[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 4, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3051-S3052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE SO-CALLED MOSCOW TREATY

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I understand that perhaps today or 
tomorrow we will have a so-called Moscow Treaty brought to the floor of 
the Senate for debate. It is a treaty that has its origin in some 
discussions between our Presidents and the leader of Russia about the 
issue of nuclear arms and the reduction of nuclear arms.
  I want to say I will vote for this treaty, although I must say it is 
not much of an agreement and not much of a treaty at all. I don't see 
any reason someone would vote against it. But I make the point that 
this is an agreement between two countries--both of which have large 
stocks of nuclear weapons--to reduce their number of nuclear weapons by 
taking some and putting them in warehouses and storage facilities and 
at the end of the process both countries can keep the same number of 
nuclear weapons they had when they started.
  No nuclear weapons under this agreement will be destroyed, 
dismantled, or defused.
  And This treaty deals with only strategic nuclear weapons, not 
theater nuclear weapons. There are thousands and thousands of theater 
nuclear weapons, such as the nuclear weapons that go on the tips of 
artillery shells. That is not part of this agreement. It has nothing to 
do with this agreement.
  Strategic nuclear weapons are the very large warheads that one would 
put on the tip of an ICBM, for example, or to have in the belly of a 
bomber, or perhaps on the tip of a missile that is in a 
submarine. Those are the strategic nuclear weapons.

  Between our country and Russia, there are perhaps 10,000, maybe 
11,000, strategic nuclear weapons. So you have thousands on each side. 
Should we be reducing them? Of course. Absolutely.
  But we have a circumstance now where there is a treaty, or an 
agreement, with Moscow in which, between now and the year 2012, we all 
the US and Russia have to do is take nuclear weapons and put them in 
storage. So each side, in the year 2012, can keep if it wants exactly 
the same number of nuclear weapons. Not one nuclear weapon that exists 
today needs to be destroyed in the next 9 years--none.
  I do not understand that. I guess it is fine to have agreements just 
for the sake of having agreements, but of what value?
  We have had examples of effective reductions of nuclear weapons and 
also delivery vehicles. I have mentioned them in the Chamber on many 
occasions. Let me do so again.

[[Page S3052]]

  There is a program called the Nunn-Lugar Program, which is named 
after former Senator Sam Nunn and our current distinguished colleague, 
Senator Lugar. It is a program that I very strongly support. It makes a 
great deal of sense. That program actually destroys nuclear warheads 
and delivery systems that are made excess through the various arms 
control treaties.
  For example, in my desk I have a piece of metal which I would like to 
show by unanimous consent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. This piece of metal belonged to a Soviet bomber. This was 
part of a wing strut on a Soviet bomber. Presumably, this bomber, 
belonging to the Soviet Union, carried nuclear weapons that could have 
been dropped on a target here in the United States of America.
  How is it that a Senator on the floor of the Senate has a metal piece 
from a Soviet bomber? Well, simple. This bomber had its wings sawed off 
and its fuselage destroyed. How? The U.S. paid for it. We did not shoot 
the bomber down. This was not the result of hostilities. This was the 
result of an agreement between our country and the old Soviet Union, 
now Russia, to actually reduce delivery vehicles, bombers, missiles, 
submarines, and to actually reduce the number of nuclear weapons.
  So that is how I come to hold in my hand a piece of metal that 
belonged to a Soviet bomber, and then Russian bomber, that would carry 
nuclear weapons that would have threatened this country.
  Mr. President, I show you this little tube of ground copper. This 
used to be in a submarine that carried nuclear weapons on behalf of the 
old Soviet Union and then Russia. Those nuclear weapons were all aimed 
at this country, thousands of them. Well, this submarine does not carry 
nuclear weapons anymore. It was dismantled and destroyed. And I have 
here, on the floor of the Senate, a piece of ground up copper from the 
wiring of an old Soviet submarine.
  That makes a lot of sense to me. We are actually reducing the threat 
by reducing the number of delivery vehicles, bombers, submarines, 
missiles, and dismantling the number of warheads.
  We have been engaged in that for the last 10 years or so. And I would 
like to especially say my colleagues, Senator Lugar and Senator Nunn, 
proposed a program by which we did not have to sink a Soviet submarine 
and we did not have to shoot down a Soviet bomber in order to destroy 
weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles. We paid for 
their destruction with large circular saws and with devices in 
shipyards that destroyed their submarine by agreement.

  By contrast, the agreement that comes to the floor of the Senate this 
week is kind of a marshmallow. It does not do anything. It is full of 
air. It says: Oh, let's have each side put more of their nuclear 
weapons in storage and then pretend we have reduced the number of 
nuclear weapons. Well, I thought pretend was all about children's 
books; it is not about the serious business of nuclear arms control.
  There was a rumor, some long while ago, that a terrorist organization 
had stolen a nuclear weapon and was set to detonate it in a U.S. city. 
The interesting thing about that rumor was that the intelligence 
community did not view it as incredible that a nuclear weapon could 
have been stolen. After all, there where thousands and thousands and 
thousands in the world, most possessed by two countries--ours and also 
now Russia.
  So our intelligence community did not believe it was an incredible 
threat. They believed it was entirely possible someone could have 
stolen a weapon, particularly from the Russian arsenal that does not 
have great command and control, I have heard and I have been told. And 
secondly, it was not something beyond the bounds of reality that, 
having stolen a nuclear weapon, a terrorist organization would know how 
to detonate it or could detonate it.
  If ever there needed to be a sober moment, that was it.
  For us to think that the potential stealing of one nuclear weapon, 
and put in the wrong hands--the hands of terrorists--would threaten 
this country, or any city in this country, ought to lead us to 
understand that if we are worried about one nuclear weapon, we ought to 
be worried about thousands and thousands and thousands of nuclear 
weapons.
  With both strategic and theater nuclear weapons, there are perhaps as 
many as 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons in this world. And what are we 
going to do this week? We are going to come and talk about how we 
shuffle the inventory of nuclear weapons from one place to another, 
destroying none of them, and then saying: We have an agreement. What a 
great agreement. By the year 2012, we will have moved nuclear weapons 
into storage facilities. And the world is safer.
  Oh, really? How?
  At the same time all of this is occurring, there is a fundamental 
shift occurring, in addition, with respect to the discussion about 
nuclear weapons. This administration says: We do not want to continue 
the antiballistic missile treaty--which has been the center pole of the 
tent of arms control.
  Instead, this administration says: We want to talk about and consider 
the possibility of developing new designer nuclear weapons; for 
example, bunker buster nuclear weapons.
  This administration, and many in this Congress--too many in this 
Senate--said: We do not support the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban 
Treaty--despite the fact that we have not tested a nuclear weapon for 
well over a decade.
  There is a fundamental shift going on. This administration has said: 
We have not ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in certain 
circumstances. I will not go into them, but they have been in the 
newspapers.
  I think our responsibility--of all countries in the world--is to be a 
leader in trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in this world, 
and to try to convince everyone and anyone that no one shall ever again 
explode a nuclear weapon in anger.
  Pakistan and India both have nuclear weapons. They do not like each 
other. They have been exchanging weapons fire across the border with 
respect to Kashmir. Both have nuclear weapons. Do we want, in any way, 
to signal that the use of nuclear weapons, in any circumstance, is 
appropriate? Do we want to signal that we actually have a desire to 
begin producing new types of nuclear weapons, such as bunker buster 
nuclear weapons?
  I think this country has chosen the wrong path with respect to these 
policies. We ought to be debating on the floor of the Senate something 
that has grip to it, something that says: Look, as a world leader, it 
is our determination to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and to stop 
the spread now. And we are going to do that.
  We ought to be saying: It is our judgment that we want to reduce the 
stockpile of nuclear weapons in this world. And we want to be a leader 
in doing that. We just have to assume that leadership responsibility.

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