[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 49 (Wednesday, April 26, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2894-S2895]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      NEGOTIATIONS WITH RUSSIA ON A REVISED U.S.-SOVIET ABM TREATY

  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the news media is buzzing with speculation 
that President Clinton will attempt, in his final month in office, to 
strike a major arms control deal with Russia--including a major ABM 
Treaty that would limit the ability of the United States to defend 
itself against ballistic missile attack.
  White House officials have openly stated their concern that Mr. 
Clinton faces the prospect of leaving office without a major arms 
control agreement to his credit--the first President in memory to do 
so. And from this President--a man uniquely absorbed with his legacy--
that perhaps would be, to him, a personal tragedy.

  Mr. Clinton wants an agreement, a signing ceremony, a final photo-op. 
He wants a picture shaking hands with the Russian President, broad 
smiles on their faces, large, ornately bound treaties under their arms, 
as the cameras click for perhaps the last time--a final curtain call.
  I must observe that if the price of that final curtain call is a 
resurrection of the U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty that would prevent the 
United States from protecting the American people against missile 
attack, then that price is just too high.
  With all due respect, I do not intend to allow this President to 
establish his legacy by binding the next generation of Americans to a 
future without a viable national missile defense.
  For nearly 8 years, while North Korea and Iran raced forward with 
their nuclear programs, and while China stole the most advanced nuclear 
secrets of the United States, and while Iraq escaped international 
inspections, President Clinton did everything in his power to stand in 
the way of deploying a national missile defense. Do you want some 
facts, Mr. President? Let's state some for the record.
  In 1993, just months after taking office, Mr. Clinton ordered that 
all proposals for missile defense interceptor projects be returned 
unopened to the contractors that had submitted them.
  In December of that same year, 1993, he withdrew the Bush 
administration's proposal for fundamentally altering the ABM Treaty to 
permit deployment of national missile defenses at a time when Russia 
was inclined to strike a deal.
  By 1996, 3 years after taking office, Mr. Clinton had completely 
gutted the National Missile Defense Readiness Program. He slashed the 
national missile defense budget by more than 80 percent.
  In 1997, he signed two agreements to revive and expand the U.S.-
Soviet ABM Treaty, including one that would expand ABM restrictions to 
prevent not only national missile defense for the American people but 
to constrain theater missile defenses to protect our troops in the 
field.
  Then for the next 3 years, the President, heeding some of his 
advisers, no doubt, refused to submit those agreements to the Senate, 
despite making a legally binding commitment to submit them. He made 
that commitment to me in writing. He did not submit them because he was 
afraid the Senate would reject them, while in doing so would clear the 
way for rapid deployment of missile defenses. To this day, he still has 
not fulfilled his legal requirement to submit those treaties for the 
Senate's advice and consent.
  In December 1995, Mr. Clinton vetoed legislation that would have 
required the deployment of a national missile defense with an initial 
operational capability by the year 2001.
  Three years later, in 1998, he again killed missile defense 
legislation--the American Missile Protection Act--which called for the 
deployment of national missile defense, as soon as its technology was 
ready, by threatening a veto and rallying Democratic Senators to 
filibuster the legislation.
  Only in 1999 did he at long last sign missile defense legislation 
into law, but only after it passed both Houses of Congress by a veto-
proof majority and only after the independent Rumsfeld Commission had 
issued a stinging bipartisan report declaring that the Clinton 
administration had dramatically underestimated the ballistic missile 
threat to the United States.

  But while Mr. Clinton was doing all this, costing America almost 8 
years in a race against time to deploy missile defenses, our 
adversaries were forging ahead with their missile systems.
  While Mr. Clinton was dragging his feet, for example, foreign 
ballistic missile threats to the United States grew in terms of both 
range and sophistication. Today, several Third World nations possess, 
or are developing, ballistic missiles capable of delivering chemical, 
biological, or nuclear warheads against cities in the United States.
  According to the Rumsfeld Commission, both North Korea and Iran are 
within 5 years of possessing viable ICBMs capable of striking the 
continental United States, and North Korea may already today have the 
capacity to strike Alaska and Hawaii. Last month, Communist China 
explicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons against United States 
cities should the United States take any action to defend democratic 
Taiwan in the event Beijing launched an invasion of Taiwan.
  So Mr. Clinton is in search of a legacy? La-di-da. He already has 
one. The Clinton legacy is America's continued inexcusable 
vulnerability to ballistic missile attack. The Clinton legacy is 8 
years of negligence. The Clinton legacy is 8 years of lost time.
  But in the twilight of his Presidency, Mr. Clinton now wants to 
strike an ill-considered deal with Russia to purchase Russian consent 
to an inadequate U.S. missile defense--one single site in Alaska to be 
deployed but not until 2005--in exchange for a new, revitalized ABM 
Treaty that would permanently bar any truly national missile defense 
system.
  The President is attempting to lock this Nation, the United States of 
America, into a system that cannot defend the American people, and the 
President is trying to resurrect the U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty which would

[[Page S2895]]

make it impossible for future enhancements to U.S. national missile 
defense in general.
  The agreement Mr. Clinton proposes would not permit space-based 
sensors; it would not permit sufficient numbers of ground-based radars; 
and it would not permit additional defenses based on alternate missile 
interceptor systems, such as naval or sea-based interceptors. All of 
these, and more, are absolutely necessary to achieve a fully effective 
defense against the full range of possible threats to the American 
people.
  Mr. Clinton's proposal is not a plan to defend the United States; it 
is a plan to leave the United States defenseless. It is, in fact, a 
plan to salvage the antiquated and invalid U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty. That 
is what it is. No more. No less. It is a plan that is going nowhere 
fast in protecting the American people.
  After dragging his feet on missile defense for nearly 8 years, Mr. 
Clinton now fervently hopes he will be permitted in his final 8 months 
in office to tie the hands of the next President of the United 
States. He believes he will be allowed to constrain the next 
administration from pursuing a real national missile defense. Is that 
what he believes or even hopes?

  Well, I, for one, have a message for President Clinton: Not on my 
watch, Mr. President. Not on my watch. It is not going to happen.
  Let's be clear, to avoid any misunderstandings down the line: Any 
modified ABM Treaty negotiated by this administration will be DOA--dead 
on arrival--at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which, as the 
Chair knows, I happen to be the chairman.
  This administration's failed security policies have burdened America 
and the American people long enough. In a few months, the American 
people will go to the polls to elect a new President, a President who 
must have a clean break from the failed policies of this 
administration. He must have the freedom and the flexibility to 
establish his own security policies.
  To the length of my cable-tow, it is my intent to do everything in my 
power to ensure that nothing is done in the next few months by this 
administration to tie the hands of the next administration in pursuing 
a new national security policy, based not on scraps of parchment but, 
rather, on concrete defenses, a policy designed to protect the American 
people from ballistic missile attack, a policy designed to ensure that 
no hostile regime--from Tehran to Pyongyang to Beijing--is capable of 
threatening the United States of America and the American people with 
nuclear blackmail.
  Any decision on missile defense will be for the next President of the 
United States to make, not this one. It is clear that the United States 
is no longer legally bound by the U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty. Isn't it 
self-evident that the U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty expired when the Soviet 
Union, our treaty partner, ceased to exist? Legally speaking, I see no 
impediment whatsoever to the United States proceeding with any national 
missile defense system we--the American people and this Congress--
choose to deploy.
  That said, for political and diplomatic reasons, the next President--
the next President--may decide that it is in the U.S. interest to sit 
down with the Russians and offer them a chance to negotiate an 
agreement on this matter.
  Personally, I do not believe a new ABM Treaty can be negotiated with 
Russia that would permit the kind of defenses America needs. As Henry 
Kissinger said last year in testimony before the Foreign Relations 
Committee:

       Is it possible to negotiate a modification of the ABM 
     Treaty? Since the basic concept of the ABM Treaty is so 
     contrary to the concept of an effective missile defense, I 
     find it very difficult to imagine this. But I would be open 
     to argument--

  And let me emphasize these words as Henry Kissinger emphasized them 
when he said--

     provided that we do not use the treaty as a constraint on 
     pushing forward on the most effective development of a 
     national and theater missile defense.

  Now then, like Dr. Kissinger, I am open to the remote possibility 
that a new administration--unencumbered by the current President of the 
United States in his desperate desire for a legacy and this 
administration's infatuation with the U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty--could 
enter into successful negotiations with the Russians.

  The Republican nominee for President, Mr. Bush of Texas, has declared 
that on taking office he will give the Russians an opportunity to 
negotiate a revised--a revised--ABM Treaty, one that will permit the 
defenses America needs. But Mr. Bush made it clear that if the Russians 
refuse, he will go forward nonetheless and deploy a national missile 
defense. And good for him. Mr. Bush believes in the need for missile 
defense, and he will negotiate from a position of strength.
  By contrast, President Clinton clearly has no interest whatsoever in 
missile defense. His agenda is not to defend America from ballistic 
missile attack but to race against the clock to get an arms control 
agreement--any agreement; he means any agreement--that will prevent his 
going down in history as the first President in memory not to do so.
  So it is obvious, I think, that any negotiations Mr. Clinton enters 
into in his final months will be from a position of desperation and 
weakness.
  For this administration--after opposing missile defense for almost 8 
years--to attempt at the 11th hour to try to negotiate a revised ABM 
Treaty is too little, too late. This administration has long had its 
chance to adopt a new security approach to meet the new threats and 
challenges of the post-cold-war era. This administration, the Clinton 
administration, chose not to do so.
  So this administration's time for grand treaty initiatives is clearly 
at an end. For the remainder of this year, the Foreign Relations 
Committee will continue its routine work. We will consider tax 
treaties, extradition treaties, and other already-negotiated treaties. 
But we will not consider any new last-minute arms control measures that 
this administration may negotiate and cook up in its final, closing 
months in office.
  As the chairman of this committee, I make it clear that the Foreign 
Relations Committee will not consider the next administration bound by 
any treaties this administration may try to negotiate in the coming 8 
months.
  The Russian Government should not be under any illusion whatsoever 
that any commitments made by this lame-duck administration will be 
binding on the next administration. America has waited 8 years for a 
commitment to build and deploy a national missile defense. We can wait 
a few more months for a new President committed to doing it--and doing 
it right--to protect the American people.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 15 
minutes and also ask unanimous consent for Senator Gorton to proceed 
then immediately following me for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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