[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.
____________________