[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 117 (Friday, September 10, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10720-S10723]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ORDER OF BUSINESS

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now

[[Page S10721]]

proceed to a period for morning business, with Senators permitted to 
speak for up to 10 minutes each.
  Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, and I shall not object, 
but I would like to make a couple of inquiries of the majority leader.
  I ask the majority leader about the issue of scheduling the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty for debate in the Senate. While I have 
asked that, let me make an observation. The majority leader just 
described the difficulties the leadership has, both the majority leader 
and the minority leader, in scheduling business before the Senate. I 
respect that. I do not think he is crying wolf. It is a difficult 
problem.
  I once saw a juggler juggle a potato chip, a bowling ball, and a 
chain saw that was running. It occurred to me that one was light, one 
was heavy, and one was dangerous. That is probably the kind of juggling 
act Senator Lott and Senator Daschle are required to do weekly and 
monthly.
  The distinction of understanding what is light and heavy and what is 
dangerous, for that matter, is a very important distinction. Let me 
describe something I think is very heavy in terms of a public issue and 
public policy. That is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty signed by 152 
countries and sent to this Senate 718 days ago without one hearing.
  I believe so strongly--and I know the Senator from Mississippi knows 
I spoke earlier this week on the floor about it --that we have a 
responsibility to provide leadership in the world on the issue of 
nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. This treaty is a baby step in that 
direction.
  So far, we have not been able to get even 1 day of hearings on this 
treaty. I believe very strongly that this is one of those heavy public 
policy issues which is important for our country and important for the 
world. I want very much to have some assurance that we are going to 
have an opportunity to debate and vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty at some point.
  I inquire of the majority leader where we are with respect to that 
treaty, why we have not been able to have hearings, and when we might 
expect some action on the floor of the Senate with respect to the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, first of all, I emphasize, obviously this is 
a very important issue. I think it is an extremely dangerous issue in a 
dangerous time. We see now uncertainty with regard to Russia and their 
economic condition and what is happening with loans that have been made 
to them I guess through the IMF. We are concerned about their 
continuing nuclear capability. So it is an uncertain time. They have 
not ratified SALT II in the Duma of Russia.  And we have not determined 
what we are going to do about revisiting the ABM Treaty.

  I talked to the President's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, 
this past week about that event. I believe very strongly we are going 
to have to take another look at the ABM Treaty.
  Then, in addition to that, you have the very dangerous situation with 
Iraq. In today's newspaper, we have an indication that Iran may have 
the capability to deliver nuclear weapons beyond what most people are 
aware. And there is the ``scary,'' I believe is the way it was 
described in the newspaper today, situation with regard to North Korea.
  The countries that have signed that treaty, for the most part, are 
countries that do not have nuclear capability, so they are perfectly 
happy to sign it. But when you look at Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, 
Pakistan, and India, the world is still very dangerous.
  The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee has indicated very 
strongly there are a number of treaties that are necessarily tied 
together; what is going to be the situation with regard to the ABM 
Treaty; what is the situation with regard to Kyoto, the global warming 
issue; and the third leg of this stool is the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty.
  I think the chairman has indicated he is willing to get into these 
three areas. He will be taking a look at hearings. I have encouraged 
him to do so, but I think everybody needs to understand that it would 
involve all three of these issues. And they are going to be dealt with.
  I commend for the reading of the Senate today's editorial page 
article by Charles Krauthammer. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of 
that article be printed in the Congressional Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Washington Post, September 10, 1999]

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

                       A Test Ban That Disarms Us

       When it comes to nuclear testing, nations will act in their 
     perceived self-interest.
       Some debates just never go away. The Clinton administration 
     is back again pressing Congress for passage of the 
     Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). This is part of a 
     final-legacy push that includes a Middle East peace for just-
     in-time delivery by September 2000.
       The argument for the test ban is that it will prevent 
     nuclear proliferation. If countries cannot test nukes, they 
     will not build them because they won't know if they work. 
     Ratifying the CTBT is supposed to close the testing option 
     for would-be nuclear powers.
       We sign. They desist. How exactly does this work?
       As a Washington Post editorial explains, one of the ways to 
     ``induce would-be proliferators to get off the nuclear 
     track'' is ``if the nuclear powers showed themselves ready to 
     accept some increasing part of the discipline they are 
     calling on non-nuclear others to accept.'' The power of 
     example of the greatest nuclear country is expected to induce 
     other countries to follow suit.
       History has not been kind to this argument. The most 
     dramatic counterexamples, of course, are rogue states such as 
     North Korea, Iraq and Iran. They don't sign treaties and, 
     even when they do, they set out to break them clandestinely 
     from the first day. Moral suasion does not sway them.
       More interesting is the case of friendly countries such as 
     India and Pakistan. They are exactly the kind of countries 
     whose nuclear ambitions the American example of restraint is 
     supposed to mollify.
       Well, then. The United States has not exploded a nuclear 
     bomb either above or below ground since 1992. In 1993, 
     President Clinton made it official by declaring a total 
     moratorium on U.S. testing. Then last year, India and 
     Pakistan went ahead and exploded a series of nuclear bombs. 
     So much for moral suasion. Why did they do it? Because of 
     this obvious, if inconvenient, truth: Nuclear weapons are the 
     supreme military asset. Not that they necessarily will be 
     used in warfare. But their very possession transforms the 
     geopolitical status of the possessor. The possessor acquires 
     not just aggressive power but, even more important, a 
     deterrent capacity as well.
       Ask yourself: Would we have launched the Persian Gulf War 
     if Iraq had been bristling with nukes?
       This truth is easy for Americans to forget because we have 
     so much conventional strength that our nuclear forces appear 
     superfluous, even vestigial. Lesser countries, however, 
     recognize the political and diplomatic power conveyed by 
     nuclear weapons.
       They want the nuclear option. For good reason. And they 
     will not forgo it because they are moved by the moral example 
     of the United States. Nations follow their interests, not 
     norms.
       Okay, say the test ban advocates. If not swayed by American 
     example, they will be swayed by the penalties for breaking an 
     international norm.
       What penalties? China exploded test after test until it had 
     satisfied itself that its arsenal was in good shape, then 
     quit in 1996. India and Pakistan broke both the norm on 
     nuclear testing and nonproliferation. North Korea openly 
     flouted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
       Were any of these countries sanctioned? North Korea was 
     actually rewarded with enormous diplomatic and financial 
     inducements--including billions of dollars in fuel and food 
     aid--to act nice. India and Pakistan got slapped on the wrist 
     for a couple of months.
       That's it. Why? Because these countries are either too 
     important (India) or too scary (North Korea). Despite our 
     pretensions, for America too, interests trump norms.
       Whether the United States signs a ban on nuclear testing 
     will not affect the course of proliferation. But it will 
     affect the nuclear status of the United States.
       In the absence of testing, the American nuclear arsenal, 
     the most sophisticated on the globe and thus the most in need 
     of testing to ensure its safety and reliability, will degrade 
     over time. As its reliability declines, it become unusable. 
     For the United States, the unintended effect of a test ban is 
     gradual disarmament.
       Well, maybe not so unintended. For the more extreme 
     advocates of the test ban, nonproliferation is the ostensible 
     argument, but disarmament is the real objective. The Ban the 
     Bomb and Nuclear Freeze movements have been discredited by 
     history, but their adherents have found a back door. A 
     nuclear test ban is that door, For them, the test ban is part 
     of a larger movement: the war against weapons. It finds 
     expression in such touching and useless exercises as the land 
     mine convention, the biological weapons convention, etc. The 
     test ban, unfortunately, is more than touching and useless. 
     It may actually work--to disarm not the North Koreas of the 
     world but the United States.


[[Page S10722]]


  Mr. LOTT. It is a very good article. He basically says that the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is disarmament, unilateral nuclear 
disarmament by the United States, because we would not be testing our 
aging nuclear weapons and saying to the rest of the world: We have been 
good guys, so we're going to have faith that you're going to be good. I 
am not prepared to put my grandson's future at risk in this way.
  So that is how I wanted to respond. I do think hearings could be and 
should be scheduled in a variety of ways. I hope the chairman will be 
working on that. I will be talking to him about it, one. Two, I do 
think this is a dangerous time to rush to judgment on such an important 
issue. Three, I do think it is the wrong thing to do. And four, if it 
is called up preemptively, without appropriate consideration and 
thought, it could be defeated.
  I think that the advocates need to weigh the ramifications and the 
implications of such an action.
  So I know the interest of the Senator. I have already talked with him 
about it. I will be glad to work with him and to work with the chairman 
to see what an appropriate time is and what an appropriate process is 
for having hearings of these critical areas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. DORGAN. Further reserving the right to object, and I shall not 
object, but I do want to respond to a couple of the comments that were 
made. We should not rush into this. No one would ever accuse the Senate 
of speeding on an issue such as this--718 days. It is very unusual that 
we have not had an opportunity to act on this treaty after 718 days 
without even 1 day of hearings. So no one will accuse the Senate of 
rushing to judgment on this issue.
  It is an uncertain and difficult world. That is precisely why it is 
important to address this issue. This country has no moral standing, or 
very little moral suasion to be going to India and Pakistan and saying 
to them: Do not detonate additional nuclear weapons. Sign and ratify 
this treaty. The fact is Russia and China, and others, wait on us.
  The majority leader talked about a piece in today's newspaper written 
by Charles Krauthammer.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Congressional Record a 
much better piece on this same subject that appeared two days ago in 
the Washington Post in the form of an editorial supporting the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and reserve the right later to ask at 
some time to include an even better piece that will be in response to 
today's Krauthammer article this morning that I and some others will 
try to write for the Washington Post.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                         Why a Test Ban Treaty?

       The proposed nuclear test ban treaty has been around so 
     long--for 50 years--and has been so shrouded in political 
     foliage that many people have forgotten just what it entails. 
     The current debate about it centers on the Clinton 
     administration's differences with the Russians on the one 
     hand and with the Republicans on the other. But in fact the 
     appeal of the treaty is a good deal simpler and more powerful 
     than the debate indicates. This treaty would put an end to 
     underground nuclear tests everywhere; tests above ground 
     already are proscribed either by treaty or by political 
     calculation. Its merits shine through.
       Testing is the principal engine of nuclear proliferation. 
     Without tests, a would-be nuclear power cannot be sure enough 
     the thing would work to employ it as a reliable military and 
     political instrument. Leaving open the testing option means 
     leaving open the proliferation option--the very definition of 
     instability. The United States, which enjoys immense global 
     nuclear advantage, can only be the loser as additional 
     countries go nuclear or extend their nuclear reach. The 
     aspiring nuclear powers, whether they are anti-American rogue 
     states or friendly-to-America parties to regional disputes, 
     sow danger and uncertainty across a global landscape. No 
     nation possibly can gain more than we do from universal 
     acceptance of a test ban that helps close off others' 
     options.
       At the moment, the treaty is hung up in the Senate by 
     Republicans desiring to use it as a hostage for a national 
     missile defense of their particular design. This is curious. 
     The obstructionists pride themselves in believing American 
     power to be the core of American security. Why then do they 
     support a test ban holdup that multiplies the mischief and 
     menace of proliferators and directly erodes American power? 
     The idea has spread that Americans must choose between a test 
     ban treaty and a missile defense. The idea is false. These 
     are two aspects of a single American security program, the 
     one being a first resort to restrain others' nuclear 
     ambitions and the other a last resort to limit the damage if 
     all else fails. No reasonable person would want to cast one 
     of these away, least of all over details of missile program 
     design. Those in the Senate who are forcing an either-or 
     choice owe it to the country to explain why we cannot employ 
     them both.
       The old bugaboo of verification has arisen in the current 
     debate. There is no harm in conceding that verification of 
     low-yield tests might not be 100 percent. But the reasonable 
     measure of these things always has been whether the evasion 
     would make a difference. The answer has to be that cheating 
     so slight as to be undetectable by one or another American 
     intelligence means would not make much difference at all.
       The trump card of those who believe the United States 
     should maintain a testing option is that computer 
     calculations alone cannot provide the degree of certitude 
     about the reliability of weapons in the American stockpile 
     that would prudently allow us to forgo tests. This is a 
     matter of continuing contention among the specialists. But 
     what seems to us much less in contention is the proposition 
     that, given American technological prowess, the risk of 
     weapons rotting in the American stockpile has got to be a 
     good deal less than the risk that other countries will test 
     their way to nuclear status.
       The core question of proliferation remains what will induce 
     would-be proliferators to get off the nuclear track. 
     Certainly a ``mere'' signature on a piece of paper would not 
     stay the hand of a country driven by extreme nuclear fear or 
     ambition. Two things, however, could make a difference. One 
     is if the nuclear powers showed themselves ready to accept 
     some increasing part of the discipline they are calling on 
     non-nuclear others to accept, so that the treaty could not be 
     dismissed as punitive and discriminatory. The other is that 
     when you embrace the test ban and related restraints on 
     chemical and biological weapons, you are joining a global 
     order in which those who play by the agreed rules enjoy ever-
     widening benefits and privileges and those who do not are 
     left out and behind.
       President Clinton signed the test ban treaty, and achieving 
     Senate ratification is one of his prime foreign policy goals. 
     More important, ratification would make the world a safer 
     place for the United States. Much still has to be worked out 
     with the Republicans and the Russians, but that is detail 
     work. The larger gain is now within American reach.

  Mr. DORGAN. I guess I heard the majority leader indicate the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is tied up with several other treaties, 
and he equated it to a stool that has a bunch of legs to it--at lease 
three legs. But I say this: this is not a stool and not legs that 
connect. There is no connection between the Kyoto treaty and the 
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The U.S. has already decided we 
are not testing nuclear weapons. We have not tested since the early 
1990s.
  I would love to have a long debate about this. I feel strongly that 
the treaty is needed in order to prevent others from testing and in 
order to prevent others from believing they have acquired nuclear 
weapons that work, because you cannot believe they work unless you have 
tested them. If we have a regime in which the world decides, through 
leadership from this country and others, that it will not test nuclear 
weapons any longer, we will have taken a step to prevent the 
proliferation of nuclear weapons.
  We can have that debate and should have that debate. But we have not 
even had the first day of hearings. What I heard the Senator from 
Mississippi say, I think, is that he has encouraged the chairman of the 
Committee on Foreign Relations to hold hearings, to hold hearings on 
this treaty.
  The reason I ask the question is I don't want to add to your 
burdens--you have plenty--but I indicated earlier this week I certainly 
will be prepared to add to your burdens and the burdens of Senator 
Daschle when you try to schedule this place because this is one of 
those heavy issues, important issues. We ought to have the opportunity 
to consider this issue as a Senate.
  So I ask the Senator from Mississippi, will we be able to expect 
hearings will be held in the Foreign Relations Committee on this 
subject, and, if so, when?

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I could respond, who has the time now? Is 
this under a reservation?
  Mr. DORGAN. It is.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate majority leader has the floor.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, at least Dr. Charles Krauthammer signed his 
editorial. We do not know who wrote the editorial in the Washington 
Post. But I would be willing to guess that Dr. Krauthammer knows more 
about the subject than whoever at the White House wrote the article for 
the Washington Post editorial page.

[[Page S10723]]

  If we want to compare capabilities and knowledge, I would be glad to 
get into that. I put my money with Krauthammer against anybody who 
writes an editorial in the Washington Post.
  Having said that, I have done what I can do at this point in terms of 
suggesting that hearings be in order.
  Mr. DORGAN. You have suggested.
  Mr. LOTT. I have suggested that to the chairman. He has indicated, 
while he understands and will be working toward that, he has these 
other issues into which he wants hearings.
  But I expect next week to get some feel from him exactly what the 
schedule would be. When I do talk to him, which will be, I presume, 
early next week, I will be glad to get back to Senator Dorgan and give 
him that information.
  Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate that.
  Let me say I have great respect for the chairman of the committee. We 
might have disagreements about the policy, but he is the chairman. I 
have respect for him and in no way denigrate his efforts and his 
beliefs on these issues.
  This is a very controversial matter but very important and one I 
believe the Senate ought to be entitled to debate. Based on the 
majority leader's response, I will look forward to further discussing 
with him next week.
  Let me say I appreciate the fact he has initiated an effort to ask 
that we have some hearings held in the Senate. I think that is 
movement, and that is exactly what should happen.
  Mr. LOTT. I cannot wait to hear how Jim Schlesinger describes the 
CTBT treaty. When he gets through damning it, they may not want more 
hearings.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. Schlesinger will be standing in a mighty small crowd. 
Most of the folks who are supporting this treaty are the folks who 
Senator Lott and I have the greatest respect for who have served this 
country as Republicans and Democrats, and military policy analysts for 
three or four decades, going back to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  Mr. LOTT. I ask unanimous consent that the time just consumed during 
the leader's presentation of consent items not count against the 
Coverdell morning business time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I yield up to 15 minutes to the 
distinguished Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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