[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 13, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1246-S1249]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STRENGTHENING OUR NATIONAL SECURITY
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I am waiting for one of our associates to
come. In the meantime, I want to begin some conversation and discussion
about the topic of the week, which the President has been working on
certainly, and that is strengthening our national security.
I suspect most people would agree that the responsibility for defense
is perhaps the No. 1 responsibility of the Federal Government. It is
the activity that no other government at any other level can handle. It
is the thing that, of course, all of us are very aware of. We are
constantly grateful for the kinds of things that have been done to
preserve our freedom by the military over the years. For more than 200
years, the military has been that arm of Government that has preserved
our freedom. Many people have sacrificed, including the soldiers,
sailors, and the marines, over the years.
So as we face the question of defense and the military, that is one
of the things with which we are obviously most concerned. The President
has put this as one of his high priorities, and I think properly so.
Clearly, over the last 8 years, specifically, the military has not been
supported to meet the kinds of needs they have had.
I think it is very clear that there are at least two kinds of
questions to be answered as we go about funding the military. One has
to do with improving the quality of life for military personnel. The
other, then, has to do with the idea of examining the structure,
examining where we are in terms of the military and how it meets
today's needs and the changing needs that obviously have happened
around us.
I think the President has been very wise to commit himself to some
payments soon to help with the quality of life for the military. I
think equally as important has been his request for some studies,
bottom-up analyses, of the military prior to making any substantial
changes in the way the military is structured, the kinds of weapons
that are necessary and those things that will deal with that aspect of
it.
With regard to quality of life, certainly one of the things that is
important, obviously, is that the military is built around personnel,
around the idea that you have men and women willing to serve. We now
have a voluntary military, of course, so that it has to be made
somewhat attractive for people to be interested in joining the
military, so that recruitment can be kept up. Equally as important, of
course, is after the training that takes place in the military, it is
necessary to have the kind of arrangement where people can stay there
once trained, whether it be airplane mechanics, or pilots, or whatever,
to leave the training and their training goes unused.
So the President has, I believe yesterday, gone down to Georgia and
committed himself to some things to improve the lives of our troops--to
raise military pay, renovate substandard housing, to improve military
training, and take a look at health care, as well as some deployments
in which we have been involved.
The President will announce, as I understand it, about a $5.76
billion increase, which will include $1.5 billion for military pay,
which is in the process and should be in the process of causing these
folks to be able to come a little closer to competition with the
private sector; about $400 million for improving military housing; and
almost $4 billion to improve health care for the military.
I believe these things are very necessary and should happen as
quickly as possible. I have had the occasion and honor over the last
month or so to visit a couple military bases, Warren Air Force Base in
my home State, a missile base in Cheyenne, WY, and Quantico, VA, the
Marine Corps base close to D.C., here, where I went through training
for the Marine Corps many years ago. It is an interesting place. In
both instances, the first priority on these bases was housing, places
for enlisted NCOs, officers, to live on base.
As to the housing in both instances, it is interesting. As different
as these two bases were, and as far as they were apart, the problems in
housing were very similar. Housing that had been built back in the
thirties was still being used. It really had gone to the extent that
rather than being renovated or repaired, it wasn't worth that; it had
to be destroyed and replaced. Some, of course, could be fixed up. It is
very difficult, particularly for enlisted with families, No. 1, find a
place to live, particularly at a place such as Quantico, but more
importantly to have it economically reasonably attractive for these
folks. As we move toward this, I hope the President will maintain--and
I want to comment on this later--his commitment to doing something
immediately for the personnel, and then to go through this study. I
think there is a great deal that needs to be done in terms of how the
military is structured. It is quite different now.
Obviously, our big problem now is terrorism. There are problems
around the world in smaller units. We are not talking about ships full
of divisions of troops with tanks landing somewhere. We are talking
about something that can move quickly and is available to move and
sustain itself without logistical support for some time. These are
things that I think are very important.
I intend to come back later this morning and talk more about this. In
the meantime, I yield to the Senator from Arizona.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Arizona.
Mr. KYL. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming for his interest in
the subject of national defense. As he noted, this is a week in which
the President is announcing several initiatives in that regard. One of
his primary objectives, he said, is to strengthen the military so we
can meet the challenges of this new century.
He is beginning, naturally, with the support for the troops, which is
the right place to begin, but he has also noted there are a lot of
other challenges. We in the Congress who have been working with this
over the years appreciate the warnings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the immediate past Secretary of Defense who have noted we are going to
have to spend a lot more on defense in order to bring our defense
capabilities up to the level where they need to be to deter threats
around the world.
One of the threats that has received a lot of attention in recent
weeks on which I want to focus today is the threat of an attack by an
adversary delivering a weapon of mass destruction via missile. Of
course, there are other ways of creating problems for the United
States. We try to deal with each of these different threats.
As chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism of the Judiciary
Committee, for example, I have worked hard to ensure we can both detect
and deter terrorism, whether in the form of delivery of a weapon in a
suitcase that people like to talk about or in the case of an attack
directly against an installation or U.S. assets, such as the attack on
the U.S.S. Cole. In all of those situations, we have plans and we have
made some progress in meeting that threat of terrorism.
Where we have been lacking is in a commitment to deal with the other
equally ominous threat of weapons of mass destruction delivery, and
that is via the intercontinental ballistic missile or a medium-range
missile. Why would countries all over the globe that mean us no good be
spending so much money on the development of their missile capability
and weapons of mass destruction warheads that could be delivered by the
missiles? And by that, the WMD--the weapons of mass destruction--we are
speaking of would be biological warheads, chemical warheads, or nuclear
warheads. Why would
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they be spending so much money if they did not intend to either use
those missiles against us or threaten to use them?
Why do we focus on threats?
As Secretary Rumsfeld has pointed out several times recently, one of
the advantages of a missile over some other kinds of terrorist acts is
that they can threaten other countries, for example, to stay out of
their way as they take aggression against another country, threatening
that if they bother them, if they try to intercede in what they are
trying to do, they will launch a missile against them.
An example is the Saddam Hussein situation in which he goes into
Kuwait. Had he had missiles with longer range capability and warheads
that could have delivered weapons of mass destruction, he could have
easily threatened cities in Europe and made it much more difficult for
the United States to have put together the coalition that we eventually
put together to stop him from further aggression and eventually repel
him from Kuwait.
It is the threat of the use of these weapons, as much as the weapons
themselves, that is an instrument of policy.
Another case that nobody likes to talk about because we do not
consider China as an enemy of the United States--and it is not--is the
situation in which, however, China would potentially, with leaders who
decide they have to take aggressive action against Taiwan, begin
initiating some form of military threat or action against that island
and force the United States to choose whether or not to defend Taiwan.
One of the elements of whether we might do so is whether we would be
subject to attack by the Chinese if we sought to inhibit their
aggressive intentions. At least some in the military in China have
already made it perfectly plain that they have missiles that can reach
the United States and perhaps we would want to think twice before
coming to the aid of Taiwan.
Again, this is not something I project or suspect is going to happen
anytime soon, but the fact is intercontinental or medium-range missiles
that can deliver weapons of mass destruction can be used to stop
countries such as the United States from interfering in hostile
actions. That is one of the reasons we have to be concerned.
The other reason, of course, is these weapons can actually be used.
It is not just the threat of use but the actual use. We know from past
experience that countries that see no hope in their situation flail
out, launching these kinds of missiles against their enemies in a last
desperate attempt to at least prove their point, if not to win the war.
We know there are some who have indicated they might do this again in
the future.
For example, a defeated Nazi Germany fired over 2,400 V-1 and 500 V-2
rockets at London, causing over 67,000 casualties, including 7,600
deaths.
During the Yom Kippur war, Egypt launched Scud missiles at Israel.
The so-called ``War of the Cities'' during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war
saw almost 300 Scud missiles exchanged between combatants, with little
or no anticipation that such actions would facilitate victory.
In 1986, Libya, in response to U.S. air strikes that were in
themselves a response to Libyan-sponsored terrorist acts, launched two
Scud missiles at a U.S. facility in Italy. That they landed harmlessly
in the Mediterranean Sea does not diminish the significance of the
event in the context of the use of hostile regimes.
While we try to deter countries from launching these kinds of
missiles, we know that sometimes deterrence fails and these missiles
will be launched. In that case, there is only one thing that is
sensible, which is to try to have some kind of defense in place to
protect our citizens or our troops deployed abroad or our allies.
The sad truth is, unfortunately, the United States today cannot
defend itself from a hostile missile attack. In fact, we have a very
hard time defending against even the kinds of missiles launched a
decade ago in the Persian Gulf war. Remember the single largest number
of casualties in that war: 28 American soldiers died because of a Scud
missile attack at our base in Saudi Arabia that we could not stop. Yet
in the interim, between that event and today, we have made precious
little progress in fielding a system which can defend against that kind
of threat.
I just returned from a trip the weekend before last to Munich,
Germany, the so-called Veracunda, a conference of primarily NATO
defense ministers, the Secretary General of NATO, as well as
representatives of the U.S. Senate and other parliamentarians--
primarily of the NATO countries--to talk about the future of NATO and
the United States-allies cooperation, among other things, in the
development of ballistic missile defenses. The U.S. delegation was led
by my colleagues John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. All of us, including
Secretary Rumsfeld who was in attendance, made the point to our allies
that the United States had no option but to move forward with missile
defense, that our interests were threatened around the world, and that
we would have to move forward, but that we wanted to consult with our
allies so, first of all, they would understand what we are doing, why
we are doing it, and perhaps they would have some participation in how
it would evolve, at least as to how it impacts them.
We wanted to make what we did applicable to them as well, to provide
protection to them if they wanted it. From a previous position of some
hostility to the idea, because of their concerns about what Russia and
China might do, I believe our allies are moving more to an acceptance
of the fact that we are going to proceed and a willingness to confer
with us on how that system evolves, even in some cases to talk to us
about how we might integrate it with their own defense to provide
protection to them as well.
I believe that momentum, in other words, for acceptance of our
missile defense system from our allies has definitely picked up. It is
important that the Senate and House support the President in his
determination to move forward with our missile defense. In this regard,
it will be very important for the administration to move very quickly
to make it clear that the momentum has not slowed, that we do intend to
move forward, and we are not going to let another season go by without
beginning the deployment of assets that we can deploy.
There are very promising technologies. I will be taking the floor at
later times to talk about how these might evolve. I start with the sea-
based systems. It was clear that the Clinton administration wanted to
have only one system. That system, built in Alaska, would have been
very vulnerable. The radar that would have been constructed at Chiniak
Island could be useful to us with respect to future systems that we
deploy.
I think it would be a mistake to assume that is the be all and end
all of our national missile defense system. Much more productive would
be the use of existing assets, the standard missiles we have aboard
Aegis cruisers and use the radars we would have constructed at Chiniak
Island and the onboard radars, to take literally anywhere in the world
to provide defense in theater, both against threats that are medium-
range threats today and in the not-too-distant future, to be able to
actually provide some strategic defense to protect the United States,
or most of it.
As I say, this technology is probably the most advanced but it will
be up to the Congress to add money to the defense budget and up to the
administration to do the planning to integrate that funding into the
testing program, the development program, and the fairly early
deployment of that limited kind of missile defense program.
At the same time, we should be pursuing the existing plans with
respect to land-based systems because I suspect that at the end of the
day we are going to want to have layered systems where we have sea-
based components and land-based components and the radars that
facilitate the effectiveness of each. These will be details of plans
emerging through the administration review, recommendations of the
Department of Defense, and the funding that will be required to come
from the Congress. Again, I will get into more detail on that later.
The point I make this morning is we are beginning the conversations
with our allies that should have taken place years ago. This
administration is committed to that. I am convinced, because of the
fine statement that Secretary Rumsfeld made at the Munich
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conference, that our allies are now going to be willing to work with us
and will be supportive of us at the end of the day. It will be up to us
to follow through with the support that only the Congress can provide.
Let me conclude by going back to the point with which I started.
There are basically two reasons to have defense. The first is to deter
action by would-be aggressors, and you deter not only the use of
missiles but also the threat of their use, because the threat of their
use is frequently the foreign policy tool of these rogue nations, to
keep you out of their way while they engage in their nefarious
activities. So you deter the threat and you also deter the actual use.
But the second reason is in the event deterrence fails to actually
defend yourself--in some cases we know that, especially with regard to
these rogue nations which can have very irrational leaders, deterrence
does not work--and the missiles do get launched. If you don't have a
way of defending yourself, you will suffer extraordinarily large
casualties.
It would be immoral for leaders of the United States today --and this
is a point Secretary Rumsfeld made over and over--it would be immoral
for the President, for the Secretary of Defense, and those in the
Congress not to do everything we can to facilitate the deployment of
these defenses on our watch.
If American citizens are killed because we failed in that duty, we
have no one to blame but ourselves because the technology is at hand,
we have the financial capability of doing it, there is no longer any
question about the threat, and we can work with our allies. All that is
left is the will to move forward to do this.
The final point I wish to make is this: There are those who say we
already have a deterrence; it is our nuclear deterrence; and no one
would dare mess with the United States because of that.
There are two problems with that. The first is that we need an option
to annihilating millions of people on the globe. If our only reaction
to an attack against us is to respond in kind--in fact, more than in
kind--and annihilate, incinerate, literally, millions of people, most
of whom are totally innocent and are simply in a country led by some
kind of irrational rogue dictator--if that is our only response, it is
an immoral response when we have an alternative, and that is a defense
that can protect the United States and deter that aggression in the
first place.
Secondly, it is much more effective to have this additional response,
because at the end of the day there gets to be a point where people
wonder whether that nuclear deterrent is even credible. It is certainly
credible against a massive nuclear attack against the United States,
but is it credible against a limited attack by some irrational
dictator, against the United States or our allies, that we would, then,
in turn, annihilate all of the citizens of his country? That is
something we have never been able to answer and we don't want to answer
because we want to leave out there the notion that we might respond
with that kind of nuclear deterrent, but it becomes less and less
likely as time goes on.
That is why we need this alternative--another option, a moral option,
the option of defense--not just the option of massive nuclear
retaliation.
Mr. President, I appreciate this opportunity to address the Senate
today on the threat to the United States from the proliferation of
ballistic missile technology and the debate on deployment of a national
missile defense system.
I recently had the pleasure, Mr. President, of attending the annual
Conference on Security Policy in Munich, Germany. This conference, for
those unfamiliar with it, is a gathering of U.S., European and Asian
foreign and defense ministers, miscellaneous civilian defense experts,
and prominent members of the media. Senators McCain and Lieberman led
the U.S. delegation. Of particular note, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
utilized the conference to make his first major address in his capacity
as head of the nation's military establishment. The main topic of
Secretary Rumsfeld's address, not surprisingly, was the Bush
Administration's intention to proceed with deployment of a National
Missile Defense system, in consultation with our NATO allies.
The Munich Conference, as has been evident in the plethora of news
stories that have appeared since, illustrated the scale of opposition
among our allies as well as among countries like Russia and China.
Fears of precipitating an arms race with Russia and China while driving
an irreparable wedge between the United States and Europe were
palpable. They were, however, equally misplaced.
Few issues within the realm of national security affairs have been as
divisive and prone to alarmist hyperbole than the development of
ballistic missile defenses. It really is, in a sense, almost
surrealistic to contemplate a country that will spend hundreds of
billions of dollars per year on national defense while conceding to its
adversaries the freedom to destroy our cities if only they develop
long-range ballistic missiles. And in anticipating the usual rejoinder
that our military superiority will surely deter such adversaries from
launching nuclear-armed missiles in our direction, let us focus a
minute to two on the history of warfare in the missile age. It really
is quite illuminating.
Deterrence, Mr. President, is a concept. An adversary or potential
adversary will refrain from taking an action or actions detrimental to
our national interest if it fears a debilitating retaliatory attack.
The history of man, however, is the history of war, and the history of
war is the history of deterrence--and diplomacy--failing. A nation at
war will rarely refrain from employing those means at its disposal,
especially when regime survival is at stake. Moreover, and of
particular relevance to discussions of missile defenses, is the
tendency of defeated regimes to strike out irrationally. A defeated
Nazi German fired over 2,400 V-1 and 500 V-2 rockets at London, causing
over 67,000 casualties, including 7,600 deaths. During the 1973 Yom
Kippur War, Egypt launched Scud missiles at Israel. The so-called ``War
of the Cities'' during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War saw almost 300 Scud
missiles exchanged between combatants with little or no anticipation
that such actions would facilitate victory. In April 1986, Libya, in
response to U.S. air strikes that were in themselves a response to
Libyan-sponsored terrorist acts, launched two Scud missiles at a U.S.
facility in Italy. That they landed harmlessly in the Mediterranean
does not diminish the significance of the event in the context of the
use of missiles by hostile regimes.
While deterrence should remain a fundamental tenet of our national
security strategy, it is not enough. Clearly, we cannot assume, nor
base the security of our population, on our own estimations of the
calculations occurring in the minds of hostile dictators, especially
during periods of heightened tensions. The historical record should be
sufficient to convince all of us that missile proliferation is a
serious problem--certainly, on that, we all agree--and that those
missiles can and may be used, either in the throes of defeat or as the
result of a failed attempt to deter the United States from acting in
defense of our vital national interests in regions like the Middle and
Far East. The recent publication of the book ``Saddam's Bombmaker,''
written by the former chief engineer of Iraq's nuclear weapons program,
includes a passage suggesting, based upon the author's personal
observations of Saddam Hussein, that the Iraqi dictator fully intends
to launch nuclear-armed missiles against Israel in the event he becomes
convinced that his personal demise is inevitable. Should he attain the
capability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, I think it
is no stretch of the imagination to add the United States to that list.
The case of Iran is equally worrisome. Last Fall, we undertook a
rather impromptu debate on the nature of Russian-Iranian relations when
the New York Times ran a series of articles detailing possible
violations of the Iran-Iraq Nonproliferation Act and the subsequent
1996 amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, which sought clearly to
sanction foreign entities determined to be transferring destabilizing
military equipment and technology to Iran and Iraq. The debate that
emerged focused, of course, given
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the text of the law, on conventional arms transfers from Russia to
Iran. Something of a given, as far as the Clinton administration's
posture was concerned, with that the Russian-Iranian military
relationship had been largely contained courtesy of the former vice
president's diplomatic skills.
Putting aside the subsequent abrogation of the secret Gore-
Chernomyrdin Pact and the emergence of a more open and vibrant
conventional arms trade between Russia and Iran, the issue of missile
and nuclear-technology transfers was clearly presumed to be under
control. But all available information points to the contrary. More
disturbing, the relationship is unquestionably at the government-to-
government level. The Clinton administration's arguments that
individual Russian entities were circumventing good-faith Russian
efforts at stemming the flow of nuclear and missile technology to Iran,
the basis of its veto of the Iran Nonproliferation Act, were wholly
without merit. In defense of this relationship, Russia's most prominent
defense analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer, was recently quoted as stating,
``We are brothers-in-arms, and have long-term interests together.'' And
Defense Minister Sergeyev's December 2000 visit to Iran to conclude the
new arms agreement was trumpeted by Sergeyev as ushering in a ``new
phase of military and technical cooperation.''
A recent CIA report act on foreign assistance to Iran's weapons of
mass destruction, missile and advanced conventional weapons programs,
submitted pursuant to the requirements of the fiscal year 2001
intelligence authorization act, includes the following:
Cooperation between Iran's ballistic missile program and
Russian aerospace entities has been a matter of increasing
proliferation concern through the second half of the 1900s.
Iran continues to acquire Russian technology which could
significantly accelerate the pace of Iran's ballistic missile
development program. Assistance by Russian entities has
helped Iran save years in its development of the Shahab-3, a
1,300-kilometer-range MRBM * * * Russian assistance is
playing a crucial role in Iran's ability to develop more
sophisticated and longer-range missiles. Russian entities
have helped the Iranian missile effort in areas ranging from
training, to testing, to components. Similarly, Iran's
missile program has acquired a broad range of assistance from
an array of Russian entities of many sizes and many areas of
specialization.
Similarly, the Department of Defense's January 2001 report,
Proliferation: Threat and Response, states with respect to Russian-Iran
nuclear cooperation, that
Although [the Iranian nuclear complex] Bushehr [which is
receiving substantial Russian assistance] will fall under
IAEA safeguards, Iran is using this project to seek access to
more sensitive nuclear technologies from Russia and to
develop expertise in related nuclear technologies. Any such
projects will help Iran augment its nuclear technology
infrastructure, which in turn would be useful in supporting
nuclear weapons research and development.
Finally, and not to belabor the point, the Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet recently testified before the Intelligence
Committee that Russian entities ``last year continued to supply a
variety of ballistic missile-related goods and technical know-how to
countries such as Iran, India, China, and Libya.'' Indeed, Director
Tenet emphasized this point several times in his testimony, stating,
``the transfer of ballistic missile technology from Russia to Iran was
substantial last year, and in our judgment will continue to accelerate
Iranian efforts to develop new missiles and to become self-sufficient
in production.''
The significance of this relationship is considerable. Opponents of
missile defenses have argued both during and after the cold war that
the dynamics of warning and response have changed; that we will have
sufficient strategic warning of serious threats to our national
security to take the necessary measures in response. The entire basis
of the Rumsfeld Commission report, and of much of DCI Tenet's
testimony, on the threat from foreign missile programs, however, is
that strategic--and, indeed, tactical--warning can be severely
diminished in the event suspect countries succeed in attaining large-
scale technical assistance or complete ballistic missiles, which Saudi
Arabia accomplished by its purchase of Chinese CSS-2 medium-range
ballistic missiles and Pakistan did in the case of the Chinese M-11
missile transfer. That is clearly the case with Iran.
The impact on U.S. national security policy of the proliferation of
ballistic and cruise missile technology, as well as of so-called
weapons of mass destruction, should not be underestimated. Presidents
of either party and their military commanders will undergo a
fundamental transformation in their approach to foreign policy
commitments and the requirement to project military power in defense of
our allies and vital interests if they possess the knowledge that
American forces and cities are vulnerable to missile strikes. We have
pondered the scenario wherein our response to an invasion of Kuwait by
a nuclear-armed Iraq would have been met with the response the 1990
invasion precipitated. Similarly, the oft-cited threat against the
United States by Chinese officials in the event we come to the defense
of Taiwan should be cause for sober reflection--although the commitment
to Taiwan's security should be equally absolute. The point, Mr.
President, is that the development or acquisition by rogue regimes of
long-range ballistic missiles will alter our response to crises in an
adverse manner. Secretary Rumsfeld summed up the situation well in his
speech in Munich when he stated, ``Terror weapons don't need to be
fired. They just need to be in the hands of people who would threaten
their use.''
The need for continued development and deployment of systems to
defend against ballistic missile attack is real. We lost eight precious
years during which the previous administration stood steadfast in
opposition to its most fundamental requirement to provide for the
common defense. No where in the Constitution is there a qualification
from that responsibility for certain types of threats to the American
population, and I doubt one would have been contemplated. The Founding
Fathers were unlikely, I believe, to have supported a policy wherein
the United States would defend itself against most threats, but
deliberately leave itself vulnerable to the most dangerous.
We can research missile defenses in perpetuity and not attain the
level of perfection some demand. We can, however, deploy viable systems
to the field intent on improving them over time as new technologies are
developed. We do it with ships, tanks, and fighter aircraft. The value
of having fielded systems both as testbeds and for that measure of
protection they will provide, while incorporating improvements as they
emerge, is the only path available to us if we are serious about
defending our cities against ballistic missile attack.
Yes, I know that a multibillion dollar missile defense system will
not protect against the suitcase bomb smuggled in via cargo ship. But
let us not pretend that we are not talking actions to defend against
that contingency as well. Arguments that posit one threat against
another in that manner are entirely specious. As I've noted, the
history of the missile age is not of static displays developed at great
expense for the purpose of idol worship. It is of weaponry intended to
deter other countries from acting, and to be used when militarily
necessary or psychologically expedient. We can't wish them away, and
the fact of proliferation is indisputable. The deployment of a National
Missile Defense system is the most important step we can take to
protect the people we are here to represent. They expect nothing less.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Iowa.
____________________