[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 137 (Tuesday, October 12, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H9825]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   LET US NOT REIGNITE THE ARMS RACE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Markey) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MARKEY. Madam Speaker, the American public deserves a full, 
deliberate, considered, informative debate on the Comprehensive Test 
Ban Treaty. Instead, the Republican Senate is conducting a caricature 
of a debate structured to obscure understanding and to maximize 
political gamesmanship by springing the subject on to the Senate 
calendar and forcing a momentous vote on a moment's notice.
  The Republican leadership is giving jack-in-the-box treatment to the 
ultimate black box subject of nuclear annihilation. Where is the 
statesmanship? Where is the sober and solemn consideration of the 
special role that the United States must play in the stewardship of the 
world's nuclear stockpiles? If we rush to judgment, we will crush the 
confidence of our cosigners and spur the proliferation of nuclear 
weapons in an unpredictable world.
  We must not reignite the arms race. We must not let the nuclear bull 
out of the ring to run wild through the streets of the world.
  The Cold War is over. This is a time to de-alert and dismantle 
nuclear weapons. Instead, the Republican leadership is bent on 
destroying the treaty to control them. This is not brinkmanship; this 
is not statesmanship. This is irresponsibility on a global scale.
  We no longer test nuclear weapons in the United States. George Bush 
stopped the nuclear testing. So if we are not going to test nuclear 
weapons in the United States, which we have not, why in the world 
should we not sign a treaty 7 years later that allows us to monitor 
every other country in the world to guarantee that they are not testing 
nuclear weapons?
  Madam Speaker, the reality is that without this treaty there can be 
clandestine tests that allow other countries in the world to catch up 
with us. The signing of this treaty ensures that we have hundreds of 
monitoring devices around the world strategically placed to ensure that 
there is no testing because, in fact, the treaty mandates on-site 
inspection. That is right.
  If we detect, through the seismological equipment or any other means, 
that there is a suspicious activity taking place in any country in the 
world, that country must allow us and the world to go in and to look at 
what they are doing, if they are testing. Then, the United States, 
which has decided unilaterally during the Bush administration, and has 
continued right through the Clinton years, not to test, will have the 
ability to ensure that there has been a technological homeostasis, a 
technological stay which has been put in place where we keep our lead.
  Madam Speaker, there is no more important issue which we can debate 
than whether or not at the end of the millennium, the gift which we can 
give to the next millennium, is that we have resolved this issue of 
whether or not the countries of the world will continue to test nuclear 
weapons. The disease, the famine, the wars of this millennium should be 
something which we do not pass on to the next millennium.
  We should be trying to find ways of ensuring that we are going to 
deal with the AIDS crisis in Africa. We should try to find ways in 
which we are going to deal with the debt crisis of the Third World, and 
we should try to find some way in which we end the specter of nuclear 
weapons which has hung over this planet for the last 50 years of this 
millennium. There can be no more important issue.
  So, Madam Speaker, let us hope that today in the Senate that enough 
Members stand up to be recognized in support of a treaty which will 
allow us to continue to spread a regime of controls which will limit, 
if not eliminate, the likelihood that we will face the day when we 
stand here and face the fact that a nuclear accident or a nuclear 
weapon was used.
  The least that the Senate should be able to say, the least that all 
of us should be able to say when those nuclear weapons are about to be 
used is that we tried; we really tried to put an end to this nuclear 
threat which hangs over the world. Let us hope today that the United 
States Senate does the right thing.

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