[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 115 (Thursday, September 6, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9187-S9188]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MISSILE DEFENSE
Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I will take a few minutes to make some
observations about some of the discussions I have read in recent days
in various news articles and have heard from Senators who have
commented on these articles relating to missile defense and the
President's efforts to discuss with Russia and other friends and allies
around the world our intentions with respect to the development of
missile defenses to protect the security interests of the United
States.
For some reason or other, in recent weeks there have been some
misinterpretations made of comments that have appeared in news
articles. Some have suggested that the administration, for example, is
going to abandon the ABM Treaty or is developing plans and asking for
funding in this year's appropriations bills to conduct tests and do
development projects for missile defense which would violate the
provisions of the ABM Treaty.
It is clear from everything the President himself has said that he
would like to replace the ABM Treaty, after full discussions with
Russian officials, allies, and friends around the world, with a new
strategic framework that more closely reflects the facts as they exist
now in the relationship we have with Russia.
The ABM Treaty was written, as we know, in 1972. It was written in an
atmosphere where the prevailing doctrine of national security was
mutual assured destruction where we would actually have, as a matter of
national policy, a plan to annihilate or destroy cities with innocent
civilians in retaliation against a nuclear missile strike against the
United States from the Soviet Union. And the mutual assured destruction
doctrine was very troubling in and of itself, but it was the only thing
we had. Deterrence was a way of life--and also a promise of a way of
death in case someone decided to authorize a strike against the other.
This was an agreement that was entered into at a time when each side
seemed to be intent on building new and more sophisticated and more
lethal weapons systems targeted to military targets in the other's
nation state.
But times have changed. The Soviet Union no longer exists. Even
though the Clinton administration attempted to negotiate a succession
agreement, it has never been submitted to the Senate for ratification.
The succession agreement lists Russia, Belarus, and another nation
state as the successor states to the Soviet Union. Think about that. I
am sure the Senate would discuss that very carefully and probably at
great length, and whether or not the Senate would advise and consent
and permit the ratification of that treaty, to permit it to go into
effect and have the force and effect of law, is problematical.
But that is just one indication of how times have changed. The
Clinton administration continued to respect the ABM Treaty to the
extent that it would not undertake testing of even theater missile
defense systems if the Russians objected. And in the discussions with
our representatives in Geneva and elsewhere, talking on these subjects,
it became clear that this country was going to be inhibited in its
testing programs of theater missile defense systems because of
provisions of the ABM Treaty.
By now, it ought to be very clear that there are threats to our
soldiers and sailors who are deployed around the world from these very
theater missile offensive systems that we saw Iraq use in the desert
war--in the war that we helped organize and wage against them to
liberate Kuwait. Twenty-eight or twenty-nine members of a National
Guard unit lost their lives in Dhahran as a result of a Scud missile
attack.
We cannot tolerate being inhibited and subject to the approval of
another country to test and develop and deploy a system that would
protect soldiers in that circumstance in the future. We have already,
as a matter of fact, developed follow-on systems to the Patriot system,
which was the only thing we used to try to counter the Scud missile
attacks. And we continue to upgrade and make progress in developing
systems that will offer the kind of protection against those missile
attacks in the future. The PAC-3 program, for example, has had a
succession of successful tests, using the hit-to-kill technology of a
defensive system.
There are other examples of theater missile programs. The Army's High
Altitude Air Defense Systems--the acronym is THAAD. It sounds like my
name is a system that offers protection against missile attack. But to
hear some Senators and look at the authorization committee's mark right
now, you would think these theater systems were the same as the
national missile defense system. We saw reports in the paper that the
chairman had presented the Armed Services Committee with a committee
print of a military authorization bill for the next fiscal year, and it
cuts $1.3 billion out of missile defense. This is being described in
the newspapers, and by Senators, too, as a reduction in the amount of
money that would be authorized for national missile defense.
When you look at the exact dollar amounts in the bill--and it is not
national missile defense--approximately $347 million is cut from the
Navy theater-wide program in the chairman's mark, along with $210
million for the THAAD program and $80 million from the airborne laser
program. These are not long-range missile programs. These are not
missile programs designed to counter intercontinental ballistic missile
threats to our country; these are designed to protect men and women in
the military service of the United States who are deployed all over the
world right now. And they are now under threats from the same kind of
missile weapons systems that were used by Iraq. Now they have been
modernized, we hear from our intelligence sources, and are more
accurate and more reliable and more lethal than they were in the desert
war.
These programs should not be cut in the name of trying to restrict
the President from using funds that the Congress appropriates for
national missile defense. These are intermediate-range defensive
systems, the testing and deployment of which were not intended to be
covered by the ABM Treaty. And even though the Clinton administration
was negotiating with the Russians our rights to test in developing
these programs--to some degree at least--it is not the subject of the
ABM Treaty. The ABM Treaty wasn't designed to deal with these threats
at all.
So what I am suggesting is that the Senate ought to be on early
warning that we are seeing an effort being developed here--at least in
the Armed Services Committee--to lay groundwork for restrictions on
funding, for restrictive language, which I understand is also included
in the chairman's mark, which would more closely restrict the President
and the Department of Defense in their effort to fully explore the use
of technologies that would help defend our service men and women when
they are in harm's way around the world today.
There are some other programs that are cut in this bill that I
understand are in the chairman's mark. One is the space-based infrared
system, which will provide satellites to track missiles after launch--
$97 billion is cut from that program.
So there is a pattern here of undermining the entire effort to
develop our
[[Page S9188]]
defenses to the capability they need to be to fully assure the security
interests of the United States. It doesn't have anything to do with the
ABM Treaty, in my view, but that is being used as an excuse to hold
back these programs. The chairman's mark cuts $350 million from a
program previously known as national missile defense, though in reality
the number is far higher, as the administration has sought to remove
the artificial barriers between the labels ``national'' and ``theater''
missile defense.
The President is talking about missile defenses. We need to have an
aggressive, robust testing program so that we can fully understand how
these technologies can be harnessed to fully defend our country's
interests and protect the security of our Nation.
The chairman's mark even cuts funds that would be used for
cooperative missile defense modeling and simulation with Russia. We are
hearing a lot about trying to interact more in a positive way with
Russia. Here is an example of a program that would give us an
opportunity to do that more successfully, and that is proposed for
cutbacks in the Armed Services Committee.
There are various legislative restrictions, one of which will provide
the Defense Department's missile activities can proceed only in
accordance with the ABM Treaty.
That is redundant, isn't it? Or it suggests that the President is
planning to undertake something that is inconsistent with the treaty.
He has said he is not going to do that. He recognizes the treaty is an
agreement that is legally binding. The President has said that.
He is hoping to replace the treaty after negotiations with the
Russians with a new strategic framework, but everybody is pronouncing
that around here as dead on arrival. Give the President a chance at
least to discuss it fully with the Russians rather than rushing over
and getting some Russian official to make some derogatory statement
about the process and then quoting it as if it is national policy in
Russia.
We should give the negotiators a chance. That is what I am
suggesting. So writing a bill here that presumes the President is going
to violate the ABM Treaty is not getting us off to a good start,
particularly if this sends a signal to the Russians: You do not have to
worry about negotiating with the President of the United States in good
faith because the Senate is going to take over, the Senate is going to
make it impossible for the President to negotiate an agreement.
We should not undermine the President's capacity to negotiate a
better agreement that will serve our national security interests in a
more effective way and replace an outdated, outmoded treaty, a cold war
relic, when we could, if we are successful under the President's
leadership, negotiate a better agreement that more fully protects our
country's national security interests. This kind of provision is
needless piling on, making it more and more difficult for our
President. I hope the Armed Services Committee will look very carefully
at these provisions.
There are a lot of other concerns that I have. I know there may be
others who want to discuss issues on other subjects of great national
concern, but they are talking about now in one other line of articles
that I have seen--and this was discussed in our Defense appropriations
hearing yesterday by some Senators--the fact there was a quote in the
paper from an administration official saying: We were not bothered by
China's buildup, the modernization of their nuclear weapons capability
and whether they were going to do that or not would not have any effect
on our decisions with respect to missile defense programs.
Secretary Rumsfeld made it very clear at the hearing, responding to
one Senator's question, that neither he nor Secretary Powell nor Dr.
Condoleezza Rice had made any statement of that kind, and they knew of
no one in the Department of Defense or the Department of State or at
the White House who had said anything like that.
There is no quote attributed to any particular individual, but yet
not only the press have taken that and made stories out of it and
repeated them, but now Senators are repeating them as if it was a fact.
The fact is, China has been modernizing its military for years. They
did not just start a new generation of nuclear weapons or
intercontinental ballistic missile technologies and systems after we
began improving our missile defense capabilities. China is going to
make the decisions they make based on their own considerations of what
is in their interests.
I am hopeful, of course, as everyone in this administration and in
this Congress, we will be able to have a stable and friendly
relationship based on mutual respect with China. Efforts are being made
in discussions by the Secretary of State and many others with Chinese
leaders in order to develop an understanding, trying to resolve
problems as they develop, and we know what they are.
The incident with the surveillance plane in the area presented its
own special set of problems, but we worked our way through that with
calm and thoughtful leadership and decisionmaking by the President and
his Cabinet officials.
The whole point of this is, we can be a party to inciting the
passions of those who worry about the capacity of our country's
leadership to function to protect our security interests, and we can do
more harm than good by the things we say and the way we discuss these
issues and the way we handle bills that come through this Senate.
We should take very seriously the provisions that are in the
chairman's print of this authorization bill before the Armed Services
Committee, and all Senators ought to notice what is beginning as an
official part of our legislative responsibility: an effort that is
clear to undermine the President's leadership capacity in developing
missile defense systems that will protect our soldiers and sailors and
the security interests of our country.
Those who say he is going to abandon the ABM Treaty need to look at
what the President said. He is trying to replace it with a new
framework, a new agreement. I have suggested to some that we ought to
consider having a peace treaty as a replacement to the ABM Treaty. We
are not at war with Russia any longer. They do not profess to be at war
with us. The cold war is over. When wars end, peace treaties are
signed. Let's sign a peace treaty with Russia. That would supplant the
ABM Treaty.
The ABM Treaty locks into law the doctrine of mutual assured
destruction. We do not want to destroy Russia. They should not want to
destroy us. So why perpetuate that doctrine with that treaty? Let's
work to develop a new framework that more clearly defines the real
relationship we have with Russia now.
That is what the President wants to do. Why can't the Senate join
with the President, applaud that initiative, support that effort, pass
legislation to fund the efforts to strengthen our military forces so we
can do the job of protecting the security of this country?
I am not going to suggest these are political games that are being
played because I know there are serious differences of opinion on this
and other issues that come before the Senate.
I am not questioning anybody's motives. I am just saying I hope
Senators will take a careful look at the facts. As we proceed through
this process of authorization and appropriation for our defense needs,
let's try to work in harmony and unity as much as possible so we will
not create any misunderstandings in Russia, in China, or among
potential adversaries out there, the so-called rogue states, that
continue to acquire technology, that continue to acquire systems,
missiles, other means of developing intercontinental ballistic missile
capability.
It is a dangerous place out there, and we need to be sure we are
doing what we can do and ought to do to protect our security interests
in this environment.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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