[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 48 (Tuesday, April 25, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2877-S2879]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              ARMS CONTROL

  Mr. DORGAN. Today, in the Washington Post, there was a story 
headlined ``U.S. Arms Policy is Criticized at the United Nations.'' The 
occasion of the criticism comes at the beginning of the conference to 
review the status of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which opened 
yesterday at the United Nations in New York. This conference occurs 
once every 5 years. It is a conference on the status of the Nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty. I would like to read the first paragraph of 
the story in the Washington Post because it is really quite a sad day 
when our country is described in the following way:

       After years of championing international attempts to halt 
     the spread of nuclear weapons, the United States found itself 
     on the defensive today as a broad alliance of arms control 
     advocates, senior United Nations officials, and diplomats 
     from nonnuclear countries charged that Washington is blocking 
     progress toward disarmament.

  Well, that is not something any of us aspires to hear. I hope and I 
believe that many of my colleagues want the United States to be seen as 
a leader in trying to stop the spread of nuclear

[[Page S2878]]

weapons and in trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in this 
world. Regrettably, others view the actions of the United States--
especially in the last few years--as actions that are not actions of a 
leader in trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
  We have made some progress over recent years in reducing the number 
of nuclear weapons. I want to describe how because I think it is 
important to understand it.
  I ask unanimous consent to show two items on the floor of the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is a piece of metal that comes from 
the wing strut of a Russian TU-160 Backfire bomber. This bomber carried 
nuclear weapons during the height of the cold war. This bomber was a 
threat to the United States of America.
  How is it that I stand on the floor of the Senate holding a piece of 
a wing strut from a Russian bomber? Did we shoot it down? No. It was 
actually sawed off the wing. Giant, rotating metal saws cut the wings 
off this bomber. Why? Because we negotiated an agreement with the 
Russians to reduce the number of bombers and missiles and nuclear 
warheads in Russia. We reduced our stockpile and our delivery 
mechanisms, and they reduced theirs. So without shooting down a bomber 
that carried nuclear bombs that threatened America, I now have in my 
hand a piece of a wing from a Russian bomber--because arms control 
works. We know it works.
  This chart shows what arms control has done in recent years. In the 
1980s we ratified the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and in 
the 1990s we ratified the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or 
START I. When we started the process in the mid-1980s, the Russians--or 
then the Soviet Union--had about 11,000 nuclear weapons on long range 
missiles. Today Russia has about 5,000. That means that 6,000 warheads 
are now gone. Many of those warheads were probably carried in the 
Russian Backfire bomber this piece comes from. So 6,000 warheads no 
longer threaten the United States of America.
  Do you know what that represents--6,000 warheads with the kind of 
strength and power of the nuclear warheads the Russians used to build? 
That is equal to 175,000 Hiroshima bombs. Let me say that again. We 
have actually negotiated the reduction of nuclear warheads in the 
Russian arsenal, and 6,000 warheads are gone. Those 6,000 warheads 
represented the equivalent of 175,000 atomic bombs dropped on 
Hiroshima. That is quite remarkable.

  This is a small container of ground-up copper wire. This copper wire 
used to run through a Russian ballistic missile submarine. This type of 
submarine, a Typhoon class submarine that snaked under the waters 
throughout the world carrying 20 missiles, with 10 nuclear warheads on 
the tip of each of those missiles, aimed at the United States of 
America. This copper wire, before it was ground up, used to course 
through this Typhoon submarine. But now I have the wire from a Typhoon 
submarine ground up in a small vial. How did I get that? Did we sink 
this submarine? Did we go to war with Russia and sink this submarine? 
No. This was dismantled, brought up to the port, and then engineers, 
carpenters, and others took this apart piece by piece, and this 
submarine doesn't exist anymore.
  This submarine was taken apart as part of the Nunn-Lugar program to 
reduce delivery systems and nuclear weapons in the old Soviet Union and 
in what we now refer to as Russia. We have spent $2.5 billion on the 
Nunn-Lugar program. We have actually paid for the destruction of 
Russian bombers. We have paid for the destruction of Russian 
intercontinental ballistic missiles, 5,000 nuclear warheads, 471 ICBMs, 
and 354 ICBM silos, 12 ballistic missile submarines.
  I have had charts on the Senate floor that show a plot of ground in 
the Ukraine where a missile silo existed with a nuclear warhead aimed 
at the United States of America, and now the silo is gone. I have held 
up a piece of metal from the hinge of the silo on the floor of the 
Senate. That hinge and that missile silo are now scrap metal. The silo 
is gone, the missile is gone, the warhead doesn't exist, and there is 
now a plot of ground with sunflowers. Where a nuclear missile used to 
rest, sunflowers now grow. That is progress. That is real progress in 
reducing the threat of nuclear weapons.
  What about the future? If this is what has happened and this is 
success, what about the future? Well, this success occurred under 
decisions by Congress--not in the last several years, but years before 
that--in which we said: We are the leaders in arms reduction and arms 
control. Our country wants to provide leadership. We want to reduce the 
number of warheads, reduce the number of bombers and missiles, reduce 
the tensions. And we have done that.
  But in the last several years, something dramatic has changed in the 
Congress. No. 1, we saw the Senate defeat the Comprehensive Nuclear 
Test Ban Treaty. It was almost unthinkable to me, but this Senate said: 
This country doesn't want to ratify a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban 
Treaty even though we have already decided that the United States is 
not going to test nuclear weapons. We decided that unilaterally some 6 
or 7 years ago. So we are not testing nuclear weapons. A treaty that 
has been signed by over 150 nations, negotiated over many years, 
ratified by most of our allies, was not ratified by the Senate because 
we have Senators who say, no, we don't think that is in the country's 
interest.
  Well, if it is not in this country's interest to reduce the stockpile 
of nuclear weapons and to stop the testing of nuclear weapons, stop the 
spread of nuclear weapons around the world, what on earth is in this 
country's interest? After the Senate failed to ratify that treaty, 
those who voted against the treaty blamed everyone but themselves. That 
treaty languished in the committee here in the Senate for over 2 years 
without a day of hearings--not one. Then it was brought to the floor on 
a preemptory basis, given short shrift in debate, and killed.

  Those who killed that treaty should not have taken much pleasure in 
putting this country in the position of failing to exert leadership 
with respect to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and the ban on 
testing nuclear weapons all around the world.
  Last week, the Russian Duma ratified START II. Prior to that, the 
Russians passed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. While that 
is happening, this country is talking about building a national missile 
defense system and trying to negotiate with Russia changes in the 
antiballistic missile system which in many ways is the linchpin for all 
of this progress in arms control and arms reduction.
  And what happens? Yesterday at the United Nations we have diplomats 
looking at Russia and saying: You are making a lot of progress here, 
Russia. You have passed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. You 
ratified that treaty, you passed START II, congratulations.
  And the United States: You have lost your edge, you are not doing 
much. You seem to be retreating on the question of whether you care 
about arms control. You seem to be stepping back from your commitment 
of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and working as hard as you 
worked previously to reduce the number of delivery vehicles and reduce 
the number of nuclear weapons.
  I regret that is the case. That should not be the case. It cannot be 
a judgment of conservatives or liberals or Democrats or Republicans to 
believe that somehow it falls to someone else to be a leader in the 
world to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Do we worry that the 
nuclear club--a rather small club in this world consisting of nations 
that possess nuclear weapons--do we worry that is going to proliferate, 
there will be more and more nations that possess nuclear weapons, and 
more and more nations that have the mechanism or the wherewithal to 
deliver those nuclear weapons? We should certainly worry about that.
  Even with START II, the U.S. and Russia will each have about 3,500 
nuclear weapons. Hopefully we will begin negotiations of START III and 
agree to much lower levels. As we do that, we have people in this 
Chamber who want to focus not on arms control but on building some kind 
of a national missile defense system, some sort of a shield to prevent 
America from being attacked by a rogue nation.
  We need to understand the only country in the world that possesses 
the

[[Page S2879]]

strength and the nuclear power to destroy our way of life is Russia. 
They still have thousands of nuclear weapons. We ought to engage with 
them in an aggressive START III negotiation and continue the progress 
of bringing down the number of nuclear weapons in the two major nuclear 
superpowers--Russia and the United States. We ought to continue that.
  I know we have people here who don't sleep at night because they are 
worried that North Korea might threaten a small slice of the United 
States. But they should realize that, No. 1 A national missile defense, 
if deployed, will be horribly costly. No. 2, it will not protect this 
country against this kind of a threat. Those people say to the American 
people that Congress will fund a national missile defense program to 
defend against a rogue nation--North Korea, they suggest, Iraq or Iran. 
The fact is, the least likely threat that a rogue nation would have 
access to is an intercontinental ballistic missile. If it acquires 
access to a nuclear weapon, it is far more likely to deploy it as a 
suitcase bomb put in the trunk of a rusty Yugo car at a dock in New 
York City, rather than putting it on the tip of an intercontinental 
ballistic missile and having any notion of being able to fire it with 
accuracy.
  It is much more likely they would acquire a cruise missile, which 
would be easier to acquire, much less costly, and not as technically 
difficult to deploy. Of course, the national missile defense system 
wouldn't do anything to defend against that. It is much more likely a 
rogue nation would find it more attractive to use a deadly vial of 
chemical or biological agents to threaten a superpower.

  We face a myriad of threats. There is no question about that. The 
biggest threat, in my judgment, is this country stepping away from its 
responsibility to lead and stop the spread of nuclear weapons around 
the world, and this country stepping away from its responsibility to 
decrease the number of nuclear weapons and decrease the launchers and 
delivery systems for those nuclear weapons.
  My fervent hope is that we will agree that last year's vote by which 
the Senate defeated ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban 
Treaty should not signal to anyone in the world that this country is no 
longer interested in these issues. We must decide again, even though 
there is not an appetite by some in the Senate to do so, we must decide 
again that leadership in arms control is this country's responsibility. 
It is upon our shoulders that this responsibility falls. No one else 
can exert this leadership with the capability of the United States.
  If we don't exert leadership, what we will end up building new 
nuclear weapons, building new defensive systems. We will start a new 
arms race. We will see more spending on nuclear weapons by China. We 
will see more spending on offensive weapons by Russia. We will see 
other countries joining the nuclear club because they will believe they 
should acquire nuclear weapons to represent their interests. We will 
see our allies depart from us on these issues because they believe 
abrogation of the ABM Treaty is very unwise.
  I think the majority of the American people believe the biggest 
threat to our future is the nuclear threat, the threat of a nuclear 
attack by an ever-increasing number of countries who acquire nuclear 
weapons.
  We know what works. Arms control works, negotiation works, destroying 
another superpower's bombers through negotiation by sawing off the 
wings, dismantling submarines that carry nuclear weapons: we know that 
works. It is far better to do that than to engage in the horror of a 
nuclear war from which this world will not, in my judgment, survive.
  Think for a moment about the devastation visited upon Nagasaki and 
Hiroshima and go back to what I discussed earlier--the reduction in 
6,000 nuclear warheads that has been negotiated and accomplished. That 
is just the first step, a big step, but just the first step. It 
represents the reduction in nuclear warheads equivalent to 175,000 
bombs the size of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
  The reason I come to the floor at the end of the day is simply to say 
we ought not take any pride as a country in seeing an article in the 
press of the United States suggesting somehow we have lost our will to 
lead on this issue. We can come to the floor and debate 100 things in 
100 days. Some of them are big; some of them are small. None are more 
important, in my judgment, than addressing the issue of the spread of 
nuclear weapons. Just because we have people now serving in Congress 
who have an unending appetite to keep building new weapons, an unending 
appetite to spend more money on new weapons, does not mean those who 
believe in arms control and believe real progress in arms control will 
make this a safer world in which to live, should step aside and say: 
Yes, you win; go build your weapons.
  We ought not do that, but we ought to wage the fight for a safer 
world by having this country exhibit the leadership it needs to 
exhibit, that it should responsibly exhibit, for the safety of all the 
people who live in this world.
  I will have more to say about this subject at another time. But on 
the eve of the meeting of the NPT Review Conference in New York, I 
wanted to talk about these issues. I want to say that some in Congress 
believe very strongly and feel very deeply the future of our children 
and grandchildren and the future of this country rests on those who 
believe in arms control prevailing in this Senate, despite the recent 
events, despite the debate we have heard in the last couple of years. 
This issue is not over. Those of us who believe as I do are not going 
to go away. We hope this country will assume some sensible mantle of 
leadership in this important area.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak in 
morning business for 7 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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