[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 41 (Tuesday, March 16, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2707-S2727]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE ACT OF 1999

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.


                        Vote on Amendment No. 69

  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the 
pending amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment. 
The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. 
Feinstein) is absent because of illness.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 99, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 49 Leg.]

                                YEAS--99

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Allard
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Bryan
     Bunning
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cleland
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     Crapo
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Reed
     Reid
     Robb
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

      
     Feinstein
       
  The amendment (No. 69) was agreed to.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. LEVIN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. THURMOND addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I rise to add my support to S. 257, The 
National Missile Defense Act of 1999.
  Any questions on whether or not the United States faces a missile 
threat were answered by the Director of the Central Intelligence 
Agency, George Tenet, and the Director of the Defense Intelligence 
Agency, General Hughes, in testimony before the Armed Services 
Committee. In his opening statement Director Tenet described the threat 
of a new North Korean missile in the following terms:

       With a third stage like the one demonstrated last August on 
     the Taepo Dong-1, this missile would be able to deliver large 
     payloads to the rest of the U.S.

  General Hughes stated:

       The number of Chinese strategic missiles capable of hitting 
     the United States will increase significantly during the next 
     two decades.

  This testimony coupled with the findings of the Rumsfeld Commission 
make an overwhelming case for a National Missile Defense System. We 
must not be dissuaded by the impact of the National Missile Defense 
System on the ABM Treaty. The evidence of the missile threat to the 
United States is too overwhelming.
  The bill before us is only a first step toward the deployment of a 
National Missile Defense System. It provides deployment flexibility to 
the Department of Defense. It states that it is the policy of the 
United States to deploy as soon as technologically possible an 
effective National Missile Defense system. It does not mandate a 
specific time nor a specific type of a system.
  Mr. President, I want to express my appreciation to Senator Cochran 
for introducing this legislation and for his passionate and articulate 
expression of support for a National Missile Defense System. Our 
citizens owe him a debt of gratitude for his persistence in pursuit of 
a missile defense program to protect them and the Nation.
  Mr. President, there has been enough discussion on this issue, it is 
time for the Nation and this Congress to act. I urge the Senate to 
express its support for the security of our Nation by overwhelmingly 
approving S. 257, The National Missile Defense Act of 1999.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas is recognized.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I rise to express my strong support, 
along with the distinguished Senator from South Carolina, for the 
National Missile Defense Act. It is, in my opinion, long overdue and 
will correct a serious deficiency in our defense policy, one that 
leaves us utterly defenseless against a threat that is real today and 
promises to get worse tomorrow.
  Last week, Thursday, in the Wall Street Journal, this headline 
greeted us:

       China Buys . . .
       Stolen information about the U.S.'s most advanced miniature 
     W-88 nuclear warhead from Los Alamos helped the Chinese close 
     a generation gap in the development of its nuclear force.

  This, of course, is a very abbreviated account of what the New York 
Times expanded on in great detail and great length. I think it 
describes for us not only a serious breach in our national security but 
a quantum leap in the ability of the Chinese Government to not only 
threaten the security of their neighbors in Asia but ultimately and 
eventually to threaten the security of American cities; thus, the 
importance of a National Missile Defense Act.
  Mr. President, the Clinton administration is in its sunset, but the 
effects of its failed, flawed China policy are clearly on the horizon. 
We are faced today with a very disturbing situation. At the same time 
that the administration is fostering what it calls ``constructive 
engagement'' with the People's Republic of China, the Government of 
China is increasingly posing a threat to the United States and its 
interests. This policy is nothing if not contradictory and 
inconsistent. It is no less than a threat to American security.
  China has made significant advances in its nuclear weapons program in 
recent years. By achieving the miniaturization of its bombs, the 
Chinese military can now attach multiple nuclear warheads to a single 
missile and hit several targets. China's technical advance means it can 
now deploy a modern nuclear force and pose an even greater threat to 
Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, not to mention the United States. The 
sad fact is that this technical advance was made possible by sensitive 
W-88 design information stolen from Los Alamos National Laboratory, a 
facility that we have discovered has very lax security.
  The details that I am going to recount in the next few minutes are 
those that have all been published and have been available to the 
public in news accounts in recent days.
  The W-88 is the smallest and most advanced warhead of the U.S. 
arsenal. It is typically attached to the Trident II submarine-launched 
ballistic missile. With smaller warheads, the Chinese military will be 
able to deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple 
warheads.
  In the last 2 days, I have attended two briefings with the Secretary 
of Energy. To me, the accounts that we heard were chilling and 
alarming. The secret information on the W-88 was

[[Page S2708]]

probably stolen in the mid-1980s. This active espionage went undetected 
until April of 1995, when nuclear weapons experts at Los Alamos 
studying Chinese underground tests detected similarities to the W-88. 
The CIA found corroborating information 2 months later. The FBI and the 
Department of Energy's intelligence group, under Notra Trulock, 
investigated the matter and were able to narrow its list of suspects to 
five, including Wen Ho Lee, an employee of the Los Alamos National 
Laboratory with access to sensitive and classified information. Lee has 
since been dismissed but not arrested. The other four suspects remain 
employed.

  DOE briefed CIA officials and then Deputy National Security Adviser 
Sandy Berger on the espionage in early 1996. The FBI subsequently 
opened a limited investigation in mid-1996 and recommended improved 
security at DOE labs in April of 1997. But DOE, under Federico Pena, 
shelved Trulock's counterintelligence program and ignored FBI 
recommendations, and although some of these accounts in the press have 
been contested and all of the facts are not yet out, according to press 
accounts, they ignored FBI recommendations to reinstate background 
checks. Instead, Chinese officials continued to visit DOE facilities 
without proper clearances. Meanwhile, Trulock, aware of other possible 
spy operations at DOE facilities, sought to inform Secretary Pena. It 
was 4 months before he could get an appointment.
  Finally, in July of 1997, DOE briefed National Security Adviser Sandy 
Berger on the situation and the possibility of current espionage 
efforts, and Berger kept President Clinton informed.
  What was the administration's response? It was back in the 1980s when 
we believe most of the theft on the W-88 took place. When it became 
evident in the mid-1990s, what was the administration's response? 
Unfortunately, the administration swept the matter under the red carpet 
they were preparing to roll out for President Jiang Zemin of China.
  The National Counterintelligence Policy Board made recommendations 
for strengthening lab security in September of 1997. It was 5 months 
before President Clinton signed a Presidential decision directive in 
February 1998. The recommendations occurred in September as to the 
changes that should be made as to the strengthening of security 
requirements at our Laboratories. It was 5 months later when President 
Clinton finally signed a PDD February of 1998 mandating a more vigorous 
counterintelligence effort at DOE. It took 9 more months to implement 
those changes that were first recommended back in September of 1997, 
PDD in February of 1998, and then 9 more months before implementation 
occurs.
  In addition, it is alleged that Acting Energy Secretary Elizabeth 
Moler ordered Trulock to withhold information from Congress.
  That is an allegation, and it is an allegation that is a serious 
allegation. And it is one that needs to be investigated by this 
Congress.
  She reportedly ordered him not to brief the House Intelligence 
Committee on the espionage matter, and not to deliver written testimony 
to the House National Security Committee. It was only when Trulock 
testified before Congressman Cox' committee investigating this whole 
matter that Trulock was then able to fully inform Congress. If what 
Trulock claims is true--that he was hindered, that obstacles were 
placed before him and he was ordered not to testify, not to provide 
that vital information to Congress--then I think we have not just a 
security breach that resulted in stolen secrets, but it involves, in 
effect, a refusal to give vital information to Congress so that the 
administration's China policy could move forward without criticism--
significant criticism--from Congress.

  Only in the last several weeks was a lie detector test administered 
to Wen Ho Lee, the main suspect in this espionage. He has now been 
dismissed. Only now will periodic polygraph examinations be required of 
certain employees.
  The administration's response to this situation seems puzzling at 
best. But then--if you put it in context of what is going on with our 
relations with China--it at least raises troubling questions. The 
administration was fostering its policy of constructive engagement, 
engaging China by in part selling nuclear technology, supercomputers, 
and satellites to China.
  To bring up this vital issue of national security spying, espionage 
stealing of secrets--to have brought that up would have disturbed the 
flow of high-tech trade to China. And so it simply never was brought 
up.
  At the same time that the Clinton administration knew about Chinese 
efforts to steal nuclear weapons technology, it certified that China 
was no longer assisting other countries in their nuclear weapons 
program.
  It is amazing that when the administration knew that espionage was 
occurring at our Laboratories, that secrets were being stolen, it went 
ahead and certified that China was no longer assisting other countries 
in their nuclear weapons program.
  That certification lifted a 12-year ban on the sale of American 
nuclear technology to China.
  Why would we want to assist China in nuclear technology at the very 
time we are discovering their intensive efforts to infiltrate our 
Laboratories?
  At the same time that the Clinton administration knew about Chinese 
efforts to steal militarily sensitive technology, it loosened export 
control laws on supercomputers and satellites.
  Once again, it becomes not just a spy case. It becomes a situation in 
which the administration was pursuing a policy that to have disclosed 
what was happening in the security realm would have interfered with the 
pursuit of that policy goal by the administration. So it loosened 
export control laws on supercomputers and satellites at the very time 
the investigation was going on at Los Alamos.
  At the same time that the Clinton administration knew about Chinese 
efforts to steal nuclear weapons technology, President Clinton was 
seeking reelection, receiving donations from Chinese sources, and 
allowing White House access to military intelligence officials.
  At the same time that the Clinton administration knew about Chinese 
efforts to steal nuclear weapons technology, administration officials 
were preparing for a visit by President Jiang Zemin.
  At the same time that Congress was investigating illegal campaign 
contributions with Chinese sources, the Clinton administration withheld 
vital information regarding security breaches at our National 
Laboratories from Congress and the American people.
  How many briefs there were is yet in dispute. Who was providing the 
information and who was not, if anyone, is yet in dispute.
  But it is troubling that there is evidence of an effort on the part 
of administration officials to preclude those who should have known, 
those who had oversight responsibilities, those who had appropriations 
responsibilities, from knowing the full extent of the security breaches 
at our National Laboratories.

  President Clinton's China policy, I believe, has been a failure. And 
I believe that these most recent revelations fit into the broader 
context of the failure of this administration's policy toward the 
People's Republic of China.
  ``Constructive engagement'' has proven constructive, but it has been 
constructive only for the Chinese military.
  The implications of this policy extend beyond the United States. In 
East Asia, our allies, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will 
face a new and greater threat because of China's nuclear capabilities. 
It is ironic that the Chinese Government warns us not to develop a 
theater missile defense system while it aims more missiles at Taiwan 
and develops multiple nuclear warheads. The Chinese nuclear 
advancements will certainly inflame anxieties in India, which may lead 
to further proliferation in both India and Pakistan.
  So President Clinton has left us with a ``strategic partner,'' as he 
terms it, pointing 13 of its 19 long-range missiles at us--a strategic 
partner building new long-range missiles, the DF-31 and DF-41; a 
strategic partner well on its way to developing multiple warhead 
missiles. These are the bitter fruits of a policy borne out of warped 
motives.

[[Page S2709]]

  There were some in the administration who would like to dismiss this 
espionage case as a failure of the Reagan administration. I agree. 
There should have been greater security measures taken at that time. 
But this administration cannot blame its failure to uphold American 
security interests on past administrations. National security is a 
bipartisan issue. But it cannot blame its failure to adequately notify 
Congress on past administrations. This administration is responsible 
for a comprehensive policy failure in regard to China. The American 
people will be suffering the consequences long after the President has 
left office.
  Mr. President, it is a fact that, while there are many facts yet in 
dispute, and while there are many questions that have gone unanswered, 
and it is my sincere desire that the appropriate committees of the U.S. 
Senate will begin immediate hearings and fulfillment of oversight 
responsibilities--while there are facts in dispute, and while there are 
questions to be answered, there are some facts that are indisputable.
  It is an indisputable fact that the Chinese Government stole nuclear 
secrets allowing it to build smaller and more efficient warheads.
  We can argue and we can debate as to whether it was a 2-year loss of 
technology or a decade, whether it was a generation, or whether it was 
less than that, but it is not disputable that China stole nuclear 
secrets allowing it to build a smaller and more efficient nuclear 
capability.
  It is indisputable that the Chinese Government continues to 
aggressively seek to obtain technology from U.S. companies allowing it 
to better target their ICBMs. That is indisputable. Whether legitimate 
means, whether legal means, or whether serreptitious means, it is 
indisputable that China today continues on an aggressive pattern of 
seeking to obtain technology from the U.S. companies.
  It is an indisputable fact that the Chinese Government is engaging in 
an expensive modernization of their weapons system.
  While there may be much debate, that is a fact. That is beyond 
dispute. China today is expending vast amounts of its budget in order 
to modernize their weapons systems.
  Mr. President, while there is much in dispute, it is a fact beyond 
dispute that the Chinese Government continues to be a major nuclear 
proliferator in the world, giving North Korea the missile capability 
even to hit American cities.
  It is a fact beyond dispute that the Chinese Government continues to 
menace our allies in Asia with military threats. And it is a fact that 
the Chinese Government has again brutally clamped down on democracy 
advocates within China and seeks to extinguish free expression, whether 
religious or political.
  In the face of all these facts, the administration is still 
determined to give an irresponsible actor in the world arena a major 
role by offering to China World Trade Organization accession. It is my 
sincere desire, it is my sincere hope, that the administration will not 
seek to bring China into the WTO, will not bend the rules, will not 
allow China to enter as a developing nation as they desire, and that we 
will, in dealing with the largest, most populous nation on the globe, 
take our rightful place and we will regain our voice where, when it 
comes to the World Trade Organization, we will require that Congress 
approve China's membership in the WTO before they are allowed to enter.
  These facts, all incontrovertible and indisputable, reveal what I 
think is already obvious. The administration must reexamine its China 
policy and restore American security as its main priority. It must take 
responsibility for defending the American people, and it must commit to 
a national missile defense system. I applaud the efforts of the 
distinguished Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran, for his leadership 
and his perseverance and his determination to bring this bill forward 
and to ensure its enactment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the Senator 
from Arkansas. I think there are far more questions than answers on the 
issues he raised. I think the issues of national security dealing with 
China are serious. The alleged spying, as I understand it, occurred in 
the mid-1980s; the transfer of missile technology and agreements for 
that transfer occurred at the beginning of the 1980s. The Senator 
raises very important security questions and we need answers to those 
questions. I am sure in the coming days we will learn more about many 
of these issues as we discuss them with the appropriate people who have 
been a part of this matter for, now, a decade or a decade and a half.
  But I came to the floor and have waited here to speak about the 
national missile defense proposal. That is what is on the floor at the 
moment, national missile defense. Mr. President, 24 years ago our 
country built an antiballistic missile system in my home State. It is 
the only ABM, or antiballistic missile, system anywhere in the free 
world. That ABM--or what we would now call national missile defense--
system, that ABM program, cost over $20 billion in today's dollars.
  On October 1, 1975, the antiballistic missile system was declared 
operational. On October 2, 1 day later, Congress voted to mothball it. 
We spent a great deal of money. I encourage those who are interested in 
seeing what that money purchased to get on an airplane and fly over 
that sparsely populated northeastern portion of North Dakota. You will 
see a concrete monument to the ABM system. It was abandoned a day after 
it was declared operational.
  Did that system make us safer? Did taking the taxpayers' dollars and 
building that ABM system improve national security in this country? The 
judgment was it was not worth the money after all. Yet here we are, 
nearly a quarter of a century later, debating a bill that would require 
the deployment of a national missile defense system, another ballistic 
missile defense system, as soon as technologically feasible.
  It was technologically feasible 24 years ago. It was a different 
technology. The technology then was, if you see a Russian missile--or a 
Soviet missile then--coming in to attack this country, you send up some 
antiballistic missile defenses, and they have nuclear warheads, and you 
blow off a nuclear warhead somewhere up there in the heavens and it 
obliterates the incoming missiles. That was the technology then. It was 
technologically possible then.
  Now the new technology is, we are not going to send a nuclear missile 
up to wipe out some incoming nuclear missile--or a missile with a 
nuclear warhead, I should say. What we will do is, we will hit a 
speeding bullet with another speeding bullet. If someone puts a missile 
up with a nuclear warhead, we send a missile up with our charge and we 
hit it--a bullet hitting a bullet. Of course, all the tests now 
demonstrate that is very hard to do. There have been far more test 
failures than successes in this technology. But here we are saying, let 
us deploy a National Missile Defense System as soon as technologically 
feasible.
  It is technologically feasible for my 11-year-old son to drive my 
car. I wouldn't suggest that someone who meets him on the road would 
consider it very safe or appropriate for Brendon to be driving my 
automobile, but it is technologically feasible.
  So what does that mean, technologically feasible? What does it mean 
with respect to missile defense? Will it make us safer? Here is what we 
do know. A national missile defense system cannot protect us from a 
low-flying cruise missile launched by a Third World despot who can much 
more easily access a cruise missile than an intercontinental ballistic 
missile and put it on a barge somewhere off a coast and lob in a 
nuclear-tipped cruise missile. Will we, when we deploy this system, 
defend against that? No, not at all. That is not what this system is 
for. It is to defend against an ICBM. And not just any ICBM--not a 
Russian ICBM, for example, because any kind of robust launch of more 
than a handful of missiles cannot be defended with this new technology, 
the kind of technological catcher's mitt that we send up to catch an 
incoming missile.
  It is only a missile from a rogue nation. If a rogue nation acquires 
an intercontinental ballistic missile--unlikely perhaps, but let's 
assume a rogue nation acquires an intercontinental ballistic missile 
and uses that

[[Page S2710]]

with a nuclear warhead attached to its top to threaten this country. 
What are the likely threats? Among the threats, the least likely would 
be a rogue nation using an intercontinental ballistic missile. More 
likely would be their access to a cruise missile, to purchase a cruise 
missile someplace. Of course this system will not defend against that. 
More likely than that is, perhaps, a rental truck filled with a nuclear 
explosive or perhaps a suitcase nuclear bomb planted in the trunk of an 
old Yugo car parked at a New York dock--a far more likely threat by a 
rogue nation than access to an intercontinental ballistic missile. Will 
this protect us against those threats? No.
  National missile defense shields us against one threat only--the 
accidental launch of a ballistic missile from an existing nuclear power 
or the future possibility of an attack by a rogue nation. But it is not 
just any accidental launch. It would be an accidental launch of just 
one or two or a few missiles, because any launch beyond that, of 
course, would be a launch that would prevail over a limited national 
missile defense system.
  If we deploy a national missile defense system before it is ready--
not just technologically possible, but tested and ready --then what are 
we getting for our money? What does the taxpayer get for the 
requirement to deploy a new weapons program, albeit defensive, before 
it is ready to be deployed? Detecting, tracking, discriminating, and 
hitting a trashcan-sized target traveling 20 times the speed of sound, 
landing in 20 or 30 minutes anywhere in the world after it is 
launched--intercepting that with another bullet that we send up into 
the skies? To put it mildly, that is problematic. Our efforts to date, 
under highly controlled test environments, come nowhere close to 
meeting the requirements a ballistic missile system would need to 
satisfy and justify deployment.
  If we deploy without regard to all of the other issues and all of the 
other considerations, all of the efforts we have made to reduce weapons 
of mass destruction that pose such a danger to the world, will we make 
this a safer world? Or a world that is more dangerous? If we deploy 
this system before we have renegotiated with Russia the Anti-Ballistic 
Missile Treaty, we are sure to jeopardize the enormous gains we have 
already made in arms reduction efforts.
  I would like to show a picture just for a moment. I also ask 
unanimous consent to show a piece of an airplane on the floor of the 
Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is a piece of a backfire bomber. I 
suppose that some years ago, you would have thought the only way a 
Member of the U.S. Senate could hold a piece of a Soviet bomber or a 
Russian bomber in his hands would be if it were shot down somewhere in 
hostile action.
  This is a wing strut from a bomber that used to carry nuclear weapons 
that threatened this country. This bomber, as you can see, no longer 
flies. This wing strut is a result of a cut from the wing of that 
bomber that rendered that bomber useless. How did that happen? How does 
it happen that we are able to cut the wings off Russian bombers, and we 
are able to destroy Russian missile silos?
  Last year I held in my hand on the floor a metal flange from a 
missile silo in the Ukraine that used to sit on the prairies there in 
the Ukraine with a nuclear warhead aimed at the United States of 
America, and that piece of metal now doesn't come from a missile silo. 
I held it in my hand. The missile silo is gone. The missile is gone. 
The warhead is gone. Where a missile once sat aimed at the United 
States, there now is planted a field of sunflowers, sunflowers rather 
than missiles.
  How did it happen that in the Ukraine an intercontinental ballistic 
missile site was dug up, the missile gone, the warhead gone, and there 
are now sunflowers? How does it happen that a Soviet bomber has its 
wings sawed off? I tell you how it happens --Nunn-Lugar. Senators Dick 
Lugar and Sam Nunn offered a program here in the U.S. Senate trailing 
the arms control agreements we have had with the old Soviet Union and 
now Russia. It says the United States will help pay for the destruction 
of your weapons.
  Doesn't it make good sense for us to destroy Russian bombers, not 
with our bullets but with saws? Doesn't it make good sense for us to 
destroy Russian missiles in their silo through the use of American 
taxpayer funds, not with people who have to go in the field and fight 
and risk their lives, but through a treaty of arms control in which we 
help pay the cost of the destruction of nuclear weapons and delivery 
systems controlled by Russia and the old Soviet Union?
  Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia, the Ukraine and 
others have destroyed over 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 
400.
  In the last several weeks, I saw a nuclear weapon. I was in a weapons 
storage facility on a tour, and I won't describe it in great detail, 
probably because I couldn't. A nuclear weapon is not very big. A 
nuclear bomb is not large at all. You can have a nuclear bomb dozens of 
times the power of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. It is no 
bigger than that desk.
  The Soviet Union, Russia and the Ukraine, now named, have destroyed 
over 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles with MIRV warheads, over 
400 of them gone. Our arms control agreement has rendered them gone. 
They are gone. We helped pay for it. We cut the wings off the planes. 
We pulled the missiles out of the ground. We saw those missiles 
destroyed. We have cut the wings off 37 Soviet bombers. Eighty 
submarine missile launch tubes are now gone; 95 nuclear warhead test 
tunnels are now sealed. That is major progress. If the Russians ratify 
START II, which I think they are likely to do, we will see further 
dramatic reductions in the number of bombers and missiles and warheads 
on both sides.
  That will happen not because we are fighting but because we are 
cooperating, not because there are tensions but because there is an 
arms control regime we are following and because we are helping them 
destroy their weapons at the same time we are reducing our weapons. We 
want to deactivate over 5,000 warheads, destroy 200 missile silos, 
40,000 chemical weapons. Look at the success. Eliminate 500 metric tons 
of highly enriched uranium. Would we or should we do anything to 
jeopardize this progress? What might jeopardize it?

  We have a treaty with the Russians, and the treaty is an ABM Treaty. 
The proposal by some is to say ignore the treaty; it doesn't matter. 
These treaties are not very important. These treaties START I, START 
II, ABM, hopefully a START III, these treaties allow us to make this 
progress and reduce the nuclear threat and reduce the threat of nuclear 
war.
  Thirty-two thousand nuclear weapons remain in the United States and 
Russian arsenals today. Some of those are theater weapons; thousands 
and thousands of nuclear weapons, of course. That is half the number of 
a decade ago, but does that give us great confidence? No. We need to 
reduce them much, much further.
  How can we do that? I know how we won't do that. All of that progress 
in the reduction of nuclear weapons could come to an abrupt halt if we 
deploy a national missile defense system without any regard to the 
concerns raised about whether this legislation would violate the ABM 
Treaty that we have made with the Russians in order to slow the nuclear 
arms race. Instead of working cooperatively with other nuclear powers, 
if we act unilaterally we surely risk a return to a costly and 
dangerous arms race with Russia and China as well.
  A former colleague, Dale Bumpers, said something interesting about 
this. He said:

       We can ignore Russia's concerns now, but in the years to 
     come, she will slowly recover and resume a great power role 
     in the world. By rash actions such as abrogation of the ABM 
     Treaty, we are far more likely to rekindle the cold war with 
     a hostile nation than to produce a constructive relationship 
     with a cooperative Russia.

  Senator Bumpers, then, was wisely cautioning us that the calculations 
that go into our strategic defense decisions today will have enormous 
consequences and costly consequences for the world that we pass on to 
our children. Each day we move closer to eliminating the nuclear threat 
left over from the cold war, thanks to arms reductions mandated in 
START I and START II and thanks to the Nunn-Lugar threat reduction that 
has been so successful.

[[Page S2711]]

  As I indicated, that investment has been a critically important 
investment in reducing the nuclear threat. I show my colleagues a chart 
that talks about the imbalance between money that some propose we spend 
on a national missile defense program versus money we spend on arms 
reduction. This chart shows what we are prepared to spend on a national 
missile defense system, a limited one, one that won't protect us 
against much of the threat, but compare it even at that to what is 
planned to be spent on arms reduction. I hope this is not a picture of 
our priorities. I wish it were reversed.
  This legislation that we are considering says just do it, in the 
popular jargon of today. Deploy the system as soon as the military can 
get it up there. Cost doesn't matter. Arms control doesn't matter. 
Nothing much matters. Deploy it as soon as is possible. We are nervous.
  Mr. President, let me say that I support the strongest possible 
defense against any threat to our country, but if you rationally think 
through the range of threats to our country, you must start with the 
understanding that the largest possible threat to our country comes 
from thousands of nuclear warheads that now exist, thousands of nuclear 
warheads already in stockpiles with delivery vehicles, bombers and 
ICBMs and others. We must continue the work of reducing them, and we 
have done that very successfully. Anything we do here to jeopardize 
that would be a profound mistake.
  In addition to that, what are the other threats? A rogue nation 
getting an ICBM? Yes, that is a small threat way over here on the edge. 
How about a rogue nation getting a rental truck, as I said, with a 
nuclear device planted in the back somewhere? Probably more likely. Or 
a deadly vile of the most deadly biological agent? More likely. A 
suitcase nuclear bomb? More likely.
  Should we worry about all of these? Should we prepare for all of 
these? Of course. We would be foolhardy as a nation to underestimate 
the threat of terrorism and underestimate the intentions of rogue 
nations. We would be fools to do that. But it would be shortsighted for 
us to decide, because we are concerned about all of that, we are 
willing to push all of our chips to the middle of the table and say we 
will risk the very substantial achievements we have made in arms 
control reductions.
  The elimination of Russian bombers by cutting off their wings, the 
destruction of Russian missiles, the dismantling of Russian warheads, 
making Ukraine nuclear free--did anyone think they would hear that? We 
risk all of that if we move in a manner in the Senate that says, ``You 
don't matter; all that matters is our short-term nervousness about one 
small slice of one of the threats that exist.'' That is not a balanced 
approach.
  Mr. President, I conclude by saying I think one of the more talented 
Senators in this country is the Senator from Mississippi, Senator 
Cochran. I enjoy working with him. I think he is bright and productive, 
and he is one of the people that makes me proud to be a Senator. The 
same is true of my colleague from Michigan, Senator Levin. The fact is, 
they have pretty big disagreements about some of these issues, but this 
is a very big issue.

  This idea about how this country responds to nuclear threats and what 
kind of nuclear threat should persuade us to respond in certain ways 
will have profound implications for all of us and for our children and 
our grandchildren.
  I have a young son age 11 and a daughter age 9 who are in school 
today, at least I hope they are in school today. They are the most 
wonderful children any father would ever hope to have. I hope when my 
service is done in the U.S. Senate, whatever I might contribute to 
public policy, that they might say I helped in a way to reduce the 
nuclear threat, I helped in a significant way to have this world move 
away from the kind of nuclear threat that has existed now for many, 
many decades.
  It is hard for people to believe because it does not get much press 
and it is not very sexy, but every day we are spending American 
taxpayer dollars to destroy missiles that used to be aimed at American 
cities. What a remarkable thing to have happen. What a remarkable 
success.
  I think it was Mark Twain who said once that bad news travels halfway 
around the world before good news gets its shoes on. That certainly has 
to be true with respect to this nuclear issue, the nuclear threat. How 
much attention does this get, the day-to-day success we have in 
reducing nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles? Let us not jeopardize 
that. Let us move forward together in a thoughtful way, understanding, 
yes, we should prepare for some kind of missile defense. Let's do it 
thoughtfully, let's do it when it is technologically possible, but 
let's make sure we do it when it is cost effective, technologically 
possible, will not interrupt and will not pose danger to our arms 
control agreements. Let us condition it on all of those issues together 
and, as a country, then do the right thing.
  Again, I thank the Senator from Michigan, Senator Levin, for allowing 
me to have some time in this debate. I hope in the coming hours we will 
be able to address this just a bit further.
  Let me conclude--I know the Senator from Tennessee is waiting--let me 
conclude with one final statement. The majority leader said this 
morning that we should be clear in our intentions toward the ABM 
Treaty. I do not know what that means. I encourage him to tell me what 
that means. I agree with it, we should be clear, and I hope we are 
clear with respect to our intentions about the ABM Treaty to say that 
treaty matters, that treaty means something, and to the extent we seek 
changes in that treaty, we will, with the Russians, negotiate those 
changes, but we will not take an attitude that this treaty does not 
matter to this country. Let us hope that is what the majority leader 
meant when he said, let's be clear about our intentions toward the ABM 
Treaty. I yield the floor.
  Mr. THOMPSON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. I thank the chair.
  My friend from North Dakota points out that there are, indeed, other 
threats to this Nation besides those that pose a threat that this bill 
is designed to prevent. There are, indeed, other threats. He points out 
that our missile defense system may not stop all of the threats that 
are out there, and he, of course, is correct with regard to that, also.
  I do not believe that is sufficient grounds for opposing a missile 
defense system for this country. We have become aware, much more than 
we would like, recently of the new threats, the new world that we live 
in, the new threats that are posed not only from old sources but from 
many, many new sources, some of which we may not be fully aware of and 
what their capabilities might be, which apparently have missed the 
estimates of our own intelligence community, in many instances.

  I agree with my friend concerning the Nunn-Lugar program. I have also 
visited Russia and have seen that program in operation and the many 
good things that it is doing and its related programs. We have a 
nuclear cities program over there where we are trying to turn some of 
their nuclear cities and help them turn their enterprises in other 
directions.
  We have assisted with regard to their scientists hopefully so that 
they will not leave the country and go to places and spread technology 
in places that would be detrimental to us.
  We have, indeed, destroyed some of the nuclear stockpile, but I think 
it is important to note that we are essentially still dipping in the 
ocean as far as that is concerned. We are just getting started in that 
regard. They have many, many more tons of nuclear materials and many, 
many missiles that we have not touched yet, even if we are aware of 
their existence.
  We should not in any case believe that we have begun to seriously eat 
into the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities. We are trying to do that. 
Those programs must be maintained. It is going to take a period of time 
before we can make any progress in that regard.
  We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Russia in order to 
maintain these programs. Our taxpayers have made a decision that it is 
worthwhile that we go over there and try to make friends with the 
Russians and try to help them make this transition. We have put our 
cash on the barrel head to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. 
That money is sorely needed in Russia right now, and hopefully it will 
be put to good use.

[[Page S2712]]

  At the same time that we are doing this, our intelligence community 
and our Government still have serious concerns about proliferation 
activities of the Russians. When you consider the threats around the 
world and the so-called rogue nations and the outlaw nations and the 
dangers they present, oftentimes if you trace back to where they are 
getting their capabilities, you will go back to Russia, you will go 
back to China. It is a serious, serious problem.
  If what we are saying today is that if the United States protects 
itself with a missile defense program, not only is Russia going to 
continue to proliferate but it is going to refuse the hundreds of 
millions of dollars that we propose to put in there, then so be it. I 
think we still have to go forward in the best interests of our country.
  Make no mistake; we do not want to abrogate understandings lightly. 
Everyone knows the circumstances have totally changed. Our deal with 
the U.S.S.R. no longer exists. We have shown our friendship. The Soviet 
Union for years and years said, ``We have to counter the United States 
of America, because they have all these hostile intentions and they 
have these aggressive tendencies.''
  We have shown that not to be the case. We have reached out a hand of 
friendship, but we cannot, in turn, be threatened with closing us out, 
especially when they are still too often spreading nuclear technology 
and capability and missile capability around the world at a time when 
we are considering whether or not we want to have a missile defense 
system to protect ourselves against whomever might be hostile to us in 
the future.
  Clearly, that is not Russia today. But it is a dangerous world out 
there in many, many more respects than when the old Soviet Union posed 
its threat.
  Many of my colleagues have already recited the growing missile and 
weapons of mass destruction threats which America faces from many 
hostile and potentially hostile countries, and I will not take the time 
to recite them again. Most of these threats in fact were well known 
when we voted on missile defense last September. What is new since the 
last time we debated missile defense is the news that China has 
obtained the design for our most modern nuclear weapon, the W-88 
warhead. This technology permits the development of massively 
destructive nuclear warheads at a fraction of the size previously 
possible.
  Acquiring this technology will allow the Chinese to fit multiple 
warheads into a single missile for the first time and to deploy more 
nuclear weapons on submarines. Of course, this revelation must be 
coupled with the knowledge that because of lax export controls, the 
Chinese have also been able to obtain American technology to improve 
the guidance of their missiles and to develop the capability to deliver 
multiple warheads from one missile.
  As we saw in the hearings of the Governmental Affairs Committee in 
our International Security Subcommittee, chaired by Senator Cochran, 
last year, cooperation with American satellite manufacturers has 
actually helped Beijing learn how to build better missiles and deploy 
multiple payloads from a single rocket. This enhances China's 
capability to develop this latter technology for use on ballistic 
missiles. As a result, they will be able to launch multiple warheads 
from a single missile, a capability called MIRV'ing.
  So now the Chinese have more reliable missiles, each of which may 
soon become capable of delivering multiple warheads with one shot. And 
now they have stolen the final ingredient to make this work--our own 
most sophisticated miniature warhead design.
  But that is not all the U.S. technology they have. American 
supercomputers may allow China to maintain the W-88 without nuclear 
testing. The administration has loosened export restrictions on this 
technology. The Chinese are also reported to have stolen U.S. laser 
technology and, in conjunction with advanced computers, may have helped 
them simulate nuclear explosions in the laboratory.
  Now the United States has a huge program underway to develop the 
means to ensure the viability of its weapons without conducting test 
explosions. Were the Chinese to develop similar capabilities, then they 
could maintain this W-88 and other modern warheads without testing. 
This would enable Beijing to conduct nuclear weapons work without 
telltale underground explosions and help the Chinese missile force 
threaten the United States for decades to come.
  So what does this actually mean in terms of U.S. national security? 
Until now, China's nuclear arsenal has been quite small, built around a 
comparatively tiny force of land-based and mostly liquid-fueled 
intercontinental ballistic missiles. However, thanks to the 
acquisition, both legal and illegal, of new technologies, Beijing now 
stands on the verge of both a qualitative and a quantitative 
breakthrough.
  There are at least four new missile programs currently underway 
designed to provide the People's Liberation Army with dramatically 
improved capabilities by the first years of the next century. Moreover, 
the Chinese now have a class of submarine capable of launching 
ballistic missiles. These developments are highly relevant to our 
debates over U.S. missile defense.

  Moreover, Mr. President, these developments threaten not only the 
United States but pose a more imminent threat to our allies in Asia. 
They are at least as worried as we are about missile and weapons of 
mass destruction advances by China and North Korea. After all, 
countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are much more likely 
targets for these weapons than we are--at least for now.
  If ongoing Chinese missile deployments and nuclear proliferation are 
not addressed, and if we do not provide access to effective missile 
defenses to U.S. allies in Asia, then such vulnerable countries may 
have little choice but to try to develop their own means of nuclear 
defense or deterrence. This would intensify rather than diminish the 
proliferation problem in Asia and is yet another reason it is 
imperative that we develop the interrelated technologies and control 
systems for theater-level and national-level missile defenses.
  We should not forget that China has a well established propensity to 
export its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology. It has 
been reported in the press, for example, that China provided a fully 
tested nuclear weapons design and highly enriched uranium to Pakistan. 
China has also provided ballistic missile technology to Pakistan and 
other countries. In 1988, China provided a turnkey medium-range missile 
system to Saudi Arabia. That is an entire weapons system ready to use 
right out of the box. China has also a record of providing nuclear, 
chemical, and biological missile technology to Iran.
  Furthermore, the Rumsfeld Commission reported that a number of 
countries hostile to the United States, including Iran, Libya, Iraq, 
and North Korea, are capable of manufacturing weapons of mass 
destruction and ballistic missiles and that previous United States 
intelligence assessments had greatly underestimated the danger that 
such developments pose to the United States. Should China decide to 
export the W-88 or a complete weapon to such nations, as has been done 
with so many other dangerous technologies, the consequences for 
regional and global stability would be grave indeed.
  All this, Mr. President, makes it more important than ever that the 
National Missile Defense Act of 1999 be passed. Faced with new and 
growing nuclear and ballistic missile threats, in part through our own 
carelessness, America needs the protection that such a missile defense 
system would offer. And Americans need the confidence of knowing that a 
system will be deployed rather than waiting on some future 
administrative decision on whether to deploy.
  It is time for Congress to act. The technology to develop and deliver 
nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction is widely available and 
is spreading rapidly. If we do not prepare today, when the day arrives 
that America is paralyzed by our own vulnerability to ballistic missile 
attack or when an attack actually occurs, we will be reduced to telling 
the American people and history merely that we had hoped this would not 
happen.
  I urge my colleagues to support S. 257, the National Missile Defense 
Act of 1999. I yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

[[Page S2713]]

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, proponents of S. 257, the bill we are 
debating now, suggest that this bill is vital to our country's defense. 
The very distinguished Senator from Tennessee just got up and made his 
case, and as an illustration he pointed to the technology that the 
Chinese Government, apparently through espionage, has acquired.
  I want to make it clear for the record, I am not confirming anything 
at this point. But assume that what was said is accurate--and I am not 
disputing it either. One of the two things the Senator pointed out, as 
things we should be worried about, is that they may have acquired the 
capability of MIRVing missiles. For the public, that means they can put 
more than one nuclear bomb on the nose of a missile, an 
intercontinental ballistic missile. And they may have gained the 
capacity to independently target those warheads.
  Put another way, we know what the Russians can do. The Russians have 
SS-18s and other intercontinental missiles, each with any of 3, 7, 10--
depending on the missile--nuclear bombs with a combined capacity that 
exceeds Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They could launch a missile, and within 
30 minutes they could have one of those warheads, one of those nuclear 
weapons, landing in Wilmington, DE, a small town, in relative terms, in 
my State, taking out all of the Delaware Valley and its 10 million 
people, and the same missile could send one warhead to Washington, DC, 
one to Roanoke, VA, et cetera--all with one missile. That is a very, 
very, very awesome capacity. We are worried that the Chinese may have 
acquired some of that technology.

  It is also suggested that the Chinese may have acquired the capacity 
to target with more accuracy. An accurate missile can breach the 
overpressure limit of certain missile silos--the pounds per square inch 
they could sustain from a blast and still be able to launch--so it 
became important during the time of the arms buildup between the Soviet 
Union and the United States what the hard kill capacity was. That is, 
could you fire a missile that would not only kill all the people in all 
the Delaware Valley, but, assuming there were silos that had Minuteman 
rockets in those silos with nuclear weapons, could also knock out that 
missile itself? That is what they called the hard kill. Accuracy became 
a big deal because you could take out the other guy's missiles, and not 
just his cities.
  We had the capacity to drop these missiles 12,000 or 13,000 miles 
away within 30 minutes on pinpointed areas the size of a soccer field 
in the Soviet Union then, in Russia now. We are worried the Chinese may 
have acquired that capacity. I think my friend from Tennessee is 
absolutely correct to be worried about that; so am I.
  What are we doing here today? We are debating what I believe to be a 
political document, not a substantive piece of legislation that adds 
anything to the concept of what our strategic doctrine should be. We 
are saying that Taepo Dong missiles in the next 1 to 5 years--the 
Koreans may be able to get up to five of them--may be able to hit the 
United States, assuming the regime in North Korea lasts that long or 
outlives the research that would be required to get this done. We are 
talking about building a thin nuclear defense system to counter that 
immediate threat and future threats from Iran, Iraq, and other rogue 
states, and we are talking about it in almost total disregard of what 
impact it will have upon the ABM Treaty.
  People say, ``What is the ABM Treaty?'' The ABM Treaty, as Senator 
Dorgan discussed, is the basis upon which we have gone from somewhere 
on the order of 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear warheads--and the capacity 
that my friend from Tennessee is worried about the Chinese acquiring--
down to 12,000 total, roughly, or 13,000 maybe, roughly evenly divided 
between the United States and Russia.
  Guess what? George Bush came along and said the single most 
destabilizing thing of all--in what I call ``nuclear theology''--are 
these ``MIRVed'' missiles, those missiles with up to 10 nuclear bombs 
on their tip, able to be targeted independently, once they separate, 
able to go in ten different directions with significant accuracy.
  Why are they destabilizing? They are destabilizing because of the 
nuclear scenarios about who strikes first and whether you can strike 
back. Anybody who faces an enemy that has this capacity has to target 
those missiles, because they are the single most dangerous thing out 
there. That means that in a crisis, if a missile were accidentally 
launched, or we thought one was launched, what we would have to do is 
go and strike those missiles first.
  What would the Russians now have to do? They would have to launch on 
warning. Knowing that their MIRVed missiles were logical targets, they 
would adopt the use-it-or-lose-it philosophy. It is the only rational 
decision a nuclear planner could make.
  So George Bush figured out these are incredibly destabilizing 
weapons. They are vulnerable to a first attack by sophisticated 
missiles and they are awesome--awesome, as the kids say--in their 
destructive capacity. So what do you do? As long as they are around, it 
means they must be on a hair trigger. No country who possesses them can 
wait for them to be struck before they fire them. Everybody can 
understand that. The gallery is nodding; they all get it. They figured 
it out. When it is explained in simple terms, everybody understands it. 
That is called crisis instability.
  What did we do? George Bush came along and said these are bad things 
to have hanging around, so we negotiated this treaty called the START 
II treaty where, in an incredible bit of negotiation on the part of the 
Republican administration, they convinced the Russians they should do 
away with these MIRVed missiles--do away with them. That means we would 
achieve crisis stability; it adds up to stability.

  What is left on both sides are single-warhead missiles that don't 
have to be launched on warning, because they are less tempting targets 
in a first strike; therefore, you pull back from the hair trigger. So 
if, God forbid, there is a mistake, it doesn't mean Armageddon is 
guaranteed. That is a sound policy.
  There is only one little trick. Russia has a quasidemocracy--my term, 
``quasi'' democracy. They have learned the perils and joys of living 
with a parliament, a congress, a legislative body, called the Duma. The 
Duma has not ratified this agreement yet.
  Why hasn't the Duma ratified the agreement? The Duma has not ratified 
the agreement for a lot of reasons. Some Nationalists think it is a bad 
idea; some old apparatchik Communists think it is a terrible idea; some 
of the democrats there don't quite know what to do as the next step. 
Here is what happens: Unfortunately for the Russians, the bulk of their 
nuclear arsenal is in these MIRVed, silo-based weapons, these 
intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads. The bulk of 
ours are on submarines (which are less vulnerable to a first strike), 
in single-warhead missiles called Minuteman missiles, or on B-1 bombers 
and B-52 bombers.
  The Russians, if they go forward with the deal to destroy their silo-
based MIRVed missiles, at the end of the day will have less destructive 
capacity in their arsenal than we will. Now, they don't have to keep it 
as less, because they are allowed to build single-warhead missiles so 
we would each end up with the same number of warheads. But guess what? 
They are bankrupt. They don't have any money. They hardly have the 
money they need to destroy the missiles they have agreed to destroy. 
That is why we have the Nunn-Lugar program, spending millions of 
dollars a year to send American technicians over to Russia to help 
dismantle, destroy, break up, and crush strategic weapons.
  Think about that. If I had stood on the floor 20 years ago and said 
that, my colleagues would have had a little white jacket ready for me. 
They would have hauled me off to the nearest insane asylum, I having 
lost my credibility completely by suggesting that the Russians would 
ever let Americans come over and destroy their nuclear weapons.
  The reason they made that agreement is that they realized it is in 
their long-term interests, and they had no money to do it. If they 
don't have money to do that, they also don't have money to build these 
new weapons that only have one bomb on the end. It costs a lot of money 
to do that. So if they can't do that and they keep the agreement called 
START II, they end up at the end of the day with fewer nuclear bombs 
than we have--something we

[[Page S2714]]

would never do. We would never allow us not to have parity with the 
Russians.
  That is their dilemma right now. That is why the administration is 
arguing about a thing called START III. At Helsinki, President Clinton 
said not only should we do START II, we could jump and do START III and 
take the total number of nuclear warheads each of us has to between 
2,000 and 2,500, from 6,000 to 6,500 which is in the first stage of the 
reduction.
  Obviously, the Russians are very interested in being able to go right 
to START III. They don't want to spend a whole lot of time where we 
have more bombs than they have, and they don't have the money to build 
many new missiles. Although they are allowed to build more missiles, 
they don't have the money to do it.
  What are we debating? We are here debating as if it were a serious 
part of our nuclear strategy whether or not we will deploy some time in 
the future a system that has not yet been developed, that if it is 
developed may be able to take out what might end up being up to five 
weapons that might be able to get to the continental United States, 
from a government that might be in place 5 years from now.
  So, what to worry about, right? No problem, it is not going to stop 
the Russian missiles, so they are not going to get worried about this. 
Let's put this in reverse. Let's assume we were about to ratify a START 
II that was going to put us at having fewer nuclear bombs than the 
Russians, and we heard that the Russian Government was about to erect a 
nuclear shield--they called it a ``thin'' shield--to intercept missiles 
that were going to come from Iran. Now, I am sure not a single Member 
on this floor would say the following:

       You know, what those Russians are really doing is erecting 
     something that is going to stop our missiles from being able 
     to strike. What have they done to us? They have convinced our 
     administration to destroy missiles that we have that can 
     penetrate their territory now; they convinced them to do 
     that. We are going to end up with fewer missiles than them, 
     and they are going ahead at the same time and building this 
     nuclear shield. And you actually have some people in the Duma 
     saying, ``The ABM Treaty doesn't mean anything to me.''

  What do you think would happen with my right-wing friends, my left-
wing friends, my middle friends, all my friends? There would be a mild 
frenzy. I can hear the Republican Party now; they would be talking 
about the selling out of America, and they would have good reason to 
think about that. We would have Democrats joining, and I can hear Pat 
Buchanan now--he could make a whole campaign out of that.
  Well, what do you think is going on in Russia right now with the 
Nationalists and the old Communists? Are they listening to our debate 
about the ABM Treaty, which some people say doesn't apply anymore? That 
is not what the sponsor of the amendment is saying, to the best of my 
knowledge, but others are. And we say to them that they should not 
worry. Why worry? We are only building this tiny, thin shield. Our 
shield isn't designed to affect them.
  Yet, to the best of my knowledge, the sponsor of this bill would not 
even accept an amendment that would say, by the way, if whatever we 
come up with would violate the ABM Treaty, we will negotiate a change 
with the Russians first. It seems like a simple proposition, doesn't 
it?
  Now, where does this leave us? I think I can say, without fear of 
contradiction, that at best, it leaves us with essentially a 
congressional resolution of no meaning, of no consequence, changing 
nothing that the administration has said about seeking the ability to 
have a thin missile defense system, for it doesn't appropriate money; 
it says this is subject--which is obvious--to the yearly appropriations 
bill. It doesn't make any guarantees; it doesn't say anything of 
consequence. In one sense, it is a meaningless resolution.
  But in another sense, because we have debated it so vigorously, it is 
invested with a meaning beyond its substance. What I worry about now is 
that it will be taken as viewing our national strategy on nuclear 
weapons as no longer envisioning as the centerpiece of that strategy 
the ABM Treaty--the very treaty that allows us to keep reducing the 
number of strategic weapons on each side.
  Let me make one more point. You may say, ``Well, Biden, what does the 
ABM Treaty have to do with the START agreement and reducing these 
nuclear weapons?'' Well, there are two kinds of truisms in this nuclear 
theology. One is, if you are incapable of building a missile shield, 
and you think the other side might build one, then there is only one 
thing you can do: build more missiles to overwhelm the defense system. 
That is axiomatic, it is cheaper, it is consistent with old-line 
policy, and it is doable. At a minimum, you would say, don't destroy 
the number of weapons you have.
  Look at it this way. If you think the other team is about to put up 
this missile shield--thin, thick or medium--and you now have 6,500 
weapons that can reach their territory, you know, as a matter of 
course, that if you reduce that number to 2,500 or 2,000, you have a 
two-thirds fewer opportunities to penetrate that shield. So why would 
you do that? Why would you do that?
  I realize my friend from Louisiana is about to offer an amendment 
that I hope will at least be read as having the impact of saying, hey, 
look, arms reduction is still important to us--translated to mean the 
ABM Treaty still makes a difference. But let's understand that, at 
best, this bill is hortatory. At worst, it is a real, real bad idea 
because, to the extent that the threat is real--and there is a 
potential threat from Korea--to the extent that it is real, it pales, 
pales, pales in comparison to the threat that remains in Russia--a 
country that is, at its best, to be characterized now as struggling to 
keep its head above water; at worst, it is losing the battle of 
democratization.

  Mr. President, the threat of a missile attack on the United States is 
real and disturbing, but the true test is not how angry we get, but how 
rationally we deal with the threats to our national interests. A 
rational development and deployment of a limited nuclear missile 
defense does not require us to ignore our ABM Treaty obligations. Only 
fear and politics drive missile defense adherents to take such a risk 
in the bill before us.
  My generation understands both that fear and the dream of a ballistic 
missile defense. Anyone who has ducked under his desk in grade school 
in an air raid drill knows the collective sense of vulnerability and 
futility caused by the thought of a nuclear holocaust.
  We have spent well over $100 billion in our effort to ease that sense 
of helplessness through civil defense or missile defense. But the role 
of this Senate, over two centuries, has been to resist those savage 
fears and passionate dreams that would otherwise take us down a 
dangerous path. America needs a balanced strategy to meet the rogue 
state missile threat, while also preserving the ABM Treaty, continuing 
the START process, and using nonproliferation assistance to combat 
loose nukes in Russia and, at the same time, advancing entry into force 
of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. That is what I believe to be a 
sound and balanced strategy, and that is what I hope Senator Kerry and 
Senator Levin and I will propose in a thing called the ``National 
Security Policy Act of 1999.''
  I respectfully suggest that it is a far cry from the ``bumper 
sticker'' bill that is currently before us. If reason can overcome 
fear, perhaps reason can also overcome politics. If the Republicans 
have the courage and foresight to pursue their goal of a limited 
national missile defense, while preserving arms control and strategic 
stability, I urge them to get to the business of talking about that.
  But right now, what is left uncertain is not whether or not we should 
have a limited nuclear defense--we should and could if it is capable of 
being done--but it can and must be done only in the context of the ABM 
Treaty, START II and START III, as well as the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty. That constitutes a national strategic policy.
  Mr. President, I have departed from my text in order to convey the 
depth of my concern over this bill. Allow me now to restate those 
concerns in a more precise manner.
  When I said that this was nothing more than an exercise in political 
theater, I may have sounded like the Police Commissioner in the film 
``Casablanca.'' I am ``shocked . . . shocked'' to discover politics in 
the U.S. Senate. But we ought to make one thing clear:

[[Page S2715]]

 the issue at stake is not--is not--whether to deploy a national 
missile defense.
  Recent Administration actions make clear that it will deploy a 
missile defense system if that should be in the national interest. The 
real issue here is whether we will be pragmatic or ideological about 
it.
  The pragmatic solution considers the cost of a missile defense; this 
ideological bill ignores it.
  Serious technical challenges remain in developing a national missile 
defense system. But that is not for a lack of trying. In fact, we have 
committed significant resources to the effort. Deputy Secretary of 
Defense John Hamre testified last October that the National Missile 
Defense program ``is as close as we can get in the Department of 
Defense to a Manhattan Project.''
  The Clinton administration has submitted plans to spend approximately 
$30 billion in additional funds between 1999 and 2005 for missile 
defense development and deployment. Of that, roughly $11 billion is 
earmarked for deployment of a ``thin'' National Missile Defense with 20 
interceptors. The Defense Department estimated last summer that an 
expanded 100-interceptor system at a single site would cost upwards of 
$15 billion to deploy.
  That $11-15 billion may very well provide us with a deployed system 
that is effective against rudimentary countermeasures. It is not at all 
clear, however, that it will buy a system that is capable against truly 
advanced countermeasures, such as are claimed for Russia's new SS-27 
missile or even other current Russian or Chinese missiles.
  Now, before my colleagues remind me that our missile defense system 
is not aimed at Russia, I would refer them to the Rumsfeld Report. That 
report warns that technology transfer is the key way that potential 
antagonists might acquire missile capabilities against the United 
States.
  The danger is that we will spend billions of dollars deploying a 
missile defense system that may work against SCUD-like technology, but 
will not work even five or ten years down the road, against the 
potential threat from rogue states who have bought or developed more 
sophisticated missile technology.
  It may be the case that we will have to spend those $11-15 billion 
dollars on missile defense deployment. It seems to me, however, that a 
much smaller sum might suffice to remove much of the threat that 
concerns us here.
  If we could move from START to START Two and START Three, a portion 
of that $11-15 billion could be spent on dismantling Russian nuclear 
weapons and securing its large quantity of fissile material. This would 
make a real, immediate, and lasting contribution to our security.
  Another portion of those funds could be used to curb North Korea's 
efforts to develop intercontinental missiles or weapons of mass 
destruction. It is clear that we need to inject new life into the 1994 
Agreed Framework if we are to curtail North Korea's nuclear program. It 
is also clear that we need to take proactive steps to halt North 
Korea's long-range missile capability.
  To be taken seriously, any U.S. initiative toward North Korea must 
combine carrots and sticks. We must bolster our deterrent posture to 
demonstrate to the North Koreans the penalties they face if they 
threaten United States security. Improving our theater defenses, 
increasing our capability for pre-emptive strikes if we should face 
imminent attack, interdicting North Korean missile shipments abroad, 
and increasing our security cooperation with other regional actors are 
all possible sticks we can wield.
  At the same time, our policy should also provide adequate incentives 
to persuade the North Korean elite that their best choice for survival 
is the path of civil international behavior. These incentives could 
include our joining Japan and South Korea in funding two light-water 
reactors in exchange for our possession of the spent fuel in North 
Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor, sanctions relief in return for a 
verifiable end to North Korea's missile programs, and security 
assurances that we have no intention of forcing a change in North 
Korea's political system.
  While these initiatives would cost money, together they could be 
funded for far less than the $11-15 billion we plan to spend for 
missile defense deployment. Thus, an article in Sunday's Washington 
Post noted that North Korea has already offered to cease exporting its 
missile technology in return for only one billion dollars.
  We rejected that proposal, and I think we can get that deal for a 
lower price. But we should remember our experience in negotiating 
access to that suspect underground site in North Korea. In this time of 
famine, North Korea would settle for food aid instead of cash. And a 
billion dollars spent on food aid goes to American farmers, rather than 
to North Korean weapons.
  I don't know how much it would cost to truly end North Korea's 
missile and nuclear programs, but we might consider putting our money 
where our mouth is. While an embryonic missile defense program might 
increase our sense of security, halting the North Korean's missile and 
nuclear programs would provide real benefit to our national security.
  The pragmatic solution considers whether the first ``technologically 
possible'' national missile defense will be reliable and effective, 
especially in light of warnings by the head of the Ballistic Missile 
Defense Office that national missile defense is a ``high risk'' 
program. This ideological bill commits us to spend at least 5 million 
dollars per day to build and deploy that first system, even if it has 
only a mediocre test record.
  Most importantly, the pragmatic solution considers ballistic missile 
defense in the context of the U.S.-Russian strategic relationship.
  Perhaps we will need to deploy a national missile defense. But this 
ideological bill would foolishly sacrifice arms control, non-
proliferation and strategic stability with Russia in order to field an 
imperfect missile defense.
  And the fact is, we don't have to make that sacrifice in order to 
address the ballistic missile threat. But we do have to reject 
simplistic answers to complex issues.
  The basic problem with this bill is not that it advocates a national 
missile defense, but that it is so narrowly ideological about it. What 
a shame, that we spend our time debating right-wing litmus tests. A 
bill that looked more broadly at challenges to our national security 
would be much more worthy of our attention.
  To underscore that point, I intend to introduce in the coming days 
the ``National Security Policy Act of 1999.'' Working with me on that 
bill are Senator Kerrey of Nebraska, who is Vice Chairman of the 
Intelligence Committee; and Senator Levin of Michigan, who is Ranking 
Member on the Armed Services Committee.
  We earnestly hope that our bill will provoke a much more serious 
debate than is possible on the one-sentence bill before us. We invite 
our Republican colleagues to join with us in forging a comprehensive, 
truly bipartisan consensus on critical national security issues.
  One such issue is the future of deterrence. Is deterrence so weak 
that we must deploy a national missile defense to combat third-rate 
powers like North Korea, Iran and Iraq? If so, then I believe we must 
reinforce deterrence.
  Deterrence is--and will remain--the bedrock of U.S. nuclear strategy. 
Rogue states must never be allowed to forget that utter annihilation 
will be their fate if they should attack the United States with weapons 
of mass destruction. We should emphasize that basic fact.
  What about the risk of ICBM's in the hands of a leader too crazy to 
be deterred? If that should happen, we should make it clear that the 
United States will destroy--pre-emptively--any ICBM's that such a 
leader may target at us. I intend that our bill will do that, building 
on our basic deterrence policy.
  What is it about nuclear deterrence that makes it so hard for some 
people to support that strategy? Nuclear deterrence between the United 
States and the Soviets, and now between the United States and Russia, 
is based upon what is sometimes called ``Mutually Assured Destruction'' 
or a ``balance of terror.'' Each country maintains the capability to 
destroy the other, even if the other side strikes first.
  Both the right wing and the left wing of American politics rebel 
against this.

[[Page S2716]]

They abhor leaving our very fates to U.S. and Russian political leaders 
and military personnel. They also hear the warning of some religious 
and ethical leaders that no nuclear war can ever be a ``just war'' in 
moral terms.
  But the ``balance of terror'' remains in place, fully half a century 
after the Soviet Union joined the United States as a nuclear power. And 
those of us in the center of the political spectrum continue to support 
it.
  Why is that? To put it simply: ``because it works.''
  Yet one of the implicit purposes of this bill is to substitute our 
policy of deterrence with one of defense. Instead of deterring an 
attack on our territory we would defend against such an attack with 
missile defenses.
  Some people believe we must make this transition from deterrence to 
defense--in this case using a National Missile Defense--because the 
leaders of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq cannot be deterred by the same 
means we have used to deter Russia and China. I disagree. These 
countries' leaders take tactical risks, but none has been willing to 
risk complete annihilation.
  Let's consider the record of deterrence against extremist leaders.
  In the 1950's, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was deterred from 
a conventional invasion of Western Europe. But why? Why did the Soviets 
not crush the Berlin Airlift? Because Stalin--that great butcher of 
souls--feared a nuclear war.
  Why did the Soviet Union pull back from confrontation in Berlin in 
1961 and Cuba in 1962? Because Nikita Khrushchev--that foolish risk-
taker who was later deposed by his nervous cohorts--still feared 
nuclear war.
  Why has China not invaded Taiwan? Because every Chinese Communist 
leader--from the consummate butcher Mao to the would-be capitalist 
dictators of today--has feared nuclear war.
  More recently, Saddam Hussein was deterred from using chemical or 
biological weapons during the Gulf War, despite his threats to do so, 
by the United State's promise that such an attack would meet with a 
devastating U.S. response.
  The record demonstrates that extremist states are deterred when we 
credibly threaten to retaliate, and when our threatened retaliation 
imperils their vital interests.
  That is what has deterred the Iraqis, the Soviets, and the Chinese 
from using weapons of mass destruction against U.S. interests in the 
past. That is what has brought the Serbs to the bargaining table, both 
in the Bosnian and Kosovo crises. That is what has deterred the Syrians 
from directly attacking Israel.
  Yet our concern today is over the North Korean threat. At some point 
in the near future, the North Koreans may achieve a limited ability to 
strike U.S. territory. We must ask ourselves whether the logic of 
deterrence--a logic that has worked in so many other instances--will 
work against the North Koreans. Again, lets consider the record.
  For years, North Korea has had the ability to rain short-range 
missiles on all of South Korea and to kill untold thousands within 
range of North Korean artillery. Yet the South Korean and U.S. 
militaries have kept the peace by threatening punishing retaliation 
should the North Koreans attack. We have kept the peace by threatening 
to destroy the very heart of the North Korean regime--its military--
which is crucial to its control over its population.
  Our military will continue to have that retaliatory capability in the 
North Korean theater of operations--whether we have a national missile 
defense or not. We maintain approximately 37,000 troops on the ground 
in Korea, including the 8th Army and 7th Air Force, to say nothing of 
the 47,000 American troops in Japan or the portions of the 7th Fleet 
deployed in the region.
  Moreover, the North Koreans must know that our early warning radars 
could pinpoint the source of any missile attack on the United States 
and that such an attack would bring a devastating response.
  Maintaining U.S. retaliatory forces, and demonstrating our 
willingness to use them when necessary, are the keys that have kept the 
peace. There is every prospect that the credible threat of retaliation 
will continue to deter extremist states in the future.
  So let us all think carefully--and rationally--before letting our 
fears of destruction move us away from a policy that has avoided 
destruction so well and for so long.
  Traditional deterrence may unnerve us because it depends upon 
rational leaders and weapons control systems. But the alternative--
missile defense--depends in turn upon the perfection of complex systems 
and their human components.
  Think of the great computer-assisted systems of our time: the 
Internal Revenue Service, the air traffic control system, credit 
bureaus, or the National Weather Service.
  Then ask yourselves whether missile defense will really make you 
safe--especially if the price of it is the end of the START process 
and, therefore, continued Russian reliance upon MIRVed ICBM's.
  Whatever missiles a rogue state might build, however, the one missile 
threat to our very existence is still from Russia. A rogue state might 
deploy a few tens of nuclear warheads; Russia has thousands. And what 
is especially appalling is this bill's cavalier treatment of the U.S.-
Russia relationship.
  As we debate S. 257, I have to ask myself: Why is the other side so 
determined to pass this bill, rather than a more serious piece of 
legislation? The sad truth is that the real goal of many ballistic 
missile defense adherents is to do away with the ABM Treaty.
  Why would they want to do that? Because they know that the ``thin'' 
missile defense proposed in this bill is at best a strictly limited 
defense. It may work against a handful of incoming missiles, but not 
against an attack of any serious magnitude.
  To achieve a defense against a serious ballistic missile attack with 
nuclear weapons, we would probably need multiple radar sites--perhaps 
using ship-borne radars--and surely more interceptor sites. (The 
Heritage Foundation proposes putting the interceptors on ships, as 
well.)
  To stop a serious missile attack using chemical or biological 
warheads, we might well need a boost-phase intercept system, either 
ship-borne or space-based. That is because the chemical or biological 
agents could be carried in scores of bomblets dispersed shortly after 
boost-phase shut-off. The national missile defense systems currently 
under development would be nearly useless against such bomblets.
  So missile defense is rather like Lay's Potato Chips: it's hard to 
eat just one. For the real ballistic missile defense adherents, even 
``Star Wars'' is therefore not dead. But the ABM Treaty bars both ship-
borne and space-based ABM systems.
  Still, the dream persists: if only this bill were passed, if only the 
ABM Treaty were killed, then ``Brilliant Pebbles'' or some other system 
could be pulled out of the drawer, dusted off, and contracted out to 
every congressional district to keep the money coming.
  Many missile defense adherents are quite open about their 
determination to kill the ABM Treaty, and frustrated because Congress 
lacks the Constitutional authority to do that. Some fall back on 
strained legal theories to argue that the break-up of the Soviet Union 
left the ABM Treaty null and void--while hoping that nobody will apply 
that reasoning to other U.S.-Soviet treaties.
  At other times, missile defense adherents press to deploy a ballistic 
missile defense regardless of whether this requires violation or 
abrogation of the ABM Treaty. That is what this bill would do.
  If we enact S. 257 and make it U.S. policy to deploy an ABM system 
without addressing Russian concerns and U.S. treaty obligations, then 
Russia will almost certainly use its thousands of ICBM warheads to 
maintain its nuclear deterrence posture.

  That would end strategic arms control. It would also sacrifice our 
long-standing goal--ever since the Reagan Administration--of removing 
the greatest threat to strategic stability: land-based, MIRVed ICBM's.
  MIRVed ICBM's--with Multiple, Independently-targeted Re-entry 
Vehicles--are the cheapest way for Russia to overwhelm a missile 
defense. But they also put nuclear Armageddon just

[[Page S2717]]

a hair-trigger away, because a missile with 3, or 7, or 10 warheads is 
a truly tempting target for a first strike by the other side.
  In a crisis, a Russia that relies upon MIRVed ICBM's may feel it has 
to ``use them or lose them.'' That's why President Bush signed START 
Two to ban those missiles.
  Today, maintaining the START momentum is a real national security 
challenge. The Russian Duma has balked at ratifying START Two, largely 
because Russia cannot afford to replace its MIRVed ICBM's with enough 
new, single-warhead missiles to maintain the force levels permitted by 
the treaty.
  But major force reductions under START Three, to reduce nuclear 
forces to a level that Russia can hope to maintain, could get the 
Russian Duma to permit Russia to give up MIRVed ICBMs.
  Serious legislation would call for lower START Three levels than 
those proposed at the Helsinki summit in 1997. The bill before us, by 
contrast, would put the final nail in the coffin of START Two.
  That is because Russia truly doubts that it can do without MIRVed 
ICBM's if the United States deploys a national missile defense. Now, 
U.S. officials are explaining to Russian leaders how a limited missile 
defense could defend America without threatening Russia or the basic 
goals of the ABM Treaty.
  The Administration thinks there is a reasonable chance of bringing 
Russia around. But that will take time. Our bill will endorse that 
process of education and negotiation.
  Passage of S. 257, by contrast, risks torpedoing those important 
U.S.-Russian talks. This bill will very likely be seen by Russia as a 
slap in the face. And it's hard to blame them, when the litmus-testers 
set up a vote just a few days before Russia's Prime Minister is due 
here for talks with Vice President Gore.
  If my colleagues want a limited national missile defense without 
sacrificing the ABM Treaty, we can get that. If, however, their real 
aim is to kill the ABM Treaty and strategic arms control, then they are 
making a tragic mistake.
  S. 257, which ignores our treaty obligations, could force us to 
abrogate the ABM Treaty. Enactment of this bill would thus practically 
guarantee that the START process would collapse, leaving us facing 
MIRVed Russian ICBM's for decades to come.
  One of the fascinating questions in the missile defense debate is why 
missile defense adherents are so willing to sacrifice the START 
process. The answers tell us a lot about isolationist ideology and the 
politics of paranoia.
  Isolationists in the Senate--mostly Republicans--have a long history 
of opposing international obligations. Henry Cabot Lodge opposed the 
League of Nations after World War I. Republicans opposed Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt's preparations for World War II, and some continued to 
accuse him of ``getting us into'' that war for another 20 years, as 
though America would have been better off accepting a Nazi Europe. And 
some Republicans opposed the United Nations in the post-World War II 
world.
  Conservative Republicans have opposed arms control treaties as well, 
from the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 to the SALT Treaty of 1972, 
the Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1974, the START Treaties of 1991 and 
1993, and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. Today they oppose 
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and call for an end to the Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.
  Imagine their frustration, then, with the tendency of Republican 
Presidents to negotiate and sign arms control treaties. Dwight 
Eisenhower's pursuit of a test-ban treaty was the first betrayal, even 
though it was John F. Kennedy who finally signed the Limited Test Ban 
Treaty.
  Richard Nixon was truly a turncoat, to many Republicans. Aside from 
recognizing Communist China, Nixon signed both the ABM Treaty and the 
SALT Treaty with the Soviet Union. The Soviets promptly used a loophole 
in SALT to deploy the MIRVed SS-19 ICBM, which the Senate had thought 
would be illegal under the treaty. Republican anger was hardly lessened 
when it came to light that the Soviets had told U.S. officials of their 
plans, and that the word had not been passed to the Senate.
  I think that the conservative Republican anger at Henry Kissinger--
which continues to this day--is due to his willingness to pursue arms 
control with the Soviet Union and better relations with China, even as 
the United States bombed their ships in Haiphong harbor. Nixon and 
Kissinger pursued the Vietnam War far beyond the point of diminishing 
returns, and they supported right-wing regimes from Greece to Chile and 
Guatemala. But their subtle power politics rejected isolationist 
ideology, and true-blue conservatives never forgave them.
  Gerald Ford was hardly better, as he signed the Threshold Test Ban 
Treaty.
  Ronald Reagan could never be seen as a traitor to the right wing. He 
brought it into the White House and brought Republicans to power in the 
Senate. He opposed SALT Two and breached the limits of that signed-but-
unratified treaty. He also brought back the missile defense issue, with 
his Strategic Defense Initiative--better known as ``Star Wars,'' as 
much for its overreaching ambition as for its space-based architecture.
  Even Ronald Reagan puzzled many right-wingers, however, when he came 
out against nuclear weapons and proposed sharing Star Wars technology 
with the Soviets. Puzzlement turned to frustration in the Bush 
Administration, as some Reagan proposals were actually accepted by the 
Soviet Union and its successors: especially the Intermediate Nuclear 
Forces agreement, the START Treaties, and the Chemical Weapons 
Convention.
  The Clinton Administration has achieved ratification of START Two and 
the Chemical Weapons Convention, but perhaps only because former 
Republican officials worked with Democrats to complete President Bush's 
legacy. The real political problem with the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty is that it was a Democratic president who signed it.
  The truth is that conservative Republicans are still uncomfortable 
with the whole concept of arms control. They see arms control treaties 
as either hamstringing the United States or defrauding the world by 
merely codifying what the two sides would have done unilaterally.
  Against this background, it is not so surprising that Republicans are 
willing to sacrifice the START process in order to kill the ABM Treaty. 
Conservatives were not very pleased to be signing arms control treaties 
in the first place. To them, the end of the Cold War is a time to rid 
ourselves of those ``foreign entanglements,'' to use President 
Washington's famous phrase.
  As a Democrat, I must admit to being perplexed by some of this 
behavior. You might expect that conservatives would appreciate the 
virtues of ``law and order'' in the field of strategic weapons, just as 
they preach it at home.
  Certainly professional military officers appreciate the virtue of 
predictability that enables them to prepare more rationally for any 
future conflict. As a result, the military nearly always supports 
ratification of arms control treaties, again to the great frustration 
of conservative Republicans. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is just 
the latest example, as every Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
since General David Jones from the Reagan Administration supports 
ratification, while conservative Republicans in the Senate vow to keep 
that treaty from coming to a vote.
  Perhaps the real clash here is between ideology and reality. 
Conservative Republicans idolize self-reliance, both in the individual 
and in the state.
  The Great Depression of 60 years ago and the interdependent world 
economy of today have made rugged individualism an insufficient 
guideline in economic and social policy. Two world wars and the threat 
of annihilation posed by weapons of mass destruction have done the same 
thing in our international relations.
  The American people understand this and vote consistently against 
those who would sacrifice national or international consensus for the 
sake of left-wing or right-wing ideologies.
  But the dream of unfettered individualism lives on. For some, it is 
the dream of resuming nuclear weapons tests, even though the price of 
that would be permitting similar tests by

[[Page S2718]]

increasing numbers of other countries. For others, it is the dream of 
fighting the next war in the so-called ``high frontier'' of outer 
space. And for still others, it is the dream of a shield against enemy 
missiles--perhaps a U.S. shield against our enemies or, in some 
versions, a U.S.-Russian shield against the rest of the world.
  To these dreamers, the bill before us is but a first step. A ``thin'' 
national missile defense will lead to ``thicker'' defenses. Demise of 
the ABM Treaty and strategic arms control will merely usher in an age 
of unfettered nuclear dominion, as the United States builds an 
eventually impregnable, space-based defense from missiles of all sorts.
  This is only a dream. But it is a dream that energizes the right 
wing. And it is a dream that has become a litmus test for Republicans 
in this body.
  That is truly a shame. For rational policy must be built on reality, 
not on dreams.
  Mr. President, the threat of a missile attack on the United States is 
real; it is disturbing. But the true test of statecraft is not how 
angry you get, but how rationally you deal with threats to the national 
interest.
  A rational development and deployment of a limited national missile 
defense does not require us to ignore our ABM Treaty obligations. Only 
fear and politics drive missile defense adherents to take such a risk 
in the bill before us.
  My generation understands both that fear and the dream of a ballistic 
missile defense. Anyone who has ducked under his desk in a school ``air 
raid'' drill knows the collective sense of vulnerability and futility 
caused by the thought of a nuclear holocaust. We have spent well over a 
hundred billion dollars on efforts to ease that sense of helplessness 
through civil defense or missile defense.
  But the role of this Senate, for over two centuries, has been to 
resist those savage fears and passionate dreams that would otherwise 
take us down dangerous paths.
  America needs a balanced strategy, to meet the rogue-state missile 
threat while also preserving the ABM Treaty, continuing the START 
process, using non-proliferation assistance to combat ``loose nukes'' 
in Russia, and achieving entry into force of the Comprehensive Test-Ban 
Treaty.
  That is what I hope Senator Kerrey, Senator Levin and I will propose 
in the ``National Security Policy Act of 1999.'' It is a far cry from 
the bumper-sticker bill currently before us.
  Let me make a special appeal to those Republican members with whom we 
Democrats make common cause to support threat reduction programs in the 
former Soviet Union. Some of those programs, like the Nunn-Lugar 
program, further the START process by underwriting the destruction of 
former Soviet weapons.
  Others guard against proliferation by safeguarding or downgrading 
special nuclear material and by improving export and border controls to 
prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Still others 
help weapons scientists and technicians to find non-military 
employment, so they will not have to consider contracts with rogue 
states for their dangerous goods or services.
  Economic collapse and resurgent nationalism may be closing Russia's 
window to the West. But these programs help to keep that window open. 
The Clinton Administration has seen the risks and opportunities that 
are inherent in Russia's economic plight: the risk of rogue-state 
recruitment has increased, but so has the buying power of every dollar 
and Deutschmark that we and our allies can devote to threat reduction 
and non-proliferation assistance.
  The Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative announced last month 
deserves our support, and I am confident that it will gain that 
support. I believe that we should do even more, including financing 
retired officer housing in return for Russian withdrawal of troops from 
Moldova and Georgia.
  We should also consider more programs that employ former weapons 
experts in non-military pursuits, even if their activities are not 
likely to result in commercially viable ventures. Eventually the 
Russian economy will turn around and provide new careers for the 
talented experts from the Soviet Union's nuclear, chemical weapons, 
biological weapons, and long-range missile programs. Until that 
happens, however, it is clearly in our national interest to keep that 
talent off the international market.
  Democrats will support our moderate Republican friends on these 
issues, and I believe that Republicans will support our similar efforts 
in return. But my moderate Republican friends should not deceive 
themselves: these programs will not survive if right-wing policies on 
national missile defense bring down the ABM Treaty and the START 
process.
  Russian pride is already damaged by its shattered power and by the 
need to accept our money. If a precipitous decision to deploy missile 
defense leads Russia to preserve its MIRVed ICBM's, Cooperative Threat 
Reduction will be ended. Once that goes, I predict that Russian 
cooperation on non-proliferation will go as well.
  Then our nuclear and chemical and biological weapon fears will expand 
from the fear of missile warheads to the fear of every ship or plane or 
truck that approaches our borders. And the far-sighted legacy of Sam 
Nunn and his concerned co-sponsors will have been but a blissful rest 
stop on the highway to destruction.
  If reason can overcome fear, perhaps reason can also overcome the 
politics behind S. 257. If Republicans have the courage and foresight 
to pursue their goal of a limited national missile defense while 
preserving arms control and strategic stability, I urge them to 
withdraw S. 257 and talk to us.
  Otherwise, I urge all my colleagues to reject this bill and avert the 
substantial peril that it risks to our national security.
  I hope the amendment of my friend from Louisiana prevails because, 
although she may not mean it this way, I read it to say arms reduction 
is still vitally important. Arms reductions are critical and, I would 
argue, are not capable of being conducted with any efficacy in the 
absence of an ABM Treaty.
  I thank my colleague for allowing me to speak, my colleague from 
Louisiana who is about to introduce her amendment. I also thank my 
friend from Mississippi, who is a consummate gentleman for following 
and listening to what I have to say.
  I yield the floor.


                            Amendment No. 72

  (Purpose: To add a statement of policy that the United States seek 
       continued negotiated reductions in Russian nuclear forces)

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Voinovich). The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Louisiana (Ms. Landrieu), for herself, Mr. 
     Levin, Ms. Snowe, Mr. Dorgan, Mr. Breaux, and Mr. Lieberman, 
     proposes an amendment numbered seventy-two:
       At the end, add the following:

     SEC. 3. POLICY ON REDUCTION OF RUSSIAN NUCLEAR FORCES.

       It is the policy of the United States to seek continued 
     negotiated reductions in Russian nuclear forces.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, it is a simply worded amendment but a very important 
amendment.
  The distinguished Senator from Delaware brought up excellent points 
in terms of the necessity for us, as we consider this important bill 
that the Senator from Mississippi has brought to us, to continue to 
talk about our commitments to further reductions of nuclear weapons.
  I strongly support a limited national missile defense. It is 
important that we pursue this program with energy and determination. 
But we must also keep pursuing other means of enhancing our security.
  We need to move our strategic relationship with Russia from the cold 
war paradigm of mutually assured destruction to one of mutually assured 
security. We have made great progress in this regard, as has been 
pointed out in the last hour on this floor by Members on both sides, 
but much remains to be done.
  However, in making this transition, we cannot allow the territory of 
the United States to be threatened by ballistic missiles from rogue 
nations, especially if it is in our capacity to protect ourselves from 
this imminent

[[Page S2719]]

threat. Nevertheless, we should not allow our missile defense effort to 
distract from our security relationship with Russia, if at all 
possible. And that is the essence of this amendment.
  Our country and Russia have come a long way in terms of reducing 
strategic nuclear threats to both countries, and nothing we do today 
should negate this progress. But, in my view, nothing in the 20th 
century has contributed more to American security than an end to the 
imminent threat of nuclear war.
  It is important that we carry this momentum to finish the task. No 
threat from a rogue nation should outweigh the need for us to attain a 
mutually secure and stable relationship with our Russian partners. On 
the eve of a visit from Prime Minister Primakov, it is important that 
we continue to work towards this goal and we use this opportunity to 
further our negotiations.
  Therefore, I offer this amendment, which simply states that it is our 
policy to seek continued negotiated reductions in Russian nuclear 
forces which will reaffirm the Senate's belief that such reductions are 
in our national interests. It would also be an important signal to the 
Russians on the eve of that visit.
  Furthermore, this amendment is in keeping with the recommendations of 
our National Defense Panel. As you know, the NDP was created by 
Congress to review the Pentagon's conclusion in its Quadrennial Defense 
Review. It is a nonpartisan panel of defense experts, some of the 
finest minds working on national security. They are in agreement that a 
defensive system, such as our national missile defense, is best 
developed if coupled with limiting our offensive capabilities in our 
arms reduction efforts.
  That is what we are trying to do with this amendment. I believe it 
will receive bipartisan support. It will help make this bill an even 
better bill.
  Before I conclude, I would like to add just a few things to the 
Record that I think are very important as we negotiate the passage of 
this important piece of legislation.
  Our distinguished colleague from Mississippi did not include this 
language in his very simple bill to deploy an effective national 
missile defense system in his efforts to gain support. And I agree with 
that. But I think it is important, Mr. President, for those who are 
considering whether or not to vote for this bill--and I hope they will 
vote for this amendment and then vote for the bill--for me to take 2 
minutes to read into the Record some important statements that have 
been made by our President, as well as some of the enemies of this 
country, about why it is important for this bill to pass.
  Not last year, not the year before, but in 1994, President Clinton 
certified that:

       I * * * find that the proliferation of nuclear, biological, 
     and chemical weapons (`weapons of mass destruction') and the 
     means of delivering such weapons, constitute an unusual and 
     extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign 
     policy, and economy of the United States, and hereby declare 
     a national emergency to deal with that threat.

  For those who say the threat is not real, recently--last year--some 
new information came out about the significance of this threat.
       This is 1994.
       Let me go on to read:

       Several countries hostile to the United States have been 
     particularly determined to acquire missiles and weapons of 
     mass destruction. President Clinton observed in January of 
     1998, for example, that ``Saddam Hussein has spent the better 
     part of this decade, and must of his nation's wealth, not on 
     providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, 
     chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver 
     them''.

  Let me also say that it is not just this country. Qadhafi, the Libyan 
leader, has stated:

       If they know that you have a deterrent force capable of 
     hitting the United States, they would not be able to hit you. 
     If we had possessed a deterrent--missiles that could reach 
     New York--we would have hit it at the same moment. 
     Consequently, we should build this force so that they and 
     others will no longer think about an attack.
  I could go on. But I think the Record is replete with quote after 
quote by hostile leaders to the United States that it is most certainly 
their intention to develop these weapons that could possibly hit our 
homeland. Although it is hard for people to think about this--and we 
most certainly don't want people to panic--we want to be realistic to 
the threat.
  I thank the Senator from Mississippi for bringing this bill before us 
at this time.
  I offer this amendment in an attempt to get more bipartisan support 
for what I consider to be a good bill, and a quite timely one, that 
will not, and should not, disrupt our ongoing and very beneficial 
relations with Russia in our reductions, but one that will protect the 
people of Louisiana, the people of Alaska, the people of Mississippi, 
the people of Michigan, and everyone in this Nation for this growing 
and imminent threat that even the President himself has acknowledged 
over and over is real.
  I yield the remainder of my time. I ask the floor leaders to give 
whatever time they think is appropriate to the discussion of this 
amendment. I will call for a rollcall vote at the appropriate time.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I believe the minority manager wants to be 
recognized. I yield, with the understanding that I will follow.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Colorado.
  I want to make an inquiry of both him and the Senator from Louisiana 
as well and, of course, the floor managers, and the sponsors of the 
bill. We are trying to determine how much time is going to be needed on 
the Landrieu-Levin amendment which is pending. We are seeking a fairly 
early vote on this amendment. I wonder if I can inquire of my friend 
from Colorado approximately how long he plans on speaking.
  Mr. ALLARD. Probably 15 to 20 minutes would be adequate for my 
remarks. I request 20 minutes, and then, if I finish before that, I 
will yield back.
  Mr. LEVIN. There is no time limit, of course, at this point.
  Mr. President, I then alert our colleagues. I think I am speaking for 
Senator Cochran also. We are seeking to know how many people will want 
to speak on the pending amendment after the Senator from Colorado has 
completed. Perhaps the cloakrooms can be notified of that promptly, if 
that is appropriate, so we can determine just whether it is possible to 
have a vote on the pending amendment sometime prior to the--what was 
the Senator's goal?
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I would like 
to see a vote around 4:30, or 4:45 at the latest.
  But we don't want to cut any Senators off. If others want to speak on 
this amendment, then we want to encourage them to come over and let us 
hear their remarks. This is an amendment we are prepared to recommend 
be approved by the Senate. We think it is a good amendment, 
noncontroversial, helps the bill, strengthens the bill, and I 
compliment the distinguished Senator for offering it.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the privilege 
of the floor be granted to John Bradshaw, who is a fellow in Senator 
Wellstone's office, during the pendency of this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, we will propound a unanimous consent 
agreement hopefully after the Senator from Colorado has completed his 
presentation. I will need about 10 minutes in support of the Landrieu-
Levin amendment, which is a critically important amendment. It should 
be discussed before we vote on it because of the impact it will have, I 
believe, on the bill and perhaps on the vote on the bill, because it 
will also have an impact on the recommendation of the senior advisers 
to the President as to whether or not he will veto this bill.
  Because it is so significant--it is simple but very vital and very 
significant--it is important that there be discussion of the Landrieu 
amendment. So I will need about 10 minutes on that, I alert my friend 
from Mississippi. We can figure out if any time agreement is possible 
after the Senator from Colorado has completed. I thank him for his 
courtesy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 257, the National 
Missile Defense Act of 1999. Before I make my comments, I ask unanimous 
consent

[[Page S2720]]

that Tim Coy be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of 
the consideration of S. 257.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Mississippi for 
his thought and effort in this regard.
  Mr. President, I think we get stuck in the way things used to be. The 
fact is, this is a changing world. We have changing dynamics as far as 
what other countries are doing in regard to weapons development and 
what their risks may be to the mainland of the United States.
  My colleague from Mississippi has said yes, this is a changing world 
out there and we need to make sure we have a national missile defense 
system. If you talk to the average Americans out here on the street, 
they think we do have a national missile defense system. The fact is, 
we are no longer in a cold war era where the foreign policy of threat 
of mutual destruction is going to be effective. We are in a modern era 
where countries can develop a missile rather quickly, because of the 
natural resources that they have--maybe it is oil and gas--and with 
these huge financial resources that all of a sudden become available to 
them. In fact, we have heard testimony in the committees on which I 
serve--I serve on both the Intelligence Committee and the Armed 
Services Committee--that the time required for a newly developed 
country to build a missile from scratch has halved in the last few 
years. That is because there is lots of technology out there, that is 
readily available, that they can acquire quickly. They can put this all 
together into a very effective offensive system if they so choose.
  So I want to take some time today to talk about what the bill means 
to me, and some of the language in the bill specifically. I would like 
to talk a little bit about the threats of today's world and talk about 
the system's feasibility. We have heard comments here on the floor that 
we are dreaming, that this is really not that feasible an approach. I 
want to make some comments in that regard and talk a little bit about 
the cost of the system and how I think we can pay for it. And then, 
finally, before I conclude, I want to talk a little bit about the ABM 
Treaty and the treaty ramifications.
  What does S. 257, the National Defense Act of 1999, do? Simply, the 
National Defense Act of 1999 states that it is the policy of the United 
States ``to deploy as soon as technologically possible a National 
Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United 
States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether that is 
accidental, unauthorized or deliberate).''
  The bill's policy statement is identical to that of S. 1873, which 
was proposed during the 105th Congress, except for the addition of the 
statement that missile defense is subject to the authorization and 
appropriations process, which is an amendment we just adopted here in a 
vote we had around 2 o'clock or 2:15.
  This bill does not mandate a date for deployment of a system, calling 
instead for deployment as soon as the required technology is mature.
  As I mentioned earlier, the United States has no defense against 
these systems, but I think it is important that we continue to push for 
their development as soon as it is technologically feasible--that we 
quickly move ahead. I think this is completely compatible with the 
January 20, 1999, statement of the Secretary of Defense: ``The United 
States in fact will face a rogue nation threat to our homeland 
against which we will have to defend the American people.'' And, he 
goes on to say, ``technological readiness will be the sole remaining 
criterion'' in deciding when to deploy a national missile defense 
system.

  Secretary Cohen stated on February 3, 1999, during the Armed Services 
hearing, that any country which fires ballistic missiles at us will 
face immediate retaliation. Again, this is the old, cold war attitude 
of mutual destruction. While I agree with this statement, we again 
decide to place ourselves at the mercy of rogue states instead of being 
proactive in protecting our citizens, because these rogue states have 
the capability of developing a system of missiles with some type of 
warhead--whether it is bacteriological, chemical, or nuclear--and we do 
not have any defense system today to counteract any missile that would 
be headed towards the United States.
  I would like to talk a little bit about the threats that are posed to 
the U.S. mainland today. I want to refer to the July 1998 Rumsfeld 
report on ballistic missile threats to the United States. The 
commissioners who put together the report concluded:

       [T]he threat to the U.S. posed by these emerging 
     capabilities is broader, more mature and evolving more 
     rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by 
     the Intelligence community.

  The report goes on and further states:

       [T]he warning times that the U.S. can expect of new 
     ballistic missile deployments are being reduced.

  I believe the missile threat to the United States is growing at an 
accelerated pace. Numerous hostile nations have declared their intent 
to obtain missiles capable of attacking the United States, and are 
succeeding in doing so. These include launches that have been made from 
North Korea and China, the old missile fields of the former Soviet 
Union--now in the Commonwealth of Independent States. I happen to 
believe that very soon Iraq, Iran, Libya, India, and Pakistan will have 
the same capability.
  Two of the worst proliferators of ballistic missiles are North Korea 
and Russia. North Korea has tested a missile capable of attacking 
Alaska and Hawaii, and is apparently developing a second missile which 
will be capable of reaching the entire United States mainland. North 
Korea has sold every missile it has developed, and the associated 
technology, to other rogue states.
  During the Armed Services hearing on February 2, 1999, Director of 
Central Intelligence George Tenet said:

       North Korea is on the verge of developing ballistic 
     missiles capable of hitting the continental United States.

  Again, relating to the North Koreans' launch when they set off a 
second-stage rocket that went over the tip of Japan, Tenet said:

       The proliferation implications of these missiles are 
     obviously significant.

  During the hearing, Director Tenet also warned that Russia is 
reneging on their earlier commitment to the United States to curb the 
transfer of advanced missile technology to Iran. Again, he stated:

       The bottom line is that assistance from Russian countries 
     is still contributing substantially to progress in Iran's 
     dangerous missile programs.

  He added:

       India, Pakistan, and Iran, who have traditionally been 
     considered technology customers, now have developed 
     capabilities that could, in some cases, be exported to 
     others.

  So here we are. We have a commission set up by the United States to 
analyze our defensive posture and our ability to counteract a missile 
attack, and we have the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency 
both warning us that we need to update our defense system to a current 
situation that exists throughout the world. I happen to believe both 
the report as well as the comments by George Tenet. I think that we 
need to move forward.
  The President's 3+3 Missile Defense Plan has already been pushed back 
to 2005, but the problem is that the threat is right now. It is not in 
2005. In December, Robert Walpole, National Intelligence Officer for 
Strategic and Nuclear Programs, said in a speech that the Central 
Intelligence Agency was caught by surprise by North Korea's flight 
testing of a three-stage missile. While the third stage of the missile 
failed, CIA analysts had to agree to the Rumsfeld report, as I stated 
earlier in my comments, that the threat is here despite the CIA's 
dismissal of the report when it was released.
  I want to talk a little bit about the feasibility of us moving ahead 
with the technology that we have today. We have the pieces of a 
national missile defense system with proven technology. However, the 
risk to development lies not in the pieces but in the integration of 
these pieces into an effective system in a timely manner, which is 
exactly what this bill does. When we talk about the term 
``technologically possible,'' it includes system integration. There is 
no date in the bill. The bill just calls for the policy to deploy when 
technologically possible.
  During a February 3, 1999, Sea Power interview, General Shelton said:


[[Page S2721]]


       The simple fact is that we do not have the technology to 
     field a national missile defense. . . . My colleagues--the 
     Joint Chiefs and I--believe that when we have the technology 
     for NMD, we ought to have the capability to be able to 
     transition right into the deployment, if the threat warrants.

  A followup on that, Ted Warner, Assistant Secretary of Defense for 
Strategy and Threat Reduction, said that the threat is no longer the 
issue holding back national missile defense, but technical feasibility 
is all that drives deployment.
  During a February 3, 1999, Armed Services hearing, Secretary Cohen 
stated that the Department is committed to advancing its missile 
defense efforts as technology risks allow, without any mention of when 
the threat is there. He admits that the threat is here now.
  I will discuss the architecture of a national missile defense system. 
The architecture for national missile defense consists of three pieces: 
the battle management system, the radars that detect incoming missiles, 
and the booster and ground-based interceptor that will comprise our 
response.
  The battle management command, control and communications system will 
receive data on the incoming missiles, calculate the number of 
interceptors needed to destroy the missiles, and monitor the status of 
the test elements, giving decisionmakers a prioritized set of choices 
for our response. Portions of this system have already been tested and 
performed flawlessly in previous tests.
  Our current detection system consists of a combination of upgraded 
early warning radars, new ground-based radars and our space-based 
satellites. Once the satellites detect a launch, they will pass the 
data to our ground-based radars, which will create a detection net to 
gather high-fidelity data on the incoming missile that will help our 
interceptor strike its target. The upgraded early warning radars have 
been rigorously tested using both computer simulations and actual test 
launches and are more than capable of performing their mission.
  Their replacement, a space-based infrared radar system, will vastly 
improve our detection. Moreover, our targeting capabilities will be 
increased with the eventual deployment of a complementary low space-
based infrared system which performs cold-body tracking of incoming 
missiles.
  The least proven piece of the architecture may very well be the 
booster and interceptor. Various parts of the interceptors, such as the 
seeker, have been tested many times, and the test objectives have been 
met. Actually, just yesterday the PAC-3 missile collected, detected, 
tracked and gauged and then hit an incoming test missile.
  The technology exists to build a national missile defense system. 
Further testing of integration should show whether the system is ready 
to deploy. Requiring more studies and analysis to see if the technology 
is here, which it is, before we decide to deploy will only place us at 
the mercy of a threat we already know is out there.
  Let me speak a little bit about the cost of the system. With regard 
to the national missile defense budget, on one hand, the administration 
added $600 million from its fiscal year 1999 emergency supplemental but 
has yet to put forward exactly where this money will be spent. There 
was discussion to use part of this money for the Wye peace agreement. 
Then the administration added $6.6 billion over the 5-year plan for the 
national missile defense but pushed the majority of the money into the 
outyears, making it vulnerable to future cuts and the whims of another 
administration. I happen to believe that we should field an NMD system 
as soon as it works. Given that most of the system is technologically 
feasible already, we should be putting money in military construction 
and procurement starting in fiscal year 2000 and deploy much earlier 
than the year 2005.
  To make a few comments about the ABM Treaty and the treaty 
ratification, this bill is not about the ABM Treaty, specific 
architecture, deployment dates, or reports. The cold war is over, and 
we shouldn't hold to the cold war ways of protecting ourselves, the ABM 
Treaty. MAD, referred to as mutually assured destruction, should not 
rule our defense posture. We are no longer facing a superpower but now 
face rogue states.
  We keep hearing that if we deploy a missile defense system, Russia 
will not ratify START II. They have used this threat entirely too many 
times--in the bombing of Iraq, they used it; in the sanctions for 
missile proliferation with Iran.
  As columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote:

       What standing does Russia, of all nations, have to dictate 
     how and whether the United States will defend itself? Russia 
     is the principal supplier to Iran of the missile and nuclear 
     technology that could one day turn New York into a Hiroshima.

  The administration has been saying that any national missile defense 
is not directed at Russia. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said:

       It's directed at rogue states that have long range 
     missiles. These are threats not only to us, but to the 
     Russians.

  In conclusion, Mr. President, a firm policy to build a defense 
against ballistic missiles will send a clear message to rogue states 
that they are wasting their money building ballistic missiles with 
which to attack or threaten the United States. If rogue countries 
decide to ignore this message, the United States will be prepared to 
protect itself as soon as the technology is ready against such attack 
or threat of attack.
  The bill is a policy declaration, making clear to the citizens, 
allies, and adversaries of the United States that it will not remain 
defenseless against a ballistic missile attack. I believe there is a 
need to have a bipartisan bill, and this is a bipartisan bill. This 
bill was introduced by Senator Cochran and Senator Inouye, and the 
exact same bill in the 105th Congress had three Democrat cosponsors, 
with four voting for cloture.
  Let me end with a final conclusion from the Rumsfeld report and our 
ability to protect the threats for the future:

       Therefore, we unanimously recommend that U.S. analyses, 
     practices and policies that depend on expectations of 
     extended warning of deployment be reviewed and, as 
     appropriate, revised to reflect the reality of an environment 
     in which there may be little or no warning.

  I yield the floor, Mr. President, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous-consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, has anyone propounded the unanimous-
consent request?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. No.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be 
20 minutes for debate on the pending amendment, with the debate divided 
as follows: 10 minutes for Senator Levin; 5 minutes for Senator 
Landrieu; 5 minutes for Senator Cochran. I further ask unanimous 
consent that following that debate, the Senate proceed to a vote on, or 
in relation to, the amendment, with no other amendments in order prior 
to the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the amendment of Senator Landrieu that is 
pending is a very simple and a very straightforward amendment, but it 
is a vital amendment. It will make a major difference in this bill, 
because if this amendment is adopted, this bill will contain two policy 
statements. It now contains but one. The policy statement that it 
currently contains has to do with the deployment of a missile defense 
system. The policy statement, which the Landrieu amendment will add, is 
that it is the policy of the United States to seek continued negotiated 
reductions in Russian nuclear forces.
  This is a very significant policy statement, and I want to take just 
a minute and explain why.
  In my opening comments on this bill, I addressed what I consider to 
be a number of flaws or omissions in this bill. I talked about the fact 
that there is no reference here to ``operational effectiveness.'' One 
can look at the word

[[Page S2722]]

 ``effective'' in this bill's language and argue, I think reasonably, 
that operational effectiveness is included in that term 
``effectiveness.'' Nonetheless, I think the bill would be stronger if 
that were clearer. That was one of the issues which was raised.
  It is a very important question to our uniformed military and to the 
Secretary of Defense, because they want to be sure that before any 
decision is made to deploy, that we have an operationally effective 
system, that it works. And those are not just casual words. 
``Operational effectiveness'' are words that have a very important 
technical meaning to our military.
  I also pointed out in my opening remarks that there was no reference 
in here to cost. Now there is.
  With the Cochran amendment that was adopted earlier this afternoon, 
we now at least have an acknowledgment that the usual authorization and 
appropriation process is going to apply to national missile defense. 
The authorizers and the appropriators naturally look at cost. So there 
is now, at least in this bill with the adoption of the Cochran 
amendment, a way in which the cost issue will be addressed in the years 
to come.
  Another factor which the uniformed military and our civilian 
leadership wanted to look at is the threat. I think it is clear to most 
of us that there is a threat that was not predicted to come this 
quickly but which is either here or will soon be here from states such 
as North Korea.
  Finally--and this was the one which to me was the greatest sticking 
point--is the omission in this bill, until Senator Landrieu's amendment 
was introduced and hopefully will be adopted, of the acknowledgment of 
the importance of continuing to negotiate reductions in Russian nuclear 
forces. Those reductions are critically important to our security. 
Those reductions have been carried out, and hopefully additional 
reductions will be carried out, because we have a treaty with Russia 
which has allowed for these reductions to be carried out in a way which 
is strategically stable.
  That treaty, called the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, has been 
critically important to nuclear arms reductions. Hopefully, there will 
be further reductions negotiated. Hopefully, the Duma will ratify START 
II. But it is important that we be aware of the fact that arms 
reductions, nuclear arms reductions, are very important in terms of 
reducing proliferation threats and very important in terms of the 
terrorist threat.
  If we act in such a way that leads Russia to stop the reduction of 
the nuclear weapons on her soil, to stop the dismantling of the nuclear 
weapons on her soil, to stop negotiating further reductions in nuclear 
weapons, we are taking a very dangerous step in terms of our own 
security.
  That is why the fourth point which our uniformed military has pointed 
to as being important, in terms of considering national missile defense 
deployment, is the effect of that deployment on nuclear arms 
reductions. Nobody is going to give Russia or any other country a veto 
over whether or not we deploy a national missile defense system. That 
issue has got to be resolved in terms of our own security. If it adds 
to our security, we should do it. If it diminishes our security, we 
should not.
  But whether or not it adds to our security is dependent upon a number 
of factors. And one of those factors is the effect on the nuclear 
weapons reduction program on Russian soil. This has been pointed out at 
the highest level between President Clinton and President Yeltsin. In 
their Helsinki summit statement in March of 1997, they emphasized--and 
these are their words-- ``the importance of further reductions in 
strategic offensive arms'' and they recognized explicitly, in their 
words, ``the significance of the ABM Treaty for those objectives.''
  Secretary Cohen, has recognized and stated the importance of that 
treaty between ourselves and Russia in terms of accomplishing these 
nuclear arms reduction objectives.
  Sandy Berger, in a letter which he has addressed to us, has 
recognized and stated the importance of that treaty between ourselves 
and Russia in terms of reducing nuclear arms and the threat of 
proliferation to this country.
  In his letter he said:

       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. . . .

  And then he went on to say:

       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, 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.

  What this amendment before us does is simply acknowledge the policy 
of the United States to seek continued negotiated reductions in Russian 
nuclear forces. That is all that it says. In that sense it is very 
straightforward, very direct. But it also, to me at least, and I think 
to many other Members of this body, acknowledges that we have a number 
of policy goals that we should be achieving.
  One is the deployment of an effective national missile defense system 
to meet a threat--I believe that is a legitimate policy goal that 
Senator Cochran's bill sets forth--a policy to deploy a cost-effective, 
operationally effective national missile defense to meet a threat. We 
do not have that system yet. It is being developed as quickly as we 
possibly can.
  Hopefully, someday we will have a cost-effective, operationally 
effective national missile defense system. And hopefully, we can take 
that step after negotiating modifications with the Russians to that 
treaty, so that we can proceed consistent with a cooperative 
relationship with the Russians and not in a confrontational way. If we 
cannot do it cooperatively and with an amendment to that treaty, and if 
our security interests indicate that we should do it because we have 
something operationally effective and cost effective, and the threat is 
there, then we should do it anyway.
  But what the Landrieu language does is state a very important policy 
objective that I hope all of us share: to seek continued negotiated 
reductions in Russian nuclear forces. It is that straightforward. It is 
that important. I commend the Senator from Louisiana for framing an 
amendment in a way which hopefully will attract broad bipartisan 
support but at the same time makes a very important addition to this 
bill by setting forth, if this is adopted, two important policies of 
this Government.
  Ms. LANDRIEU addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I thank our ranking member, the Senator from Michigan, 
for his good work in this area. He is a national leader and has been 
outspoken on this issue. His guidance and counsel have been very 
important as we have worked through this very important piece of 
legislation. I thank him.
  I also thank the Senator from Mississippi for his graciousness and 
being open to working out this bill--although simple, it is quite 
important and quite historic--and to make sure it is done in the right 
and appropriate way.
  I am convinced, Mr. President, that if this amendment I have offered, 
on behalf of myself, Senator Levin, and some of my colleagues here and 
on the other side of the aisle, is adopted, it will enable us to vote 
in good faith and in good conscience for this bill, which I have said 
earlier I support but have some hesitation.
  This amendment will make sure it is the policy that we have a 
national missile defense system capable to deploy, as soon as 
technologically possible, an effective system and one that also states, 
with this amendment, that while we are developing this we will continue 
to negotiate reductions in Russian nuclear forces. It is the policy, a 
joint policy. It makes this bill stronger and better. And it enables us 
to pass this bill that recognizes the threat is real, that the world 
has changed significantly.
  The record is replete, as I have mentioned earlier in my remarks, 
with hostile neighbors to the United States, with the development of 
these weapons that could, in fact, now threaten parts of our homeland--
Hawaii, for instance, which is why the distinguished Senators from 
Hawaii are supporting this

[[Page S2723]]

bill. And it is clear to many of us now that this threat is more real 
than ever before, so the need for this bill is important.

  I think this amendment helps to strengthen the bill. It most 
certainly will enable several of us on this side of the aisle to vote 
for this bill and to pass it with bipartisan support and, I believe, 
with the administration's support.
  I thank my distinguished ranking member. I thank the author and 
sponsor of this bill, and I yield back the remaining time I have.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to give consideration to this amendment 
which will make a good bill even better.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I am pleased to support the amendment of 
the able Senator from Louisiana (Ms. Landrieu) because I interpret that 
it refers to the policy of pursuing Russian ratification of the START 
II Treaty. Any proposed reduction below the START II level should, of 
course, be considered on its specific merits.
  I commend Senator Landrieu for offering the amendment consistent with 
my interpretation stated above.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, as I indicated earlier, I support the 
amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from Louisiana and thank 
her for her contribution to strengthening the legislation. Like the 
statement of policy already contained in S. 257, this is a 
straightforward statement of an important national security goal.
  The high levels of strategic forces deployed during the cold war are 
no longer necessary in today's vastly changed strategic environment. 
Already our two countries have reduced levels significantly through 
START I and will reduce them further under START II. Both policies 
articulated here, our determination to deploy a missile defense against 
limited threats and our continued interest in further offensive 
reductions, are in our interests. Of course, inclusion of both in this 
bill does not imply that one is contingent upon the other, but that is 
completely consistent with what we have been saying all along--that 
defensive and offensive reductions are not incompatible. I urge all 
Senators to support the amendment.
  I also urge Senators, if they have other amendments, to let us know 
about them. I am hoping that we can get an agreement that would 
identify any other amendments and that we can have a time limit agreed 
upon with respect to those amendments. If there are no other 
amendments, it would be our expectation that we could go to third 
reading within a short period of time. Senators communicating that to 
the managers or their intentions to the managers would be appreciated 
very much so we could go forward with the expeditious handling and 
conclusion of the bill.
  I yield back whatever time remains, and I ask for the yeas and nays 
on the amendment of the Senator from Louisiana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, a brief 10 seconds. As I indicated earlier, 
I have been informed by the President's National Security Adviser that 
if this amendment is adopted, the recommendation to the President to 
veto this bill will be withdrawn. I think that is a very significant 
development and I think folks may want to consider that as part of the 
overall debate on this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment. 
The yeas and nays have been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. 
Feinstein) is absent because of illness.
  The result was announced--yeas 99, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 50 Leg.]

                                YEAS--99

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Allard
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Bryan
     Bunning
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cleland
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     Crapo
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Edwards
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Fitzgerald
     Frist
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Reed
     Reid
     Robb
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Feinstein
       
  The amendment (No. 72) was agreed to.
  Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator from 
Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, we understand that it is possible to 
reach an agreement on the identity of amendments that are yet to be 
offered to the bill. I will, on behalf of the leader, propound a 
unanimous consent request regarding the amendments that would be in 
order to the bill and a time agreement on each, in the hope that we can 
complete action on this bill tomorrow and have final passage. If we do 
get the agreement, we would then proceed to hear any further statements 
that Senators might have on the bill tonight. Senator Ashcroft, I know, 
is here and available to speak on the bill, but there would be no 
further votes on amendments tonight.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
following amendments be the only amendments remaining in order, that 
they be subject to first- and second-degree amendments where 
applicable, and they must be relevant to the first-degree they propose 
to amend.
  I further ask that all first-degree amendments be limited to 1 hour, 
equally divided in the usual form for debate, and any second-degree 
amendments limited to 30 minutes in the usual form.
  I further ask that following the disposition of the listed 
amendments, the bill be immediately advanced to third reading and 
passage occur, all without intervening action or debate, and that no 
motions be in order other than motions to table.

  The list is as follows: a Bingaman amendment on operational success 
of system; Conrad amendment, space-based missile defense; Dorgan 
amendment on NMD deployment; a second Dorgan amendment on NMD 
deployment; Harkin amendment on study on relevant risks, and a second 
amendment on condition on relevant; Kerry amendment, relevant; a Levin 
amendment, relevant; a Robb amendment, relevant; and a Wellstone 
amendment, relevant.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, we have no objection to that, and I believe 
that all of the Senators on this side of the aisle now are included. I 
wanted to make sure that they all understand there is, in addition to 
this list, a time agreement here, as the Senator from Mississippi has 
indicated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Chair hears none, and 
it is so ordered.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, in light of this agreement limiting 
amendments, there will be no further votes this evening, and I thank 
all colleagues for their cooperation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Stephanie 
Sharp of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor during the 
pendency of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of S. 
257, the

[[Page S2724]]

National Missile Defense Act of 1999. I commend the two principal 
sponsors of the bill, Senator Cochran and Senator Inouye, for their 
commitment to this legislation and for their dedication to the national 
security of our country.
  The fact that we are having a debate on this bill at all, in the 
sense of trying to overcome opposition to this legislation, is somewhat 
troubling to me. The foreign missile threat has come to our very door 
in the last 6 years, and yet the administration and many of my 
Democratic colleagues continue to oppose this legislation, which simply 
says we will defend the American people as soon as we can.
  A recent poll shows that more than 85 percent of Americans favor the 
deployment of a missile defense system and that three out of every four 
Americans were surprised to learn that the United States cannot destroy 
an incoming ballistic missile. The American people would be even more 
surprised to learn that they remain defenseless today, not so much due 
to the cost or technological hurdles of missile defense as to a lack of 
political leadership here in Washington.
  The administration's record on missile defense has been plagued with 
the same inconsistency and lack of foresight that is characteristic of 
our more general foreign policy over the last 6 years. In each of the 
critical areas that we are facing today in deploying a missile defense 
system--modifications of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, program 
management and budgeting, and the assessment of the missile threat--the 
administration is having to reverse astoundingly shortsighted policies 
adopted only a few years ago.
  Secretary Albright has encountered firm resistance from Russia in 
modifying the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but Russia eagerly 
discussed possible modifications to the treaty in the Ross-Mamedov 
talks in 1992. To Russia's great surprise, one of the first things 
President Clinton did after coming to office was suspend this dialogue 
on modifying the ABM Treaty. Now, 6 years later, with a greatly altered 
diplomatic landscape, the window of opportunity for active Russian 
cooperation on modifying the treaty may be permanently closed. 
Regardless of one's views on the ABM Treaty, squandering opportunities 
such as the Ross-Mamedov dialogue is serious negligence.
  The lack of foresight in program management and budgeting for missile 
defense also has undermined the development and deployment of an 
effective system. When President Clinton entered office in 1993, 
promising missile defense initiatives fostered under the Bush 
administration were limited or curtailed. Ambassador Hank Cooper, 
President Bush's Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative 
Organization, had a procurement program in place in 1992 for the first 
site of a ground-based missile defense system which potentially could 
have been deployed by the year 2000. This effort was suspended, and the 
budget for the national missile defense system was slashed by an 
astounding 71 percent in the first year of the Clinton administration.
  Here is a chart which shows our commitment to missile defense. During 
the Reagan and Bush years, we saw a consistent and strong commitment to 
missile defense. In the years when the budgeting was under the control 
of this administration, we saw an astounding drop, a 71-percent drop in 
the funding to develop a national missile defense system.
  Now, after 4 years of undermining the National Missile Defense 
Program, the administration is rushing to increase the funding levels 
because the threat can no longer be ignored or denied.
  The administration has used faulty intelligence estimates of the 
foreign missile threat to justify a missile defense policy of delay and 
obfuscation. Based in part on a National Intelligence Estimate in 1995 
that said the Continental United States would not face a new ballistic 
missile threat until 2010, the President vetoed the FY 1996 defense 
authorization bill because of language which called for the deployment 
of a missile defense system by the year 2003.
  Now, 3 years after the President's veto, with North Korea and Iran 
developing ballistic missiles to strike the United States, with China 
modernizing its nuclear weapons, possibly with U.S. technology, and 
with the threat of accidental missile launch from Russia rising, 2003 
is, if anything, too late to deploy a national missile defense system.
  The administration has relied on faulty intelligence to our 
collective peril. North Korea's test of the Taepo Dong 1 in August of 
1998 was the last nail in the coffin of the National Intelligence 
Estimate and a strong indictment of the administration's complacency in 
preparing for an imminent foreign missile threat. But the Taepo Dong 
test was a result of proliferation trends that have been detectable and 
discernible for over a decade.
  We could see the threat coming as proliferation accelerated in the 
1980s. We saw the threat arrive when the largest single loss of life of 
U.S. soldiers in the Gulf War occurred when an Iraqi ballistic missile 
killed 28 of our soldiers and wounded 89 more on February 25, 1991.
  The threat was apparent by 1991, at the latest, and that is why the 
Senate passed the National Missile Defense Act that year as part of the 
Defense Authorization bill. The National Missile Defense Act was a 
strong piece of legislation calling for modifications to the 
Antiballistic Missile Treaty and calling for deployment of an effective 
missile defense system by a date certain, that date to be 1996.
  Yet now, 8 years after passage of the National Missile Defense Act, 8 
years in which two terrorist governments, Iran and North Korea, have 
come to the threshold of acquiring ICBM capability, this administration 
and many of my Democratic colleagues continue to oppose legislation 
which simply states that it is United States policy to defend the 
American people as soon as we can.
  Winston Churchill once said, ``Occasionally you must take the enemy 
into consideration.'' This administration would be well advised to heed 
Mr. Churchill's words and to grasp the seriousness of the multiple 
missile threats posed to the United States.
  At least 25 countries have or are pursuing weapons of mass 
destruction programs that could threaten not only their neighbors but 
the stability of this globe, and nearly all of those countries also 
have ballistic missiles of one kind or another. The technology is out 
there and is being proliferated at an alarming rate.
  In spite of these rising missile threats to the United States, the 
administration continues to speak of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty 
as the cornerstone of strategic stability. Although the legal status of 
the treaty is in doubt after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the 
accord continues to guide administration policies that have undermined 
the entire missile defense effort.
  As William Graham, former science adviser to President Reagan, stated 
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

       Not only has the ABM Treaty prohibited the deployment of 
     national missile defenses, it has led to the prohibition of 
     funding for the research and development on systems which 
     might, if deployed, conflict with the ABM Treaty. Moreover, 
     it has made Defense Department program managers unwilling 
     even to propose missile defense systems and programs that 
     might. . .be viewed as conflicting with the largely ambiguous 
     details of the ABM Treaty. . . .

  Mr. Graham's point is simply this: that the ABM Treaty has kept 
people in the administration from even exploring alternatives that 
might well defend the people of this country.
  This administration's commitment to the ABM Treaty has precluded our 
best space-based options for national missile defense and limited the 
more advanced capabilities of our theater missile defense programs.
  A host of critical missile defense initiatives under the Bush 
administration were derailed or downsized in 1993. Brilliant Eyes, now 
known as SBIRS Low, a satellite program to provide essential tracking 
capabilities for national missile defense, has seen its deployment 
delayed by as much as a decade.
  Brilliant Pebbles, a system of hit-to-kill vehicles in low Earth 
orbit and still potentially the best national missile defense option, 
was canceled as a result of this administration's policies.
  A space-based national missile defense system could best defend the 
American people. So why isn't it being pursued? Even President 
Clinton's current Director of the Ballistic Missile

[[Page S2725]]

Defense Organization, General Lester Lyles, stated before the Armed 
Services Committee last month:

       I think all of us recognize that the optimum way to do 
     missile defense, particularly in a robust manner in the 
     future, is from space.

  This is President Clinton's Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense 
Organization.
  Space-based national missile defense systems have been shelved for 
one simple reason: this administration's commitment to the outdated and 
dangerous Antiballistic Missile Treaty.
  If the administration is so concerned about the cost of missile 
defense, why is it expending precious missile defense dollars on the 
least effective systems, rather than the most effective ones 
acknowledged by the administration's own Director of the Ballistic 
Missile Defense Organization?
  If the administration is so concerned about deploying a 
technologically sound missile defense system, why is a ground-based 
system that has the highest technological challenges the 
administration's only near-term missile defense initiative? As 
Ambassador Cooper testified before the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee in September 1996, ground-based systems are the most 
expensive, least effective defense that will take the longest to build. 
The administration has cut the national missile defense budget and 
diverted those scarce funds into the least effective national missile 
defense programs.
  All of this, because the administration refuses to relinquish its 
tight grip on the ABM Treaty.
  Finally, the ABM Treaty is undermining the robustness of theater 
missile defense programs. For example, limiting the use of additional 
off-site radars for theater missile defense programs out of concerns 
for the ABM Treaty increases the cost of missile defense exponentially. 
Bill Graham, former science adviser to Presidents Reagan and Bush, 
states:

       . . .the area that a surface-based interceptor system can 
     defend using only its. . .radar is one-tenth the area that 
     the same interceptor can defend using space-based sensing. 
     Therefore, to defend the same area without space-based 
     sensing, 10 times as many missile/radar systems would have to 
     be deployed at a cost that would be approximately 10 times as 
     much. . ..

  So this persistent, dogged determination to honor an outdated treaty, 
the ABM Treaty, increases the cost of our theater missile defense 
systems ten-fold, just to cover the same territory.
  In almost every theater missile defense program we have, serious 
constraints have been imposed to try to limit the ICBM intercept 
capability of regional theater missile defense systems. Software and 
radar of the Navy Aegis cruisers have been constrained to limit their 
ability to track ballistic missiles. Software for THAAD has been 
constrained to limit its intercept capability. The ballistic missile 
intercept capability of the Patriot system was restrained until the 
urgency of the gulf war.
  Ambassador Cooper stated before the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee:

       . . .the 28 military personnel killed when an Iraqi Scud 
     hit their barracks during the Gulf War might have been spared 
     if Patriot had not been dumbed-down and delayed because of 
     ABM Treaty concerns.

  It seems like the loss of life and the injury to dozens and dozens of 
others in that particular incident should have sounded a wakeup call 
sufficiently urgent to at least startle this administration into 
pursuing a course of action which would not be guided by an unwarranted 
commitment to the ABM Treaty.
  In spite of the restrictions the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty 
imposes on U.S. missile defense efforts, the administration continues 
to view the accord as the cornerstone of strategic stability and 
essential for future arms control efforts. Although the past 27 years 
have demonstrated that the treaty probably accelerated the arms race 
rather than curtailed it, this administration remains committed to the 
idea that reductions in nuclear weapons cannot occur unless the 
American people are completely vulnerable to missile attack.
  I want to say that again. This administration remains committed to 
the idea that reductions in nuclear weapons cannot occur unless the 
American people are completely vulnerable to missile attack. My view is 
that we deter aggression through strength, not through increasing our 
own vulnerability. To continue to risk American lives for thoroughly 
invalidated arms control policies is a serious abnegation of our duty 
to protect and defend the United States.
  Administration officials seem mortified by the prospect that Russia 
will reject the START II treaty if the United States builds an 
effective missile defense. The administration seems to have forgotten 
however that the size of Russia's nuclear stockpile will continue to 
decline with or without another arms control agreement. The size of 
Russia's nuclear arsenal is in freefall thanks in large part to one 
American President who returned America to the tried and true principle 
that strength deters aggression.
  Ronald Reagan knew that ``Nations do not mistrust each other because 
they are armed; they are armed because they mistrust each other.'' He 
confronted and deterred aggression, and although this administration 
would like the forget it, Ronald Reagan used ballistic missile defense 
to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union.
  This particular graph shows the level of nuclear warheads maintained 
by the United States and the Soviet Union, later Russia, over the last 
several decades. The ABM Treaty was negotiated in 1972, and shortly 
after the ABM Treaty came into force, we see the levels of Soviet 
nuclear warheads begin to increase dramatically. This graph illustrates 
that America's weaknesses under the ABM Treaty was one factor behind 
the Soviet arms buildup, while Reagan's resolve to confront Soviet 
aggression, in part through the Strategic Defense Initiative--hastened 
the collapse of the Soviet Union. President Reagan used missile defense 
to deter Soviet aggression, and the dissolution of the Soviet empire 
led to the reductions in arms that always proved elusive to advocates 
of appeasement.
  Reagan's success in confronting and undermining Soviet tyranny was 
one of the greatest contributions to freedom in modern history. As part 
of that broader policy, Reagan's commitment to missile defense is at 
once a telling indictment on the failed policies of the more recent 
past and a shining example of the courage needed to chart a course for 
the revitalized defense of the American people.
  The legislation we are considering today simply says this: We will 
defend the American people against missile attack as soon as possible. 
How could there be opposition to this bill when every conflict we have 
fought in the past has proven that weakness and vulnerability invite 
aggression? We do not get a reduction in our vulnerability by remaining 
vulnerable. We get a reduction in our vulnerability by showing 
strength.
  How could there be opposition to this bill when missiles from North 
Korea and Iran pose an imminent threat to the United States? How can 
there be opposition to this bill when China points the majority of its 
nuclear weapons at the United States and has implicitly threatened Los 
Angeles if American forces defend Taiwan?

  Mr. President, the sad truth is that the United States is completely 
defenseless against a ballistic missile strike. George Washington once 
said, ``If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. . 
.'' Why are North Korea and Iran pursuing advanced missile technology 
at breakneck speed? These terrorist governments are seeking the tools 
of aggression because they know that we cannot repel their attacks.
  Our ambivalence and complacency in providing an effective missile 
defense for American citizens and for American interests is an 
unconscionable act of negligence. We should not shrink from or shirk 
the burden of eternal vigilance in the defense of freedom because the 
cost of missile defense is high or the technology is complicated or 
there will be difficulties to overcome in the development of a system.
  As Franklin Roosevelt said in September 1941, ``Let us not ask 
ourselves whether the Americas should begin to defend themselves after 
the first attack, or the fifth attack, or the tenth attack, or the 
twentieth attack. The time for active defense is now.''
  Mr. President, those words ring as true today as they did before 
World War II and reflect the commitment of the American people to 
safeguard the blessings of liberty. The defeatist policies which would 
leave America vulnerable to nuclear, chemical or biological

[[Page S2726]]

warheads have been followed for too long, to the great detriment of our 
country. We must return to the sound policies of an active defense 
system before a missile strike on U.S. soil eclipses the catastrophe of 
Pearl Harbor. We do not have another 6 years to waste, Mr. President. I 
applaud Senator Cochran and Senator Inouye for their leadership on 
ballistic missile defense and I urge my colleagues in the Senate to 
pass this legislation.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I stand today in support of a very simple 
yet essential piece of legislation, the National Missile Defense Act of 
1999. The bill states:

       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 that attack is accidental, unauthorized, or 
     deliberate.

That is all the language does. Mr. President, this bill may concern 
rocket science but it does not take a rocket scientist to realize the 
inherent necessity of this legislation for the safety of this country.
  Currently, our nation is defenseless against the threat of ballistic 
missile attack. Some have shrugged their shoulders and said, ``So what, 
America won the cold war without a missile defense. The Soviet Union 
never attacked us and no one else will either.'' Yet the fact that the 
United States won the cold war is the very reason that America faces a 
new and very real missile threat today.
  The world is not as simple in 1999 as it was during the cold war. 
Today, a much less stable Russia still maintains an awesome nuclear 
arsenal. Communist China is developing into a superpower with interests 
which are frequently adverse to our own. That development includes a 
force of ballistic missiles capable of striking the continental United 
States. And as we have seen in recent weeks, China is persistent in its 
efforts to acquire the technology necessary to make its missiles more 
accurate and deadly.
  Equally disturbing, today's threat includes the use of ballistic 
missiles by rogue nations and terrorist groups. The disintegration of 
the Soviet Union has exacerbated the proliferation of missile 
technology and lethal payloads. Iran and North Korea are developing and 
testing longer range missiles. Both countries are potential adversaries 
in regions vital to the national interest of the United States. Both 
countries have ties to international terrorist groups. With 
proliferation rampant, these two countries will surely not be the last 
to acquire long range missile technology. The failure to deploy an 
effective national missile defense system could subject this nation to 
diplomatic blackmail from any rogue state or terrorist group that can 
purchase or steal ballistic missile technology.
  Some have argued, as does the administration, that this bill will 
disrupt ongoing negotiations with Russia concerning the Anti-Ballistic 
Missile Treaty. Mr. President, if that is the case, then so be it. The 
ABM Treaty was signed with the Soviet Union. That state no longer 
exists and as such the treaty should be declared void. A number of 
constitutional scholars have adopted this view. Nevertheless, if it is 
the policy of this administration to honor the treaty, that policy 
should not be permitted to impede the deployment of a missile defense 
system. The administration can negotiate enough flexibility into the 
treaty to permit a viable national missile defense.
  Mr. President, the bill we are considering states that this nation 
will deploy a system when it is technologically feasible. That 
technology is being developed as we speak and is nearly at hand. 
However, I would urge my colleagues in the months and years ahead to 
continue investment in missile defense support technology. It is an 
important yet often overlooked investment. Under funding support 
technology today will jeopardize the future effectiveness of any 
missile defense system. Rapid changes in technology and potential 
development of missile defense countermeasures by our adversaries 
require that this nation maintain its technological superiority. That 
superiority does not come without a price. However the cost of losing 
our technological edge is one I hope this body never has to consider.
  Mr. President, some well intentioned opponents of this bill have 
stated that treaties and superior intelligence gathering will protect 
us from a future ballistic missile attack. This is nothing more than a 
gamble with the lives of the American people. Treaties have been broken 
throughout history. Intelligence is effective only when properly 
interpreted and disseminated. Ask the men of the U.S.S. Arizona at the 
bottom of Pearl Harbor. Intelligence collection did them little good. 
Mr. President, I am not willing to gamble with the lives of the 
American people. I continue to strongly support the National Missile 
Defense Act of 1999 and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I rise today to offer my support for S. 
257, the National Missile Defense Act currently pending before the 
Senate. I do so with the firm belief that passage of this legislation 
will help keep the American people safe. Given the seriousness of the 
threat posed by ballistic missiles, it is our duty to act to confront 
this threat through the development of a national missile defense 
system.
  I believe some of the controversy surrounding this piece of 
legislation comes from the misperception of what national missile 
defense really is. Mr. President, we are not proposing to build a star 
wars-style system. We are not proposing to build a system designed to 
counter a massive nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. That plan was 
unworkable in the 1980s and is unnecessary today. Instead, the missile 
defense system we are talking about today is a limited system, designed 
to protect the United States from rogue-state ballistic missile 
launches and accidental launches--precisely the kind of threats that 
will not be countered by our traditional reliance on deterrence.
  The truth is, Mr. President, we do not currently possess the ability 
to protect the American people from these threats. But we should. The 
legislation we are debating today would take the first step toward 
protecting the United States by declaring it to be the official policy 
of the United States to deploy a national missile defense system. The 
bill before us does not identify a particular system for deployment It 
does not authorize or appropriate a single dollar. These are decisions 
that will be left up to this and future Congresses. Instead, the 
National Missile Defense Act simply states that the United States 
should deploy a missile defense system to protect the American people.
  Mr. President, perhaps the only situation worse than not having an 
adequate missile defense system to protect the American people, is 
deploying a system that has not been proven feasible. I am pleased with 
the recent announcement by the Clinton administration that they plan to 
increase spending on missile defense research by $6 billion over the 
next five years. I applaud the administration's decision to fund 
missile defense in the fiscal year 2000 Defense budget so that a 
decision to deploy a missile defense in 2005 could be made as early as 
June of next year. We should all take note of the outstanding 
scientific and engineering efforts which have been ongoing for years in 
the Defense Department to get us to this point. This administration 
deserves credit for vigorously attacking the very daunting set of 
scientific and engineering challenges by which a bullet can strike 
another bullet. At the same time, development of a system will only 
come through further research and development and a rigorous testing 
regime.
  Many opponents of this legislation have asked why should we take this 
step now? It's true, the threat of ballistic missiles is not a new one. 
The American people have lived for decades under this threat. In fact, 
during the cold war, the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear-tipped 
ballistic missiles pointed, ready to shoot at American cities. What has 
changed is the source of the ballistic missile threat. During the cold 
war, and even today, we used the power of deterrence to protect 
ourselves. Nations like Russia and China know that an attack on America 
would be met with an immediate and overwhelming response by United 
States forces. They were and still are deterred by a calculation of 
their own self-interest. However, the underlying assumption of 
deterrence is rational behavior by the other side. None of the

[[Page S2727]]

emerging threats--whether they be terrorist states or rouge or 
desperate individuals--can be counted on to respond rationally to the 
threat of retaliation.

  In the past, I have voted against cloture on the motion to proceed to 
this bill. However, two distinct events over the last few months have 
highlighted the changed nature of the threat and have led me to support 
this legislation. First, the release of the Rumsfeld Commission Report 
last July stated that the newer ballistic missile threats are 
developing from countries like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The report 
went on to state that these nations could be able to acquire the 
capability to inflict major destruction on the United States within 
about 5 years of a decision to acquire ballistic missiles. Furthermore, 
the Rumsfeld Report warmed that these emerging threats had more mature 
capabilities than previous assessments has thought possible.
  Then, almost on cue, North Korea tested the Taepo Dong I missile on 
August 31, 1998. The details of this test have been widely reported in 
the media. But the real lesson of this missile test was that our 
intelligence community was surprised by the North Koreans' ability to 
launch a three-stage missile. We saw that North Korea may have the 
ability to hit parts of the United States with a missile with a small 
payload. We also know that the North Koreans continue to work on the 
Taepo Dong II; an intercontinental missile with the capability of 
reaching the United States mainland. In addition, North Korea's nuclear 
capability and nuclear ambitions turn these missile developments into a 
clear strategic warning.
  Mr. President, aside from demonstrating the validity of the 
conclusions of the Rumsfeld Report, the North Korean missile test put a 
face on the emerging ballistic missile threat. There may not be a more 
unpredictable regime on earth than that of Kim Jong II. A government 
which continues to pour resources into weapons of mass destruction 
while its people undergo a famine is beyond our understanding. But I 
have no doubt of North Korea's willingness to use ballistic missiles--
in an all-out desperate act of terror--against United States cities. 
Traditional threats of massive retaliation are unlikely to deter a man 
as unstable as Kim Jong II. They will not likely deter the Iranian or 
Libyan governments or other future rogue states. Instead, we must 
protect our nation through a limited missile defense. Time remains for 
us to counter this threat. But we must act now.
  Mr. President, opponents of this legislation have valid concerns 
about how national missile defense will affect our relationship with 
Russia. I share these concerns. Our long-term global interests are best 
secured by maintaining a cooperative relationship with Russia. While a 
wide variety of Russian political leaders have expressed their 
opposition to United States national missile defense, I do not believe 
Russian opposition is insurmountable.
  Just as our allies like Britain and France realize United States 
national missile defense is not directed against them, the Russians can 
be convinced the threats we seek to counter through missile defense 
come from unauthorized and rouge-nation launches. Furthermore, these 
are threats--given their proximity to countries like Iraq, Iran, and 
North Kora--Russia must also confront. Although Russia has deployed an 
ABM system around Moscow, there is nothing particular about Russia that 
will make it impervious to these threats. Mr. President, in their 
vulnerability I see a chance to engage Russia; to work cooperatively to 
confront the mutual threat of ballistic missile proliferation. By 
jointly developing national missile defense with Russia, we will make 
our citizens safer and improve our bilateral relationship. Similarly, 
the problems presented by the ABM Treaty may in fact present 
opportunities. There is no reason why we can't work with Russia to 
adapt the ABM Treaty to reflect the changes that have occurred in the 
world since the treaty was signed in 1972. At that time, we could not 
anticipate the proliferation of ballistic missile technology we face 
today. By changing the treaty to allow each side to develop a limited 
missile defense system to protect from unauthorized or rogue launches, 
we can address the threat, maintain the treaty, and not upset the 
strategic balance ABM sought to create.

  Mr. President, I see further opportunity to reduce the threat of 
ballistic missiles and make significant strides in our relationship 
with Russia. In the past, and again today, I call on the President to 
seize this opportunity to make a bold gesture to reduce the danger 
posed by United States and Russian strategic nuclear weapons. More than 
6 years after the end of the cold war, both the United States and 
Russia maintain thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. My 
fear, Mr. President, is our maintenance of more weapons than we need to 
defend our interests is prompting Russia to keep more weapons than she 
is able to control.
  I have proposed that the President, acting in his capacity as 
Commander in Chief, order the immediate elimination of U.S. strategic 
nuclear forces in excess of proposed START III levels. Such a bold 
gesture would give the Russians the security to act reciprocally. 
Russia not only wants to follow our lead in such reductions, it must. 
Russia's own Defense Minister recently said, publicly, that Russia is 
thinking of its long-term nuclear arsenal in terms of hundreds, not 
thousands. To help Russia accomplish these reductions, Congress must be 
prepared to provide funding through the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat 
Reduction Program. We should spend whatever is necessary to help Russia 
dismantle and secure its nuclear arsenal. The best form of missile 
defense is helping Russia destroy its missiles.
  Mr. President, my support for the bill before you comes from my 
belief that its passage will make Americans safer. The time to prepare 
for the emerging threat of ballistic missiles is today. The legislation 
before us sets us on the path to confront these threats in a real and 
manageable way. I strongly encourage my colleagues support for this 
legislation and I yield the floor.
  Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.

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