[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 172 (Wednesday, December 12, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12998-S13000]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   DEFEATING AND PREVENTING TERRORISM TAKES MORE THAN MISSILE DEFENSE

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise this morning to speak to a decision 
that I am told and have read is about to be made by the President--a 
very significant decision and, I think, an incredibly dangerous one--to 
serve notice that the United States of America is going to withdraw 
from the ABM Treaty.
  Under the treaty, as you know, a President is able to give notice 6 
months in advance of the intention to withdraw.
  Mr. President, we live in tumultuous times. The transition from the 
old cold war alignments to new patterns of conflict and cooperation is 
picking up speed. This transition is not quiet, but noisy and violent. 
For 3 months now, it has been propelled by a new war.
  In the modern world, high technology and rapid communications and 
transportation put our own country and our own people on the front 
lines of that war. We are on the cutting edge of revolutionary 
developments in everything from medicine to military affairs.
  We are also on the receiving end of everything from anthrax to the 
attacks of September 11--and we will remain vulnerable in the years to 
come. The question is: how vulnerable?
  How shall we deal with this accelerated and violent transition? How 
well is the Administration dealing with it?
  And is their primary answer--withdrawing from ABM and building a star 
wars system--at all responsive to our vulnerabilities?
  We can find some answers in both the experience of the last 3 months 
and the President's speech yesterday at the Citadel.
  Wars are chaotic events, but they impose a discipline upon us.
  We must focus on the highest-priority challenges.
  We must use our resources wisely, rather than trying to satisfy every 
whim.
  We must seek out and work with allies, rather than pretending that we 
can be utterly self-reliant.
  How well have we done? In the short run, very well indeed.
  Our people and institutions rose to the occasion on September 11 and 
in the weeks that followed.
  We took care, and continue to take care, of our victims and their 
families.
  We resolved to rebuild.
  We brought force to bear in Afghanistan, and used diplomacy in 
neighboring states and among local factions, to prevail.
  We have also gained vital support from countries around the world, 
although we have been slow to involve them on the ground. We have 
shared intelligence and gained important law enforcement actions in 
Europe in the Middle East, and in Asia.
  We have begun to take action to combat bioterrorism. At home, we have 
learned some lessons the hard way and we have accepted the need to do 
more. We are stepping up vaccine production.
  But we have yet to take the major actions that are needed to improve 
our public health capabilities at home--or our disease surveillance 
capabilities overseas, to give us advance notice of epidemics or 
potential biological weapons.
  Neither have we moved decisively to find new, useful careers for the 
thousands of biological warfare specialists

[[Page S12999]]

in Russia who might otherwise sell their goods their technology or 
their capabilities to Iran or Iraq, to Libya, or to well-funded 
terrorists.
  This is no longer a matter for just those of us who have intelligence 
briefings to know--and we have known this for a long time. Now the 
world knows that rogue states and terrorists have, in fact, attempted 
to buy nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons.
  The President recognizes the problem of bioterrorism, and listed it 
in his speech yesterday. At the Crawford summit, President Putin and he 
promised more cooperation to combat bioterrorism. So far, however, 
there has been a great deal more talk than action. Al-Qaida's eager 
quest for weapons of mass destruction has, in my view, highlighted and 
brought home to every American the importance of nonproliferation, of 
closing down the candy store, so to speak, where all these radical 
wackos go to shop.
  The President understands this. In his speech yesterday, after 
talking about the need to modernize our military, he said:

       America's next priority to prevent mass terror is to 
     protect against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction 
     and the means to deliver them. . . .
       Working with other countries, we will strengthen 
     nonproliferation treaties and toughen export controls. 
     Together we must keep the world's most dangerous technology 
     out of the hands of the world's most dangerous people.

  That is correct and well-phrased rhetoric. It gives nonproliferation 
a high priority. It recognizes the importance of international 
treaties. But where, Mr. President, are the actions to match that 
rhetoric? The President offers only a new effort ``to develop a 
comprehensive strategy on proliferation,'' something he has been 
promising for over a year.
  Meanwhile, just last week, the United States of America 
singlehandedly brought to an abrupt and confusing halt the Biological 
Weapons Convention Review Conference that is held every 5 years. Why? 
Because the administration was determined not to allow any forum for 
the negotiation of an agreement to strengthen that convention.
  This was diplomacy as provocation, in my view, and it was and is a 
self-defeating approach. It undermined our efforts to achieve agreement 
on proposals we made earlier in the conference, such as to address the 
need for countries to enact legislation making Biological Weapons 
Convention violations a crime. We asked that it be made a crime to 
violate the convention. We proposed that, but then we shut down the 
conference, killing even our own proposal, because we did not want any 
further discussion or a possible new agreement.
  The President may understand the need to work with other countries, 
but some people under his authority do not seem to get it. For that 
matter, where are the actions to promote nonproliferation across the 
board?
  The White House review of our programs in the former Soviet Union has 
been limping along for over 10 months. But when the fiscal year 2002 
budget was presented, we were told the funds for Nunn-Lugar were being 
reduced. Those are the funds we use to send American personnel to 
Russia to dismantle their nuclear weapons delivery systems their 
strategic bombers and missiles.
  We were told that the cut was not permanent, that the reason was they 
were reviewing whether or not the money was being well spent. While 
they are reviewing, those nuclear-tipped missiles sit there, and the 
inability of the Russians to dismantle them because of lack of money or 
capability still exists. Thus, we got promises of new efforts, but in 
the fiscal year 2002 budget there is actually a cut in these programs. 
The Department of Defense has left so many funds unspent that 
the appropriators tried to cut the Nunn-Lugar program just to get the 
Pentagon's attention.

  Nonproliferation is, thus, our No. 2 priority, but the engine is 
still in first gear. The same is true of our supposed top priority: 
modernizing our military. The vaunted rethinking process in the Defense 
Department has yet to produce much that is new, and the fine 
performance of our forces in Afghanistan owes more to strategy and 
equipment developed in the Gulf War and the ``revolution in military 
affairs'' of the last decade than it does to anything new this year.
  If you want action with your rhetoric, go down to the No. 3 priority 
in the President's speech: missile defense. Even there, however, the 
action is more diplomatic, or rather undiplomatic. If news reports are 
correct--and I know they are, based on my conversation today with the 
Secretary of State--the President will shortly announce his intention 
to withdraw in 6 months' time from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 
1972.
  Russia will not like that. Some here will say: So what? What does it 
matter what Russia likes or does not like? But none of our allies likes 
it either. And China, I predict, will respond with an arms buildup, 
increasing tensions in South Asia, causing India and Pakistan to 
reconsider whether to increase their nuclear capability and, as strong 
as it sounds, in the near term--meaning in the next several years--this 
will cause the Japanese to begin a debate about whether or not they 
should be a nuclear power in an increasingly dangerous neighborhood. 
All of that is against our national interest.
  But the President will invoke Article XV of the ABM Treaty, which 
allows a party to withdraw ``if it decides that extraordinary events 
related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its 
supreme interest.'' In my view, invoking this clause is a bit of a 
stretch, to say the least. No new enemy has fielded an ICBM missile, 
which is the only missile our national missile defense is intended to 
stop. Tactical missile defense is not barred by the ABM Treaty, and 
Russia has said it would even amend the treaty to permit an expanded 
United States testing program. So where is the jeopardy to our supreme 
interest?
  The administration has said it wants to conduct tests that would 
breach the ABM Treaty, but the head of the Ballistic Missile Defense 
Organization in the Pentagon told Congress earlier this year that no 
breach was needed to do all the tests that were needed and scheduled.
  Informed scientists say the features added to the test program that 
might breach the treaty, which the Defense Department presented to the 
Armed Services Committee several months ago, are far from necessary, 
especially at this time. Phil Coyle, the former chief of testing for 
the Pentagon, says we can conduct several years of needed testing 
without having to breach the treaty's terms.
  The administration wants to build an Alaska test bed with several 
missile silos at Fort Greely that it says could be used for an 
emergency deployment. But the new interceptor missile for the missile 
defense will not be ready yet. The so-called ``kill vehicle,'' the 
thing that separates from the interceptor missile and hits the incoming 
warhead, will not have been tested against realistic targets yet. And 
the radars supporting this system, the battle management capabilities, 
are pointed at Russia, so they will not even see a North Korean missile 
as it flies into southern California, following the scenario cited by 
those who try to justify building a limited missile defense system.
  So where is the real action on missile defense? Is the announcement 
of our intent to withdraw from the ABM Treaty a real action, or is it a 
White House Christmas present for the right wing, who dislike arms 
control under any circumstances and see this season of success in 
Afghanistan, unity on foreign policy, and Christmas as a propitious 
moment to make this announcement?
  Is now the time for unilateral moves--now, while we are still 
building coalitions for a changed world in which old enemies can reduce 
their differences, at a minimum on the margins, and maybe even work 
together out of their own self-interest?
  We are in a time of great risk. But there is also great opportunity. 
Despite the horrors visited upon us on September 11, the truth is we 
were attacked by the weakest of enemies. Al-Qaida is a group that no 
civilized state can tolerate. It was sheltered by a regime with almost 
no international legitimacy and little support, even in its own land. 
Its goals and methods were so extreme as to be an object lesson to the 
world on why we must oppose all international terrorism. Many of its

[[Page S13000]]

members and supporters, lacking in Afghanistan the popular support that 
in other wars have enabled guerillas to blend into the landscape, were 
left to fight an armed conflict in which our side could readily 
prevail, as we have done.
  Meanwhile, the vast majority of countries, including some longtime 
adversaries, have lined on up on our side. Their cooperation has been 
and will remain important in our war effort, in the war against 
terrorism. The war has also opened doors that have been shut for many 
years. Opportunities have expanded for cooperation on issues of mutual 
concern. As the President said yesterday at the Citadel:

       All at once, a new threat to civilization is erasing old 
     lines of rivalry and resentment between nations. Russia and 
     America are building a new cooperative relationship.

  We must seize the opportunity that this war has afforded us. 
Clausewitz long ago explained that triumph in war lies not so much in 
winning battles, but in following up on your victories. The same is 
true in the broader arena of international politics. We must follow up 
on the cooperation of the moment and turn it into a realignment of 
forces for decades to come--so that our grandchildren and great-
grandchildren can look back on the 21st century and say that it did not 
replicate the carnage of the 20th century.
  How many Presidents get that opportunity? How many times does a 
nation have that potential?
  Withdrawal from the ABM Treaty will not make nonproliferation, which 
should be our highest priority and which combats our clearest danger, 
any easier to achieve. I find that especially worrisome.
  A year ago we were on the verge of a deal with North Korea to end 
that country's long-range ballistic missile program and its sales of 
missiles and missile technology. Now we seem far away from such a deal, 
pursuing instead a missile defense that will be lucky to defend against 
a first-generation attack, let alone one with simple countermeasures, 
until the year 2010 or much later. What good will a missile defense in 
Alaska do, if North Korea threatens Japan or sells to countries that 
would attack our allies in Europe, or sells to terrorist groups that 
would put a nuclear weapon in the hull of a rusty tanker coming up the 
Delaware River or into New York Harbor or San Francisco Bay? How does 
withdrawal from the ABM Treaty help defend against those much more 
realistic, near-term threats?
  What expenditures of money are we going to engage in? How are we 
going to deal with what Senator Baker, our Ambassador to Japan and 
former Republican leader, said is the single most urgent unmet threat 
that America faces, made real by the knowledge that al-Qaida was trying 
to purchase a nuclear capability?
  We must corral the fissile material and nuclear material in Russia as 
well as their chemical weapons. The Baker-Cutler report laid out 
clearly for us a specific program that would cost $30 billion over the 
next 8 to 10 years, to shut down one department--the nuclear 
department--of the candy store that everyone is shopping in.

  Senator Lugar actually went to a facility with the Russian military 
that housed chemical weapons. He describes it as a clapboard building 
with windows and a padlock on the door, although its security has been 
improved with our help. He could fit three Howitzer shells in his 
briefcase. Those shells could do incredible damage to America.
  How does withdrawal from the ABM Treaty defend against any of that? 
Which is more likely--an ICBM attack from a nation that does not now 
possess the capability, with a return address on it, knowing that 
certain annihilation would follow if one engaged in the attack; or the 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology and weaponry, 
so it can be used surreptitiously?
  If you walk away from a treaty with Russia, will that make Russia 
more inclined to stop its assistance to the Iranian missile program? Or 
will Russia be more attempted to continue that assistance? Russia has 
now stated, in a change from what they implied would happen after 
Crawford, that expansion of NATO, particularly to include the Baltic 
States, is not something they can likely tolerate--not that we should 
let that influence our decisions on NATO enlargement. Which do we gain 
more by--expanding NATO to the Baltic States, or scuttling the ABM 
Treaty with no immediate promises of gaining a real ability to protect 
against any of our genuine and immediate threats? If we end the ABM 
Treaty, will Russia stop nuclear deals of the sort that led us to 
sanction Russian institutions, or will it cozy up to Iran's illegal 
nuclear weapons program?
  The President made nonproliferation the No. 2 priority yesterday and 
missile defense No. 3. I truly fear, however, that his impending 
actions on that third priority will torpedo his actions on his No. 2 
priority. If that should occur, we and our allies will surely be the 
losers.
  So far, the administration's conduct in the war on terrorism has 
shown discipline, perseverance, the ability to forge international 
consensus, and the flexibility to assume roles in the Middle East and 
in Afghanistan that the administration had hoped it could avoid. In 
this regard, the American people have been well served, and I 
compliment the President.
  The war is only 3 months old, however, and the new patterns of 
cooperation and support are young and fragile. We should nourish them 
and build on them. This is not the time to throw brickbats in Geneva or 
to thumb our noses at treaties.
  We read in Ecclesiastes: A time to tear down and a time to build up. 
In Afghanistan and elsewhere, we are rightfully and wonderfully tearing 
down the Taliban and al-Qaida. But if our victories are to be lasting 
and give lasting benefit, we must simultaneously build up the 
structures of international cooperation and nonproliferation. The 
opportunities afforded by a war will not last forever. Today the doors 
to international cooperation and American leadership are wide open. But 
if we slam them shut too often, we will lose our chance to restructure 
the world and we will be condemned to repeat the experience of the last 
century, rather than move beyond it.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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