons of mass destruction, and the top of the list involves the issue 
of ballistic missile attack.
  Beyond ballistic missile attack, we know that there are many other 
concerns of biological warfare and chemical warfare. Right now a 
commission is working to try to streamline the Federal Government to 
try to make some organizational sense, organizational improvements out 
of the 96 separate agencies which now deal with weapons of mass 
destruction.
  During my tenure as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, 
working collaboratively at that time with CIA Director John Deutch, a 
provision was inserted in the Intelligence Authorization bill in 1996 
to provide a commission to take a look at the 96 separate agencies 
dealing with weapons of mass destruction. We find that the Department 
of Health and Human Services is involved in this venture, as is the 
Department of Defense, as is the Department of Justice. Tomorrow we are 
holding a hearing on some aspects of the domestic problem.
  Internationally, the strategic defense initiative has been a hotly 
contested subject for debate for more than a decade, going into the 
early administration of President Reagan when he articulated the idea 
of a strategic defense initiative, popularly known as Star Wars. At 
that time many people debunked the idea that there could be a shield to 
protect the United States from a ballistic missile attack, and we have 
relied upon the theory of mutual assured destruction--accurately 
labeled, in shorthand, MAD, for mutual assured destruction--with our 
basic defense posture being that the Soviet Union, our principal 
adversary, would not fire ballistic missiles at the United States 
because of fear of retaliation, so that the balance of power was 
maintained.
  More than a decade ago, we had some very lively debates on the Senate 
floor as to whether the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty should have a 
narrow or a broad interpretation, going back to the origin of the 
treaty, the history. The debate then was whether we might be able to 
deploy some sort of strategic defense initiative under a broad 
interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. That treaty, 
entered into in 1972, has been a subject of very extended debate on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate and beyond. It may well be that with the 
enactment of this policy, there will have to be some negotiations with 
Russia, with other parties to the ABM Treaty. It was entered into by 
the Soviet Union, which no longer exists. There have been many 
modifications of the policy with the former Soviet Union, with Russia, 
where the United States, under the Nunn-Lugar program, has appropriated 
very substantial sums of money to acquire and destroy Russian missiles, 
missiles formerly housed by the U.S.S.R. I do believe that with the 
changing relationship between the United States and the former Soviet 
Union, and with the expansion of NATO, a move that many thought Russia 
would never tolerate but now has become acclimated to,

[[Page S2637]]

there are signs of a maturation process, a changing relationship 
between the United States and Russia.
  I do believe that it is important to have talks with Russia about the 
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but I do think that the treaty is 
subject to modification. There are provisions for revocation of the 
treaty on notice by the United States, but we now face a very different 
kind of a threat. We now face a threat, perhaps, from North Korea, 
perhaps soon from rogue nations like Iran or Iraq. It is none too soon 
to look toward the deployment of a national missile defense system 
which is intended to deal with the threat posed by the rogue nations.
  The technology is very hard to calculate as to what can be achieved.
  When President Reagan articulated the principle, or the idea of a 
strategic defense initiative, people said it was impossible. I recall 
reading a commentary more than a decade ago about Vannevar Bush's 
comment back in the mid-forties, about 1945, when Vannevar Bush said it 
would be an impossibility to have intercontinental ballistic missiles. 
Now look at what has happened; we have them by the thousands.
  In 1965, then Secretary of Defense McNamara said that the United 
States was so far ahead of the Soviet Union that they could never catch 
up. They did. For a time, they passed the United States, until we 
rearmed America, leading, in effect, to the bankruptcy of the Soviet 
Union and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
  There is a story many people believe to be apocryphal, but it is a 
true story, about a man who worked for the Patent Office shortly after 
the turn of the 19th century who resigned his post because everything 
that could be discovered or invented had been discovered or invented. 
We see how modern science has produced discoveries, inventions 
unthought of, uncontemplated. So, too, we may be able to find an 
effective system to protect the United States from missiles from rogue 
countries.
  I believe this is an important bill. We could not bring it to the 
floor in the 105th Congress because we were one vote short of cloture. 
There are some 54 cosponsors on this bill, and I believe it articulates 
a very important principle, to defend America, to defend Americans and 
to find a national missile defense system which would protect our 
country against rogue nations, against accidental, unauthorized, or 
deliberate attacks.
  We will have other considerations to deal with regarding Russia, 
other considerations to deal with in relation to China where recent 
events have shown advances in China's missile technology, in part, 
according to reliable reports, as a result of China having gained 
access to United States technology through espionage. But this 
principle--of having a national missile defense policy--is something 
which ought to be adopted.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. REED addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. REED. Madam President, first, as a procedural matter, I ask 
unanimous consent that Anthony Blaylock, a defense fellow working in 
Senator Dorgan's office, be granted the privilege of the floor during 
debate on S. 257.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REED. Madam President, we are here today debating an issue of 
fundamental importance to the United States and to the world community, 
and that is whether or not we will adopt a resolution of this Senate to 
proceed with a national missile defense as soon as it is 
technologically possible.
  As many of my colleagues have indicated, I believe there is strong 
recognition of the need for the careful deployment of a national 
missile defense because we are at a historical crossroads.
  First, there have been technological advances by rogue states which, 
for the first time, allow them in the near future to be able to launch 
intercontinental ballistic missiles that would strike the territory of 
the United States. That, in and of itself, has focused our attention, 
our resolve, and our commitment to begin accelerated development and, 
one would hope, the eventual deployment of a national missile defense.

  But the issue before us today is whether this legislation, S. 257, 
will materially aid that effort without unduly complicating our 
ability, first, to defend the United States and, second, to maintain 
the regime of deterrence that has lasted throughout the cold war and 
has avoided to date, and we hope indefinitely, the use of nuclear 
weapons in the world.
  I mentioned that we are at a historical crossroads, the first element 
of which is the fact that rogue nations can, in fact, begin to launch 
in the near future intercontinental ballistic missiles. But the second 
aspect of this historical crossroads is the fact that we have been 
maintaining over decades a strategic balance which always contemplated 
limits on offensive capability and which has led to treaties between 
ourselves and the former Soviet Union, and now Russia, with respect to 
limitations on offensive weapons. Complementing that has been, since 
1972, the limitation on antiballistic missile systems.
  Sometimes I think we take this balance for granted. We assume that is 
the way it always will be because it exists today. But we are seeing 
pressure on this balance. First and most obviously, because of the 
collapse of the Soviet Union and the constrained position of Russia, we 
are seeing some operational wearing around the edges in terms of their 
ability to maintain the same type of controls that they had at the 
height of the cold war.
  We are also seeing a situation where operationally they might, 
regretfully, be a little bit quicker on the draw, since they do not 
have the same type of panoply of long-term observation or radars that 
they had or those that they have are beginning to deteriorate.
  The point I want to make with respect to strategic balance is that 
this is not something automatically that comes into play, it is 
something that has to be sustained and maintained, and when we look at 
legislation like the bill before us, we have to seriously ask the 
question, Will this aid the maintenance of this strategic balance, or 
will it give incentives to act unilaterally? That is a serious question 
which I think we have to address.
  There is a second factor with respect to the historical crossroads, 
and that is, for the first time in recent memory, Russia, as the 
legatee of the Soviet Union, is not able to match dollar for dollar, 
ruble for dollar, if you will, developments that we, in fact, might put 
in place. Unlike the cold war, where they could accelerate their 
offensive missile capability by putting out more launches if we did 
something, they cannot do that too easily. Nor could they easily copy 
an extensive national missile defense if we put it in place. Again, 
this is another strategic aspect that has to be considered when we 
consider this legislation.
  All of these issues together suggest a few things. First, we have to 
seriously address the issue of the rogue state with intercontinental 
ballistic missiles, but, just as seriously, we have to be concerned 
about doing something that might destabilize the overall arms control 
regime in the world. What we want to avoid is the temptation for states 
with nuclear weapons and a capacity for intercontinental-range launches 
to start taking unilateral actions which may imperil us just as much as 
the development of missiles by a rogue state.
  Having said that, I think we can look at the situations which we 
potentially are trying to cover with this national missile defense and 
pose two questions which I think are at the heart of our debate.
  First of all, we are really focused at this juncture, with respect to 
this legislation, on what is called the simple case, as the Ballistic 
Missile Defense Office will describe it, the C-1 situation: A few 
simple ICBMs, no sophisticated countermeasures. In that context, we are 
proposing to create a system to deter that threat and also, in some 
respects, to undermine or simply, hopefully, to modify, through mutual 
assent, the arms control regime in the ABM Treaty. That is just one 
situation.
  The second situation is what they call C-2. That is not just some 
simple ICBMs but a few advanced ICBMs--those having, for example, 
multiple independent reentry vehicles and some more sophisticated 
countermeasures.
  Finally, the category of many sophisticated reentry vehicles, many 
with

[[Page S2638]]

independently targeted warheads, and also with sophisticated 
countermeasures.
  For this latter category we have to ask ourselves, is that 
technologically possible, national missile defense scoped and designed 
for the first simple threat going to meet what might evolve into the 
more complicated threat? That is a technological question. I think that 
is a question that gives us some pause in the sense of rushing into 
this, this declaration that we are going to do it now and we are going 
to do it with respect to the rogue nation threat.
  Again, I think we have to ask two basic questions: First, will this 
first technologically possible solution be the best solution, not just 
to our short-run dilemma with respect to potential missile development 
in North Korea or Iran but over time as these systems may well evolve 
from a simple missile threat to a very sophisticated missile threat? 
Then second, we have to ask ourselves, will we build a system designed 
to counter this simple threat, the rogue threat, and cause, 
unwittingly, the precipitation of a much more sophisticated threat--to 
cause, unwittingly, powers like Russia, that have the capacity to put 
MIRVs on top of their launchers, to have, through strained resources 
and through frayed nerves, perhaps the potential to shoot a little 
quicker than they did in the cold war? That, I think, would be a 
tremendous misstep in maintaining our strategic balance.
  For all these reasons, I suggest that we must move with caution--with 
deliberation but with caution. I think we have to move not with some 
single-factor analysis, simply ``technologically possible,'' but with a 
multifaceted analysis which I hope would undergird all our decisions 
with respect to momentous decisions and costly decisions. We have to 
consider cost. We have to consider the evolution of the threat. We have 
to consider our diplomatic relationships and the fact that we have 
maintained this nuclear balance through mutual decisions.
  First we maintained it through the policy of mutual assured 
destruction. We built enough offensive weapons so that no enemy thought 
they could conduct a successful first strike. And then we moved down a 
much more promising road by talking about limiting offensive weapons 
and limiting defensive weapons through diplomacy.
  The rejection of this mutuality would be a casualty which I do not 
think any of us would like to see. So I think we have to be very, very 
careful. And if we need an anecdote to suggest the care which we must 
devote to this exercise, I think it could be seen from a story I 
recently read in the Washington Post about an incident that took place 
on September 26, 1983, where a Russian lieutenant colonel was sitting 
in his bunker and suddenly all the lights went on that said ``start.'' 
And what the ``start'' meant was to start a nuclear retaliation round.
  But because of that officer's judgment, in the environment of that 
time of 1983, an environment in which the thought was that a nuclear 
attack by the United States would not be possible --the fact that there 
was no effective ABM system providing national defense--the fact that 
the operative motivation was not ordering a counterstrike but waiting 
for further information, that could be changed by what we do in the 
next several months, particularly, I think, if we do not make a good-
faith effort to modify, through negotiation and through mutuality, the 
ABM Treaty.
  We could have a situation in which, through an error of software, an 
error of misperception, instead of waiting the extra second, a 
lieutenant colonel in the Russian rocket forces could decide that this 
very well could be an active launch by the United States and that his 
only recourse is to launch a retaliatory strike.
  So we have to be careful. I believe that such care would lead us, I 
hope, to consider legislation that does not just talk about 
technological possibility but talks about a range of things, including, 
we hope, a mutual adjustment of the ABM Treaty.
  Missile defense is a situation, a topic, that has followed us since 
1940, when we first became aware that Germany was developing 
intercontinental ballistic missiles. It has followed us through my 
entire life, and it will go on, we hope, without a dramatic conclusion, 
for as long as we can foresee. We have been able to manage these 
issues, and each administration has taken them seriously, and the 
Clinton administration is no stranger to the seriousness of this 
endeavor.

  We have also seen changes in terms of programs, in terms of budget. 
Just a few years ago, in the Persian Gulf we discovered that there was 
a real threat to our theater forces, our forces in the field, and we 
began actively upgrading our theater missile defense, a program which 
we also bought and which we consider to be vital to the operational 
effectiveness of our forces around the world.
  In 1996, the administration announced that they were moving forward 
with respect to national missile defense with their 3+3 approach. That 
would be 3 years devoted to research and development, a deployment 
decision due in June of 2000, and then, if required, the deployment 
would take place within the next 3 years. All of this, of course, 
supposed and presumed that there would be active discussion with Russia 
and others with respect to the ABM Treaty.
  We have devoted not only conceptual energy to this project, we have 
also devoted dollars. We have increased the administration's proposal 
for efforts through fiscal year 2005 to the order of $10.5 billion. 
This is not a project that is languishing without financial support and 
financial resources.
  In short, in sum, both the Congress and the administration agree on 
the importance of missile defense, of providing the resources to do 
that, and are hoping that we can in fact develop a technologically 
feasible, cost-effective system that will be appropriate to our needs 
and also, hopefully, will be agreed upon by the world community as a 
necessary part of our defense.
  I have mentioned before what I think some of the limitations are of 
the approach that we are debating today with respect to S. 257. 
Principally, it is the sole reliance upon one criterion, and that is, 
``technologically possible.''
  There are other parameters that we have to look at.
  The threat: Again, today we are looking at a very limited threat, 
that C-1 threat, a rogue nation with a simple IBM, without any 
countermeasures. But that threat quickly will mature to something else. 
It does not take too much to incorporate countermeasures on our reentry 
vehicle. And once we do that, we might be into a configuration of 
national defense which does not fit that neat picture of what is 
technologically possible right now.
  Of course, we have to look at cost. And it is not just an issue of 
cost in and of itself, it is the classic issue of opportunity cost. To 
develop this system immediately might preclude us from taking other 
steps which are just as important with respect to our defense, with 
respect to our missile defense, with respect to other aspects of our 
defense policy.
  And then we certainly, I think, have to look at the effect on arms 
control agreements.
  Consideration of these factors I think would mitigate against 
unconstrained, unconditional support for S. 257 and would suggest that 
we would amend this measure and adopt a more comprehensive and a more 
realistic approach to the decision matrix we face when it comes to 
national missile defense.
  Just briefly, there is a threat out there; no one is denying that. 
The administration is not denying it. No one in this body is denying 
it.
  We have seen just recently, in May of 1998, India and Pakistan 
conduct nuclear tests.
  We have also been the beneficiaries of the Rumsfeld Commission report 
that anticipates the ability of a rogue nation to have an 
intercontinental capability by the year 2010.
  Then, on July 22, 1998, Iran test fired an intermediate-range 
ballistic missile capable of hitting most of the Middle East.
  Then, finally, perhaps most chillingly, on August 31, 1998, North 
Korea launched a Taepo Dong 1 missile that was far more advanced than 
we thought capable at that time. These threats are serious. They are 
not taken lightly.

  It is because of these threats that we are moving and committing 
dollars for the development of a national missile defense system. As 
General Shelton, our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of

[[Page S2639]]

Staff, pointed out in ``Seapower'' magazine:

       There are other serious threats out there in addition to 
     that posed by ballistic missiles. We know, for example, that 
     there are adversaries with chemical and biological weapons 
     that can attack the United States today. They could do it 
     with a briefcase--by infiltrating our territory across our 
     shores or through our airports.

  Essentially, it raises the issue that if we, in a break-neck race to 
just deploy our first technologically possible system, all of these 
resources--are we missing out on providing effective deterrence and 
defense for these other approaches? I think we raise that issue with 
respect to S. 257.
  Now, the other aspect of this is we don't want to buy a system with 
billions of dollars that will work for a couple of years and then be 
obsolete. We don't want to go through the trouble of renegotiating a 
treaty--or perhaps the worst case, of walking away from a treaty for a 
system that is just not going to work.
  William Perry, our former Secretary of Defense, put it well when he 
said:

       Think of this problem in terms of buying a personal 
     computer for college. If you had ordered your computer as a 
     high-school sophomore it would have been obsolete by the time 
     you started college. It would lack the capabilities you now 
     need and would be impossible, or prohibitively expensive, to 
     update.

  In many respects, that is the same type of intellectual dilemma we 
face today. Putting a system in the field because it is technologically 
possible might not be the best approach. That is the only criterion in 
S. 257.
  We know this is also a very difficult technical problem, essentially 
because we are using ``kill'' vehicles that are target upon target, 
using kinetic energy--i.e. impact. It is like a bullet hitting a 
bullet. That is a tough problem. In fact, we have had very few 
successes in the experiments we have tried to run to date. So few, in 
fact, a Pentagon review panel has called the program to date a ``rush 
to failure.'' We don't want to rush to failure. We want ``progress to 
deployment'' of a system that works for us, defends the country and 
maintains our strength--not just in the small case of a rogue nation 
but in the larger case of international nuclear stability.
  Now, S. 257 will require us to deploy this system as long as it is 
technologically possible. Again, one could ask, what does that mean? Is 
that the first step that succeeds? Is it a series of two or three tests 
to succeed in any case? That type of analysis alone is not, I think, 
the optimal way to approach this issue.
  As I mentioned before, we have to consider costs. Between 1984 and 
1994, the Congressional Research Service estimated that the Pentagon 
spent $70.7 billion on ballistic missile defense activities, yet no 
system was deployed. I hope valuable information was gained and 
research could be applied to the ongoing projects, but $70 billion was 
spent in a decade without the breakthrough deployment, the breakthrough 
technology of a system. Again, we have to consider costs.
  Just the simple preparation of one site for a national missile 
defense would range between $6 and $13 billion. These costs would be 
justified in many respects by the threat if we are confident or more 
confident that the system we are putting in place would be something 
that could evolve to the greater threats in the future and is something 
that really does provide comprehensive protections to the United 
States--not just today but in the future. This legislation does not 
call for such a comprehensive measure in which to determine whether to 
deploy or not to deploy.
  As mentioned before, every dollar we spend on national missile 
defense is important, but there are some other measures of defense 
which are equally important and which may find themselves shortchanged 
if we have this rush for deployment as soon as we are technologically 
possible. Again, we have to consider, I think, this issue in broader 
terms beyond just technological possibility.
  Then we have to consider, as I have mentioned, the effect of arms 
control agreements. Since 1940, we have been wrestling with this issue 
of how to defend the United States against intercontinental ballistic 
missiles. We tried to develop defense mechanisms. We have had systems 
in place. We were developing in the 1970s and the late 1960s a central 
system. The central system turned into Safeguard and Safeguard was 
moving forward, but at the height of the cold war at a time when the 
tensions between ourselves and the Soviet Union were extremely 
pronounced, President Nixon negotiated and ultimately agreed to an 
antiballistic missile treaty. In fact, this treaty limited what was 
technically possible. The Safeguard system was going in place to 
protect our ICBM fields. It was technically possible, it was thought 
then that we would be more secure if we limited the deployment of 
ballistic missile systems--mutually limited--amongst ourselves and the 
Soviet Union. That decision was made. That decision has stood the test 
of time to date.

  The ABM Treaty has been questioned over time, but it has provided us 
a situation where we have a more stable balance between ourselves, 
certainly, and at one time the Soviet Union, and now Russia.
  I think, however, recognizing the rise of these rogue states with 
their missile capability, it is appropriate to look at ABM. It is 
appropriate to go back and attempt to modify the treaty--modify it not 
just in terms of the simple case, the C-1 case, but look at it in terms 
of modifications that will carry us through the medium and the long run 
for systems that very well may not be technically possible today or in 
2 years but would be extremely important, indeed perhaps necessary, in 
5 to 10 years. We could do this if we negotiate with the Russians.
  We have to ask ourselves what kind of message S. 257 would send, 
basically saying we are going to deploy this as soon as we think it 
works, without any mention of negotiation of ABM. I don't think it 
sends the right message. It sends the message at a time when the Soviet 
missile force has been transferred to the Russians. We know it is 
fraying on the edges in terms of command control, in terms of its 
replacement, in terms of its technological sophistication.
  Again, do we really want to change what was the operative rule in the 
cold war--that a missile strike by the United States, a first strike; 
or by Russia or the Soviet Union--would be unlikely if not impossible? 
That is the type of mindset which gave a lieutenant colonel in the 
Russian rocket forces the gut feeling to disregard all the warnings on 
his computer and on the screen to say, ``This can't be right; it would 
be reckless and foolish for the United States to launch five or so 
missiles against us.'' We certainly don't want a situation where some 
lieutenant colonel says, ``They have an ABM system which they put in 
unilaterally without our consent, over our opposition. You know what? 
Maybe these five missiles are more than a mistake on my computer.''
  We have to very serious about this. I know we are all serious, but I 
suggest, and I think Senator Levin would suggest later, that this 
legislation could benefit mightily from the amendments that at least 
acknowledge the importance of negotiation, the importance of cost 
estimates, the importance of evaluation or threat before we go forward.
  The other aspect of this legislation is that it will not speed up the 
deployment of a national missile defense. The administration is 
committed to developing, doing the research, making a decision based on 
all of these factors I mentioned and deploying a missile defense, at 
the same time negotiating with the Russians with respect to the ABM 
Treaty. As the President indicated, if those negotiations are 
fruitless, if we are ready to deploy, if the threat is there with 
respect to rogue states, he is quite prepared at that point to make a 
decision to deploy.
  That is a far cry from standing here today saying, ``Disregard 
negotiations, disregard the evolution of the threat, disregard the 
cost. As soon as we have one successful test we are going to put it in 
the field.'' I don't think that is the wisest course. I think we can do 
better. Indeed, I believe that everyone--the sponsors of the 
legislation, those who disagree with the legislation--want to do the 
best for this country and want to ensure that we are protected, want to 
ensure that in the long run we have comprehensive national

[[Page S2640]]

security; that we don't have a situation where we might provide for the 
inherent missile strike from a rogue nation, yet we have undermined the 
balance between ourselves and another major nuclear power--Russia or, 
indeed, China.

  I think we can do this, but I think we have to begin with the 
conception that it is just not one parameter, one criteria, and that it 
is done in a careful way on a multiplicity of issues like cost, 
technological possibility, threat, and also maintaining a strong regime 
of arms control, which has benefited us mightily over the course of 
many decades.
  So I hope very much that we will be able to amend this legislation to 
reflect those different aspects and, having amended it, to agree 
unanimously to send it forward to the President for his signature. I 
hope we can do that in the days ahead. We will see.
  At this time, I yield the floor.
  Mr. KYL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I rise in support of S. 257, the National 
Missile Defense Act of 1999. This straight-forward bill states that due 
to the increasing ballistic missile threat we face, ``It is the policy 
of the United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible 
an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the 
territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack 
(whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate).'' This bill is 
essentially identical to last year's measure which was filibustered by 
the minority and failed to gain cloture by a single vote. I would ask 
those who opposed the bill last year to consider the events over the 
intervening period which reinforce the arguments in favor of national 
missile defense:
  First, North Korea launched a three-stage missile last August that 
overflew Japan in an attempt to orbit a satellite. This missile, the 
Taepo Dong 1, has sufficient range to reach Alaska and Hawaii as 
demonstrated by the fact that its debris landed 4000 miles out in the 
Pacific. The range and the presence of a third stage was a surprise to 
the Intelligence Community, according to unclassified statements by 
Robert Walpole, National Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear 
Programs. Furthermore, successor missile, the Taepo Dong 2 is expected 
to be able to reach all of the American mainland and may be ready for 
testing this year. As the Chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence 
Council noted last October, ``An ICBM threat from North Korea is 
looming.''
  Second, Iran tested a medium range missile last July that is capable 
of reaching Israel and U.S. forces throughout the Middle East. This 
missile, the Shahab-3, may already be in production and Iran, with 
Russian assistance, is developing a longer-range missile capable of 
reaching Central Europe. Russian missile assistance to Iran has 
continued despite intensive U.S. efforts to halt this deadly trade. As 
CIA Director Tenet noted in testimony last month to the Armed Services 
Committee, ``Especially during the last six months, expertise and 
materiel from Russia has continued to assist the Iranian missile effort 
in areas ranging from training, to testing, to components.'' General 
Zinni, our CENTCOM commander has stated that Iran may have nuclear 
weapons within five years. Iran has been typically bloody-minded in its 
propaganda. During a military parade in Tehran last year, slogans were 
written on sides of missiles that read ``Israel should be wiped off the 
map'' and ``the USA can do nothing''. Moreover, last year's hopeful 
signs that Iranian moderates were gaining ascendancy now look much less 
clear.
  Third, Iraq has achieved its long-sought goal of escaping from UNSCOM 
inspections. Chief UN arms inspector Butler has stated that Iraq has 
resumed its weapons programs. There is now no inspection regime in 
place, the UN embargo is under mounting attack including by erstwhile 
allies, potential suppliers are eager to be of assistance, and Iraq 
retains a significant missile production and support infrastructure 
upon which to build. UN inspectors had uncovered drawings of multi-
stage missiles and they are within a decade of an intercontinental 
missile capability.
  Fourth, China continues measured but steady improvement in its 
existing force of ICBMs which are already capable of hitting American 
cities. China's ICBMs have benefitted from both the outright theft and 
the unwisely permitted transfers of American space launch vehicle 
technology. Recently there have been disturbing published reports that 
China stole the design of the nuclear warhead of our Trident missile. 
This sophisticated multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicle or 
MIRV design has the capability to be a real force multiplier. Moreover, 
the technology that China obtains from the United States may not remain 
there. According to a Washington Times report on February 23, China has 
assisted North Korea's missile and space technology. China has also 
developed a habit of using ballistic missiles to intimidate its 
neighbors. On the eve of Taiwan's first democratic elections in 1996, 
China launched M-9 missiles to areas within 30 miles of Taiwan's two 
primary ports. A report just released by the Defense Department states 
that China is engaged in an intense buildup of ballistic and cruise 
missiles opposite Taiwan. Easy assumptions that the U.S. can enjoy a 
constructive relationship with China may be rooted in hope rather than 
reality. Beijing's recent crackdown on the fledgling Democracy Party 
serves as a reminder that China remains an authoritarian and 
potentially hostile regime with a highly uncertain future.
  Finally, the condition of Russia is cause for serious concern. Russia 
retains over 6000 strategic nuclear warheads and is still conducting 
limited modernization even as their strategic forces experience overall 
decay. While a return to cold war confrontation is unlikely today, the 
prospects for Russia's successful transition to democracy remain 
unclear. Their economic meltdown last summer further aggravated 
problems of nuclear weapons security, and command and control. The 
competence and morale and, hence, the safety of their nuclear forces 
are increasingly in question.

  The timeliness of the warnings of the bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission 
Report last summer have been more than borne out by these events. The 
North Korean and Iranian missile tests followed within weeks of that 
report. You will recall that the Rumsfeld Commission offered three 
major conclusions. (1) The missile threat to the United States is real 
and growing. (2) The threat is greater than previously assessed and a 
rogue nation could acquire the capability to threaten the U.S. with an 
ICBM within as little as five years. And (3) we may have little or no 
warning of the emergence of new threats. How prescient these 
conclusions were. How quickly they were borne out by subsequent events.
  Madam President, the administration is to be commended for its 
recognition that a missile threat to the United States exists. On 
January 20, Secretary of Defense Cohen stated that ``the United States 
will, in fact, face a rogue nation threat to our homeland against which 
we will have to defend the American people'' and that ``technological 
readiness will be the sole remaining criteria'' in deciding when to 
deploy a national missile defense system. But subsequent statements by 
administration spokesman have hedged on this forthright statement and 
suggested that other considerations may affect our deployment decision. 
For example, Secretary of State Albright has suggested that any 
deployment was conditional on the actual emergence of a threat and on 
the successful renegotiation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
  I've just outlined the threat and, in particular, the recent events 
which demonstrate that it is closer than many believed. There may well 
be rogue nations with the capability to reach American shores with 
weapons of mass destruction before we can deploy even a limited missile 
shield under the administration's most optimistic scenarios of 
successful tests and timely decisions. And even after Secretary Cohen's 
announcement, there has been slippage in a key program, namely the 
Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellites for missile detection 
and tracking. I joined several others Senators in expressing my concern 
at this unfortunate decision by the Air Force to delay development of 
this vial component of any missile defense architecture. If left 
unchanged, this decision will delay the deployment of any NMD

[[Page S2641]]

system until 2006 when the first SBIRS-low satellites are launched. The 
bottom line is that the threat is developing more rapidly than our 
response to it. We cannot afford additional delays while our potential 
adversaries develop and deploy increasingly capable missiles.
  Second, Secretary Albright and other administration officials have 
spoken of the need to revise the ABM Treaty to accommodate deployment 
of a national missile defense. Mr. President, the ABM Treaty is an 
anachronism. It is the last relic of the cold war. Whatever its merit 
then, it has none now. In fact, some legal scholars believe the ABM 
Treaty is no longer binding on the United States since one of the 
original parties to the Treaty has ceased to exist. Renegotiation of 
the ABM Treaty is likely to prove a long and fruitless undertaking. 
Russia will not doubt hold out the prospect of START II ratification as 
they have done for six years now. The United States has purchased START 
II ratification several times over and we should not do so again. The 
economic situation in Russia today renders it unlikely that a START II 
level, let alone a START I level, of weapons is sustainable. To hold 
hostage the defense of the United States for the constantly receding 
mirage of START II would be strategic folly. Russia is not the target 
of American national missile defense except in so far as we seek the 
capability to defend against accidental or unauthorized launch. We can 
and should continue cooperative efforts with Russia, but they should 
not exercise a veto over our decision to defend ourselves against an 
Iran or a North Korea.
  Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have advanced 
arms control arguments in opposition to missile defense. I suggest that 
American deployment of national missile defense will actually be a 
profoundly stabilizing step. If we have the prospect of defending our 
country from attack by weapons of mass destruction, we are less likely 
to have to resort to nuclear retaliation. Further, our deployment of a 
national missile defense will reduce the incentive for nuclear and 
missile proliferation by our prospective adversaries. It will reduce 
the ability of a North Korea to successfully blackmail us and our 
allies with its nuclear and missile programs.
  The bill before the Senate does not, however, address the ABM Treaty. 
The bill does not say what kind of architecture the missile defense 
system should have. It does not say where such a system should be 
located, or more generally, whether it should be based on land, at sea, 
or in space. It does not specify a date by which such a system should 
be deployed. It simply states a national goal, a goal on which 
bipartisan agreement should be possible. I am surprised 
and disappointed that the administration has chosen to oppose this 
bill, the purpose of which seems identical to the policy announced by 
the Secretary of Defense in January. I would have hoped that we could 
agree on the goal and turn our attention to the means to achieve it.

  There is an important debate that has only just begun as to the best 
means of providing a national missile defense. For example, one option 
that I don't think has received enough attention is a sea-based missile 
defense. While the best defense is obviously an integrated land, sea, 
and space combination, I think it is becoming more and more clear that 
sea-based systems offer our best near term solution to both theater and 
national missile defense needs. This is because of their operational 
flexibility, cost-effectiveness, ability to deploy rapidly where 
needed, and the potential for ascent-phase intercepts. As you will 
recall, the ABM Treaty precludes sea-and space-based defenses. 
Unfortunately, the Clinton administration is attempting to remain 
within the sacred scripture of the ABM Treaty by proposing one or two 
fixed land-based sites and hasn't vigorously pursued research and 
funding of more promising technologies.
  We need a better alternative. For my money, that alternative is to 
develop a robust theater navy system which can provide a limited 
defense against some strategic missiles possibly at an earlier date 
than the administration's proposals would allow. Such a system can be a 
bridge to a complete national defense later. For many years now, the 
Navy has been heavily involved in missile defense and has invested over 
$50 billion in the Aegis fleet which now comprises more than 60 ships 
with more than 5,000 missile launchers. The Navy is currently working 
on two missile defense programs to be based on Aegis ships--the area or 
``Lower Tier'' system that will provide protection for point targets 
against short-range missiles, and the Theater Wide or ``Upper Tier'' 
system capable of defending areas as large as several countries against 
much longer range missiles. The Pentagon's current plans do not call 
for the Navy Theater Wide system to be deployed before 2010 but this 
timing is driven by budget constraints rather than technology 
development. In fact, both the navy and the Ballistic Missile Defense 
Office have recently concluded that if funding were increased by 
roughly $300 million per year, the system could be deployed between 
2003 and 2005 without a significant increase in risk.
  Madam President, it is a more dangerous world out there than it was 
two or five years ago. Rogue nations have been able to pursue missile 
and nuclear programs with little effective hindrance from international 
proliferation regimes. The past twelve months have witnessed the first 
tests of the North Korean Taepo Dong I and the Iranian Shahab-3, the 
latter based on North Korea's No Dong design. Russia flirts with chaos 
and China once again reminds us that they remain a repressive, 
authoritarian regime, not a ``strategic partner'' in the 
administration's ill-chosen phrase. Both continue to assist rogue 
nations in their weapons of mass destruction. The administration's 
diplomacy has been inconsistent, distracted, and shortsighted at best. 
Its military programs are hobbled by outdated arms control strictures. 
Proliferation outstrips anti-proliferation efforts and rogue state 
offensive weaponry is advancing more rapidly than the administration's 
programs to counter them. The time has come for the United States to 
defend itself from the increasing missile threat that I have just 
described. The Cochran bill is the first step on this path. I urge my 
colleagues to support its passage.
  Madam President, I would like to respond to my friend from Rhode 
Island and to speak to the question of whether or not we ought to 
maintain a window of vulnerability, because that is basically what has 
been presented here. My friend acknowledged the threat to the United 
States, but said we ought to go slow; after all, this might cost a lot 
and technology is hard and the Russians are going to be nervous about 
it. Therefore, maybe we ought to go slow.
  Let me remind my colleagues what this amendment says. It is very 
simple:

       It is the policy of the United States to deploy, as soon as 
     is technologically possible, an effective missile defense 
     capable of defending the territory of the United States 
     against limited ballistic missile attack.

  Madam President, that is pretty straightforward. We are saying that 
when it is possible, we should deploy such a system. Why? Because we 
are threatened. Is that threat sometime off in the future? No. The 
threat is now. There is a window of vulnerability between the time that 
we are threatened and the time we can deploy a system to protect 
ourselves against the threat. Why is this important? We know that 
Russian missiles can reach the United States already. We know Chinese 
missiles can reach the United States, and we now know that the North 
Koreans probably have a missile that can at least reach some of the 
United States, and they are testing further missiles that would have a 
longer range and eventually have the capability of reaching the 
continental United States.
  Have we ever been threatened by any of these countries? Yes, as a 
matter of fact, we have. Back when the Chinese were launching missiles 
across Taiwan before the Taiwanese elections in an obvious effort to 
intimidate them, the United States decided to send carriers to the 
Taiwan Strait. One of the Chinese generals is supposed to have said to 
an American: ``You know, we believe in the long run that you care more 
about Los Angeles than you do about Taiwan''--the implicit threat 
being, of course, if you get in our way, if we are ever serious about 
doing something to Taiwan, we can threaten to launch ballistic missiles 
against Los Angeles.
  Is it fair for the people of the United States, for their leaders, 
knowing this

[[Page S2642]]

vulnerability exists, to do nothing about it, or to take the ``let's go 
slow'' approach that has just been suggested by my colleague? I think 
not. We would be negligent to the utmost degree if we understood that a 
threat existed, yet, we failed to protect the American people against a 
potential attack by a foreign country. That is the first and most 
important obligation of the U.S. Government--to protect the American 
people.

  We now know that ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction 
carried by them are the weapon of choice--and not just by our old 
adversary, the Russians, but by rogue nations. That is why we should 
not allow a piece of paper--the ABM Treaty--to get in the way of 
defending us. Back in the days my colleague was just referring to, the 
United States and Russia--whether for good reasons or bad--decided we 
would remain neutrally vulnerable to an attack by the other; thereby, 
we would create stability. That may or may not have worked in those 
days.
  I argue that there were other factors at play, but let's assume that 
was the reason. There were only two countries that could threaten each 
other; therefore, this was a workable arrangement. But to tie our hands 
behind our back mutually with the Russians doesn't account for today's 
reality in which there are other nations that could attack us. So while 
we politely agree with the Russians to maintain a lack of defense 
against ballistic missile attack, other countries have developed that 
capability and can threaten us, impede our foreign policy goals and, 
God forbid, even use the weapons against us with impunity because we 
don't have the means to defend ourselves.
  Some would argue that we have the nuclear retaliatory capability to 
respond to such an attack. Well, Madam President, I for one would not 
like to have to launch a massive nuclear retaliation against North 
Korea, or anyone else, as the price of being attacked myself. I would 
rather deter that attack in the first place by having a defense--a 
limited defense--which would threaten in no way the Russian system 
because it would easily overwhelm it, but which would provide limited 
protection against an attack by a rogue nation.
  I applaud Senator Cochran for his perseverance in continuing to bring 
this before the body, even though many on the other side of the aisle 
have not up until now allowed us to have a vote on this, and even 
though the administration strongly opposes it.
  What were the arguments posed against the amendment? First is that we 
should not rush to this, and I think I have already made the point. 
There is no doubt about the threat here. The window of vulnerability 
will be in the neighborhood of a minimum of 5 or 6 years. That is too 
long. Under the administration's plan, we would deploy, maybe in 2005, 
a system that could defend us--or probably in 2006. We are talking 6 to 
7 years from now. I don't think that trying to deploy this system as 
soon as technologically possible is rushing in any sense that is bad 
for the United States. Rather, I see a 6- or 7-year window of 
vulnerability as the problem. I would like to rush even more. I wish we 
could create the technology tomorrow and deploy this tomorrow. I don't 
think waiting 6 or 7 years and being threatened during that interim is 
rushing too much.
  Secondly, my colleague suggested that we have to consider the threat. 
I don't know of anybody that denies the threat. The Rumsfeld Commission 
made it crystal clear that the Russians, Chinese, and the North Koreans 
have the capability, and that other countries will soon have the 
capability of reaching States of the United States. Now, that is a 
threat from weapons of mass destruction.

  How about the cost? Of course, we have to consider the cost. So how 
much is this going to cost? Well, about as much as it has cost us to go 
to Bosnia. The estimates there range from $12 billion to $20 billion. 
Whatever the cost is, certainly protecting the American people from 
ballistic missile attack ought to at least be as important as what we 
have spent in Bosnia, shouldn't it? How about 1 percent of the defense 
budget? That is what we are talking about. The administration is 
talking about adding about a billion dollars to a defense budget of 
$260 billion, or maybe $270 billion. So, Madam President, that is less 
than 1 percent of the defense budget. It is a fraction of the overall 
budget of the United States.
  If this represents the No. 1 threat to the United States from rogue 
nations, and if it is 1 percent of the defense budget, is that too 
much? How much is too much to protect the American people, I ask my 
colleagues? Can you put a number on it? I can't. Certainly, 1 percent 
of the defense budget is not too much.
  So first of all, there is a threat and there is a window of 
vulnerability. We are not rushing this, and we are not spending too 
much money on it. I challenge my colleagues to answer the question: How 
much is too much to protect the American people? When we don't even 
want to see one American life lost in a place like Bosnia, and we go to 
great lengths to protect our service people when we deploy them abroad 
because we don't want to lose one person, how much is too much to 
protect the people of Hawaii or Alaska, the States that are currently 
threatened by a country like North Korea, which is a country that 
absolutely cannot be predicted in terms of its behavior?
  The third issue is diplomacy. We have the ABM Treaty to deal with. I 
am going to get into a little bit more detail on that in just a moment 
because we certainly have to think about strategic stability. We don't 
want to do anything here that would be so disruptive to our 
relationships with other nations, that somehow we would find ourselves 
in greater danger than from this particular threat. I suggest to my 
colleagues that there is no upsetting of the strategic stability of the 
world if we proceed to defend ourselves, especially from rogue nations.
  As a matter of fact, I suggest that the deployment of missile 
defenses to protect the people of the United States will be profoundly 
stabilizing. If we have the prospect of defending our country against a 
ballistic missile attack, we are less likely to have to use massive 
nuclear retaliation, which is more destabilizing. Furthermore, our 
deployment of a national missile defense will reduce the incentive for 
nuclear and missile proliferation by our potential adversaries knowing 
that they can't succeed against us because we have this defense.
  That is one of the key things that brought down the Soviet Union--
knowing that we were committed to develop what was then the Strategic 
Defense Initiative to preclude the Soviet Union from ever succeeding in 
an attack against us. They basically packed it up. They said: We cannot 
compete with that; therefore, we are going to quit.
  It seems to me that a strong commitment to defend ourselves will have 
the right effect. It will cause other countries to get realistic about 
the ability to try to push the United States around by the development 
of these threatening weapons. They will decide that discretion is the 
better part of valor and will decide that they can spend their money on 
more useful things. It will certainly reduce the ability of countries 
like North Korea to successfully blackmail the United States and our 
allies because we can't defend ourselves against their weapons.
  Madam President, let me show, with the aid of a couple of charts, 
some things that I think are very interesting. This first chart shows 
the level of offensive weapons, nuclear warheads, permitted under 
different regimens today under treaties. This is the one we are 
currently under. It is called the START I. It said both Russia and the 
United States had to limit our nuclear warheads to about 6,000. So that 
is where we are.
  We proposed, and the United States has ratified, the START II treaty, 
which almost cuts this in half--down to 3,500. We have been waiting, I 
believe now for 6 years, for Russia to ratify the START II treaty. They 
haven't ratified it yet.
  We are worried here about making the Russians upset. How about us 
being upset? For a long time we have said: Let's create a more stable 
world; let's get rid of these dangerous weapons; you don't need them; 
we don't need them; let's reduce them down to 3,500--6 years ago. The 
Russians still haven't ratified. We have given a lot to the Russians as 
inducements for them to ratify. We bought the START II treaty many 
times. But they have yet to deliver. So we are still waiting.

[[Page S2643]]

  Some argue that, because it is so costly to maintain these weapons, 
actually the Russians would prefer to go right to a more realistic 
level that they could sustain, a START III level, about 2,000; maybe 
they can afford to keep 2,000 weapons around; and, therefore, we ought 
to just jump right over START II and go all the way down to START III. 
Let's examine that argument for a minute.
  It turns out that it is not the ABM Treaty at all, or the START II 
treaty, that is determining the strategic parity between the United 
States and Russia with respect to nuclear weapons. It turns out that 
this stability is created more by a very practical situation; that is, 
how much can the Russians afford? How much, frankly, can the United 
States afford?
  As it turns out, Igor Sergeyev, the Russian Minister of Defense, last 
summer told the Russian Security Council that Russia will be unable to 
muster a strategic nuclear force of more than 1,500 warheads by the 
year 2010 and that the reasons have nothing to do with armaments 
control. They can't afford it. Their economy is broken. They have no 
money. Much of their military force is in disrepair. And, indeed, the 
only part they have been modernizing is their strategic nuclear 
offensive capability. As a result, Sergeyev points out that this is the 
maximum level they are going to be able to maintain with or without an 
ABM Treaty, with or without a START II or START III treaty.

  So it is not what we do with respect to these arms control agreements 
that is going to dictate the parity of nuclear weapons between our two 
countries; it is the stark reality of what we can both afford.
  Frankly, this level of 1,500 to 2,000 is about where we are going to 
end up. So it doesn't matter whether we deploy another defensive system 
or not, or a defensive system against nuclear-tipped missiles or not. 
The fact is, the Russians are going down to this level because they 
can't afford to do anything else.
  I think, therefore, that the notion that offensive reductions in 
strategic nuclear warheads will not occur if this bill is passed is 
simply not borne out by the facts. This bill has nothing whatsoever to 
do with that. It is happening and will continue to happen regardless of 
what we do today.
  But let's suppose something. Let's make believe something--that some 
of the arguments similar to those that have just been made are correct 
and that ``Russia would likely retain thousands of nuclear warheads'' 
and somehow they would develop the money to do this that they would 
``otherwise eliminate'' under these arms control agreements. Suppose 
some miracle occurs and Russia finds the resources to rejuvenate its 
strategic forces.
  What rationale would Russia have for doing this?
  Bear in mind that what we are talking about here is a national 
missile defense system. We qualified it, it says ``limited,'' and the 
reason is that we do not intend to build anything more, and we would 
not build anything more, than a limited system capable of providing a 
defense against a limited attack, an attack that we currently believe 
we are threatened by a rogue nation like North Korea, or, given the 
debate about China these days, perhaps a China, which doesn't have the 
same quantity of missiles that Russia does.
  There are other nations in the world that I will not list that also 
are developing this capability.
  Suppose that when we develop this system, Russia looks at it and 
says, ``How is this going to affect our strategic missile offensive 
warhead situation? Maybe we ought to have more warheads, because the 
United States system is going to degrade our capability of successfully 
attacking them.'' In other words, ``If they have a good defense, maybe 
we need more offense.''
  I pointed out that the defense we are talking about is a minimal 
defense, perhaps capable of defending against just a handful of 
missiles, not the 6,000 warheads that the Russians may have today. If 
the strategic stability argument is to be believed, it has to be 
because the Russians would find the idea of the United States missile 
defense so threatening that they would have to retain thousands and 
thousands of warheads in order to be sure they could overcome our 
defense.
  So, let's examine the defensive side of the equation.
  I have another chart which I think will explain this situation. The 
offensive warheads again are in red. This is what was originally 
permitted under START I. You can see that we had about 2,000 warheads 
at the time. But START I eventually got to the level of 6,000 that I 
mentioned a while ago. That is where we are today--both countries in 
the neighborhood of authorized 6,000 warheads. That is the column in 
red. This is the way it began back when START I was actually ratified, 
and when the ABM Treaty was created. Back in those days, each side was 
limited by the ABM Treaty to 200 interceptor missiles. In 1974, at the 
time the treaty was negotiated, or signed, neither side having plans to 
deploy the full complement of defensive missiles it was allowed, that 
number was reduced to 100. That remains the limit today. So both 
countries have 100 authorized interceptors. Of course, Russia has built 
its system. We have not built our system.

  The limited missile defense system the United States is developing 
will be capable initially of shooting down, as I said, a handful of 
relatively unsophisticated warheads. The plans for ``Capability 1,'' as 
we will call it, called for deployment of 20 interceptor missiles to do 
this job--just 20 interceptor missiles. This is the system the 
administration claims can be deployed by 2005. Subsequently, this will 
grow to ``Capability 2,'' which, according to the Ballistic Missile 
Defense Organization, will consist of up to 100 interceptor missiles 
able to shoot down a somewhat larger number of sophisticated warheads.
  Although the concept of operations envisions firing several 
interceptors at each warhead, let's assume for the purpose of argument 
that each interceptor will work absolutely perfectly and kill one 
warhead. That is never going to be the case, but we will give the other 
side the absolute maximum benefit of the doubt. That means that, at 
most, as envisioned today, the United States system will be capable of 
destroying 100 Russian warheads, out of a START III total of no fewer 
than 2,000, or perhaps 1,500, if Minister Sergeyev is correct. Let's 
examine what that means.
  Back in 1974, when the ABM Treaty was created, there was a 10-to-1 
ratio in terms of offensive to defensive, because you had about 2,000 
warheads and 200-interceptor authorized capability, although we never 
built it. We have now built up to 2,000 warheads, and we have an 
authorized 100-interceptor capability. The blue line here is the 
defensive warheads, or the defensive missile capability.
  So you have 6,000 warheads existing, and a 60-to-1 ratio, because you 
can only intercept 100 at the absolute most, because you get 1 for 1. 
Under START II, that ratio would be 35 to 1, because you would have 
3,500 warheads and you still have 100 authorized interceptors. Under 
START III, it would be 20 to 1, because you would have 2,000 warheads, 
100 interceptors. Even if Minister Sergeyev is correct, as I said, you 
would have no more than 1,500 warheads in the Soviet Union and you 
would have 100 interceptors, for a 15-to-1 ratio--15-to-1 ratio. That 
is still greater than the ratio that existed at the time of the signing 
of the ABM Treaty, the time and the age we are trying to go back to and 
preserve. This is the way things ought to be--1974, a ratio of 10-to-1, 
offensive weapons to interceptors. That was strategic stability. That 
was the ratio, the parity that we wanted, and so we negotiated it. That 
is what is in jeopardy now.

  That is what is in jeopardy now, Madam President? If you give the 
other side the absolute maximum of a 1-to-1 kill ratio, you hit 100 
missiles with 100 interceptors, the ratio today at 15 to 1 is still a 
greater ratio than 10 to 1. How could the Russians be more threatened 
today with a 15-to-1 ratio of offensive over defensive capability when 
they were perfectly happy to sign the ABM Treaty back in 1974 with a 
10-to-1 ratio? How could this be more destabilizing? How could any 
Senator argue against the protection of the American people today 
because it would threaten the Russians because it would be 
destabilizing, it would create a worse situation than existed back in 
1974, when the ratio then was 10 to 1? And it would be 50 percent more 
than that today--15 to 1.

[[Page S2644]]

  You cannot argue it; it is illogical. And for the Russians to contend 
otherwise would be irresponsible. Certainly for us to act on behalf of 
their irrational objections would be irresponsible on our part.
  Incidentally, I might add that this Nation that will allegedly be so 
angered and concerned about the deployment of our limited defense has 
the world's only ABM system, nuclear armed, recently upgraded, now in 
its fourth generation. It is deployed around Moscow with all 100 
interceptor missiles allowed under the ABM Treaty. So how is it that a 
comparable U.S. system cannot be deployed without unduly angering the 
Russian leadership? They have 100 very modern interceptor missiles 
today. We have none. So if we have 100 just like they have, how is that 
going to be destabilizing? It is we who should be arguing about 
instability, not the Russians.
  I think the argument that strategic stability would be somehow upset 
if the United States did what the ABM Treaty authorizes, and that is 
create a capability to intercept first 20 and then 100 missiles, would 
hardly be destabilizing, at least to the point that we should delay or 
preclude ourselves from doing it.
  Obviously, the Russians will complain; it is in their interest to do 
so. Although the cold war has ended and we still enjoy a much more 
positive relationship with the Russians, all traces of rivalry have not 
disappeared. They still find it in their interest when possible to work 
in ways inimical to U.S. interests, and they know that our 
defenselessness against ballistic missile attack constrains our actions 
around the world, and that, in the Russian view, is not necessarily a 
bad thing.
  So one realistically understands that there will be objections, but 
one must realistically evaluate those objections. I wish my colleague 
who just spoke a few minutes ago, who so tortuously examined all of the 
reasons why we could not move forward with this--it is going to cost a 
lot, the technology is hard, diplomatically we need to think of how the 
Russians would feel--I wish that we were as concerned about the threat 
to the United States as we are the feelings of the Russian leadership. 
And I wish we were as concerned about our ability to project our 
national interests in our foreign policy against the threat of rogue 
nations such as the Irans and the Iraqs and the North Koreans of the 
world as we are about the feelings of the Russians. Russian soldiers 
and scientists understand the reality that is portrayed on these charts 
just as well as we do, and we know that a very limited missile defense 
system that we have the right to deploy in no way threatens strategic 
stability, no matter how loudly they may protest that it does. Our 
relationship with Russia is something that must be taken very 
seriously, but it cannot prevent us from taking reasonable actions to 
defend the American people against threats from other countries. The 
day that we conclude that unduly taking Russian concerns into account 
would inhibit our ability to defend ourselves is the day we have to 
move forward.

  So, in summary, strategic stability as defined by the other side in 
this debate, the ABM Treaty at the time that it was negotiated, which 
created a 10-to-1 advantage of strategic offensive over defensive 
weapons, that 10-to-1 ratio is not degraded even under the worst set of 
conditions that one might imagine in terms of our ability to defend 
ourselves here, or I should say even under the best of conditions 
because the ratio will still be 15 to 1 under this condition. It is 
more likely to be in the neighborhood of 20 to 1 or 35 to 1, the point 
being that no Russian could feel threatened with this kind of 
relationship if they didn't feel threatened back here anyway. And this 
defines the golden mean, remember.
  With respect to the cost, I think I have covered that. Even this 
administration is willing to add money to the budget to pay for what it 
believes will be a system that it can build when it is technologically 
feasible. Recognizing that the technology is hard, we provide in this 
amendment that it is our policy to deploy as soon as is technologically 
possible an effective missile defense system.
  So we are not saying deploy something that is not technologically 
possible. Yes, we know technology is hard, but we also know we can get 
there, the administration believes, by about the year 2005.
  So to the thought we should not be rushing forward with this 
amendment, I simply say how long do you want to leave the American 
people vulnerable? How valuable is it to you to leave the American 
people vulnerable to a missile attack, or to leave our Nation subject 
to blackmail, to the threat of such an attack; to prevent us, for 
example, from defending our friends in South Korea because the North 
Koreans have a nuclear weapon with a missile capable of hitting Alaska 
or Hawaii; to prevent us from defending Taiwan against Chinese 
aggression because they have missiles that can reach Los Angeles; to 
prevent us from supporting a country like Japan or any of the other 
interests that we may have around the world?
  Eventually, it boils down to this: We have an obligation to defend 
the American people. We will have the technological capability of doing 
that soon in the next century. There is a threat to the American people 
today. The cost of building a national missile defense is not 
prohibitive. Even if it were 1 percent of the defense budget, it would 
not be prohibitive--I submit, even if it were 10 percent, but it is 
obviously not going to cost that much.
  So given the nature of the threat, given the fact that technology is 
taken into account in this proposal, that it clearly is not going to 
cost too much even by this administration's analysis, and the fact that 
it will not disrupt strategic stability in the world, it seems to me 
that we would be derelict in our duty as representatives of the people 
not to move forward.
  The first step in moving forward is to adopt this simple resolution 
because, as is clear from the debate on the other side, unless we are 
committed to deploying a national missile defense, we are going to find 
excuses for not doing it. And until the Senate and the House of 
Representatives pass a resolution that says we are going to do this, 
the bureaucrats and the naysayers and those who don't want to do it 
will have good reason for not moving forward. We will not have spoken 
on the issue in a definitive way. That is why I applaud my colleague, 
Senator Cochran. He understands that we have to get an expression of 
serious intent in order to be able to convince the naysayers to move 
forward. And that is why adoption of this resolution is so important.
  So I urge my colleagues to support this bill when we have a chance to 
do so; we do it with great pride and with understanding that it 
fulfills the most important responsibility we have to the American 
people, and that is to provide for the national defense.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Fitzgerald). The Senator from Rhode 
Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, if I may just respond briefly to the 
comments made by my colleague, the Senator from Arizona.
  First, let me again emphasize something that I think is implicit in 
his statement, and that is we all recognize the threat that is posed by 
the potential development of intercontinental delivery systems by these 
rogue nations. No one is discounting that. That has changed the 
calculus significantly. The question is whether we are going to move 
forward on the very simple--and one might say simplistic--criterion of 
``technologically possible,'' or if we are going to, in this 
legislation, and in practice, address the complexities of this issue.
  Historical analogies are never perfect, but I suspect back in the 
1930s when France was debating defense policy, the notion of building a 
series of concrete forts along their territorial line was not only 
technologically feasible but ultimately was constructed. But when it 
came to 1940, the Maginot Line just did not work to defend the people 
of France. I am not suggesting we are in the same type of debate, but I 
think it is sometimes too alluring to think in the simple terms of: If 
we have the technology of doing something, let's do it--particularly 
when we get to the issue of national missile defense.
  The Senator talked about a window of vulnerability, and there is 
increasing potential, because of the development of these missiles by 
North Korea and others, of threats to our territory. But I ask that we 
think also of the potential vulnerability if Russia, for example, 
decides, because of our actions, to abandon reasonable arms control;

[[Page S2645]]

decides, instead, to walk away from START II, to keep their launchers, 
their land-based systems with multiple independent reentry vehicles 
which complicate our defense enormously; if it decides, in fact, to 
more aggressively deploy its submarines with cruise missiles that may 
have nuclear warheads, all of which could easily defeat the system that 
we are proposing to spend billions of dollars on today to counter a 
limited military threat.
  Put that new sort of spirit--an ill spirit, I should suggest--
together with what one can see as a decaying command and control system 
and we might be increasing our vulnerabilities by moving forward with 
this particular legislation.
  I think we have to be sensitive to those issues. I would not readily 
accept the notion that simply because of the number of launchers that 
we have, the number of launchers that they have, that the Russians 
would simply disregard our unilateral abandonment of the ABM as not a 
threat to them.
  We feel threatened, I think with good reason, when the North 
Koreans--a very, very remote and ill-prepared power--begin to 
experiment with intercontinental ballistic missiles which would have a 
capability years from now. To hear on the floor the suggestion that the 
Russians will just casually shrug their shoulders, although we have 
made no attempt to renegotiate the ABM and we will have a law that says 
we have to put the system in place as soon as we can technologically do 
it, I think misreads their character and, frankly, the predictable 
character of any country--particularly one like Russia which sees its 
national greatness eroding greatly, to react, perhaps not rationally 
but predictably--to not be cooperative, in fact creating more 
vulnerability.

  The issue, too, of how much is too much, is a question that can be 
raised in every context. But, frankly, we all understand that there are 
opportunity costs, not with respect to using defense dollars for other 
nondefense matters, but within the context of defense. Take, for 
example, not the theoretical but the operational possibility of an 
enhanced submarine fleet which the Russians might deploy with cruise 
missiles. By the way, those cruise missiles launched reasonably close 
to our shores could not be countered by any type of national missile 
defense, C-1, C-2, or C-3.
  So, in respect to what we have to do, I think we have to ask 
ourselves, for one thing, is this the wisest course of action? Are we 
truly protecting the American public? And there can be many answers to 
that question. But I hope, in the course of this debate and in the 
conclusion of this debate, we will simply embrace the reality of the 
situation. It is not one dimensional. It is not just technological 
feasibility. It has to do with cost, it has to do with threat, it has 
to do with the evolution of a threat. It has to do with already-
existing agreements with respect to international arms control.
  If we reflect those issues in our legislation, we will find, I 
suspect, unanimous support for a strong message which would correspond 
with the administration's message on national missile defense.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of the 
Cochran-Inouye Missile Defense Act because I think it is long overdue 
that this Senate take an action that is so very crucial to the security 
of our Nation. I commend Senator Cochran and Senator Inouye for trying 
so hard to get our Congress to move forward, to deploy this defense 
system in the face of opposition from the President of the United 
States.
  I appreciate that they have twice come to the Senate and twice been 
filibustered and have been unable to set this very important national 
security policy. In fact, the question is, Shall it be the policy of 
the United States to deploy, as soon as technologically possible, an 
effective national missile defense capable of defending the United 
States against limited ballistic missile attacks? It is a very simple 
question, and most people in this country think we already have a 
defense to an in-coming ballistic missile. But in fact we do not.
  We now know that Chinese missiles can reach our mainland. In a few 
short years, Iran, Iraq and North Korea could also be able to attack 
the United States. Today, we cannot defend the people of our country 
nor any place in the world where we have troops on the ground.
  The Clinton administration said that we would have 15 years' warning 
for missiles from North Korea and Iran, but the Rumsfeld report said 
the danger could arise at any time. I commend former Secretary of 
Defense and former Congressman Don Rumsfeld for really delving into 
this issue in a very bipartisan commission. He had a very tough row to 
hoe. But he said we are going to get to the bottom of this and he did 
not stop until he had a unanimous report from his commission, some of 
whom were naysayers in the beginning, that said this danger is upon us 
and we better do something about it. He gave us the wake-up call, and 
we should be forever grateful to Don Rumsfeld for having the guts to 
get to the truth so we would have the facts to back up the need for 
this security for our country.
  Unfortunately, U.S. espionage has shown that China has tremendously 
boosted its military space and missile capabilities. There is just no 
good argument against this resolution.
  The bill has support from both sides of the aisle. It really shows 
that people are beginning to be aware that we have a security threat to 
the United States. This bill is not what many of the critics have said. 
It does not mandate a missile defense architecture. It does not 
authorize a particular funding level. It is not a production decision, 
and it doesn't lead to the signing of any contracts. Instead, it is a 
policy statement by the Senate of the United States. But it is an 
important step for our national security.
  America, the innovative Nation that landed a man on the Moon, has 
built up an impressive array of antimissile technology. We have had a 
formal missile defense program since President Ronald Reagan launched 
SDI in 1983, and there were various antimissile technologies in 
research before that. An operational system is now within our reach. 
The experts say we could have one in 2 years, 3 years, perhaps 4. But 
because of misinformation, this promising system remains confined to 
the laboratory, and the Government has never taken the policy step that 
is illustrated in this bill.
  As long as we continue to ignore this basic policy question, we won't 
have an antimissile protection for our country, nor an effective 
theater defense for our forces and allies abroad. We have a chance to 
take that first step, and it is time that we did this.
  What do the opponents of a missile defense system fear so much that 
they will not even permit us to go forward to try to get the technology 
in place? The danger of ballistic missiles can no longer be ignored. 
The Clinton administration stubbornly sticks to the old ABM Treaty.
  In a letter to Senator Levin on February 3, the President's National 
Security Adviser, Sandy Berger wrote:

       . . . a decision regarding national missile defense 
     deployment must also be addressed within the context of the 
     ABM treaty and our objectives for achieving future reductions 
     in strategic offensive arms through START II and START III. 
     The ABM treaty remains a cornerstone of strategic stability. 
     . . .

  The letter promises a Presidential veto of this measure if it is 
passed in its present form. Our choice is clear. We deploy a missile 
defense system as soon as technologically feasible, or we hide behind a 
25-year-old treaty with a country that no longer exists. In fact, many 
legal and treaty scholars believe that as a matter of international 
law, the treaty terminated when the U.S.S.R. collapsed. How anyone can 
believe that the ABM Treaty is the cornerstone of strategic stability, 
when so many nations outside the treaty are flagrantly ignoring its 
principles, I do not understand, when nearly three dozen countries are 
building or transferring ballistic missile technology. How does the ABM 
Treaty protect us from high-tech missiles in North Korea, in Iran, in 
Iraq and in China?
  In fact, Mr. President, the White House cannot even say who the 
treaty partner is right now. To solve that problem, the administration 
negotiated a new ABM Treaty, signed in 1997 in New York, that would 
make

[[Page S2646]]

Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan parties to the new treaty. It 
would also impose new limits on the most promising theater missile 
defenses, limits that were never envisioned in the ABM Treaty of 1972. 
The New York treaty would handcuff us, crippling our defenses.
  Where is that treaty now? The Senate has gone on record on several 
occasions insisting that the new treaty be submitted for our 
constitutionally required advice and consent, but the President has 
consistently refused to submit the treaty that would put new countries 
into it to the Senate for ratification.

  Have we learned nothing from the Rumsfeld Commission report, from the 
test of a three-stage ICBM by North Korea that went right over Japan 
where we have thousands of troops on the ground, from the launch of 
Iran's Shahab-3, from China's own threats? Eight years after the fall 
of the U.S.S.R., we are still fighting the last war. We are basing our 
safety in the cold war strategy of arms control with Russia, coupled 
with deliberate vulnerability to missile attack.
  Polls show that most Americans believe we have antiballistic missile 
protection. Can you imagine our country being vulnerable and not even 
taking the first step, the first step to a policy that says we are not 
going to leave ourselves open when countries are threatening that they 
have ballistic missiles that will reach our shores, based on an 
obsolete treaty that is not even in the best interest of Russia, which 
is the country that this administration says is the other party to the 
treaty? I think we would sit down with Russia, and it would be in both 
our best interests to have a defense for both of our countries from 
rogue nations that have already shown that they have ballistic missile 
capabilities, and some even have nuclear capabilities to put right on 
one of those ballistic missiles.
  Mr. President, there is no responsibility any greater for the U.S. 
Senate than the security of our country. That we would not pass the 
Cochran-Inouye resolution immediately and go forward with a technology 
that would protect our country is unthinkable; it is unthinkable. Yet, 
we have seen a filibuster of this very resolution twice in the last 
year in the U.S. Senate. I urge my colleagues not to let one more day 
pass that this country is not in high gear, pursuing the security of 
our Nation and our forces in any theater in the field and our allies 
who depend on us for their protection as well.
  Mr. President, we should not let another day pass or we will be 
walking away from one of the key responsibilities that Congress has, 
and that is to stand up to the President of the United States, to admit 
that the ABM Treaty is obsolete and no longer in the best interest of 
the former U.S.S.R., nor the United States of America, and to say we 
are going to protect the people of America and the troops that are 
fighting for our freedom wherever they may be in the world, that we 
would protect them from an incoming ballistic missile with nuclear, 
chemical or biological capabilities. That is the statement that we will 
be making if we pass the Cochran-Inouye bill. I urge my colleagues to 
do it, hopefully very soon, to start the first step.
  This does not appropriate the money. It doesn't designate the 
authorization. It only says it is the policy of this country to go 
forward to make the technology something that will work and to put our 
very best minds on this issue. Then we will authorize it. Then we will 
appropriate for it. We cannot shirk this responsibility, Mr. President.
  Once again, I thank Senator Cochran and I thank Senator Inouye for 
being determined that on their watch we will do the right thing for the 
people of the United States of America and all of our allies, wherever 
they may need us in the future.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, first let me thank the distinguished 
Senator from Texas for her remarks on the bill and other Senators who 
have spoken today on both sides of the aisle on this subject. I think 
we have a better understanding now of this issue.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. COCHRAN. Seeing no other Senators seeking recognition on the 
floor at this time, in behalf of the majority leader, I ask unanimous 
consent that the Senate resume the pending missile defense bill at 
11:30 a.m. on Tuesday and at that time there be 1 hour for debate on 
the pending Cochran amendment, with a vote to occur on or in relation 
to that amendment No. 69 at 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday and that no other 
amendments be in order prior to that vote.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, there is no objection on this side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, in light of this agreement, the leader 
has asked that we announce that the next rollcall vote will occur in 
the Senate at 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16.

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