[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 167 (Thursday, December 16, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10315-S10359]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Omnibus Appropriations

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I want to respond to what has been said 
by my friend Senator Kyl from Arizona, as well as Senator McConnell of 
Kentucky, about the appropriations bill, which we are going to consider 
in a very short period of time.
  I am a member of this Appropriations Committee. I remember what 
happened, and I want to put it on the record right now so that some of 
the things that have been said can be compared to what I think is the 
reality. This is the reality: The Appropriations subcommittees--each 
and every subcommittee of that full committee--met with Democrats and 
Republicans and prepared a bill. I have the Subcommittee on Financial 
Services and General Government. Senator Susan Collins of Maine worked 
long and hard in preparation of that bill. Other subcommittee chairs 
did the same thing. There was full bipartisan cooperation in the 
preparation of each of these subcommittee bills--every single one of 
them. And the appropriations bill that we will vote on is the 
combination of all of that effort.
  Let me also talk about the amount of money we are going to 
appropriate to continue to fund the operations of our Federal 
Government.
  It is true, it is over $1 trillion. In fact, it is $1.1 trillion in 
this bill. But what hasn't been said by Senator McConnell and Senator 
Kyl is that is exactly the amount they asked for. Senator McConnell 
came to the Senate Appropriations Committee and said Republicans will 
not support this bill unless you bring the spending down to $1.108 
trillion. That is exactly what we bring to the floor to be considered.
  So to stand back in horror and look at $1.1 trillion and say, where 
did this figure come from, well, it came from Senator Mitch McConnell 
in a motion he made before the Senate Appropriations Committee. It 
reflects the amount that he said was the maximum we should spend in 
this current calendar year on our appropriations bills. He prevailed. 
It is the same number as the so-called Sessions-McCaskill figure that 
has been debated back and forth on this floor, voted repeatedly by the 
Republicans to be the appropriate total number. So we have a bipartisan 
agreement on the total number. Yet now the Republican leader comes to 
the floor, stands in horror at the idea of $1.1 trillion--the very same 
number he asked for in this bill. You can't have it both ways.
  Secondly, they say, well, this is a 2,000-page bill. Well, allow me 
to explain why.
  When you take the work of 12 subcommittees, instead of separate bills 
and put them in one bill, the total number of pages is going to 
increase. Maybe the best thing we can give as a Christmas gift to the 
Senate Republican Caucus is a speed reading course so they can sit down 
and read these bills. It turns out their fingers get smudgy and their 
lips get tired if you have more than 100 pages in a bill. Over and over 
we are told, don't worry about the substance, just count the pages, and 
if it gets up to a thousand pages, it is clearly a bad bill. Wrong. 
This 2,000-page bill reflects the work of 12 subcommittees and 12 
Republican Senators who helped to assemble and to devise the contents 
of that bill. It is no surprise that it would reach that number when we 
put all of the spending bills--the Appropriations subcommittee bills--
into one document.

  Another point that is raised--what a surprise--we have this thing 
thrown at us. We have not seen this before. We don't have time to look 
at this.
  This bill was posted 2 days ago, and will be available not only for 
every Senator and every staff member but for every citizen of this 
country to look at in detail. The reason Members have been coming to 
the floor talking about its contents is they have access to it, and 
have had for almost 48 hours, and will for an even longer period of 
time before it is finally considered.
  I also want to say that the schedule we are facing here now, which is 
putting us up against some deadlines--deadlines for the funding of 
government, a lot of personal family deadlines, which trouble all of 
us, but we accepted this job and its responsibility--many of these 
deadlines have come to be because of an exercise of the Senate rules. 
Time and time and time again the Republican minority has forced us to 
go into a cloture vote, into a filibuster--record-breaking numbers of 
filibusters over the last several years.
  If Members of the Senate were to go back home and ask the cable TV 
viewers who watch C-SPAN what their impression of the Senate is, their 
impression is an empty Chamber--an empty

[[Page S10316]]

Chamber because day after weary day we have had to put up with cloture 
votes and filibusters from the Republican side, delaying us time and 
time and time again while we burned off the hours on the clock instead 
of rolling up our sleeves and actually getting down to business.
  Now they come and tell us, well, we are going to threaten to start 
reading bills. They have a right to do that under the rules. It is 
really not needed, since all these bills have been posted and any 
Senator who wanted to read them has now had 48 hours to read this 
appropriations bill, if they wanted to. But they may burn off hours on 
the clock again and then complain we are ruining Christmas for Members 
of the Senate and their families. Well, unfortunately, their hands are 
not clean.
  When it comes to the things included in this bill, incidentally, I 
have heard many Republican Senators come down here and talk about 
specific elements in this Appropriations bill they disagree with, and 
that is their right. But many of the same Senators who are criticizing 
congressionally directed spending, or earmarks, have earmarks in the 
bill. That is the height of hypocrisy--to stand up and request an 
earmark, have it included in the bill, and then fold your arms and 
piously announce, I am against earmarks. You ought to be consistent 
enough to know if you are asking for an earmark one day and criticizing 
it the next, your credibility is going to be challenged. That is a 
fact.
  As far as some of the things that have been talked about, one of them 
brought up by Senator Kyl relates to drilling, and how quickly drilling 
permits will be issued by the Federal Government.
  Our Department of Interior has asked for 90 days to review 
applications for drilling permits included in the bill. Why would we 
want to be careful when it comes to drilling permits? America knows 
why. We saw what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. We saw the damage 
done. And we know for many businesses and many families and many 
people, and for a very fragile environment, things will never be the 
same. Let us avoid that from happening in the future. Waiting 90 days 
instead of 30 days is hardly an onerous burden to make sure that what 
is done is done properly and done in a way that won't come back to 
haunt us.
  Finally, to argue this is disrespectful of the democratic process is 
to ignore the obvious. Time and time and time again, when we have tried 
to move the democratic process, we have run into a roadblock with 
filibusters from the other side of the aisle--obstructionism.
  I am glad we passed the tax bill yesterday. It was an amazing day. I 
think the final vote was 81 to 18, which was an incredibly strong 
bipartisan showing. Let's end this session on a bipartisan note. Let's 
get away from lobbing bombs back and forth across the aisle. Let us 
roll up our sleeves and get down to what we need to do.
  Senator Kyl should come to the floor and offer his amendment on the 
START treaty. He has talked about needing time to offer amendments. 
Let's do it, and let's do it this morning. Let's start the amendment 
process, let's have votes, let's not filibuster anything. Let's get to 
the vote, vote on the substance, and let's bring it to an end. Then let 
us bring up the Omnibus appropriations bill and the CR, let the Senate 
work its will, and let's vote on it.
  We have two or three other items we can complete, and if people don't 
exercise delay tactics, we can get this done in a few days. I urge my 
colleagues, in the spirit of what we did with the President's tax 
package, let's return to a more bipartisan approach to completing our 
business and going home to our families.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. LUGAR. What is the business before the Senate?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The START treaty.
  Mr. LUGAR. I thank the Chair. I wish to work with my colleague, the 
chairman of our committee, to make time available to Senators. I see 
the distinguished Senator on the floor.
  Are you prepared, sir, to make a statement?
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, yes, I am.
  Mr. LUGAR. I yield to the Senator from Wyoming.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I rise today to express my views on 
the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, also known as New START. This 
treaty is an extremely important and serious matter. New START 
significantly impacts America's national security and nuclear 
deterrent. As a result, I believe this treaty deserves adequate time in 
the Senate--time to examine the issues, time to debate the many flawed 
provisions, and time to vote on all of the amendments offered for 
consideration.
  The majority leader should not be piecemealing together segments of 
time for debate on an issue as important as nuclear arms control. The 
treaty should not be shortchanged and rushed through the Senate. The 
treaty should not be jammed together with consideration of a 1,924-page 
omnibus Federal spending bill. The treaty should not be considered 
during a lameduck session.

  Consideration of the treaty will require a substantial amount of time 
in order to sufficiently address its many flaws. Like many of my 
colleagues, I plan on offering amendments, amendments designed to 
protect our national security. This debate concerns the national 
security of the United States. It is critical that the United States 
maintains a strong nuclear deterrent in order to defend our Nation and 
provide assurances to our allies. I have major concerns about the 
impact the New START will have on Wyoming and on national security.
  While I have many issues with the New START, I want to address only a 
few of my major concerns this morning. First, START straitjackets the 
U.S. missile defense capabilities. Second, START offers no method to 
make sure a historically noncompliant Russia state will keep its 
promises. Third, the approach embodied by START is representative of an 
outdated and simplistic view of the U.S. position on the world stage.
  To begin, I wish to specifically discuss the limitations placed on 
the U.S. missile defense by the New START. The treaty signed by 
President Obama and Russian President Medvedev on April 8, 2010, places 
explicit limitations on U.S. missile defense. The preamble of the 
treaty--the preamble declares an interrelationship between strategic 
nuclear offensive weapons and strategic nuclear defensive weapons. It 
implies the right of Russia to withdraw from the treaty based on U.S. 
missile defenses that are beyond ``current strategic'' capabilities. 
The treaty preamble, the very preamble of the treaty, gives Russia an 
opportunity to turn their backs on the treaty at the slightest sign of 
a shift in American defensive strategy. This language is unacceptable 
and needs to be removed.
  I offered an amendment in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 
to strike this language. The White House resists any attempt to amend 
the preamble. The administration argues it is a nonbinding concession 
to Russia. Russia clearly doesn't see it that same way. They have made 
it quite clear they consider the preamble legally binding. A Russian 
Foreign Minister stated the treaty contained ``legally binding linkage 
between strategic offensive and strategic defensive weapons.'' The 
Russians have wanted this language for a long time in order to have 
grounds to claim that the U.S. missile defense program violates an 
international agreement. This type of constraining language is not 
unique to the preamble.
  The treaty also places a legally binding limitation on missile 
defense in article V of the treaty. Article V prohibits the 
transforming of offensive strategic missile launchers into defensive 
strategic missile launchers. As this Nation continues to face threats 
from around the world, we should not take any action that will hinder 
our missile defense options. We need to be able to defend ourselves.
  Just like the preamble, the administration makes excuses as to why 
they have made concessions to the Russians on our missile defense. The 
current administration claims that they have no plans to use the 
missile defense options

[[Page S10317]]

prohibited under the new START treaty. I believe that placing any 
constraints on future U.S. defense capabilities should not even be up 
for debate, let alone placed in a treaty on strategic offensive nuclear 
weapons.
  The purpose of New START was to reduce strategic nuclear weapons 
between the United States and Russia, not limit the ability of the 
United States to defend ourselves. It is outrageous that the 
administration would make any concessions to Russia on our national 
security.
  The United States must always remain in charge of our own missile 
defense--not Russia, not any other country. We should not be tying our 
hands behind our backs and risking the security of our Nation and our 
allies. Russia is trying to force the United States to choose between 
missile defense and the treaty. The clear choice should always be to 
protect the ability of the United States to defend ourselves. I believe 
the administration's decision was a serious mistake.
  I also have major concerns about the central limits of New START. 
This treaty is a one-sided agreement aimed at only reducing U.S. 
strategic nuclear weapons. Russia is currently below the limit for 
strategic nuclear delivery vehicles under the New START treaty. As a 
result, Russia will not have to make reductions. The United States will 
be the only party required to slash its forces.
  Due to loopholes in the treaty counting rules, Russia could deploy 
more than 1,550 warheads, go above that ceiling and still be in 
compliance with the treaty. Russia may even be able to deploy more than 
2,100 warheads under the treaty. Each deployed heavy bomber, regardless 
of the actual number of warheads on it, only counts as one deployed 
strategic warhead. If anything, the limits just tell Russia how many 
weapons they are allowed to add to their strategic nuclear force. Why 
would the administration enter into a bilateral treaty that only 
requires the United States to make sacrifices? This is not acceptable.
  New START offers us nothing in return, not even a robust verification 
mechanism that enables us to make sure Russia is keeping its promises. 
President Ronald Reagan regularly repeated the phrase ``trust, but 
verify.'' He did it repeatedly regarding nuclear weapons. The 
verification measures play an important role in analyzing the New 
START. The New START has a weak verification regime.
  Former Secretary of State James Baker made the exact point by 
indicating the New START verification procedure provisions, he said, 
were weaker than the original New START. Under New START, the U.S. 
would be limited to 18 inspections per year as opposed to 28 in the 
past. Under the original START treaty the United States conducted 
approximately 600 inspections. Under New START the United States is 
limited to a maximum of 180 inspections. This further plays into 
Russia's favor due to there being 35 Russian facilities compared to 
only 17 U.S. facilities to inspect.
  The administration also dropped two key provisions from New START. 
The United States will no longer have continuous monitoring at the 
Russian nuclear missile assembly plant. We had it in START I. Why are 
we giving up this important verification component in New START? The 
United States also will not have full access to Russian nuclear 
ballistic missile launch telemetry under New START. Under START I we 
had unrestricted access. Why are we giving that up?
  The treaty does not provide us with the verification mechanisms that 
enable us to make sure Russia is keeping its promises. Instead, there 
is a lot of trust and precious little verification.
  A weaker verification system is even more dangerous due to Russia's 
long history of noncompliance on arms control treaties. Russia has a 
record of noncompliance and violations under the original START treaty. 
Up until the end of the original START treaty in December of 2009, 
Russia was continuing to engage in compliance violations. The 
Department of State compliance reports from 2010 spell out the numerous 
violations made by the Russians.
  Finally, the treaty relies on the false premise that Russia is 
America's only nuclear rival. This view of the world is outdated and 
simplistic. Even if we could trust Russia there are numerous other 
threats such as North Korea and Iran which have repeatedly shown 
hostility to the United States and to our allies. We should never 
abandon our defenses and sacrifice our deterrent in the face of 
increasing international belligerence. It is the equivalent of asking 
America to stare down the barrel of a gun without knowing whether the 
gun is loaded, and then to trust the person holding it not to pull the 
trigger.
  In arguing for this treaty the administration has tried to have it 
both ways. The treaty demands the United States reduce our nuclear 
strike force by specific numbers. Yet the administration has only 
offered a vague range of estimates regarding where these cuts would 
take place. The President's force structure plan provides up to 420 
intercontinental ballistic missiles, 14 submarines carrying up to 240 
submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and up to 60 nuclear-capable 
levee bombers.
  Even if the administration did cut the absolute maximum number of 
weapons it has proposed to cut, it would still fail to live up to the 
reductions demanded by New START. Instead of giving the Senate a 
specific force structure, the President is repeating his health care 
playbook and telling us to wait until after the United States ratifies 
the treaty to find out the details.
  It is wrong that the Senate is considering approving this treaty 
without knowing these details, and these details matter.
  The force structure of our nuclear triad is critical to maintaining 
an effective deterrent. The nuclear triad of the United States spans 
sea, air, and land. By working together, our nuclear triad complicates 
and deters any attempt at a successful first strike by anyone on our 
country. I believe the President's force structure proposal will weaken 
our nuclear triad.
  The American people deserve a full debate on the Senate floor on a 
treaty of this magnitude. It is my hope that the Senate will take its 
constitutional responsibility very seriously and provide the New START 
with the scrutiny it deserves.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. LUGAR. Madam President, I understand the distinguished Senator on 
the floor wishes to speak. I yield for Senator Udall.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Madam President, let me start by thanking my 
good friend from Indiana, not only for yielding the floor to me but for 
his strong leadership on this crucial treaty before us here in the 
Senate.
  I rise in strong support of the New START treaty. I want to start by 
reminding my colleagues that arms control treaties are an integral part 
of this country's modern history, premised on a shared belief that a 
world with fewer nuclear weapons is a safer world. Even as the Cold War 
raged, it was Ronald Reagan who committed America to the ultimate goal 
of eliminating these weapons from the face of the Earth.
  Those are his very words. This goal has animated numerous arms 
control agreements since then and it underpins the New START treaty, an 
agreement I believe we cannot fail to ratify. The dangers of nuclear 
proliferation have grown. As the Senator from Indiana knows well, 
because this has been a part of his life's work, the threat of global 
nuclear war has receded but the risk of nuclear attack has increased, 
enabled by the spread of nuclear technology and the danger of materials 
falling into the wrong hands.
  I believe we cannot be seen as a credible leader of a nation strongly 
committed to meeting our nonproliferation obligations unless we pursue 
further nuclear arms reductions ourselves. The United States and Russia 
have over 90 percent of the world's nuclear arms between us. Thus, we 
have an obligation to verifiably decrease our nuclear stockpiles and 
reduce this primary threat to global and national security. That is why 
the New START treaty matters. It establishes limits for U.S. and 
Russian nuclear weapons to levels lower than the 1991 START Treaty and 
the 2002 Moscow treaty.
  These limits have been validated by our defense planners and ensure 
that we have the flexibility to meet our security needs.

[[Page S10318]]

  The treaty also includes a strong verification regime, which 
Secretary Gates called the ``key contribution'' of the agreement.
  As we debate this agreement today, we should not only consider the 
consequences of ratification but also the consequences of failure. 
Because START expired over a year ago, we currently have no treaty and, 
therefore no constraints on Russia's stockpile or verification of their 
weapons.
  The choice facing U.S. Presidents through the decades has been 
whether we are better off signing arms agreement with the Russians or 
pursuing an arms race. Historically, Presidents from both parties and 
bipartisan majorities in the U.S. Senate have agreed that we are better 
served by agreements.
  Today is no different. As U.S. Strategic Command's General Chilton 
testified, without a treaty, Russia is not constrained in its 
development of force structure, and we have no insight into its nuclear 
program, making this ``the worst of both possible worlds.''
  Failure to ratify this treaty would make the broad ``resetting'' of 
U.S.-Russian relations harder. The distrust it would engender would 
also reduce or even eliminate the possibility of further bilateral 
strategic weapons reductions. As former National Security Adviser Brent 
Scowcroft--I think we would all agree he is one of the wisest Americans 
about foreign policy--testified earlier this year, ``the principal 
result of non-ratification would be to throw the whole nuclear 
negotiating situation into a state of chaos.''
  But we need to remember that this treaty is not just about Washington 
and Moscow, it is also about the world community and our global 
relationships. Failure to ratify this treaty would signal to the world 
that America is not willing to constrain its own weapons arsenal, even 
as we ask other countries to restrict theirs or avoid joining the 
``nuclear club'' altogether.
  It would discourage multilateral cooperation on nonproliferation 
goals and hinder our ability to lead by example. It would make global 
cooperation on dealing with rogue states like Iran and North Korea more 
challenging, tying our hands at a time when the threat from those two 
countries is increasing.
  Treaty opponents have tried to make the case that the dangers of 
ratifying the agreement outweigh the advantages of ratification. They 
are simply wrong.
  They argue that the treaty limits our ability to develop missile 
defense capabilities. The head of the Missile Defense Agency argued, 
that the treaty actually reduces constraints on missile defense. And 
countless military and civilian leaders, including the former 
Secretaries of State for the last five Republican Presidents, have 
publicly stated that New START preserves our ability to deploy 
effective missile defenses.
  Treaty opponents argue it inhibits our ability to maintain an 
effective and reliable nuclear arsenal. It is true that this 
administration inherited an underfunded and undervalued nuclear weapons 
complex. But the President understands that the nuclear experts and 
infrastructure that maintain our arsenal also help secure loose nuclear 
materials, verify weapons reductions and develop technologies that 
underpin our nuclear deterrent.
  That is why the President's budget request provides $7 billion for 
these programs this year, a 10-percent increase over last year. New 
START would in no way limit these investments. And as treaty opponents 
know well, the President has offered an even more robust investment in 
modernization and refurbishment of our nuclear infrastructure over the 
next 10 years, totaling $84 billion.
  The importance of ratifying this treaty goes beyond politics. We know 
that a lack of demonstrated bipartisan support could poison relations 
with Russia and our allies. And we cannot risk the loss of American 
leadership in the world that would ensue if we are perceived as too 
entangled in our own internal politics to ratify a strategic arms 
treaty that is clearly beneficial to our own security.
  I know that some of my colleagues hope to amend this treaty and, in 
so doing, kill it, since any changes will require the administration to 
start from scratch and reopen negotiations with the Russians. I urge 
them to reconsider and to think about what is at stake.
  And I urge them and all my colleagues to listen to our military 
leadership when they tell us that this treaty is essential to our 
national security. As Senator Lugar pointed out yesterday in his 
eloquent statement, ``Rejecting an unequivocal military opinion on a 
treaty involving nuclear deterrence would be an extraordinary position 
for the Senate to take.''
  Let us not allow this to be the first time in history that the Senate 
denies ratification to a treaty with overwhelming bipartisan support 
and the endorsement of the full breadth of our military and civilian 
leaders. I urge my colleagues to support this treaty and to support a 
safer world.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator very much for 
his comments and his support. It is my understanding that Senator 
Ensign was going to speak at this point in time. He is on his way. We 
are happy to accommodate that.
  Let me say to colleagues that we are open for business. We are ready 
to entertain amendments people may have. We encourage colleagues to 
come down here. Obviously, some people have raised the question of the 
press of time, but it does not seem, from both yesterday and today, 
that anybody is actually in a rush to bring an amendment.
  We are prepared to vote on our side of the aisle. I want to make that 
very clear. There are 58 Democratic Senators and Senator Lugar who 
obviously are working to advance this treaty. We do not have any 
amendments. We are prepared to vote. So if colleagues want to bring an 
amendment, now is the time to do it, and we encourage them to do so.
  Let me just say that I know Senator Barrasso just spoke with respect 
to missile defense. I understand the legitimate concerns that have been 
expressed by a number of colleagues about the question of missile 
defense. I wish to make it as clear as possible, from all of the record 
to date, that the treaty's preamble, first of all, requires nothing 
legally whatsoever. There is no legal, binding effect of the preamble--
none whatsoever.
  Secondly, Secretary Clinton said this and Secretary Henry Kissinger 
said this: All it is is a statement of fact about the existence of a 
relationship. It has no restraint whatsoever on our ability to proceed 
with missile defense.
  Moreover, the resolution of ratification could not be more clear 
about that. There are pages within the resolution and several different 
individual references to the fact that the missile defense is not 
affected.
  Let me read from it. This is from ``Understandings,'' and this is the 
missile defense understanding No. 1:

       It is the understanding of the United States--

  This is what we will pass when we pass this, and I am quoting from 
it--

     that the New START Treaty does not impose any limitations on 
     the deployment of missile defenses other than the 
     requirements of paragraph 3 of Article V of the New START 
     Treaty, which states, ``Each Party shall not convert and 
     shall not use ICBM launchers and SLBM launchers for placement 
     of missile defense interceptors therein. Each Party further 
     shall not convert and shall not use launchers of missile 
     defense interceptors for placement of ICBMs and SLBMs 
     therein.''

  It goes on to say that any New START treaty limitations on the 
deployment of missile defenses beyond those specifically contained--and 
I will speak to what they are in a moment--would require an amendment 
to the New START treaty. That would require an entire new process of 
ratification in order to live up to the requirements of the treaty 
process itself.
  Now, the specific, tiny, little limitation they are talking about in 
there is one that the Secretary of Defense said: We don't want; that 
is, the conversion of a current ICBM silo. There are four of them that 
are grandfathered into existence here, but the military has determined 
it is more expensive to do that than to simply build a new silo for a 
ground-based missile, which is what we plan to do in the event we want 
to--when we deploy.
  So there is, in effect, zero limitation. Every single member of the 
Strategic Command and the current command has said there is no 
limitation. Secretary Gates has said there is no limitation. And I 
believe we will be able to have even some further clarification of the 
absence of any limitation.

[[Page S10319]]

  The fact is, if you change that preamble now, you are effectively 
killing the treaty because it requires the President to go back to the 
Russians, renegotiate the treaty, and then you have to come back and go 
through months and months of hearings and resubmission and so forth.
  The important thing to focus on is the fact that--and let me quote 
Henry Kissinger about the language Senator Barrasso has referred to. He 
said, ``It is a truism, it is not an obligation.''
  Secretary Gates also emphasized the fact that it has no impact 
whatsoever on the United States. Secretary Gates reminded us in May 
that the Russians have always reacted adversely to our plans for 
missile defense, so they have tried a number of times to try to 
interrupt that.
  Secretary Gates said in his testimony:

       This treaty does not accomplish any restraint for them at 
     all.

  He also said:

       We have a comprehensive missile defense program, and we are 
     going forward with all of it.

  In addition to that, General Chilton reported on how he informed the 
Russians in full about exactly what program we were going forward with, 
including the recently agreed on deployment at Lisbon for the 
deployment of missile defense in Europe.
  They understand exactly what we are doing, what our plans are, and, 
notwithstanding that, they signed the treaty. So I think the comfort 
level of all of our military, of all of those involved with the 
laboratories, and all of those involved with the Strategic Command 
ought to speak for itself.
  I see Senator Ensign is here.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about this New 
START treaty. I have some very serious concerns about it.
  I appreciate the work that has been done by my colleagues. This is an 
incredibly serious issue. I do not question anybody's motives, but I do 
think there are some serious flaws that lie not only within the four 
corners of the treaty text but also speak to the manner in which this 
administration has dealt with Russia. This policy of Russian ``reset'' 
has meant that the United States is making major concessions, while our 
Russian counterparts give up virtually nothing.
  Further, I have serious reservations about the manner in which the 
Senate is considering this treaty. This body, the Senate, is supposed 
to be the most deliberative body in the world. It is supposed to be a 
chamber that respects the rights of the minority. Senators are supposed 
to be afforded the right of unlimited debate and the right to have 
their amendments considered. Rushing a treaty of this magnitude through 
a lameduck session is not what the Founders had in mind when they gave 
this body the power of advice and consent in these serious matters.
  The American people sent a clear message in November to concentrate 
on jobs, taxes, and the economy.
  While I do not think this lameduck is the time to debate this very 
important treaty, I do plan on offering multiple amendments to address 
this treaty's flaws, as well as the resolution of ratification. My 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle will also offer amendments with 
topics ranging from how this treaty restrains our missile defense 
capabilities to ceding the Senate's advice and consent power to the 
flawed Bilateral Consultative Commission.
  For example, there needs to be an amendment which addresses the 
verification regime in this treaty, or lack thereof. Further, it is 
astounding to me that tactical nuclear weapons were left out of the 
treaty, considering that Russia has approximately a 10-to-1 advantage. 
Additionally, we need to consider how the rail-mobile ICBMs are 
counted, or not counted, and our Russian policy in a much broader 
sense.
  As the Senate moves forward in examining the intended consequences of 
this treaty, we also need to pay careful attention to those 
consequences that are unintended because that is where the danger truly 
lies. In order to properly examine these, the administration needs to 
provide the Senate with the full negotiating record which it has yet to 
do. Only upon examination of this record can we accurately determine 
how Russia views this accord to ensure that their understanding is the 
same as ours.
  On the topic of missile defense, this is clearly a case of the 
administration wanting to have its cake and eat it too. There should be 
zero--zero--mention of missile defense within 100 miles of this treaty. 
Yet there it is, right in the preamble to New START, which clearly 
recognizes an interrelationship between offensive nuclear weapons and 
missile defense. I believe this is unacceptable.
  Further, if we examine article 5, paragraph 3, of New START, missile 
defense is again referenced, plain as day, in a provision prohibiting 
the United States from converting ICBMs or sea-based launchers for 
missile defense purposes. Where is the wisdom in removing such an 
option from our toolkit for the whole life of the treaty? Russia must 
understand that we will not limit our options for national defense 
based on current plans, ideas, or technology. Should a breakthrough 
occur in missile defense technology or launcher development we cannot 
have already ruled out pursuing new courses of action.
  In their attempts to persuade Republicans to support the treaty, 
proponents have attempted to invoke the name of Ronald Reagan. Let's 
remember that over two decades ago, President Reagan returned from 
Iceland and made the following statement:

       While both sides seek reduction in the number of nuclear 
     missiles and warheads threatening the world, the Soviet Union 
     insisted that we sign an agreement that would deny me and 
     future presidents for 10 years the right to develop, test and 
     deploy a defense against nuclear missiles for the people of 
     the free world. This we could not and would not do.

  This clearly states, in his own words, where Ronald Reagan would be 
on this New START treaty. Another especially troublesome facet of the 
New START is that it would establish a Bilateral Consultative 
Commission with the authority to agree upon additional measures to 
increase the effectiveness of the treaty. This seems like a broad and 
vague purview for a commission, and it is unclear why the Senate would 
delegate its advice and consent responsibilities to a commission. This 
leads me to ask the question: Since missile defense has fallen under 
the purview of this treaty, wouldn't it be logical that this commission 
could make decisions as to what we can and cannot do with our missile 
defense assets? We must make it clear this commission, the BCC, cannot 
have the authority to further handicap our national defense as it could 
otherwise do under this treaty without further scrutiny of the Senate.
  I hope we agree as a body to insist that the workings of the BCC are 
completely visible and accessible to the Senate and that we explicitly 
make these changes to the treaty itself, not just the resolution of 
ratification.
  As we move forward in examining this treaty, a colleague of mine will 
be sorely missed. The senior Senator from Missouri, Kit Bond, as vice 
chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is the foremost 
expert in the Senate and likely in all of Congress on matters of 
intelligence. At least that is my opinion. I wish to quote my good 
friend. The Select Committee on Intelligence has been looking at this 
issue closely over the past several months.

       As the vice chairman of this committee, I have reviewed the 
     key intelligence on our ability to monitor this treaty and 
     heard from our intelligence professionals. There is no doubt 
     in my mind that the United States cannot reliably verify the 
     treaty's 1,550 limit on deployed warheads. The administration 
     claims that New START is indispensable to reap the ``Reset'' 
     benefits with Russia. If a fatally flawed arms control 
     agreement is the price of admission to the Reset game, our 
     Nation is better off if we sit this one out.

  I could not agree more. It is naively optimistic to assume that a 
world with fewer nuclear weapons is the same thing as a safer world. 
Our security has long depended on a strong and flexible deterrent. New 
threats are constantly emerging from every corner of the globe. This 
has been recently demonstrated by Iran's resistance to denuclearization 
and North Korea's increasingly violent saber rattling. The United 
States must be able to rapidly adapt and respond to new threats to our 
security. Now is the time for more flexible deterrent capability, not 
less.
  New START is riddled with U.S. concessions from which I can see 
little gain. U.S. leadership in this arena will

[[Page S10320]]

be measured by how well we protect our ability to defend ourselves and 
our friends, not by how quickly we agree to an imperfect treaty.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I ask my colleague from Nevada--he 
mentioned he had some amendments, and we are ready to do amendments. Is 
he prepared to go forward with his amendments?
  Mr. ENSIGN. Let me check.
  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, let me speak to a couple points the 
Senator from Nevada raised. He talked about the article V ban. I 
discussed this a few minutes ago with respect to the conversion of ICBM 
silo launchers. There is a one-paragraph restraint in the treaty with 
respect to the conversion of those missile defense interceptors. The 
Foreign Relations Committee, in the course of our hearings, pressed the 
administration on this question very extensively. There were a lot of 
questions asked by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. The record 
unequivocally counters the argument just made by the Senator from 
Nevada. The ban does not prevent us from deploying the most effective 
missile defenses possible. I will be specific.
  We will soon have some 30 missile defense interceptors in silos in 
California and Alaska. We are going to have an additional eight extra 
launchers in Alaska, if we need them. If we need more interceptors, the 
Missile Defense Agency Director, LTG Patrick O'Reilly, who was 
originally appointed to that post in the administration of President 
Bush, told the committee: ``For many different reasons,'' they would 
``never'' recommend converting either ICBM silos or SLBM launchers into 
missile defense interceptor launchers.
  What we are hearing is a completely red herring argument, sort of 
throw it out there and say that somehow this is a restraint on missile 
defense. Why is it not a restraint? One reason is cost. It is 
intriguing to me to hear a lot of colleagues raise this particular 
missile defense issue in the treaty, when they also raise the issue of 
the deficit and how much we are spending and how we should not be 
spending on things people don't want and the military doesn't want. 
Here is something the military doesn't want. They don't want it because 
the conversion cost of the last ICBM launcher at Vandenberg into a 
missile defense interceptor launcher was about $55 million.
  The average cost for a new hardened missile defense interceptor silo 
in a new missile field is $36 million. The reason for that is because 
the Missile Defense Agency has developed a smaller, more effective, 
special purpose silo to meet its needs.
  The annual operating cost for a separate converted silo, which is 
what our colleagues are complaining about, is actually $2 million 
higher per silo, and it is $2 million higher than a silo which the 
military thinks is more effective and less expensive to maintain. As 
Strategic Command General Chilton noted, we also don't want to force 
Russia to make a split-second guess as to whether a missile that is 
flying out of a U.S. silo field is either a missile defense interceptor 
which may be aimed at a rogue missile or a nuclear-tipped missile aimed 
at Moscow. That confusion is impossible to distinguish unless we have a 
completely separate silo field. So converting an old ICBM silo in a 
particular field where we can't distinguish between an interceptor or 
an ICBM actually increases the potential of confusion and threat and 
possibly a dangerous mistake and decision.
  With regard to putting a missile defense interceptor in a submarine 
launch tube, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen both said this is not a 
cost-effective step, and it presents very unique operational 
challenges. We need to take these red herrings off the table. Secretary 
Gates and Admiral Mullen both noted it would make much more sense to 
put missile defense interceptors on aegis-capable surface ships, which 
is what they are doing, and that is not constrained by any treaty. 
There is no constraint whatsoever in our ability to go out and do what 
best meets the needs as defined by the military themselves.
  The bottom line is, article V, paragraph 3 does not constrain us one 
iota.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I plan to speak for about an hour for the 
benefit of scheduling, although I will only scratch the surface of what 
I will have to say about this treaty.
  Let me begin by talking about 14 or 15 specific things I intend to 
cover at some point when we have time during this debate and note that 
there will be amendments proposed that deal with many of the items I am 
going to be mentioning.
  First, I think it is important for us to lay out what some of the 
concerns are.
  This morning when I talked about the fact that the Senate is going to 
have to deal with the funding of the U.S. Government which expires on 
midnight on Saturday, I noted the fact that the process the majority 
leader has invoked, to dual-track or consider the START treaty along 
with the Omnibus appropriations bill, is not a process that allows 
adequate consideration of either, and the American people sent a signal 
in the last election that they didn't want us to continue this wasteful 
Washington spending spree we have been on. Yet the Omnibus 
appropriations bill, which I am not sure I could lift, will do exactly 
that.
  We ought to be focused on a process by which that can actually be 
considered with amendments. Under the way the majority leader has 
outlined our schedule, that does not appear to be possible.
  The first concern I have with respect to going to the START treaty at 
this time is that we are putting the cart before the horse. Our first 
job needs to be to ensure that the Federal Government doesn't run out 
of money at midnight on Saturday. Yet the majority leader has turned to 
the START treaty. Why? I think the obvious--at least one--answer is to 
divert attention from this big pile of spending that I am pointing to, 
6,700 earmarks. If we are talking about the START treaty, we are not 
talking about the Omnibus appropriations bill. But the American people 
are talking about government spending. That is what we should be 
focusing our attention on.
  The problem now is that we are on the START treaty, and those of us 
who want to talk about this and want to amend it and believe we will be 
denied the opportunity to do so will be accused of not wanting to talk 
about the START treaty because that is what the majority leader has put 
on the Senate floor. And he will say: Gee, you have had all this time 
to talk about it. Why aren't you talking about it? That is part of what 
is wrong with the process. That is one of the reasons I have been 
saying you cannot do all these things and do them right.

  In addition, the majority leader said this morning we have other 
things he wants to consider before Christmas as well. There is no 
earthly way to do all this within the time we have.
  Let me mention some of the concerns I will be discussing with respect 
to the START treaty. I think one thing you have to talk about, first of 
all, is whether we are going to have sufficient time in order to do 
what needs to be done to both amend the treaty as well as the 
resolution of ratification and debate some of the issues, including the 
issue that my colleague from Massachusetts was just talking about.
  Secondly, what were the benefits of the treaty for the United States 
vis-a-vis Russia? What were the concessions we made to Russia? What do 
they get out of it? What do we get out of it? My own view is, they got 
virtually everything out of it, and I do not know what we got out of 
it, except for the President to say he made another arms control deal 
with Russia.
  Third, where will this treaty leave our nuclear forces, our delivery 
vehicles, and our warheads in terms of the deterrent capability not 
only for the United States but the 31 allies who rely on the U.S. 
nuclear umbrella? We will have cut our forces to the bone. Yet, 
interestingly, Russia will not be forced to make any reductions at all 
in these delivery vehicles for the nuclear warheads.
  Fourth--and there has been quite a bit of discussion in the media 
about my work on modernization--where does the administration's 
modernization plan end up relative to START? The point here is, if you 
are going to bring your nuclear warheads down to a bare minimum number 
or below that you

[[Page S10321]]

have to make darn sure every single one of them is safe, secure and 
reliable and they will do what they are supposed to do and everybody 
needs to know that. But all the experts agree the facilities we have 
for taking care of our warheads and maintaining them are inadequate for 
that purpose, and they have to be modernized.
  Is the process and the amount of money that has been set aside for 
that adequate? I will discuss my views on that and the questions that 
remain about critical funding for the modernization of both our nuclear 
weapons and the complex necessary to sustain them.
  Fifth is the administration's uncertain commitment to the nuclear 
triad. This I find troubling because while they have committed to a 
modernization program, they have not yet committed to a program for the 
modernization of the three legs of the nuclear triad: the delivery 
systems, the ICBM force, the bomber force, accompanied by cruise 
missiles and our submarine force. I will be discussing the areas in 
which I think the commitments in that regard are insufficient and 
dangerous.
  Probably most interesting to a lot of people in this country, and 
certainly to a lot of our colleagues, is the question of what has 
occurred with respect to the relinking of strategic offense and defense 
capabilities. This is the missile defense concern. There is 
significantly divergent views between the United States and Russia on 
this question of what the treaty does or does not do with respect to 
missile defense. Both explicitly and impliedly, there are limitations 
on U.S. missile defense activities in the treaty.
  On the one hand, the Department of Defense has said the United States 
has plans for developing and deploying missile defense systems that 
will have adequate capability against ICBMs coming, for example, from 
Iran. If they have capability against those missiles, they also have 
capability against Russian missiles.
  On the other hand, the U.S. official policy statement that 
accompanied the treaty and subsequent briefings from the State 
Department assures the Russians that the United States will not deploy 
defenses that are capable of undermining the Russian deterrent. That is 
important because of the way the Russians interpret the preamble and 
other features of the treaty.
  Misunderstanding and conflict between the parties is thus built into 
the treaty if the United States intends to deploy more capable missiles 
either to defend Europe or the United States, which it is our stated 
policy to do. So are we to believe the administration will ever put 
this treaty at risk over future missile defense plans? That is a 
subject we will be exploring in-depth.
  Seventh, the Senate gave advice to the administration not to limit 
missile defense or conventional prompt global strike, which is a 
capability that would permit us to deliver over long ranges, 
intercontinental ranges, a warhead that is not a nuclear warhead, 
something which this administration and I think are very important for 
our future ability to deal with rogue states, for example. 
Nevertheless, contrary to Congress's instructions, the administration 
has subjected advanced U.S. conventional military capabilities to 
limitations in this treaty, and we will discuss that.
  Eight is something else. There are people who say there is nothing 
that stands between us and a nuclear-free world. It is called zero 
nuclear, the President's stated goal of a world without nuclear 
weapons. Some say this treaty needs to be adopted, ratified in order to 
permit us then to take the next step, which is to achieve that great 
goal. I submit that goal is neither feasible nor desirable, and that to 
the extent this treaty is deemed as a stepping stone toward that, it is 
a bad step to take.
  Moreover, it is an unwelcome distraction from addressing the true 
nuclear dangers the President has made very clear are his top 
priorities; that is, the dangers of proliferation and terrorism.
  Ninth is a question about verification, something Senator Bond has 
talked a great deal about and I am going to be speaking some about 
because of issues that arose during my trip with Senator Feinstein to 
Geneva during the time our negotiators were working on this treaty with 
their Russian counterparts.
  It is very clear that with lower force levels, we need better 
verification. But this New START treaty has substantially weaker 
verification provisions than its predecessor, START I. Of course, 
Russia has a history of cheating on every arms control treaty we have 
ever entered into with them, which amplifies the concern.
  There are some comparisons, and I would suggest they are false 
comparisons, to the SORT treaty, which is the 2002 treaty. It is called 
the Moscow Treaty; that is, the treaty that deals with our strategic 
offensive weapons after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the 
Soviet Union, and the determination by the United States and Russia 
both to simply bring down our nuclear forces. We did not need anymore 
the nuclear forces that existed during the Cold War.
  There are some false comparisons there that I think are very 
important for us to talk about as it relates to this treaty before us.
  I think we also need to talk about the New START and Russian reset. I 
will talk about that a little bit when I begin discussing the reasons 
for trying to act so quickly here. But I think it also requires some 
further discussion because, frankly, Russia is threatening a new arms 
race if the Senate does not ratify this treaty. Is that the reset the 
President is so fond of talking about, this new wonderful relationship 
with the Russian Federation?
  Twelfth, I think we need to talk about tactical nuclear weapons. The 
treaty did not deal with tactical nuclear weapons, and respected 
Members of this body, including the Vice President of the United 
States, then a Senator, made clear that after the last treaty the next 
item on the agenda had to be to deal with tactical nuclear weapons. It 
should have been, but it was not done here.
  Thirteenth--and this deals with some of the amendments that are going 
to be necessary--there is a Commission in here that somewhat like 
previous treaty commissions--it is called the Bilateral Consultative 
Commission--and the treaty delegates to this Commission the ability, 
even in secret, to modify terms of the treaty--a group of Russians and 
a group of U.S. negotiators. There is some reference in the committee's 
resolution of ratification, but, in my view, it is inadequate for the 
Senate to be able to react in time to notification by that Commission 
of things it is intending to do in time for the Senate to provide its 
advice and consent, if those are necessary.

  Then, as I mentioned, it is also important for us to determine how 
this treaty is distracting attention from what the President has said, 
and I agree, is our top priority; that is, dealing with proliferation 
and terrorism. This treaty does not do anything to advance our goals in 
that respect, and I think it would be much better if we could have 
spent part of the last 2 years better focusing on the illegal nuclear 
weapons programs of Iran and North Korea and why that should be our top 
agenda item right now.
  Those are some of the things I am going to be talking about. I will 
not have time to deal with all of them during this first hour. But let 
me at least briefly talk about the question of adequate time. I do not 
think Senators are quite aware of some of the procedures that exist 
with respect to treaty ratification. Because of precedent in the 
Senate, when cloture is filed, it will close off debate both on 
amendments to the treaty and the preamble, as well as amendments to the 
resolution of ratification.
  I think it is important to note there are amendments that Members, at 
least on our side, have that go both to the treaty and preamble and 
also amendments that deal with the resolution of ratification. In fact, 
I think there are many more that deal with the latter subject. We are 
going to have to be able to deal with both of those subject matters. So 
when Members talk about filing cloture, I think it is important to 
realize that would cut off debate on every additional change, even if 
we have not been able to complete work on the amendments to the 
resolution of ratification.
  Also, I think it should be clear that there have been numerous 
letters sent to our leadership in the Senate and to the committee 
leadership from Republican Members of the Foreign Relations Committee, 
other Republican Senators, the 10 Republican Senators-

[[Page S10322]]

elect, Representatives from the House Armed Services Committee, and 
others, indicating this is not the appropriate time or way to deal with 
this treaty.
  Incidentally, I happened to be watching Chris Matthews the other 
night--a television program--and Lawrence Eagleburger, one of the 
people who support the treaty, was asked by Matthews what the fuss was 
about getting it done now and, among other things, this is what 
Lawrence Eagleburger, former Secretary of State, said:

       They want to do it before these lame duckers are out there. 
     That's not the way to move on this issue.

  I agree with that. There are a lot of serious things to consider, and 
the rush to do all the business this lameduck session has is not the 
best way to get that done.
  The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday expressed 
the view that we had plenty of time to do this, comparing the work we 
have here to the START I treaty. The START I treaty is the predecessor 
to this New START treaty, though there was the intervening 2002 Moscow 
Treaty I mentioned before. But just to make two quick points on this: 
When we dealt with START I, we did not have all the competing 
considerations, the dual tracking with an Omnibus appropriations bill 
and the votes we are going to have to take on that, as well as the 
other items the majority leader has mentioned. Secondly, if we are to 
talk about an analogous treaty, the START treaty was not considered by 
the Senate until September of 1992, and the analogy would be that this 
treaty before us now would be appropriate to bring to the Senate next 
May, May of 2011. That is how much time elapsed between the two.
  I am not suggesting we need that much more time, but I am simply 
pointing out the fact that it is not analogous. Probably a better 
analogy would be the INF Treaty. That is a treaty that took the Senate 
9 days of floor time. We had no intervening business of any kind. There 
were 20 votes on amendments and plenty of time to work out 
consideration of other amendments.
  So the idea that, well, some treaties have not taken that long, 
therefore, why can't we do this one, is a specious argument, and I 
think when we see the serious issues that need to be considered, our 
colleagues will appreciate the need to take adequate time on this 
agreement.
  One of the curious arguments is, we have to do this quickly because 
the verification provisions of the predecessor START I treaty have 
lapsed and, as a result, we have a situation that is untenable. As a 
matter of fact, Robert Gibbs, the Press Secretary, believing that the 
Senate yesterday was reading the treaty, which did not happen, 
nevertheless put out a statement, obviously prematurely, and one of the 
things he said was:

       Every minute that the START Treaty is being read on the 
     Senate floor increases the time that we lack verification of 
     Russia's nuclear arsenal.

  Well, apart from the fact that he was wrong about the reading of the 
treaty, he is also wrong about the urgency because of the lack of 
verification of the Russians. First of all, I am confused by the two 
main arguments to support the treaty.
  No. 1, we have this wonderful relationship with the Russians that has 
been reset and we are cooperating on all of these things. By the way, 
we can't trust those guys so we quickly have to put these verification 
measures in place. There is something that doesn't quite connect there 
as far as I am concerned.
  But I go back to why we don't have verification right now. This story 
reminds me a little bit about the trial of a fellow who killed both of 
his parents and then pled for mercy from the court because he was an 
orphan. This problem of verification was created by the administration. 
It has nothing to do with action by the Senate, and they have nothing 
but themselves to blame for whatever verification procedures are not in 
place.
  How did that come about? Well, the START treaty had perfectly good 
verification provisions in it that could have been continued for 
another 5 years if the United States had taken the view with Russia 
that that is what we should do. But the administration said, no, we are 
going to deliver the START treaty on time so there won't be any hiatus 
there, so we don't need to continue the verification provisions of 
START I.
  Here is what was said in a joint statement between President Barack 
Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation, on 
April 1 of 2009:

       The United States and the Russian Federation intend to 
     conclude this agreement before the treaty expires in 
     December.

  Originally, we had nothing to worry about because the new treaty 
would be done by then. It soon became evident that wasn't going to 
happen, the negotiations were dragging, and the treaty would expire. 
Did this administration decide to try to continue the existing treaty--
which it could have done? It just takes the United States and Russia 
agreeing to do it, no Senate action required. No, it didn't do that.
  Several of us began to express concerns about this. The Republican 
ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even 
introduced legislation to provide the necessary legal framework for 
verification to continue even though the two treaties had lapsed, and I 
cosponsored that legislation. The administration said, well, what we 
are going to do is get a bridging agreement with Russia that will 
bridge the time between the time START lapses and the time the new 
treaty is ratified.
  Michael McFaul, the NSC adviser for Russia, in a press briefing on 
November 15 of 2009 made that point. He said:

       It does expire on December 5 and in parallel, we have a 
     bridging agreement that we are also working on with the 
     Russians, so there is no interruption. The key thing here is 
     verification. We just want to preserve the verification.

  So that was the intention. Those of us who expressed concerns about 
this were at least, I think, somewhat mollified, except that when I 
went to Geneva, what we found was there had been no conversations 
whatsoever, and it appeared to me--I came back to the floor and 
actually called it malpractice--that our negotiators and the Russian 
negotiators had not thought about, let alone begun, to negotiate what 
kind of agreement would be put in place in the event the treaty expired 
and nothing else was in place to provide for verification. But at least 
they promised we would have this bridging agreement.
  Then the administration said--when the treaty was signed and the two 
Presidents spoke to the issue--that we would continue in the spirit of 
the previous treaty so there would be no difference in action between 
the two countries in whatever time period it took for the ratification 
of the treaty to occur by the two countries' bodies. This is a 
quotation from the statement of Presidents Medvedev and Obama:

       We express our commitment as a matter of principle to 
     continue to work together in the spirit of the START Treaty 
     following its expiration, as well as our firm intention to 
     ensure that a New START Treaty and strategic arms enter into 
     force at the earliest possible date.

  It is a complete mystery as to what happened. What happened to the 
bridging agreement? What happened to this spirit of cooperation we were 
going to continue in the spirit of the previous treaty? We are now told 
it is an absolute emergency for the Senate to hurry up and ratify this 
treaty because the Russians might cheat. Nobody has explained what 
happened here and nobody has explained why it was important before, but 
it never got done, and now we have the emergency.
  There were documents that trickled in over time, but one of the 
things we have asked for to try to explain what happened and what this 
spirit is that the Presidents both talked about was the negotiating 
record. We have absolutely been denied access to that negotiating 
record. The Russians know what we said and what they said. The State 
Department knows what we said and what they said, but Senators who are 
asked to give their advice and consent can't be trusted, I guess, to 
know what was said between the Russian and U.S. negotiators.
  Numerous officials of the administration have said there is an 
urgency to ratify the treaty because we lack verification measures with 
Russia. That was the statement Senator Clinton made back in August and 
others have said the same thing. Of course, we do have some 
verification, but I don't want to get into in open session the national 
technical means we have. We can discuss that in executive session.

[[Page S10323]]

  But apart from the mystery about this bridging agreement and the 
commitment of the two Presidents, this urgency is irrational if we are 
to believe that we really reset this relationship with Russia. In fact, 
administration officials have actually denied that the emergency 
exists, a point that has been made by others. Gary Samore, who is 
special assistant to the President, said:

       I am not particularly worried near term, but over time as 
     the Russians are modernizing their systems and starting to 
     deploy new systems, the lack of inspections will create much 
     more uncertainty.

  Absolutely true. I agree with that. But he is not worried in the near 
term; that is to say, within the next few months.
  The Washington Post I thought put it well. In an editorial they said:

       But no calamity will befall the United States if the Senate 
     does not act this year. The Cold War threat of the nuclear 
     exchange between Washington and Moscow is, for now, almost 
     nonexistent.

  So I don't think it is a valid argument to rush this treaty through 
in the week before Christmas, that somehow this is an urgent need and 
that our national security is threatened if we don't do that. I also 
reject the argument that the only choice for us is this treaty or no 
treaty. Obviously, there are other choices. When it comes to 
verification, both countries have the ability to have agreements with 
each other that provide for the kind of inspection regimes that would 
be appropriate.
  Let me conclude at this point. Ian Kelly, who is a State Department 
spokesman, made a comment that I think sums it up. He said:

       Both sides pledge not to take any measures that would 
     undermine the strategic stability that the START has provided 
     during this period between the expiration of the START treaty 
     and entering into the force of the new treaty, which will 
     take some months.

  He is right. But I think the argument that the Senate has to act 
now--right now--or else our national security is going to be 
jeopardized by lack of verification is specious, and it certainly 
raises questions if we are to examine what the real basis is and what 
the result of this new reset relationship with Russia is. That is the 
argument: We have to do this now, because otherwise we won't be able to 
verify what the Russians are doing. The other argument is that we reset 
our relationship with Russia and, therefore, if we don't do this, it 
will make the Russians mad and they will not continue to cooperate with 
us on important matters they have cooperated with us on. I think it is 
important to both examine that allegation as well as the question of 
what the two countries got out of this treaty.
  Let me speak for a moment about what the Russians got out of the 
treaty and what the United States purportedly gets out of the treaty, 
most of it characterized in this reset language. Russian politician 
Sergei Kurginyan said:

       Russia could not have an easier partner on the topic of 
     nuclear arms than Obama.

  He is referring to President Obama.
  What exactly did the Russians get out of this? Some said, Well, even 
though they are no longer a powerful nation they need the superpower 
status, and entering into a treaty such as this, such as the kinds of 
treaties that used to be entered into during the Cold War, gives them a 
feeling of superpower status along with the United States. So it is 
important for us to do that. First of all, I am not sure you treat a 
serious reset partner that way, but apart from that, obviously, the 
Russians felt that if they could negotiate a good treaty with the 
United States, it would be to their benefit, and I don't question their 
intentions in doing that.
  But what we got out of this in terms of the primary feature of the 
treaty is to reduce the nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles. The 
delivery vehicles are the most important thing, in my view. But only 
the United States reduces its strategic delivery vehicles under this 
New START treaty. The Russians don't. They currently have about 560 
delivery vehicles. These are ICBMs, bomber capability, and submarine 
capability. The United States has 856. The treaty takes you down to 700 
of deployed delivery vehicles. So even under the treaty, Russia can 
build up to that level by adding 140 launchers they don't currently 
have, while the United States must cut our forces by 156. One says, 
Well, why shouldn't it be exactly equal? The United States has 
obligations beyond those of Russia. Russia has a need to defend its 
territory. The United States has 31 other countries relying on the U.S. 
nuclear umbrella. Therefore, the targets we must hold at risk and the 
concerns we have about adequate delivery vehicles are much different 
than Russia's. Nonetheless, we have agreed to a parity number here of 
700. So they can build up to that number; we have to build down. That 
is not exactly a great victory, in my view. In fact, it is the first 
time since the very disastrous Washington naval treaties with Germany 
and Japan before World War II that the United States has agreed to one-
sided reductions in military might.
  I mentioned the bridging agreement before. Where that fell through 
the cracks, I don't know. The administration was apparently pushing for 
it. It didn't get it. We still don't know what happened because we 
haven't been given the record.
  On mobile missiles, this is a matter that exercised the Russians when 
the committee dealt with it in a very modest way in its resolution of 
ratification. You see, the Russians have had rail mobile missile plans 
and don't know exactly what they are going to do in the future with 
rail mobile, but when the committee deigned to speak to this, the 
Russians reacted like a scalded dog: Well, we recommend the Duma not 
approve the treaty if we are going to be talking about rail mobile 
missiles. What about the United States in contention? We shouldn't be 
talking about U.S. missile defense. No, that is OK, but we don't want 
to talk about rail mobile missiles. So the Russians successfully 
prevented any revisions on that and there is maybe a concern now that 
we made a mistake in not including that. Obviously, the concession 
makes it much harder to monitor their forces if they go with rail 
mobile forces.
  In addition, we limited the monitors of missile production at 
Votkinsk. Votkinsk was the missile production facility in Russia that 
produced many of the missiles the Russians used and this was required 
by the START I treaty. The Russians didn't want this anymore. I can 
understand why. If we are going to understand what they are producing 
in their factory and see what happens when they roll them outside the 
factory, then we will have a better idea of whether they are cheating. 
The Russians said from the very beginning, We are not going to let you 
do that anymore. So they got something very important with regard to 
verification. Again, the argument is we have to do verification. 
Understand that verification in this treaty is much weaker than the 
verification that existed under START I and that could have been 
continued for another 5 years if the administration had taken that 
position.
  Very troublesome is a reverse in course by the United States and 
Russia both with regard to MIRVing of ICBMs. We have been working 
against MIRVing for a long time and finally achieved in the last treaty 
a recognition of the fact that MIRVed missiles; that is to say, 
missiles that have numerous warheads on top, are very destabilizing 
because it creates a situation where you basically have to use them or 
you lose them. If we attack a missile silo and kill eight warheads all 
at once with one strike, that is a major loss. So the idea is that 
strategic offensive weapons with those MIRVs on them need to get off 
before they are hit by an incoming missile. Very destabilizing.
  So both countries agreed we would move toward a single warhead 
missile. Well, in this treaty, that all goes by the boards. The United 
States is going to continue to provide for single warheads, but not 
Russia. In fact, it is believed that 80 percent of the Russian ICBM 
force in the future will consist of MIRVed ICBMs. I don't know why the 
administration walked back from that. Again, we don't know because we 
don't have the negotiating record.
  The SLCM is the submerged launch cruise missile. Now, the START I 
treaty had a side agreement that limited submerged launch cruise 
missiles. But this new START treaty ends that side agreement and says 
even though the United States is retiring our submerged launch cruise 
missiles, as we intended to do under START I, it appears that Russia is 
developing a new

[[Page S10324]]

version of such a missile, with a range of up to approximately 5,000 
kilometers, which is a longer range than some ballistic missiles 
covered by the treaty.

  Again, why do we allow a relinkage of a subject as important to us as 
missile defense with strategic arms limitations and yet not limit rail 
mobile, SLCMs, and so on? It is a very lopsided result in the 
negotiations, it seems to me.
  I mentioned missile defense. Russia not only achieved a recognition 
of its position that missile defense is related to strategic offensive 
systems in the preamble of this treaty, but it negotiated limitations 
on U.S. missile defense in article V. Importantly, it added some what I 
will call ``bullying'' language in the unilateral statement 
accompanying the treaty. These achievements came after the U.S. gave 
away ground-based European systems and promised the Senate there would 
be no treaty limitations on defensive missiles.
  Missile defense targets is another area in which the U.S. gave 
ground. There is ambiguous treaty language which I believe will 
constrain U.S. ability to maximize the affordability of our missile 
defense targets. We are not going to be able to reuse old targets.
  Telemetry is a big issue the U.S. fought hard on but apparently caved 
on. We don't have the record, so we don't know what kind of quid pro 
quo could have been gotten for this. Under START I, one of the most 
valuable collection methods was the unencrypted telemetry from missile 
tests by the Russians. They got that from our missile tests. We both 
knew the capability of each other's missiles. In a sense, that is 
stabilizing. But under New START, which is supposed to be improving the 
situation with regard to certainty, unencrypted data from almost every 
ballistic missile flight will be not subject to sharing with the other 
side. At best, five flights a year will be shared. But Russia can 
choose to never share flight test data from new missiles they are 
currently developing and testing. They can say here is data from five 
tests of old missiles, but they don't have to share data as to any of 
their new missiles. None of our intelligence people will tell you that 
is an improvement or a good situation.
  Here is another disparity in the treaty: conventional prompt global 
strike. Remember I mentioned the Russian potential plans for rail 
mobile or cruise missile submarine launch. I think the United States 
has a very good idea about moving forward with something we call 
conventional prompt global strike. It is not even a nuclear program. It 
is a sensible way to deal with some of the emerging threats around the 
world today, where we may have a need, in a very quick time and over a 
long distance, to send a conventional warhead to a country. We may not 
want to have to send a nuclear warhead--Heaven knows what that would 
start--but it makes sense to have a conventional capability to do this.
  The Russians have fought that. It is a little unclear why, since it 
would totally be aimed at other countries, certainly not Russia. In a 
treaty nominally about nuclear weapons, we have a specific limitation 
on the U.S. plans for conventional prompt global strike. It would limit 
the capability we are seeking to address WMD and terrorist threats by 
requiring that any such missiles be counted against the already-too-low 
limit of 700 missiles for delivery of nuclear warheads.
  Let's say we were going to deploy 24 of these missiles--to decide a 
number. That means you have to reduce the 700 by 24. That provides a 
huge disincentive to deploying these conventional prompt global strike 
missiles and a dangerous reduction from a negotiated 700 launcher limit 
in the treaty.
  I am not going to get deeply into inspections and verifications. That 
will have to be dealt with in executive closed session where we can 
discuss classified matters. Suffice it to say here, in discussing the 
disparity between what the Russians got and what we got, in a number of 
inspections this new treaty cuts the number of inspections by more than 
half compared to START I.
  Part of the problem is that none of the inspections that are 
permitted will ever enable us to have a good sense of the total number 
of warheads. So that is different from the START I treaty. We are never 
going to be able to monitor, under this treaty, whether the Russians 
are complying with the overall limit on warheads. Again, we will have 
to get more into that in executive session.
  I talked about tactical nukes. I mentioned the fact that when he was 
a Senator, Vice President Biden made remarks during ratification of the 
2002 Moscow Treaty. He said:

       After entry into force of the Moscow Treaty, getting a 
     handle on Russian tactical nuclear weapons must be a top arms 
     control and nonproliferation objective of the United States 
     Government.

  Well, here it is 8 years later, and not only is there no further 
progress toward that--and I agree with the Vice President--but this 
treaty, at the insistence of the Russians, has not one word about 
tactical nuclear weapons. I will be discussing that in more detail 
later on. I just mention it here to illustrate yet another area where 
it seems to me there is a great disparity.
  I didn't count up all of these things, but there have to be 10 or 12 
areas in which the Russians have gotten very much what they bargained 
for. The question is, What did we get?
  We are told that we benefit for the following reasons: We can resume 
inspections in Russia. As I said, we could have done that by extending 
the START I treaty. That is a problem of our own making. By allowing 
that to expire and not renewing or putting into place a bridging 
agreement or enforcing the joint statement the two Presidents put 
together in working together in the spirit of START I, the inspections 
are significantly weaker, as I said.
  I will quote Senator Bond. He said:

       The administration's new START Treaty has been oversold and 
     overhyped. If we cannot verify that the Russians are 
     complying with each of the treaty's three central limits, 
     then we have no way of knowing whether we are more secure or 
     not. There is no doubt in my mind that the United States 
     cannot reliably verify the treaty's 1,550 limit on deployed 
     warheads.

  Senator Bond is exactly right. We will discuss some of that in open 
session and the rest of it in closed session.
  I will conclude this point by noting that the Vice President and 
others have also suggested that this treaty is important for the United 
States because it is a valuable part of the so-called reset 
relationship with the Russians.
  I have to ask several questions about this. Why have we assumed this 
has been such a great success?
  My colleague, Senator Durbin, for example, stated a couple of weeks 
ago that we need Russia's help in dealing with Iran because that nation 
is about to bring online a new nuclear powerplant. I remind everybody 
that Russia built and fueled that powerplant for Iran. So that is a 
great benefit to this reset relationship.
  We will have more to say about that as well. I will conclude this 
part by quoting from Dr. Henry Kissinger, who believes the treaty 
should be ratified. He said:

       The argument for this treaty is not to placate Russia. That 
     is not the reason to approve this treaty. Under no condition 
     should a treaty be made as a favor to another country, or to 
     make another country feel better. It has to be perceived to 
     be in the American national interest.

  So what are the two big arguments for the treaty? We have to get this 
verification regime in place because the Russians may cheat. Well, I 
guess they are our new best friends and we have to keep it that way or 
else they will get mad. Dr. Kissinger wrote before about this matter of 
what should motivate us to do an arms control treaty. He said every 
arms control treaty has to be justified within its own four corners. 
You can never say a reason to do it is to make the other country feel 
better or to gain some kind of leverage with the other country or to 
gain its cooperation in some way. A, it is illegitimate; and, B, it 
doesn't work. He made that point precisely with respect to this. He is 
saying that is not a reason to endorse this treaty.

  I conclude that the two big arguments are not arguments at all, and, 
in point of fact, the Russians got a lot more out of this treaty than 
the United States ever would.
  I spoke a little bit about the treaty limits because this is the 
central idea of the treaty--to reduce the number of

[[Page S10325]]

warheads and delivery vehicles. I wanted to discuss that in this 
context because there are a lot of people who believe--and I certainly 
understand the argument--that it seems like a good idea if both 
countries are reducing nuclear weapons forces and warheads. That was 
exactly the theory under the Moscow Treaty of 2002. We didn't need that 
many warheads and delivery vehicles.
  The United States said: We are just going to reduce ours; and Russia 
said: We have to reduce ours, too, so why don't we have a treaty. The 
United States said: We can have one, but we don't need one; we are 
going to do this out of our own best interests because it costs a lot 
of money. As a favor to Russia, we said: If you want to do a treaty, 
fine, but we will not make any concessions to do it.
  Now we are cutting into the bone and getting the level of delivery 
vehicles down to 700 could jeopardize our ability to carry out our 
missions. That is my assertion. There are experts in the administration 
who have briefed us, who can show exactly where the targets are, where 
our missiles are, how many we would need, and so on. They say actually 
we still have enough to do the job.
  I am willing to accept their, first of all, patriotic motivations, 
expertise, and judgment on this issue. But I also note that when you 
read all of the statements that all of them made, they appreciate that 
this is it--this is the limit beyond which we don't dare go. It rests 
upon several assumptions, including the assumptions that the Russians 
are never going to break out or cheat. It rests on the assumption that 
we don't have new targets that we have to worry about.
  I suggest, especially with respect to the Chinese development and 
modernization of its nuclear force, and the role it is beginning to 
play in the world militarily, it is not necessarily a valid assumption 
that the targets that existed during the Cold War are all that we will 
ever have to worry about.
  Let me talk briefly about this matter of how we have brought down the 
number of warheads and missiles, and why it is not necessarily the 
great thing that the proponents are cracking it up to be. The first 
point I will reiterate: We did all the giving; they did the taking. We 
have to reduce the number of our delivery vehicles, and they can 
actually build up theirs.
  At the signing of the treaty, Russia had a total of 640 strategic 
delivery vehicles, with only 571 of them deployed. That is according to 
the Moscow defense briefing in 2010 about their missiles and delivery 
vehicles. Aleksey Arbatov, a former deputy chairman of the Duma Defense 
Committee said:

       The new treaty is an agreement reducing the American and 
     not the Russian strategic nuclear forces. In fact, the latter 
     will be reduced in any case because of the mass removal from 
     the order of battle of obsolete arms and the one-time 
     introduction of new systems.

  We believe his statement is correct. I am worried that we have gotten 
very close to the line. Nothing has changed since 2008 except that the 
Chinese have been working hard at their modernization. That is when the 
Bush administration testified that the current level--the levels we 
have today, not the levels we are going down to--were necessary for 
deterrence.
  I could quote from Secretary Bodman and Secretary Gates who spoke to 
that issue in September of 2008 to make that point. General Cartwright, 
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who supports the treaty, testified 
that in 2009 he would be concerned about having fewer than 800 delivery 
vehicles. I am quoting:

       From about 1,100 down to about 500--500 being principally 
     where the Russians would like to be, and 1,100 being 
     principally where we would like to be, now the negotiation 
     starts. I would be very concerned if we got down below those 
     levels, about midpoint.

  Secretary Schlesinger said:

       As to the stated context of strategic nuclear weapons, the 
     numbers specified are adequate, though barely so.

  Those are the views of experts.
  Dr. Kissinger, who testified in support of the treaty, said this:

       [T]he numbers of American and Russian strategic warheads 
     and delivery systems have been radically reduced and are 
     approaching levels where the arsenals of other countries will 
     bear on a strategic balance, as will tactical nuclear 
     weapons, particularly given the great asymmetry in their 
     numbers in Russia's favor.

  There are two things he is talking about. First, as Russia and the 
United States bring our forces down, there is a certain point--I am not 
suggesting we are there yet, but there is a certain point that 
countries, such as China, for example, can say: Wait a minute, there is 
now not that much difference between where Russia and China are--Russia 
and the United States are and where we are, and therefore, if we just 
build ours up somewhat, we can be at virtual parity with Russia and the 
United States, and, voila, instead of having two powers with a large 
number of nuclear warheads, you then have three. So there is an 
incentive for countries like that to build up once we get down to a 
certain point.
  The other point he makes is with respect to tactical weapons. 
Tactical does not really relate to the amount of boom the weapon makes, 
its destructive capabilities, so much as the delivery vehicle it is on. 
The Russians have a significant advantage in that, as Secretary 
Kissinger pointed out. So there is an asymmetry that exists both with 
respect to warheads and delivery vehicles.
  General Chilton, when he talked about support for New START, 
predicated it on no Russian cheating or changes in the geopolitical 
environment. I would like to read his quotation. He said:

       It was decided . . . we would just fix that [Presidential 
     guidance] for our analysis of the force structure for the 
     START negotiations. And so that's how we moved forward. . . . 
     The only assumptions we had to make with regard to the new 
     NPR, which was, of course, in development in parallel at the 
     time [with the START treaty] was that there would be no 
     request for increase in forces. And there was also an 
     assumption that I think is valid, and that is that the 
     Russians in the post-negotiation time period would be 
     compliant with the treaty.

  He assumes they are going to be, in other words. But those are the 
two assumptions on which we had to base a reduction down to this level. 
I think Senators should ask themselves whether they agree with these 
assessments in light of the facts that Russia does continue to 
modernize its force, as does China; that more nuclear forces in those 
countries necessarily means more potential targets for the United 
States to hold at risk; and that Russia has violated practically every 
arms control treaty it signed with the United States; and taking into 
account what hangs in the balance--the commitment of the United States 
not only to our 31 allies and the nuclear umbrella we have but also the 
protection of the United States with our nuclear deterrent. We have 
little to gain and much to lose if we can't be certain the numbers in 
New START are adequate.
  Let me conclude this point by talking about some counting rules. This 
is a little esoteric and gets down into the weeds, but it is important 
to understand in the context of what I am talking about.
  Under the treaty, strategic stability may be weakened because there 
is not a specified loadout of reentry vehicles per missile. That is 
what we used to have. The counting rules in the treaty present 
opportunities for allowable cheating that the United States is not 
likely to pursue--in fact, I would say we will not pursue--but which 
could give Russia an advantage.
  While the United States improves stability in our ICBM force by 
eliminating the MIRVing I talked about before, Russia will become more 
reliant on MIRVed ICBMs, and, again, that is destabilizing because it 
encourages first-strike planning for fixed silo weapons--the ``use it 
or lose it'' problem.
  The Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, said:

       The United States will ``de-MIRV'' the Minuteman III ICBM 
     force to a single warhead to enhance the stability of the 
     nuclear balance.

  So why would we, then, encourage the Russians to go exactly the 
opposite direction in this treaty?
  Let me quote again. This is from a Russian forces blog, November 30, 
2010:

       The commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, Lt.-General 
     Sergei Karakayev, announced today that all new mobile Topol-M 
     missiles will carry multiple warheads. This modification of 
     the missile is officially known as the Yars or RS-24. The 
     first three RS-24 missiles were deployed in Teykovo earlier 
     this year.

  That is what I was referring to before, and that promotes strategic 
instability, not stability.

[[Page S10326]]

  Finally, due to the bomber accounting rules, at least one Russian 
military commentator has noted:

       Under the treaty, one nuclear warhead will be counted for 
     each deployed heavy bomber which can carry 12 to 234 missiles 
     or bombs depending on its type. Consequently, Russia will 
     retain 2,100 warheads.

  Might I inquire how close I am to using the 60 minutes I had intended 
to speak?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has about 10 minutes 
remaining on the hour he asked for, but there is no time limit.
  Mr. KYL. I appreciate that there is no time limit on my speaking and 
I appreciate there is no time limit on my time, but I have an 
engagement at noon and, second, I did not want to be out here on the 
floor talking for too long.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. I wish to ask the Senator, if I can--I don't want to 
interrupt him, but I wanted to inquire, get a sense here--I appreciate 
a lot of the comments he has made. First of all, let me say that I have 
appreciated working very closely with Senator Kyl on this for months 
now. We have had an enormous amount of dialog; we have had a lot of 
meetings; we have gone back and forth. I think he would agree that we 
have tried very hard and in good faith to address many of the concerns 
he has raised, notwithstanding the ones he just raised in his speech, 
many of which I will speak to as we go along.
  But I would like to sort of get a sense from him. He mentioned 
amendments, others have, but we are now almost at lunchtime, and we 
don't have an amendment. I would like to get a sense of when we might 
anticipate really being able to do the business on the treaty.
  Mr. KYL. I will be happy to respond. Part of the business of the 
Senate on the treaty is to expose its flaws and to have a robust debate 
about those flaws, which can provide the foundation for amendments 
which we intend to offer.
  I was struck by the seriousness and importance, at least in my mind, 
of the two-page list of amendments my staff acquired from colleagues. 
As my colleague knows, we actually shared a list of 10 or 12 amendments 
that I had thought about, and actually some of my colleagues--in fact, 
we had a couple-of-hour conversation about that one morning to see if 
we could reach agreement on any of them, which we were not able to do. 
But there are some very serious amendments, most of which go to the 
resolution of ratification, and a few go to the treaty or the preamble 
itself.

  I note that yesterday my colleague said--I think I am quoting him 
correctly--``Make no mistake, we will not allow an amendment to the 
treaty or the preamble.'' Maybe there are the votes to not allow that. 
But I do think it is important for us, in this discussion, before 
offering such an amendment, to appreciate why we believe such an 
amendment would be important.
  As my colleague well knows, there is a great deal that can be said 
about this. I am trying to say it in as succinct a form as I can.
  Mr. KERRY. I appreciate it.
  Mr. KYL. But there is a great deal of discussion that needs to occur 
for a predicate for the amendments we intend to offer.
  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I completely respect what the Senator 
from Arizona has just said, and we obviously want to give him time to 
lay any predicate to whatever he may perceive to be a flaw. For 
instance, as he raises the question about the MIRVing, as he just did--
and later, I will go through each of these points--but the fact is, the 
reason the Russians are MIRVing--which we all understand, and there are 
plenty of letters from the Strategic Command and elsewhere that will 
articulate the way in which they do not see that as a threat--the 
reason they MIRV is because they cannot afford to do some of the other 
things with respect to the numbers of missiles, so they put more 
warheads on one missile.
  We have preserved a very significant breakout capacity here. As 
General Chilton and others will point out, it is not a flaw at all. It 
is actually an advantage which is maintained in this treaty for the 
American strategic posture. I will go into that later. What the Senator 
describes as a flaw from his point of view I think the record will well 
state is sort of a preserved American advantage.
  That said, I respect, obviously--we want to get this joined. I think 
what the Senator has just laid out is very helpful. It will help us 
join the debate. But I do want to impress that the sooner we can get to 
some of these amendments, the more we can really discover whether 
something is, in fact, a flaw or is not a flaw and has been adequately 
answered.
  Mr. KYL. I appreciate my colleague's comment. I note that I think the 
reason the Russians are going to MIRVing is--at least the primary 
reason is exactly as Senator Kerry has stated. They have financial 
limitations on what they can do here, but I don't think one can deny 
that the result of it is strategic instability compared to moving 
toward a single warhead missile, such as the United States has been 
doing and will continue to do.
  What I wanted to do in this segment of my remarks before I conclude--
and I will advise my colleagues that the next thing I intend to be 
talking about is the administration's commitment to the nuclear triad, 
but I don't think I am going to have time to get to that. I would like 
to conclude now with some comments about modernization.
  It has been well known that I have been involved in negotiations with 
the administration regarding modernization. My colleague and friend, 
Senator Kerry, has been very helpful, I might say, in occasionally 
restarting those conversations when they got bogged down a little bit 
and was helpful--and I specifically have complimented him before and 
will do it again--in ensuring that the President's increase in the 
budget for our nuclear modernization program that was in his budget 
this year will actually be carried out in the funding the Congress 
does. We had to do a continuing resolution back in September, and I 
think it was largely due to Senator Kerry's efforts that that funding 
was included.
  I just note that we have had a lot of concern back and forth about 
whether there is a real commitment to get that done over the years. 
Obviously, both of us appreciate the fact that no one can guarantee 
anything, but there is a certain amount of good will and commitment 
involved here, and certainly the administration needs to be very 
actively involved in ensuring that the funding required for its 
modernization program actually comes to pass.
  I note that the continuing resolution as passed by the House of 
Representatives unfortunately conditioned this funding Senator Kerry 
and I were responsible for--conditioned it on the ratification of the 
START treaty, saying: If you don't ratify the treaty, you are not going 
to get the money. Thankfully, a couple of administration officials 
relatively quickly pushed back on that and said: No, that is not right. 
The treaty stands on its own, and the modernization program stands on 
its own, and this funding is necessary.
  That is the kind of pushback on what might otherwise be rather petty 
politics that is going to be required by all of us who understand that 
modernization is critical in the future.
  With that belief predicate, let me state what the problem has been 
and generally how we went about trying to correct or solve the problem.
  The United States, believe it or not--and this is the fault of 
Republican and Democratic administrations and Republican and Democratic 
Members of Congress--it is a negligence, I would say a gross negligence 
on all of our parts. I take some of the blame for not having yelled 
about this more than I have. But at the same time that every other 
nuclear power is modernizing its forces, both its facilities and its 
capability to maintain its weapons, its weapons, and, in the case of 
the Russians and the Chinese, their delivery systems as well--while 
every one of them has a capacity to do that, to actually produce a 
warhead to put back into production when one comes out of production, 
the United States does not. The country that literally invented these 
weapons with the Manhattan Project is still using Manhattan Project--
that is 1942, in case you have forgotten--era buildings to take care of 
these most sophisticated weapons. If you were to liken it to a car, it 
would be like a Ferrari race car or Formula 1

[[Page S10327]]

race car, highly technical--I don't think you would want to refurbish 
those in somebody's old backyard garage.
  The bottom line is that these facilities have to be brought up to 
modern standards to be able to modernize our weapons over time. Why do 
the weapons have to be modernized? Generally speaking, these are 
weapons that were designed in the 1970s, built in the 1980s, and built 
to last 10 years. Do the math. We are still relying on those weapons.
  What we found, even though we have cut way back on the funding for 
what we call surveillance--that is to say, taking a look at several of 
these weapons every year, taking the skin off, looking down inside, 
seeing what is rusty and what is loose and so on, to use an analogy to 
a car maybe--what we found is that there are significant issues with 
these weapons that need to be addressed if our commanders and labs are 
to continue to be able to secure them as safe, secure, and reliable, as 
they must.
  So we need the facilities in which to bring these sophisticated 
weapons in, take them apart, make sure they are put back together 
properly with all the requisite either new parts or reused parts or 
whatever is necessary to continue to allow them to work and get them 
back into production.
  The timeline on this is more than critical. Suffice it to say in this 
open session of Congress that we dare not waste any more time at all. I 
think that is one of the reasons why the President's advisers from the 
laboratories and the Department of Defense and Energy presented this to 
the President and his nuclear posture review. In the modernization plan 
he developed, there is a very firm commitment on his part to move 
forward with this, because no time can be wasted.
  To give you one illustration, when we left one of the facilities we 
had examined--we have been to each of these facilities and we have 
talked to the people there, and we were given a little souvenir from 
one of them. It is encased in plastic, a little vacuum tube. It is a 
vacuum tube such as those that came out of our black-and-white TVs back 
in the 1960s, I guess. It is still being used in a component of one of 
our weapons, and they are replacing it with circuit boards, of course.
  That is the kind of thing that needs to be modernized in these 
weapons. So what is it going to take to do it? Well, the Congress, 
understanding that we had to get about this, in the last Defense bill 
put in a requirement that the President prepare a plan. It is named 
after the section of the bill, which was 1251. That section of the bill 
now is the nomenclature for the plan, the 1251 plan for modernizing our 
forces.
  This followed a speech Secretary Gates made. Let me quote from the 
speech and then get into a little bit of the detail here. He said:

       To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a 
     credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our 
     stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile 
     or pursuing a modernization program.

  That was pretty much the genesis, that and the so-called Perry-
Schlesinger Commission, which ran the red flag up the flagpole to get 
this program moving. So in fiscal year 2010, the Obama administration 
devoted $6.4 billion to nuclear weapon activities, but it has 
acknowledged that that is a loss of purchasing power of about 20 
percent, from 2005--this is by the administration's own calculations. 
So we knew from the very beginning there was not enough money in the 
plan to get the job done.
  In December, a year ago, 41 Senators--this is before Scott Brown, I 
might add, joined us--wrote a letter to the President stating:

       Funding for such a modernization program beginning in 
     earnest in your FY 11 budget is needed as the U.S. considers 
     the further nuclear weapon reductions proposed in the START 
     follow-on negotiations.

  To make a long story short, the administration had a 10-year plan in 
place that was becoming pretty apparent would not be adequate. That 10-
year plan called for about $7 billion a year over 10 years, to 
basically operate the facilities. I have said, it is like the money to 
keep the lights on, but not money for this new modernization of our 
nuclear warheads or most of it would not have gone to that.
  They realized they needed about $10 billion, at least according to 
their initial calculations. They got about half of that from the 
Defense Department, the other half they figured they would get from 
savings from recalculating interest costs in the latter years of the 
budget. So they added a $10 billion slug onto the $70 billion that was 
already budgeted for general operation of the system, and said that is 
our $80 billion modernization program. But based upon work that had 
done by laboratories earlier, by other study groups and so on, a lot of 
experts agreed, including all of the former lab directors, that that 
slug of $10 billion would never be adequate for the costly items that 
needed to be performed over the next decade. Most of us estimated it to 
be about double that cost or about $20 billion. I think that is 
essentially where we are going to end up, by the way.
  In any event, the two biggest drivers are two new buildings, 
facilities that have to be built, one for plutonium work at Los Alamos 
Lab in New Mexico, the other for uranium work at the so-called Y-12 
plant at Oak Ridge, TN. Those two buildings alone could end up costing 
over $10 billion. As a result, as I said, we went to the administration 
and said, we appreciate this modernization plan, but you need to update 
the plan and incorporate a lot of new costs.
  We showed them a lot of areas in which there were deficiencies, 
including deferred maintenance that had to be performed. We even 
pointed out there was a billion-dollar unfunded pension liability that 
would have to be dealt with in order for the scientists to continue to 
work. I will not go into the quotations here. Vice President Biden 
acknowledged the same thing in a statement he made. I appreciate the 
fact that, by the way, they complimented our work and our staff for 
pointing out a lot of these things, which were the bases then for the 
administration coming back and doing an update to the 1251 plan, which 
at least incorporated funding for some of the items we had talked 
about.
  There has been some talk about an additional $4.1 billion, and I know 
Senator Kerry will confirm this. It grates on me, and I am sure it does 
on him as well, to hear people referring to this in negotiation terms: 
Well, they gave Kyl another $4.1 billion. That should be enough.
  That is not the point here. This is an ongoing, evolving process. The 
administration has also identified about another $2 billion likely to 
have to be spent within 6 years, but they were only looking at a 5-year 
process, so that $4 billion pertains to 5 years. My guess is, there 
will be another $6 billion over the last 5 years, and we will 
ultimately look at about $20 billion, more or less.
  The point is, I did not believe the administration had been 
sufficiently careful in defining the requirements and identifying the 
amount of money that would be needed. I have said to many people, 
including my colleague Senator Kerry, we better not underestimate this 
for the appropriations Members of Congress. We better let them know 
upfront, this is going to be pretty costly, and get that out on the 
table.
  To their credit, the administration has now put out new figures. As I 
will discuss in more detail later, but to summarize here, while that is 
a big step forward and very welcome, and I will support it all, there 
are other things that need to be done. One of the biggest concerns I 
have is that it achieves this objective in part by simply extending the 
date to complete these two big facilities I mentioned by another 2 
years. They would not be complete until 2023 for one and 2024 for the 
other one.
  That has the advantage of getting them outside the 10-year budget 
window, so you do not count any new money, but it extends the time by 
which these facilities can be done. And every year we were told it is 
about a $200 million expense to keep the existing facilities operating.
  So we are losing a lot of money every year that we do not get these 
two new buildings constructed so we can move into them and get the 
modernization done. That is the biggest concern I have. I will talk 
about some others later.
  But let me conclude here with a couple of quotations that I think 
illustrate the importance of doing what we need to do here.

[[Page S10328]]

  Tom D'Agostino, who is the Deputy NNSA Administrator said:

       Our plans for investment in and modernization of the modern 
     security enterprise are essential, irrespective of whether or 
     not the START treaty is ratified.

  He and I think all of us agree, it is even more important if we go 
down to the lower numbers in the START treaty. But this is important 
either way. I note that former Energy Secretary Spence Abraham wrote a 
column in Weekly Standard recently that made the same point, that 
regardless of what is done on the START treaty, this modernization 
needs to move forward.
  I made the point earlier about how the House Democrats conditioned 
the funding on ratification of START. I hope in the comments that are 
made on the floor here, it may be the subject of an--in fact, it 
probably will be the subject of at least one amendment to the 
resolution of ratification. But this is a place where the debate we 
have, the comments we make, may be as important as an amendment, 
because it is a statement of our intention as Senators. I think you 
will find that republican Senators who support the START treaty, and I 
am sure Democratic Senators who support the START treaty, will all say, 
one of the things that has to happen is the modernization of our 
facilities, along the lines of this updated 1251 plan, and the 
statements that the administration, as well as we, have made.

  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, would the Senator yield?
  Mr. KYL. I will yield.
  Mr. KERRY. I want to compliment the Senator, and confirm on the 
record that Senator Kyl indeed brought to the attention of the 
administration and to all of us several points which the laboratory 
chiefs agreed were in deficiency. And he is absolutely correct, that 
while it is not directly within the four corners of the treaty, the 
modernization, per se, obviously if you contemplate reductions, you 
have to also be able to understand you are maintaining the capacity of 
your existing force. Senator Kyl has been diligent in pursuing that.
  I also applaud the administration for responding, and I think he 
would too, and acknowledging that. So he is correct, that I think this 
part of the record is an important one. We have met separately with 
Senator Inouye, with Senator Feinstein, and they have agreed with 
Senator Kyl, that they accept the need to continue down to the levels 
that the administration has put on the table, and they are committed to 
doing that.
  That said, let me also place in the Record a letter from our three 
laboratory leaders, Dr. George Miller at Lawrence Livermore, Dr. 
Michael Anastasio, who was just referred to at Los Alamos, and Dr. Paul 
Hommert at Sandia. I will read the relevant portion. I will put the 
whole thing in the Record. But here is what they say:

       We are very pleased by the update to the Section 1251 
     Report, as it would enable the laboratories to execute our 
     requirements for ensuring a safe, secure, reliable and 
     effective stockpile under the Stockpile Stewardship and 
     Management Plan. In particular, we are pleased because it 
     clearly responds to many of the concerns that we and others 
     have voiced in the past about potential future-year funding 
     shortfalls, and it substantially reduces risks to the overall 
     program. We believe that, if enacted, the added funding 
     outlined in the Section 1251 Report update--for enhanced 
     surveillance, pensions, facility construction and Readiness 
     in Technical Base and Facilities among other programs--would 
     establish a workable funding level for a balanced program 
     that sustains the science, technology and engineering base. 
     In summary, we believe the proposed budgets provided adequate 
     support to sustain the safety, security, reliability and 
     effectiveness of America's nuclear deterrent within the limit 
     of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads established by the new 
     START Treaty with adequate confidence and acceptable risk.

  I think it is very important to sort of do that. I would think we 
have adequately addressed it, because there is also language in the 
resolution of ratification that embraces the modernization component. 
So I thank the Senator from Arizona. I think that has been a 
constructive component to helping us to be in a position to be able to 
ratify the treaty.
  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I appreciate my colleague's comments. 
Rather than read the remainder of this, I ask unanimous consent that at 
the conclusion of my remarks here there will be additional quotations 
on the need for modernization by former lab directors Dr. Miller, 
Secretary Schlesinger, and several others.
  I would conclude by emphasizing what the lab directors also 
emphasized in this correspondence. ``As we emphasized in our 
testimonies, implementation of the future vision of the nuclear 
deterrent will require sustained attention and continued refinement.''
  The outyears are very important. That is why the record we create in 
this debate is important to ensuring that those who come after us will 
appreciate our intentions as we move forward here that we never again 
take our eye off the ball and allow the deterioration in our nuclear 
forces to occur, as we have, so we can continue to support them as 
called for in this modernization plan. I will ask unanimous consent to 
have those printed in the Record at this point, and then make the 
remainder of the statement at another time when I have not taken up all 
of my colleagues' time.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   Additional Quotes on Modernization

       Former laboratory directors: ``However, we believe there 
     are serious shortfalls in stockpile surveillance activities, 
     personnel, infrastructure, and the basic sciences necessary 
     to recover from the successive budget reductions of the last 
     five years.'' \47\
       Dr. Michael Anastasio: ``I fear that some may perceive that 
     the FY11 budget request meets all of the necessary 
     commitments for the program . . . I am concerned that in the 
     Administration's Section 1251 report, much of the planned 
     funding increase for Weapons Activities do not come to 
     fruition until the second half of the ten year period.'' \48\
       Dr. George Miller: ``In my opinion, there is no `fat' in 
     the program of work that has been planned and, in fact, 
     significant risks exist; therefore, there is no room for 
     error.'' \49\
       Secretary Schlesinger: ``I believe that it is immensely 
     important for the Senate to ensure, what the Administration 
     has stated as its intent, i.e., that there be a robust plan 
     with a continuation of its support over the full ten years, 
     before it proceeds to ratify this START follow on treaty.'' 
     \50\
       Secretary Baker: ``Because our security is based upon the 
     safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons, it is 
     important that our government budget enough money to 
     guarantee that those weapons can carry out their mission.'' 
     \51\
       Secretary Kissinger: ``As part of a number of 
     recommendations, my colleagues, Bill Perry, George Shultz, 
     Sam Nunn, and I have called for significant investment in a 
     repaired and modernized nuclear weapons infrastructure and 
     added resources for the three national laboratories.'' \52\
       Under Secretary Joseph: ``New START must be assessed in the 
     context of a robust commitment to maintain the necessary 
     nuclear offensive capabilities required to meet today's 
     threats and those that may emerge . . . This is a long-term 
     commitment, not a one-year budget bump-up.'' \53\
       Under Secretary Edelman: ``a modernized nuclear force is 
     going to be essential to that. As Secretary Gates suggested 
     in October 2008, it's a sine qua non for maintaining nuclear 
     deterrents.'' \54\
       Secretary Gates: ``I see this treaty as a vehicle to 
     finally be able to get what we need in the way of 
     modernization that we have been unable to get otherwise.'' 
     ``We are essentially the only nuclear power in the world that 
     is not carrying out these kinds of modernization programs.'' 
     \55\
       Secretary Gates: ``This calls for a reinvigoration of our 
     nuclear weapons complex that is our infrastructure and our 
     science technology and engineering base. And I might just 
     add, I've been up here for the last four springs trying to 
     get money for this and this is the first time I think I've 
     got a fair shot of actually getting money for our nuclear 
     arsenal.'' \56\
       NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino: ``The B61 warhead is 
     one of our oldest warheads in the stockpile from a design 
     standpoint. And actually warheads [are] in the stockpile . . 
     . that have vacuum tubes . . . We can't continue to operate 
     in this manner where we're replacing things with vacuum 
     tubes. Neutron generators and power supplies and the radar 
     essentially are components that have to be addressed in this 
     warhead. Also I think importantly this warhead, the work on 
     this warhead, will provide our first real opportunity to 
     actually increase the safety and security of that warhead for 
     21st century safety and security into that warhead. So when 
     we work on warheads from now on I'd like to be in the 
     position of saying we made it safer, we made it more secure, 
     we increased the reliability to ensure that we would stay 
     very far away from ever having to conduct an underground 
     test.'' \57\


                                ENDNOTES

       \47\ ``Harold Agnew et al., Letter from 10 Former National 
     Laboratory Directors to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and 
     Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. May 19, 2010.
       \48\ Dr. Michael It Anastasio, Director, Los Alamos 
     National Laboratory, Testimony to the Senate Armed Services 
     Committee, July 15, 2010.
       \49\ Dr. George Miller, Director, Lawrence Livermore 
     National Laboratory, Testimony

[[Page S10329]]

     to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Response to QFR, July 
     15, 2010.
       \50\ Secretary James Schlesinger, Testimony to the Senate 
     Foreign Relations Committee. April 29, 2010.
       \51\ Secretary James Baker, Testimony to the Senate Foreign 
     Relations Committee. May 19, 2010.
       \52\ Secretary Henry Kissinger, Testimony to the Senate 
     Foreign Relations Committee. May 25, 2010.
       \53\ Under Secretary Robert Joseph, Testimony to the Senate 
     Foreign Relations Committee. June 24, 2010.
       \54\ Under Secretary Eric Edelman, Testimony to the Senate 
     Foreign Relations Committee. June 24, 2010.
       \55\ Secretary Robert Gates, Testimony to the Senate Armed 
     Services Committee. June 17, 2010.
       \56\ Secretary Robert Gates, Testimony to the Senate Armed 
     Services Committee. June 17, 2010.
       \57\ NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino, Testimony to the 
     Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, April 
     14, 2010.

  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Arizona. I look 
forward with anticipation to when he returns to the floor with an 
amendment. We look forward to moving on that. I also regret that he 
will not be here, because I would like to be able to answer some of the 
concerns he raised, because I think there are answers to them. I think 
it is important obviously for that part of the record.
  Some of the questions that were raised were questions about 
verification. I will not take a long time, because I know the Senator 
from Nebraska and the Senator from Georgia are waiting to speak. In a 
letter from the Secretary of Defense to us regarding this issue of 
verification--and we may well have a closed session where we will 
discuss that to some degree. But in the letter, Secretary Gates writes 
to me, and, through me, to the Senate, saying:

       The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint 
     Chiefs, the Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, and I assess 
     that Russia will not be able to achieve militarily 
     significant cheating or breakout under New START, due to both 
     the New START verification regime and the inherent 
     survivability and flexibility of the planned U.S. Strategic 
     force structure.

  They have confidence in this verification regime. We need to have 
confidence in the leadership of our military, national security 
agencies, the intelligence agencies, and the strategic command, all of 
whom are confident we have the capacity to verify under this treaty.
  I ask unanimous consent to have that printed in the Record.
                                         The Secretary of Defense,


                                                     Pentagon,

                                     Washington, DC, Jul 30, 2010.
     Hon. John Kerry,
     Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: (U) As the Senate considers the New 
     Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia, I 
     would like to share the Department's assessment of the 
     military significance of potential Russian cheating or 
     breakout, based on the recent National Intelligence Estimate 
     (NIE) on monitoring the Treaty. As you know, a key criterion 
     in evaluating whether the Treaty is effectively verifiable is 
     whether the U.S. would be able to detect, and respond to, any 
     Russian attempt to move beyond the Treaty's limits in a way 
     that has military significance, well before such an attempt 
     threatened U.S. national security.
       (U) The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint 
     Chiefs, the Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, and I assess 
     that Russia will not be able to achieve militarily 
     significant cheating or breakout under New START, due to both 
     the New START verification regime and the inherent 
     survivability and flexibility of the planned U.S. strategic 
     force structure. Additional Russian warheads above the New 
     START limits would have little or no effect on the U.S. 
     assured second-strike capabilities that underwrite stable 
     deterrence. U.S. strategic submarines (SSBNs) at sea, and any 
     alert heavy bombers will remain survivable irrespective of 
     the numbers of Russian warheads, and the survivability of 
     U.S. inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) would be 
     affected only marginally by additional warheads provided by 
     any Russian cheating or breakout scenario.
       (U) If Russia were to attempt to gain political advantage 
     by cheating or breakout, the U.S. will be able to respond 
     rapidly by increasing the alert levels of SSBNs and bombers, 
     and by uploading warheads on SSBNs, bombers, and ICBMs. 
     Therefore, the survivable and flexible U.S. strategic posture 
     planned for New START will help deter any future Russian 
     leaders from cheating or breakout from the Treaty, should 
     they ever have such an inclination.
       (U) This assessment does not mean that Russian compliance 
     with the New START Treaty is unimportant. The U.S. expects 
     Russia to fully abide by the Treaty, and the U.S. will use 
     all elements of the verification regime to ensure this is the 
     case. Any Russian cheating could affect the sustainability of 
     the New START Treaty, the viability of future arms control 
     agreements, and the ability of the U.S. and Russia to work 
     together on other issues. Should there be any signs of 
     Russian cheating or preparations to breakout from the Treaty, 
     the Executive branch would immediately raise this matter 
     through diplomatic channels, and if not resolved, raise it 
     immediately to higher levels. We would also keep the Senate 
     informed.
       (U) Throughout my testimony on this Treaty, I have 
     highlighted the Treaty's verification regime as one of its 
     most important contributions. Our analysis of the NIE and the 
     potential for Russian cheating or breakout confirms that the 
     Treaty's verification regime is effective, and that our 
     national security is stronger with this Treaty than without 
     it. I look forward to the Senate's final advice and consent 
     of this important Treaty.
           Sincerely,
                                                  Robert M. Gates.

  Mr. KERRY. One last quick comment. Senator Kyl knows these materials 
very well. He is an effective advocate for a point of view. But that 
does not mean that by saying those things, all of them have a factual 
underpinning or that they are, in fact, the best judgment as to what 
our military thinks or the national intelligence community thinks about 
the components of this treaty. Let me give an example. Senator Kyl has 
raised concerns about the conventional prompt global strike capacity. 
What he didn't say is, Russia very much wanted to ban strategic range 
conventional weapons systems altogether. We rejected that approach. The 
Obama administration said: No; we are not going to ban all conventional 
capacity. In effect, they decided to proceed along the same approach we 
used in START I.
  Ted Warner, the representative of the Secretary of Defense to the 
negotiation, testified in the Foreign Relations Committee, saying we 
agreed to a regime whereby conventionally armed ICBMs or SLBMs--for the 
folks who don't follow this, those are the intercontinental ballistic 
missiles or submarine-launched ballistic missiles--would be permitted. 
But, yes, they did agree to count them under the strategic delivery 
vehicle and strategic warhead ceilings. Senator Kyl sees that as a 
problem. All of our folks who negotiated this treaty and our military 
and our strategic thinkers see that as an advantage for the United 
States. That protects us. We are better off that way. Why? Because it 
would be extraordinarily difficult to verify compliance with a treaty 
that limited nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs but didn't count and, 
therefore, didn't inspect identical conventionally armed ICBMs and 
SLBMs. We couldn't tell the difference between them. We would be 
absolutely foolish on our part to allow the Russians to deploy 
additional ICBMs and SLBMs based exclusively on their assurance that 
they are not nuclear armed. How would we know? It is only by putting 
them under the counting that we, in fact, protect the interests of our 
country rather than creating a whole sidebar arms race which would make 
everybody less safe. Not counting those missiles would, in fact, create 
a new risk--the risk of breakout, that we allow the other side, Russia, 
the opportunity, even if there were no cheating, to simply leave the 
treaty and arm those missiles with nuclear warheads on very short 
notice, and we would all be worse off.
  In fact, what Senator Kyl was complaining about is something that 
makes us more stable. If we did what he is sort of hinting he might 
like to do, we could actually create greater instability, and it would 
be clearly much more likely to kill the treaty altogether.
  Some of these things get raised and they sound like there is 
reasonableness to them. But when we put them in the overall context of 
strategic analysis and thinking and the balance, the sort of threat 
analysis that attaches to any treaty of this sort, what we are trying 
to work through is sort of reaching an equilibrium between both sides' 
perceptions of the other side's capacity and of what kind of threat 
that exposes each side to. That is how we sort of arrive at that 
equilibrium. That is what has driven every arms control agreement since 
their inception. The Pentagon has made very clear that the global 
prompt strike is going to be developed, but it is going to be developed 
as a niche capacity. They think it is too expensive to do in huge 
numbers. It is

[[Page S10330]]

also very clear that under the best circumstances, it is going to be a 
long time before that is ready to deploy.
  We have boost-glide vehicles still in the proof-of-concept test 
stage. Nobody has any imagination as to whether they will be ready in 
10 or 15 years. The life of this treaty is 10 years. So we are looking 
beyond the life of the treaty for when they might or might not be 
ready. There are a host of other concepts out there about this. We are 
going to get a report from the Pentagon next year on what technologies 
they think are most promising. It is going to be exceedingly difficult 
to imagine bringing them online within the 10-year life of this treaty. 
Any concept of sort of revising things that make this treaty subject to 
some component of that is, in effect, a guise to try to kill the 
treaty. I say that about this one component of it. There are many 
others, many other similar kinds of arguments raised in the last hour. 
As we go forward, if an amendment arises, we will deal with each of 
them.
  I want colleagues to be aware there is more underneath some of these 
red herrings than may appear to the eye at first blush.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. ISAKSON. May I inquire if there is a scheduled recess at 12:30?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are not under that order.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, I was on the floor last night and 
addressed my significant concerns with the omnibus and the dual-track 
process we are on right now. That statement has been made. I come this 
morning to address the START treaty, the New START treaty. I voted for 
it to come out of the Foreign Relations Committee to the floor. I want 
to go through my reasons for having done so. I wanted to talk about 
what the New START treaty is, not what it is not.
  First, I want to pay tribute to Dick Lugar. He has been a bastion of 
strength on nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation issues for 
years. I thank Senator Kerry for the time he gave us to go through hour 
after hour after hour of hearings and hour after hour after hour of 
secure briefing in the bowels of the new Visitor Center, where we read 
the summary of the notes of negotiations on the treaty, where we read 
the threat initiative and the estimate of the terrorism threat 
initiative and all the classified documentation about which we cannot 
speak on this floor. These things are critical to our consideration as 
we debate this treaty.
  I wish to talk about two Senators, one a Democrat and one a 
Republican. With all due respect to the chairman, it is not he. It is a 
Democrat by the same of Sam Nunn from Georgia, who chaired the Armed 
Services Committee, who, along with Senator Lugar, put together Nunn-
Lugar and the cooperative threat initiative. I sought out Senator Nunn 
and Senator Lugar in my deliberations during the committee debate and 
my consideration of what I would do in terms of that committee vote and 
later a vote on the floor. I wish to make a couple notes about the 
success of the Nunn-Lugar initiative. Nunn-Lugar is a commitment to see 
to it that nuclear materials are secure. It is a commitment to see to 
it that loose nukes around the world don't fall in the hands of those 
who would kill my grandchildren, your grandchildren or all of us in the 
United States. I don't think it has been mentioned, but as a result of 
the Nunn-Lugar initiative, since 1991, since its formation, they have 
reduced the number of loose nukes in the world by 7,599.
  Belarus, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan no longer have nuclear arsenals. 
Through that comprehensive threat initiative, they have destroyed the 
weapons, and they have turned weapons of mass destruction into 
plowshares that are powering powerplants. The nuclear threat initiative 
does not mean we get out of the business of having a nuclear arsenal. 
It means we get in the business of security for the nukes that are 
there and establish goals toward nonproliferation which to all of us is 
critically important.
  My history as far as this goes back to the 1950s. It goes back to Ms. 
Hamberger's first grade class, when I remember getting under the school 
desk once a week to practice what we would do if a nuclear attack hit 
the United States. My history with this goes back to October of 1962 
when, as a freshman at the University of Georgia, I stood in fear with 
all my colleagues and watched what was happening in Cuba, watched the 
blockade, watched the strength of John Kennedy, who faced the Russians 
down and ultimately prevented what would have been a nuclear strike 
against the United States and ultimately our strike against them in 
Cuba as well as in Russia.
  Then I remember the night in October of 1986, when I had the honor to 
introduce Ronald Reagan in Atlanta the night before he flew to Iceland 
to begin negotiations on nuclear treaties at that time. In one speech 
made today, it has been referenced that Reagan rejected what Gorbachev 
offered at Reykjavik. That is correct. Reagan rejected not doing 
research and development and building a nuclear arsenal. But what he 
did insist on was verification of what both countries were doing so we 
could never have a situation of not having transparency, not having 
intelligence, and not knowing what the right and left hand were doing. 
It was out of that rejection and at his insistence that the beginning 
of the negotiations for the START treaty began. They were ultimately 
signed in 1991, under the administration of George H.W. Bush.

  Until December 5 of last year, that START treaty had been in place. 
For those years, the United States had transparency. It had 
verification. It had cooperative communication back and forth between 
the two countries that controlled 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in 
the world. My history with this goes all the way back to climbing under 
a school desk, to introducing President Ronald Reagan, to 1 year 
serving on the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate.
  My decision to support the treaty coming out of the committee were 
based on four principles. The first is inspections. It has been said 
the inspections have been reduced. What has not been said is the number 
of sites to inspect have also been greatly reduced. The number of 
inspections correspond with what is necessary to inspect the Russian 
arsenal and know whether they are complying with the treaty. 
Inspections are very important. We learned on 9/11 what happens when we 
don't have human intelligence on the ground where we need it. What 
happens is we get surprised. What happened to us on 9/11 is almost 
3,000 citizens died at the hands of a heinous attack by radical 
terrorists because we didn't have as good intelligence as we needed to 
have. That is why I don't want to turn my back on the opportunity to 
have human intelligence on the ground in the Russian Federation 
verifying that they are complying with a mutual pact we have made with 
them and, correspondingly, the transparency they have to inspect our 
nuclear arsenal in the United States.
  The second point I wish to make that caused me to come to the 
conclusion it was the right thing to do to support the treaty in 
committee was the verification process. I have heard some people say 
this verification process is not as good as the old verification 
process. I am not going to get into that argument, but this 
verification process is a heck of a lot better than no verification 
process at all, which is exactly what we have today.
  Since December 5 of last year, we haven't had the human intelligence. 
We couldn't verify. Verification is critically important because with 
verification comes communication. With communication comes 
understanding, and from that understanding and communication comes 
intelligence. While our inspections are to make sure the quantity of 
the nuclear arsenal and the warheads and the delivery systems are 
within compliance, it also gives us interaction to learn what others 
may know about nuclear weapons around the world that are not covered by 
this treaty.
  That brings me to one other point. It has been said by some that 
bilateral treaties are no longer useful in terms of nuclear power; we 
need multilateral treaties. I have to ask this question: If we reject 
the one bilateral treaty over nuclear power, how will we ever get to a 
multilateral treaty? We will not do it. I think it is important to have 
a bilateral treaty between the two countries that controls 90 percent 
of the weapons so we see to it, as other countries gain nuclear power, 
we can bring

[[Page S10331]]

them into a regimen that requires transparency and accountability 
too. You will never be able to do that if you reject it between 
yourself and the Russian Federation.

  Now, the third thing I want to talk about for a second--I mentioned 
Senator Nunn before. He served as Armed Services chairman, and so did 
John Warner, who is a distinguish retired Republican Member of this 
Senate. They released a joint statement not too long ago and raised a 
point I had not thought of. If you will beg my doing this, I will read 
on the floor of the Senate one of the points they made that was 
supportive of this treaty. I quote from Senator Nunn and Senator 
Warner:

     . . . Washington and Moscow should expand use of existing 
     Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers--which we--

  Meaning Warner and Nunn--

       and other members of Congress--

  Meaning Dick Lugar--

     established with President Ronald Reagan to further reduce 
     nuclear threats.
       For example, to improve both nations' early warning 
     capabilities, the centers could exchange data on global 
     missile launchers. Other nations could be integrated into 
     this system. It could provide the basis for a joint 
     initiative involving Russia, the United States and the North 
     Atlantic Treaty Organization on a missile defense 
     architecture for Europe that would help address other key 
     issues, like tactical nuclear weapons vulnerable to theft by 
     terrorists. Indeed, when the centers were proposed, they were 
     envisioned to help prevent catastrophic nuclear terrorism. 
     These initiatives can go forward with a New START Treaty.

  I thought that observation was very telling and looking prospectively 
into the future about, again, having the two nations--the Russian 
Federation and the United States--bring in other people, such as NATO, 
to be a part of a treaty and a missile defense system that is agreeable 
with all parties. The absence of negotiation, the absence of 
transparency, the absence of cooperation ensures that cannot happen.
  My fourth point is this: The thing I fear the most as a citizen, the 
thing I fear the most as a Senator, and the thing I fear the most, 
quite frankly, as the father of three and grandfather of nine is a 
nuclear fissionable material getting into the hands of a radical 
terrorist. That is the fear that all of us dread.
  It is critical, when we look at what the Nunn-Lugar initiative has 
done in the destruction of loose nukes--7,599--what the original START 
treaty, the foundation it gave us, to begin to reduce nuclear weapon 
proliferation without reducing our ability to defend ourselves and to 
launch strikes that are necessary to protect the people of the United 
States of America.
  But I worry about one of the radical terrorists getting hold of one 
of these materials, and I fear in the absence of transparency, 
verification, and inspection, we run the risk, unwittingly, of playing 
into their hands and making that type of a material more and more 
available.
  What is known as the Lugar Doctrine is very important to understand 
at this stage of the debate. In doing my research on the treaty, and 
the work that Dick Lugar and others have done on nonproliferation, I 
came upon what is known as the Lugar Doctrine. I would like to read it 
because it answers the question I just raised about a loose nuke 
getting into the hands of a rogue terrorist:

       Every nation that has weapons and materials of mass 
     destruction must account for what it has, spend its own money 
     or obtain international technical and financial resources to 
     safely secure what it has, and pledge that no other nation, 
     cell, or cause will be allowed access or use.

  That is as clearly and as succinctly as you can state the future fear 
that all of us have for this country and what might happen with nuclear 
weapons.
  So in closing my remarks, I went through interviews with Sam Nunn, 
listened to the chairman and the ranking member, listened to the 
testimony, Ms. Gottemoeller, and all the others, read the 
documentation, which everybody else can read in the secure briefing 
room, and I came to the conclusion that verification is better than no 
verification at all; that inspections and transparency are what 
prohibit things like what happened on 9/11 from ever happening again, 
and that you can never expect multilateral negotiations with other 
countries that have some degree of nuclear power if the two greatest 
powers refuse to sit down and negotiate and extend the understanding 
they have had since 1991.
  Only through setting the example, without giving in or capitulating a 
thing, do we hopefully give hope to the future that my grandchildren 
and yours can live in a world that will not be free of nukes but will 
be secure; that loose nukes are not in the hands of bad people; and we 
have transparency and accountability while still having the capability 
to defend ourselves and execute the security of the people of the 
United States of America.
  It is for those reasons I supported the New START treaty in the 
committee, and I submit it for the consideration of the Members of the 
Senate.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. NELSON of Nebraska. Madam President, I rise to discuss the New 
START treaty. In the last 40 years, our country has participated in 
numerous arms control and nonproliferation efforts. They are a critical 
element of our national security strategy.
  If done right, arms control agreements can enhance U.S. national 
security by promoting transparency and information--sharing that can 
inform us about the size, makeup, and operations of other military 
forces.
  They also provide other countries with information about our force 
and capabilities, and that promotes a strategic balance and discourages 
an attack on the U.S. or its allies.
  Transparency and information sharing enable our military planners to 
better prepare for a real threat. Without such agreements and 
understandings, our military and the military of countries like Russia 
must prepare for worst-case scenarios.
  That leads to inefficient, runaway defense spending. If that sounds 
familiar, that is because we have been down that road before--it was 
called the arms race.
  The U.S. and the former Soviet Union poured massive resources into 
building not only vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but also on the 
expansive systems needed to defend against incoming bombers and 
missiles.
  Since the late 1960s, arms control agreements and other measures have 
worked to reduce nuclear forces and systems that support them.
  I would note that former President Ronald Reagan, who accelerated 
nuclear modernization and launched the Star Wars missile defense 
effort, overcame his initial distaste for arms control agreements. 
Working with Soviet Premier Gorbachev, Reagan laid the foundation for 
today's START treaty.
  In July 1991, Presidents Bush and Gorbachev signed the START I treaty 
and the Senate later approved it on an overwhelming and bipartisan vote 
of 93 to 6--a vote which concluded after 4 days of floor debate. 
Nebraska's Senators at the time, Jim Exon and Bob Kerrey both supported 
the START 1 treaty.
  As we consider New START, it is our constitutional duty to address 
today's concerns and the treaty's merits.
  Now I have heard five main concerns during debate.
  They are: No. 1, treaty limitations on missile defense; No. 2, 
sufficiency of modernization plans for nuclear enterprise; No. 3, 
adequacy of treaty verification measures; No. 4, force structure 
changes resulting from treaty reductions; No. 5, and the timing of the 
Senate's deliberations of the treaty.
  First, the New START treaty won't affect any current or planned U.S. 
missile defense efforts. Some point to language in the treaty's 
preamble and the inclusion of unilateral statements. But they are not 
legally binding. And changing the preamble would unravel the treaty.
  The only binding restriction on missile defense systems arises in 
article V. It prevents conversion of ICBM silos into missile defense 
launchers. That has no practical effect because converting silos is 
more expensive and less desirable than building new silos.
  Second, some have questioned the administration's commitment to 
modernize our nuclear facilities and forces. As the chairman of the 
Armed Services' Strategic Forces Subcommittee, I held three hearings 
this year addressing the health of our nuclear weapons complex.
  I would note that the administration asked for $7 billion in Fiscal 
Year 2011

[[Page S10332]]

for stockpile sustainment and infrastructure investments.
  That is roughly 10 percent more than 2010 funding.
  The administration also plans to invest $80 billion in the next 
decade to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex. That is 
the biggest commitment to the nuclear enterprise in more than a decade. 
On top of that, the administration recently offered an additional $4 
billion toward modernization goals.
  Third, some argue that verification measures are less rigorous than 
for START I.
  Its verification measures expired last December. So, as of today, we 
have gone 376 days without onsite monitoring and verification in 
Russia.
  The less we are allowed to see for ourselves the more uncertainty we 
will feel about Russian forces.
  New START includes verification measures allowing 18 onsite 
inspections annually. We determine where and when to go, with very 
little advance notice to the Russians.
  As many of you know, this treaty counts every warhead and delivery 
system and tracks them with unique identifiers. That is a tremendous 
advancement in transparency over the previous system of attribution. 
And it certainly is better than no verification system, which exists at 
the present time.
  Fourth, some express concern about the treaty's impact on the nuclear 
triad--our strategic bombers, missiles, and ballistic missile 
submarines.
  In testimony and in direct conversations with me, our military 
leaders have assured that the New START retains the triad.
  Proposed reductions by the Pentagon aim to spread across all systems 
and minimize impacts to any one system or base, thus retaining a safe, 
secure, and effective triad.

  Finally, some indicate that considering New START now prevents the 
Senate from spending adequate time to consider the treaty, or that we 
would be rushing judgment on the treaty.
  New START was signed in April of this year, and the Senate has had it 
for consideration since May.
  Together, the Foreign Relations, Intelligence, and Armed Services 
Committees have held 21 hearings and briefings related to the treaty. 
The truth is that the Senate has been actively deliberating New START 
for 7 months.
  By comparison the 2002 Moscow Treaty took 9 months to complete and 
START I took a little more than a year. When it came to floor debate, 
the 1991 START I treaty required 4 days of debate, while START II, the 
Chemical Weapons Convention and the 2002 Moscow Treaty each took 2 
days.
  I am confident that the Senate has fulfilled its responsibility to 
fully consider and deliberate on New START, and our actions are 
entirely consistent with the past actions of this body in considering 
previous arms control agreements.
  Those are concerns that have been raised. Now let's look now at the 
merits.
  In recent months, I have spoken about this treaty with key military 
leaders including Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen, General Cartwright, 
and General Chilton.
  Each has expressed full support and participation in this treaty. 
They also fully support the proposed reductions to the nuclear arsenal 
and the continued sustainment of the nuclear triad.
  In addition, Secretary Clinton and every living former Secretary of 
State--nine in total--have all publically voiced their support. Five 
former Secretaries of Defense on both sides of the aisle have endorsed 
the treaty. Seven former Strategic Command commanders have endorsed the 
treaty. STRATCOM, headquartered in my State in Omaha, NE, in the 
Bellevue area, oversees America's strategic nuclear, nonnuclear and 
cyber defenses.
  Also, it is important, I believe, that the U.S. Strategic Command 
actively played a key role in negotiating the treaty. With that 
experience, the former STRATCOM commander in chief General Chilton who 
is recently departed, said:

       Our nation will be safer and more secure with this treaty 
     than without it. What we negotiated to is absolutely 
     acceptable to the United States Strategic Command for what we 
     need to do to provide the deterrent for the country.

  I wholeheartedly agree.
  I am prepared to vote to ratify the New START Treaty because it 
promotes our national security and can make America and the world 
safer. It increases transparency between nuclear nations. It promotes 
cooperation and not suspicion. And it reduces the possibility of a 
nuclear exchange and still enables America to respond to the terrible 
threats that continue in the nuclear age.
  I would like to elaborate.
  America will be stronger if we can continue to look under Russia's 
hood, and they under ours. Trust but verify still works.
  This treaty will help U.S. Strategic Command accomplish its 
absolutely vital mission for our Nation.
  Further, as the chairman of the U.S. Senate--Russia 
Interparliamentary Group, I have held many meetings with my Russian 
counterparts about this treaty. It is a step in the right direction to 
encourage further cooperation between the U.S. and Russia. As we work 
toward cooperation, the treaty reestablishes verification measures and 
increases transparency considerably.
  That will reduce uncertainty about Russian forces, and increase their 
predictability. Without this treaty, our understanding of Russian 
nuclear forces will continue to deteriorate.
  We would have a tendency for U.S. forces to overcompensate for what 
we don't know.
  That is a losing strategy in an era of large budget deficits and 
needed fiscal constraint. Entering into this treaty demonstrates our 
commitment to modernizing the nuclear stockpile by making the most of 
what we have to spend and to keep our country safe.
  The New START treaty offers the possibility of providing our military 
with insights needed to efficiently and successfully provide a safe, 
reliable, and secure nuclear deterrent.
  At the end of the day, the New START treaty builds on successes from 
previous treaties, and paves the way for further bilateral agreements 
between the United States and Russia.
  It moves us further away from a nuclear war no one wants. Even as it 
does, we will retain a powerful and effective deterrent capability.
  And finally, ratification also will send a strong message to those 
around the world opposed to proliferation and those seeking to 
proliferate.
  For these reasons, I support the New START treaty and I believe the 
Senate should ratify it as soon as possible.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, I would like to speak briefly on the 
New START treaty and state the reasons I believe the Senate should go 
ahead and ratify this treaty.
  Let me highlight some key points on, first, what the treaty 
accomplishes. Let me mention four things.
  No. 1, it reduces the number of deployed nuclear warheads by a 
relatively small number; that is, it takes us from 2,200, which is what 
we were required to reduce to under the Moscow Treaty, down to 1,550.
  Second, its counting regime is not based on attributing a number of 
warheads to a launch system but, instead, like the 2002 Moscow Treaty, 
this treaty actually requires the counting of deployed warheads.
  Third, this treaty reestablishes a verification regime of inspectors 
on the ground. This is something which lapsed a year ago when START I 
lapsed.
  Fourth, this treaty still maintains a credible nuclear deterrent 
against Russia, against China, against anyone who might threaten our 
country.
  Before discussing some of these points in detail, let me put the New 
START treaty in some historical perspective, at least as I see it.
  As this chart graphically demonstrates, at the peak of the Cold War 
some 30 years ago there were about 60,000 nuclear warheads. That is 
clearly an astounding number given that a single warhead would destroy 
most major American cities and most major cities anywhere in the world.
  From 1991, when the first START treaty was signed, until 2002 when 
the Moscow Treaty was signed, the number of warheads declined 
dramatically from about 50,000 to a little over 20,000, or about 10,000 
for the United States and 10,000 for Russia. This includes spare and 
deployed warheads not just those that were deployed. The Moscow

[[Page S10333]]

Treaty took this count further down and allowed 2,200 to 1,700 deployed 
warheads. Additional spares of about 3,300 were included, and the 
number rises to somewhere between 5,500 and down to 5,000 warheads for 
each nation. If the New START treaty is ratified as shown on this 
chart, down here where this arrow is in the right-hand bottom corner, 
in 2010, it will take the number of deployed warheads to 1,550 from the 
Moscow lower limit of 1,700 that was in the Moscow Treaty. That is a 
very modest reduction compared to what has been done in previous arms 
control agreements.

  After the Cold War ended 20 years ago, it was clear we had an 
astounding and excessive number of nuclear weapons. I believe it was 
the hope and the expectation of most Americans that there would be deep 
reductions in nuclear weapons at that time. That reduction, in my view, 
has been slow in coming. Our government has declassified the number of 
nuclear warheads we have in our active stockpile, and that number is 
5,113. If asked directly, I believe most Americans would be surprised 
to know at the end of 2010 we still have over 5,000 nuclear warheads, 
and we have 2,200 that are deployed.
  Today we have a treaty before us that achieves a modest reduction 
from the Moscow level of 2,200 deployed warheads. As I indicated 
before, this treaty will take us down to 1,550. Quite frankly, I am 
surprised some are arguing for having a drawn-out debate over the 
treaty. START I took about 4 days of floor debate and lowered the 
number of warheads between Russia and the United States from about 
50,000 to 20,000, a 60-percent reduction. The Moscow Treaty lowered the 
total number of U.S. warheads from about 11,000 to today's level of 
about 5,000. That took 2 days to debate. That involved a 55-percent 
reduction. Yet with a relatively modest reduction called for in this 
treaty, we still have people proposing a floor debate that could extend 
into the next Congress.
  Let me turn to a number of substantive issues associated with the New 
START treaty that I believe weigh in favor of its ratification by the 
Senate. First, we have been briefed by the military commanders about 
the 1,550 deployed warheads that will still be in place once this 
treaty is approved. This total is comprised of about 700 deployed ICBMs 
and SLBMs and about 800 total heavy bombers and launchers.
  I urge my colleagues to obtain the classified briefing on the treaty. 
I believe it is clear the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command has 
analyzed in detail the strategic nuclear force structure of each side 
under this treaty and is confident we can maintain our deterrence 
against Russia and China, who hold 96 percent of the world's strategic 
nuclear warheads.
  The resolution of approval as reported by the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee speaks to this issue, noting in condition 3 that 
before any reductions in deployed warheads are made below the current 
Moscow Treaty level, the President must notify Congress that such 
reductions are in the ``national security interests of the United 
States.''
  The second point is that the intelligence community has judged that 
we are better off with this treaty and its inspection regime than we 
are without it. Monitoring and verification under START I, which has 
now expired, was based on counting strategic launch systems and then 
attributing a number of warheads to each submarine, each airplane, each 
missile. This counting rule overestimated the number of warheads 
carried on U.S. strategic systems. The New START treaty is much more 
specific than START I. It counts only the actual number of warheads 
carried by each deployed missile. In fact, this is the same counting 
rule as in the Moscow Treaty which was developed by the prior 
administration and subsequently approved in the Senate 95 to 0.
  Moreover, under this treaty we have the ability to inspect on the 
ground, with short notice, to determine whether uniquely coded 
launchers actually carry the declared numbers of warheads. Contrary to 
what some have claimed, short notice inspections of uniquely identified 
launchers combined with other intelligence assets give us a high 
probability of detecting cheating such as uploading more warheads, 
which would take days to months for Russia to achieve.
  Condition 2 of the resolution of approval out of the committee speaks 
to the monitoring issue by requiring the President to certify that our 
National Technical Means or other intelligence assets, combined with 
our on-the-ground verification capability, is ``sufficient to effective 
monitoring of Russian compliance with the provisions of the Treaty.''
  Third, there is a larger policy issue of strategic stability. This 
treaty provides a framework of transparency through inspections and 
accountability of warheads and launchers. If we are worried about 
unchecked growth of Russia's strategic nuclear forces, not now but 5 
years from now, it makes great sense to approve this treaty.
  Many have criticized the treaty because it does not deal with 
Russia's numerical advantage and tactical nuclear weapons, such as 
gravity bombs or submarine launched cruise missiles. I would point out 
that none of the previous nuclear arms control treaties have dealt with 
tactical nuclear weapons. While I agree we should have discussions with 
Russia on tactical nuclear weapons, we need this treaty to restart the 
process of negotiations if we are ever going to achieve the goal of 
reducing tactical nuclear weapons.
  This treaty lays the groundwork for a subsequent negotiation to 
address tactical nuclear weapons, many of which are deployed close to 
our NATO allies. If we cannot demonstrate we have the ability to enter 
into binding obligations on strategic nuclear forces, which are the 
most easily verifiable, how can we advance to the next step with Russia 
on reducing their tactical nuclear weapons, which number in the 
thousands and which are the most easily concealed of the weapons?
  The fourth point: Let me turn to the issue of modernization of our 
own nuclear arsenal. Despite our unsustainable budget deficit--and I 
notice the Senator from Alabama is on the Senate floor today. He and I 
both voted against the tax bill. I don't know all of his reasons. One 
of mine was the unsustainable deficits faced by this country today. But 
despite these unsustainable budget deficits, this administration is 
committing an additional $14 billion over the next 10 years for a total 
of $84 billion to modernize our nuclear weapons enterprise to ensure 
that as we draw that nuclear arsenal down, reduce the numbers in the 
nuclear arsenal under New START, we will be capable of maintaining 
those weapons we do rely upon.
  Now, this chart shows the 10-year projection for weapons stockpile 
and infrastructure funding, and my colleagues can see there is a very 
substantial commitment of funds by this administration to maintain the 
reliability of our stockpile.
  The fifth point I wish to make is that concerns have been raised 
regarding the nonbinding Russian unilateral missile defense statement. 
This is separate from the binding provisions of the treaty. This is a 
nonbinding statement that Russia made that considers the treaty 
effective only where there is, as they put it, ``no qualitative or 
quantitative buildup of the missile defense capabilities of the United 
States of America.''
  In testimony before the Armed Services Committee, Secretary of State 
Clinton stated unequivocally the treaty does not constrain our missile 
defense efforts. Secretary Clinton went on to say:

       Russia has issued a unilateral statement expressing its 
     view. But we have not agreed to this view and we are not 
     bound by it. In fact, we have issued our own statement making 
     it clear that the United States intends to continue improving 
     and deploying effective missile defense.

  In the same hearing, Secretary of Defense Gates said:

       The treaty will not constrain the United States from 
     deploying the most effective missile defense possible, nor 
     impose additional costs or barriers on those defenses.

  Secretary Gates then goes on to say in that hearing:

       As the administration's Ballistic Missile Defense Review 
     and budget makes clear, the United States will continue to 
     improve our capability to defend ourselves, our deployed 
     forces and our allies and partners against ballistic missile 
     threats.

  From a historical perspective I would note that similar unilateral 
statements on missile defense were made by Russia in connection with 
START I and in connection with START II, both of which treaties were 
approved by the Congress.

[[Page S10334]]

  Consistent with the statements by Secretaries Clinton and Gates, the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee's resolution of approval contains an 
understanding included in the instrument of ratification that ``it is 
the understanding that the New START Treaty does not impose any 
limitations on the deployment of missile defenses other than the 
requirement of paragraph 3, article V.''
  That section of the treaty prohibits the use of existing ICBM and 
SLBM launchers for missile defense or the conversion of missile defense 
launchers for ICBMs except for those that have been converted before 
the treaty was signed.
  On the question of whether we should vote on ratification in this 
Congress or leave this to the next Congress to consider, some Senators 
claim that we simply need more time and that other treaties have laid 
before the Congress for much longer periods. This is simply not the 
case. Arms control treaties since the ABM Treaty in 1972 were either 
taken up, debated and ratified within the same Congress or, in the 
cases of START II, the Moscow Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Treaty 
were taken up, debated and approved within the Congress from which the 
Foreign Relations Committee reported a resolution of approval. This 
historical precedent on the ratification of arms control treaties runs 
counter to what some of my colleagues are advocating. It is this 
congressional session of the Senate that received the treaty, held 21 
hearings and briefings and submitted over 900 questions as part of the 
advise and consent process and it should be this congressional session 
of the Senate that should finish the job.
  Let me conclude with where I started on the New START treaty, it is a 
relatively modest treaty in terms of reducing the number of nuclear 
warheads. Our military commanders have analyzed the force structure 
under the treaty and have concluded it maintains our nuclear deterrent 
and that it provides on the ground intelligence through verification 
that the intelligence community believes we are better off with than 
without. Finally, it is clear that it does not impede our missile 
defense programs.
  In my opinion there is no credible argument that the ratification of 
this treaty undermines our national security. I urge my colleagues to 
vote for the ratification of the New START treaty. I thank the chair 
and yield back any remaining time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The Senator from Alabama is 
recognized.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, as we begin consideration of the New 
START treaty, we must understand that the proposal is not made in a 
vacuum. In one sense, it is an important part of our Nation's strategic 
policy. I have served as chairman, ranking member, and a member of the 
Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, subcommittee of the Armed Services 
Committee, for 12 years in the Senate. Thus, on these matters of 
nuclear policy and missile defense that have been before us so many 
times, I have had a front-row seat on it.
  Our President, whose work and proposals absolutely deserve fair and 
just consideration in the Senate, after appropriate debate, has stated 
that this treaty is a critical part of his approach to strategic 
issues, repeatedly insisting that it is needed so the United States can 
set an example and show leadership in moving toward what he has often 
stated to be his goal--a nuclear-free world.
  This treaty now comes at a time when our Nation is the world's only 
nuclear power. We are the only nuclear power to have no nuclear 
production facility ongoing at this time. It will have to be 
reconstituted. That has been a sore spot in this Congress for quite a 
number of years, but it has not happened.
  For over a decade, the Senate's efforts to modernize our aging 
weapons stockpiles--which our scientists have told us are getting to a 
point where they have to be fixed--have been blocked by House 
Democrats, mostly, and some Republicans there. We have gotten bills out 
of the Senate to do this, but they have failed in the House. It has 
been an article of faith on the left in America and abroad on the 
international left that our goal must be to eliminate all nuclear 
weapons from the world. President Obama and his administration have 
often used that rhetoric. But our modernization capability hasn't been 
started, and that is a troubling situation. As Secretary Gates has said 
about modernization, we cannot continue at this rate.
  In 2008, I sponsored legislation to create a bipartisan commission of 
experienced statesmen to do a study of our nuclear posture. The 
legislation passed and the Commission on the Strategic Posture of the 
United States did its work. It was headed by Dr. William J. Perry and 
James R. Schlesinger, a former Defense Secretary of this country--a 
Democrat and Republican. They reached a consensus on a number of key 
issues. They concluded that we could reduce our nuclear stockpile more 
than the current number, but that ``modernization is essential to the 
nonproliferation benefits derived from the extended deterrent.'' So 
they said it was essential to have a modernization program.
  I know a lot of the discussion has been ongoing about that. I do 
believe Senator Kyl has done an excellent job in raising this issue, 
and the administration responded positively in some regards. The 
Commission also, nicely, in diplomatic language, deflected the 
administration's goal of zero nuclear weapons by saying:

       It's clear that the goal of zero nuclear weapons is 
     extremely difficult to attain and would require a fundamental 
     transformation of the world political order.

  I think that is about as close as you come from a bipartisan 
commission expressing serious concerns about this policy. Meanwhile, 
China, Russia, Pakistan, and India continue to expand their stockpile, 
while rogue, outlaw nations, such as North Korea and Iran, posing great 
risk to world peace, advance their nuclear weapons programs.
  We will need to talk about this more as this debate goes forward. It 
is quite clear that the greatest threat to world peace and nuclear 
danger arises from the rogue nations and other nations that have less 
secure situations than the Russians do. While it could be very 
beneficial to have a good treaty with the Russians, this is not the 
core of the danger this Nation faces today.
  We have had very little work, very little success, in getting the 
kind of robust support from Russia and China that we should have 
regarding North Korea and Iran. It is inexplicable to me why they would 
jeopardize their reputation as a positive force in the world to curry 
favor with rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea. But this 
administration has been unsuccessful in gaining the kind of support to 
ratchet up the sanctions to get those countries that could perhaps make 
a difference.
  The Russians are steadfast in their nuclear program. They have 
absolutely no intention of going to zero nuclear weapons. I had an 
opportunity to talk to some of their people, and it is pretty clear to 
me they thought it was outside the realm of good judgment to discuss 
going to zero nuclear weapons. They were never going to zero nuclear 
weapons. They have a 10-to-1 advantage over the United States in 
tactical nuclear weapons--more maneuverable--and this treaty does 
absolutely nothing to deal with that situation. The Russians may make 
some changes in the future, perhaps, but I don't think they are going 
to do much on tactical nuclear weapons. It is a critical part of their 
defense strategy.
  We understand Russia is willing and has plans at this time to reduce 
their strategic nuclear stockpile, which is what this treaty deals 
with, not the tactical weapons, and that is because it represents a 
necessary economic move for them. Frankly, I don't think they see the 
United States or Europe as the kind of strategic threat they used to 
be, and they are willing to pull down those numbers. It is a good 
thing, and we should celebrate what gains we can obtain.
  Some close observers believe this treaty curtails the U.S. programs, 
such as missile defense, while not curtailing certain Russian 
modernization programs of the systems they want to advance. In short, 
the Russians seem to have negotiated more effectively than the United 
States in this treaty. That is my observation. We wanted it too 
desperately. I warned our negotiators that they were too committed, too 
desperate to get this treaty. It would make more difficult the 
negotiation also with the Russians. I think that has proven to be true.

[[Page S10335]]

  Let me be plain about my overall concern. First, the idea that it 
should be the goal of this country to move toward the total elimination 
of nuclear weapons is not just a fantasy, a wild chimera or some 
harmless vision; I think it is dangerous. It can only raise questions 
about the quality of the judgment that underlies our strategic policy.
  The question arises, is the fierce determination of this 
administration to get a treaty a part of their stated goal of moving to 
zero nuclear weapons and setting ``an example'' for the world? Is the 
United States of America, under whose nuclear umbrella resides a host 
of free and prosperous nations, no longer reliable as a nuclear power? 
We know many other nations that are part of our nuclear umbrella are 
worried about our nuclear policy. I can understand that. How far, how 
low does this world leadership role take us? How few weapons should we 
go to? Down further from 1,500, as this treaty would have it--and that 
might be a sustainable number--to 1,000 or 500? Well, not 500, somebody 
would say. But I note that Mr. Jim Hoagland, writing in the Washington 
Post on December 10, declared that the treaty fails, in his view, 
because the numbers are not low enough. He says that ``500 or fewer'' 
would be sufficient.
  Well, will this example of reducing our weapons cause other nations 
to follow our good example? I think not. If Iran and North Korea risk 
their security and their financial soundness on building a nuclear 
arsenal today, will our example cause them to stop? I think not. 
Rather, I must conclude it will embolden them. As our weapon numbers 
fall lower and lower, these rogue nations can begin to see clearly 
their way to being a peer nuclear competitor of what is now the world's 
greatest military power. Why would we want to encourage them in that 
fashion? I think it is a risky goal.
  Thus, to the extent that the treaty is an effort to advance the 
stated goals of this administration--a nuclear-free world--the treaty 
will be counterproductive and dangerous, I think. If that is what it is 
about, it is counterproductive, and it will enhance and encourage other 
nations to have nuclear weapons, and any country that has advanced 
under our nuclear umbrella who does not now have nuclear weapons may 
decide they have to have their own, further proliferating nuclear 
weapons.
  At the Halifax International Security Forum a few weeks ago, 
supported by the German Marshall Fund, Under Secretary of Defense for 
Policy Michele Flournoy repeated the administration's goal of zero 
nuclear weapons, and further stated, ``It is a vision. It's an 
aspiration.'' She acknowledged, ``It may not happen in our lifetimes.'' 
I can tell you it is not happening in our lifetimes, with a high degree 
of certainty.
  The name of the panel, by the way, had a little bit of an irony to 
it. It was ``A World Without Nukes, Really?'' Good question. So some of 
my Democratic colleagues may say these statements about ``no nukes'' 
or, you know, they are just rhetoric, you have to say those things to 
keep the President's political left in line. The President is not 
really serious about it. It is not a real goal of his.
  Well, I do not know. America leaders usually mean what they say. He 
has not renounced the policy. Secretary Flournoy was repeating it a few 
weeks ago at an international conference. I've got to say, a lot of 
people were not too impressed with that policy, frankly, from our 
allies around the world.
  Even if the President is not telling us accurately what his 
philosophy is, these words do not mean anything. He is throwing out 
astonishing visions about what he would like to happen, the lamb lying 
down with the lion. What else is he not serious about as we consider 
this treaty? If one is not accurate about matters as significant as 
nuclear weapons, we have a grave problem of leadership in this country. 
Does it mean the President favors modernization of our stockpile? He 
says so. But, in essence, he has conditioned that support on passing of 
the treaty when we need to modernize the stockpile whether or not we 
have a treaty.
  Does this give me confidence that the President is clearheaded about 
our nuclear policy when the Secretary of Defense and former Secretary 
of Defense and the laboratory directors and the top military people 
have, without exception, said we need to modernize our nuclear forces, 
and he is only going to support it if this Congress ratifies the 
treaty? I do not feel good about that. A lot of people have opposed 
modernization. They think modernization is a step toward more nuclear 
weapons, in their mind, and we ought to eliminate nuclear weapons, not 
have more.
  That is, frankly, where the President's political ancestry is. That 
is where he came from politically. So forgive me if I am not real 
comfortable about this. Does the President mean it when he says he has 
not compromised and will not compromise our ability to deploy strategic 
missile defense systems in Europe?
  There is a rub here. Some in this relativistic, postmodern world may 
not have the slightest concerns that our Commander in Chief's words are 
ambiguous on matters such as this. They do not believe much in the 
authority of words anyway. But call me old fashioned. I think words are 
important. These words that I am hearing worry me. So these views that 
are fantastical place a cloud of unreality over this entire process.
  Secondly, I am not persuaded that this administration has not 
retreated on nuclear missile defense to a significant degree. I am not 
persuaded that that has not occurred. For example, the latest WikiLeaks 
reveal that the administration negotiated away President Bush's plan 
for a forward missile defense site in Poland in exchange for the 
Russian cooperation. The New York Times summarized these cables on 
November 29:

       Throughout 2009, the cables show, the Russians vehemently 
     objected to American plans for a ballistic missile defense 
     site in Poland and the Czech Republic. . . . In talks with 
     the United States, the Russians insisted that there would be 
     no cooperation on other issues until the European site was 
     scrapped. . . . Six weeks later, Mr. Obama gave the Russians 
     what they wanted: he abruptly replaced the European site with 
     a ship-borne system.

  So it makes me a bit nervous. We had a plan to place that in Europe, 
a two-stage system instead of the three stage we have in the United 
States, to give us redundant coverage from Iranian attack, and the 
Russians did not like it. They did not want a missile defense system on 
their border, even though, at best, it would have only minimal support 
against a massive number of missiles that they have. We were only going 
to put 10, I think, in Poland. But they objected. They objected. The 
Bush administration stood firm. They got the last treaty by standing 
firm. Indeed, former Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith wrote 
an article in one of the major newspapers, an op-ed, I think the Wall 
Street Journal, saying that they said no, and eventually the Russians 
agreed to sign.
  He raised an important issue. I want to share this with my colleagues 
whom I know believe so deeply we have to have this treaty or all kinds 
of bad things will happen. Mr. Feith told the Russians: We do not have 
to have a treaty with you. We do not have a treaty with other nations 
that have nuclear weapons. If it is not a good treaty, we are not going 
to agree to it.
  Eventually the Russians agreed. He said the very same insistences, 
the positions they asserted at that time against the Bush 
administration that they rejected were demands acquiesced in by this 
administration in this treaty.
  So forgive me if I am a bit dubious about how wonderful this treaty 
is. I asked the State Department about those cables, and we have not 
heard any information on them. So there are many more things we need to 
talk about with regard to the treaty and the overall strategic 
situation we find ourselves in.
  Are we making the world safer? I am worried that we are not. I am 
worried that this approach may not make us safer. I am well aware that 
some of our best allies are worried now about the constancy of the 
United States, the commitment of the United States to a defense, even 
if, God forbid, nuclear defense of our world allies, that we will not 
follow through, and so they may have to have their own nuclear weapons.
  I know there is a good bit more to discuss in this debate. I 
encourage this body to be deliberative in its consideration of the 
treaty. I am not happy that it is being shoved at this point in

[[Page S10336]]

time. I was so hopeful and expectant that we would be able to give a 
firm date to start the debate early next year, and we could have a 
robust debate, not only about the treaty but how it fits into our 
overall nuclear strategic posture, what are we going to do about 
missile defense, what are we going to do about updating our stockpile, 
and what about our triad and delivery systems, what are we going to do 
about those. Now it is being jammed in here. I understand why. They 
have got more votes they think now, and the likelihood of it passing is 
greater now. I think it has a realistic chance of passing next year.
  But, more significantly, I think the administration wishes to avoid a 
full debate about the strategic nuclear policy of the United States. If 
that is successful, then I think the American people will be the 
losers, as will the security of the United States.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. I wanted to ask the Senator before he leaves, it is now 
1:30 in the afternoon, and we have yet to have one amendment presented 
to us. I recognize there is a value to having some of these comments 
help frame it, but it also can be done in the context of a specific 
amendment.
  I would ask the Senator if he has an amendment he is prepared to 
offer that could help us move forward?
  Mr. SESSIONS. Well, it is difficult to amend a treaty, as the Senator 
knows, once it has been signed. There are things that can be done. I 
think, first and foremost, we need to ask ourselves, is this a good 
thing for the country? Will it advance our interests? I believe we need 
a pretty big discussion about that and where we stand.
  I know Senator Kerry has been supportive of modernization--I believe 
you have--at least as this treaty has moved forward, if not in the 
past. And we need to do that. But I am a bit uneasy that the President 
is basically saying, if you do not pass my treaty, we are not going to 
modernize, when I think modernization is critical to the security of 
our country. I also want to know how it fits into our overall strategic 
policy.
  So that is kind of my biggest concern, I say to Senator Kerry. I do 
not know that the numbers that the treaty takes us to, the reduced 
numbers themselves are dangerous. Some people say they think it is a 
bit dangerous, but most experts do not think so. I am not inclined to 
oppose a treaty on whether it is 1,550 or 1,700 or 1,800. But I think 
if it is part of a trend to take our numbers down further--perhaps you 
saw Mr. Hogan's article saying it ought to be 500 or lower. That would 
make me very concerned and I think would cause serious ramifications 
internationally. Would you agree? If this treaty would be, say, for 
500, it would definitely create some concern and angst around the 
world?
  Mr. KERRY. Well, let me say to my friend--and I appreciate his desire 
to try to be thoughtful about what the numbers are and about the treaty 
as a whole. I appreciate that. A couple of comments I want to make. No. 
1, the administration is not linking modernization to the treaty. I 
think it is clear now to Senator Kyl. I read a letter before the 
Senator started speaking from the directors of the three laboratories 
expressing their satisfaction and gratitude with the levels of funding 
that have been put in there.
  I acknowledge that Senator Kyl was correct in finding some 
inadequacies in the original funding levels, and the administration, in 
good faith, has made up for those. What happened over in the House, 
happened over in the House. It was not instigated by the 
administration. In fact, the administration has countered that and made 
it clear that modernization is necessary as a matter of modernizing, in 
order to keep our arsenal viable.
  The second point I wish to make to the Senator, I hope the Senator 
does not vote against this treaty because he thinks somehow this is a 
step to some irresponsible slippery slide that takes us to ``zero'' 
nuclear weapons without all of the other things that very intelligent, 
thoughtful statesmen have talked about in the context of less nuclear 
weapons.
  But I should point out to the Senator, Dr. Henry Kissinger, who is an 
advocate for this concept, not as something we are going to do tomorrow 
or in the next, you know, 10 years perhaps, 20 years, 30 years, but as 
an organizing principle, as a way of beginning to think differently 
about how we resolve conflicts--because whatever you do that moves you 
toward a world of less nuclear weapons, because we have to get 67 votes 
here, clearly would build the kind of consensus that says we are doing 
things that make us safer. So it would have to be accompanied by the 
other country's transparency, by other countries taking part.
  It would also, I would say to the Senator, almost necessarily have to 
be accompanied by something that today is way out of reach, which is a 
kind of restraint on conventional weapon growth and involvement and the 
way in which we try to resolve conflicts between countries.
  It is no accident that George Shultz, Bill Perry, and Sam Nunn, as 
well as both of the 2008 Presidential nominees, Senator McCain and 
President Obama, have all agreed this is a principle worth trying to 
move toward. One thing is for certain: The road to a reduced number of 
nuclear weapons in the world, which would reduce the amount of 
fissionable material potentially available to terrorists, certainly 
doesn't pass through a nuclear Tehran. So if we are going to have our 
bona fides to be able to leverage North Korea and Iran, we need to at 
least prove we can put together a bilateral agreement between the two 
countries that have 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons.
  I would hope my colleague would not view this--given all of the 
signoffs that have accompanied it, from our national security 
establishment, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from military leaders, 
from the national intelligence community, from our laboratory 
directors, our strategic commanders--all of them have agreed 1,550, the 
current number of launchers we have, the 800--this is going to permit 
the United States to maintain the advantages we feel we have today.
  I hope my colleague would look hard at sort of how Henry Kissinger 
and George Shultz and Bill Perry have framed this concept of moving in 
that direction as an organizing principle. I don't expect it in my 
lifetime. I doubt the Senator does. But I wouldn't vote against this 
treaty that provides a window into what the Russians are doing, 
provides verification, reduces the threat, and creates stability. I 
wouldn't link the two, and I would hope the Senator would not.
  I see the Senator from Arizona has arrived.
  Mr. SESSIONS. May I ask, I believe earlier today the Senator made the 
point:

       Make no mistake, we are not going to amend the treaty 
     itself. We are willing to accept resolutions that don't kill 
     the treaty.

  I think I understand that. But I do assert that, as we both know, 
amending a treaty is not something that is easily done. So we have to 
deal with whether we think the treaty is helpful. We can do some things 
through the amendment process to make it more palatable and acceptable 
to people who have concerns. I do not dispute that. But I do believe 
that, fundamentally, this day ought to be about discussing the overall 
strategic impact of the treaty.
  I thank the Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. I thank the Senator. We have incorporated into the 
resolution of ratification some 13 different declarations, 
understandings, and conditions. We certainly would welcome more if they 
are constructive and are not duplicitous. We have already addressed the 
missile defense issue, the rail-mobile issue, the verification issue. 
All of those have been addressed. But I welcome and look forward to 
working with the Senator in the next days to see if we can do that.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, we are discussing the New START treaty at 
this time. I look forward to continued debate and discussion on this 
vital and important national security issue. I wish to, however, remind 
colleagues that, as with any other issue that relates to this treaty 
and the Russians, it

[[Page S10337]]

can't be totally considered in a vacuum. Events that have transpired in 
the last several years in Russia should bring great concern and pause 
to all of us.
  I will speak about the situation in Russia today and specifically the 
continued imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his associate, 
Platon Lebedev, and the imminent verdict by a Russian judge to likely 
extend that imprisonment which was delayed from yesterday to December 
27. If we needed any more reason to know what verdict is coming, this 
is it.
  The Russian Government seems to be trying to bury some inconvenient 
news by issuing it 2 days after Christmas and after this body will 
probably be finished debating the possible ratification of a treaty 
with the Russian Federation. Some may see this as evidence that the 
Russian Government is accommodating U.S. interests and desires. I would 
be more inclined to believe that if these prisoners were set free. 
Until that time, I will continue to believe that when Prime Minister 
Putin says Khodorkovsky should sit in jail, as he said yesterday, that 
this is exactly the verdict the Russian court will deliver.
  The fact is, the political fix has been in for years on this case. 
Mr. Khodorkovsky built one of the most successful companies in post-
Soviet Russia. And while I am under no illusions that some of these 
gains may have been ill-gotten, the subsequent crimes committed against 
him by the Russian State have exceeded the boundaries of human decency, 
equal and lawful justice, and the God-given rights of man.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article in 
Yahoo from yesterday that says ``Russia's Putin: Khodorkovsky `should 
sit in jail'.'' That is what the Prime Minister of Russia said about an 
ongoing judicial situation.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                           [From Yahoo! News]

           Russia's Putin: Khodorkovsky `Should Sit in Jail'

                   (By Lynn Berry, Associated Press)

       Moscow.--Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared 
     Thursday that former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a 
     proven criminal and ``should sit in jail,'' a statement 
     denounced as interference in the trial of a Kremlin foe whose 
     case has come to symbolize the excesses of Putin's rule.
       Putin's judgment gave ammunition to government opponents 
     who claim Khodorkovsky is being persecuted by Putin and his 
     allies.
       Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year sentence after being 
     convicted of tax fraud and is awaiting a verdict in a second 
     trial on charges of stealing oil from his own oil company 
     that could keep him in prison for many more years.
       Putin was in his first term as president when Khodorkovsky, 
     then Russia's richest man, was arrested in 2003 after funding 
     opposition parties in parliament and challenging Kremlin 
     policies.
       Khodorkovsky's lawyers and supporters said Putin's comments 
     during his annual televised call-in show would put undue 
     pressure on the judge as he deliberates and exposed Putin's 
     role as a driving force behind the seven-year legal 
     onslaught.
       One of his lawyers, Karinna Moskalenko, said Putin's 
     statements indicate that the judge will find Khodorkovsky 
     guilty.
       In addition to saying Khodorkovsky was guilty of economic 
     crimes, Putin once again suggested the former oligarch had 
     ordered the killings of people who stood in his way as he 
     turned Yukos into Russia's largest oil company. Khodorkovsky, 
     whose oil company was taken over by the state, has not been 
     charged with any violent crime.
       Putin reminded television viewers that the former Yukos 
     security chief was convicted of involvement in several 
     killings.
       ``What? Did the security service chief commit all these 
     crimes on his own, at his own discretion?'' he said.
       Putin said Khodorkovsky's present punishment was ``more 
     liberal'' than the 150-year prison sentence handed down in 
     the U.S. to disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, who cheated 
     thousands of investors with losses estimated at around $20 
     billion.
       ``Everything looks much more liberal here,'' Putin said. 
     ``Nevertheless, we should presume that Mr. Khodorkovsky's 
     crimes have been proven.''
       Speaking to reporters afterward, Putin said he had been 
     referring to the conviction in the first case, a distinction 
     he did not make during the televised show.
       He insisted the second case would be considered objectively 
     by the court, but said it involved even higher monetary 
     damages than the first case, implying no leniency should be 
     shown.
       ``I believe that a thief should sit in jail,'' Putin said.
       With more than a touch of sarcasm, Khodorkovsky's lead 
     lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, thanked Putin for speaking his mind 
     ``because it directly and clearly answers the question of 
     who, with what aims and with what power is putting pressure 
     on the court as the judge is deliberating.''
       Judge Viktor Danilkin is scheduled to begin reading the 
     verdict on Dec. 27.
       If convicted, Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev 
     face prison sentences of up to 14 years, which could keep 
     them in prison until at least 2017.
       Putin has not ruled out a return to the presidency in 2012, 
     and critics suspect him of wanting to keep Khodorkovsky 
     incarcerated until after the election.
       The case has been seen as a test for President Dmitry 
     Medvedev, who has promised to establish independent courts 
     and strengthen the rule of law in Russia.

  Mr. McCAIN. Quoting:

       I believe that a thief should sit in jail.
       With more than a touch of sarcasm, Khodorkovsky's lead 
     lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, thanked Putin for speaking his mind 
     ``because it directly and clearly answers the question of 
     who, with what aims and with what powers is putting pressure 
     on the court as the judge is deliberating.''

  In 2003, when Mr. Khodorkovsky became increasingly outspoken about 
the Russian Government's abuses of power, its growing authoritarianism, 
corruption, and disregard for the law, he was arbitrarily arrested and 
detained under political charges. His company was stolen from him by 
authorities, and he was thrown in prison through a process that fell 
far short of the universal standards of due process. Mr. Khodorkovsky 
was held in those conditions for 7 years, and when his sentence was 
drawing to a close, new charges were brought against him which were 
then even more blatantly political than the previous ones.
  Mr. Khodorkovsky, along with Mr. Lebedev, was charged with stealing 
all of the oil of the company that had been so egregiously stolen from 
them. The trial has now concluded. So what will happen next? It seems 
rather clear. After spending 7 years in prison, Mr. Khodorkovsky will 
likely face many more, which I fear is tantamount to a death sentence.
  This case is a travesty of justice for one man, but it is also a 
revealing commentary on the nature of the Russian Government today.
  Yesterday, the Senate voted to take up the New START treaty. To be 
sure, this treaty should be considered on its merits to our national 
security. But it is only reasonable to ask--and I ask my colleagues 
this question--if Russian officials demonstrate such a blatant 
disregard for the rights and legal obligations owed to one of their own 
citizens, how will they treat us and the legal obligations, be it this 
treaty or any other, they owe to us?
  What is worse, the sad case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky now looks like 
one of more modest offenses of corrupt officials ruling Russia today.
  I would like to quote from a recent article in the Economist dated 
December 9, 2010, entitled ``Frost at the core,'' which I ask unanimous 
consent to have printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   [From the Economist, Dec. 9, 2010]

                           Frost at the Core


dmitry medvedev and vladimir putin are presiding over a system that can 
                            no longer change

       On December 15th, in a small courtroom in central Moscow, 
     Viktor Danilkin, a softly spoken judge, is due to start 
     delivering a verdict. Its symbolism will go far beyond the 
     fate of the two defendants, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon 
     Lebedev, former principal shareholders in the Yukos oil 
     company. Both men have been in jail since 2003 on charges of 
     tax evasion. Their sentences expire next year. In order to 
     keep them in prison, the government has absurdly charged them 
     with stealing all the company's oil.
       Neither the first nor the second trial had much to do with 
     the rule of law. But there the similarity ends. In 2003 Mr. 
     Khodorkovsky personified the injustice and inequality of the 
     1990s, when tycoons wielded enormous power over a state that 
     could not even pay pensions and salaries on time. Seven years 
     on, Mr. Khodorkovsky is a symbol of the injustices 
     perpetrated by corrupt bureaucrats and members of the 
     security services, who epitomise the nexus between power and 
     wealth. As Mr. Khodorkovsky said in his final statement, 
     ``They turned, us, ordinary people, into symbols of a 
     struggle against lawlessness. This is not our achievement. It 
     is theirs.''
       The chances that Mr. Khodorkovsky will be found not guilty 
     are slim. If he were, it would be a sign that the system of 
     Vladimir Putin, Russia's former president and current prime 
     minister, was beginning to come

[[Page S10338]]

     apart. That system, which tolerates corruption and violence, 
     has just received the endorsement of FIFA, which has awarded 
     Russia the prize of hosting the 2018 football World Cup. But 
     its evolution had much to do with Mr. Khodorkovsky's story.
       In the 1990s, when businessmen bribed the courts, both 
     parties knew they were in the wrong. After Mr. Khodorkovsky's 
     case, a judge taking instructions from a bureaucrat felt he 
     was in the right. The Russian state not only flagrantly 
     flouted the law for its own interests, but also sent a 
     powerful signal to its bureaucracy that this practice was now 
     okay.
       According to Alexander Oslon, a sociologist who heads the 
     Public Opinion Foundation in Moscow, Mr. Putin's rule ushered 
     in a breed of ``bureaucrat-entrepreneurs''. They are not as 
     sharp, competitive or successful as the oligarchs of the 
     1990s, but they are just as possessed by ``the spirit of 
     money'' in Mr. Olson's phrase, the ideology that has ruled 
     Russia ever since communism collapsed. By the end of the 
     1990s the commanding heights of the economy had been largely 
     privatised by the oligarchs, so the bureaucrat-entrepreneurs 
     began to privatise an asset which was under-capitalised and 
     weak: the Russian state.
       Unlike businessmen of Mr. Khodorkovsky's type, who made 
     their first money in the market, the bureaucrat-entrepreneurs 
     have prospered by dividing up budget revenues and by 
     racketeering. ``Entrepreneurs'' who hire or work for the 
     security services or the police have done especially well, 
     because they have the ultimate competitive advantage: a 
     licence for violence.
       No one worries about conflicts of interest; the notion does 
     not exist. (Everyone remembers the special privileges given 
     to party officials for serving the Soviet state.) As American 
     diplomats are now revealed to have said, the line between 
     most important businesses and government officials runs from 
     blurry to non-existent. Putting Mr. Khodorkovsky in jail, or 
     awarding a large contract to one's own affiliated company, 
     could be justified as a public good. Indeed, more people were 
     in favour of locking up Mr. Khodorkovsky, even though they 
     knew it would benefit only a few Kremlin bureaucrats.
       In 1999 the oil price started to climb and petrodollars 
     gushed into Russia, changing the mindset of the political 
     class. Mr. Oslon points out that the most frequently used 
     word in Mr. Putin's state-of-the-nation address in 2002 was 
     ``reform'' and its variants. A few years later the most 
     frequently used word was ``billion''. Divvying up those 
     billions has become the main business in Russia. Corruption 
     no longer meant breaking the rules of the game; it was the 
     game.
       Unlike private businessmen, who started to invest in their 
     core businesses (Yukos among them) in the late 1990s, 
     bureaucrat-entrepreneurs have little incentive to do so. 
     Their wealth is dependent on their administrative power, 
     rather than newfangled property rights. The profits are often 
     stashed away in foreign bank accounts or quickly spent: on 
     luxury property in European capitals, or on their children's 
     education in British private schools. All this is inevitably 
     accompanied by anti-Western rhetoric and claims of Russia's 
     resurgence.


                        The message of Krasnodar

       On November 4th, National Unity Day, in the small town of 
     Kushchevskaya in the Krasnodar region, eight adults and four 
     children were killed in a house. They were the family of a 
     wealthy farmer and his guests.
       The youngest child, nine months old, suffocated when the 
     killers set the house alight.
       Terrible murders can happen in any country. This one stood 
     out because it was the work not of a maniac but of a well-
     established criminal gang, which has terrorised the region 
     for nearly 20 years. More than 200 trained thugs do its work, 
     including dozens of murders and rapes. Its boss, Sergei 
     Tsapok, was a deputy in the local council and had links with 
     the chief law-enforcement agencies, the tax police and local 
     government. The gang first emerged in the early 1990s, 
     racketeering and carving up valuable plots of land. In 2002 
     it began to ``legalise'' and incorporate itself into local 
     state power structures.
       Mr. Tsapok's agricultural firm received massive state 
     credits and grants. It employed the head of security of the 
     local prosecution service as its in-house lawyer. In 2008 Mr. 
     Tsapok boasted that he was among the guests at the 
     inauguration of Dmitry Medvedev as Russia's president, 
     according to Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper. 
     The gang ran the region not only under the gaze of 
     government, but also in its stead.
       When the chief Russian investigator into the murders 
     arrived a few days later from Moscow, he was besieged by 
     complaints from all over the region. Alexander Tkachev, the 
     governor, seemed dismayed by all the fuss: ``Such a crime 
     could have happened in any part of the region. Unfortunately, 
     such gangs exist in every municipality.'' Despite what 
     happened, he remains in his job.
       In the past such bespredel (extreme lawlessness) was mostly 
     restricted to Chechnya and a few other parts of the north 
     Caucasus. But violence has spread, and Kushchevskaya has 
     caused horror not only because of the child victims, but 
     because it presented a threatening model of a crumbling 
     state. The government used to mask its problems with a thick 
     layer of money. But as this layer gets thinner, the problems 
     become more obvious.


                            a shrinking pie

       Corruption was also excessive in the 2000s, but it was 
     compensated for by strong economic growth and fast-rising 
     incomes. This, and soothing television pictures, created a 
     sense of stability. But the global financial crisis hit the 
     Russian economy harder than that of any other large 
     industrial country, exposing its structural weakness. As 
     Vladislav Inozemtsev, an economist, argues in a recent 
     article, the improvement in living standards was achieved at 
     the cost of massive under-investment in the country's 
     industry and infrastructure. In the late Soviet era capital 
     investment in Russia was 31% of GDP. In the past ten years 
     Russia's capital investment has been, on average, about 21.3% 
     of GDP. (For comparison, the figure over the same period in 
     China was 41%.)
       Despite rising oil prices and a construction boom, Mr. 
     Inozemtsev says, in the post-Soviet period Russia has built 
     only one cement factory and not a single oil refinery. The 
     Soviet Union used to build 700km of railways a year. Last 
     year, it built 60km. ``We have lived by gobbling up our own 
     future,'' he argues. Peter Aven, the head of Alfa Bank, the 
     largest private bank in the country, thinks today is like the 
     late Soviet period: ``Once again the main source of wealth is 
     oil and gas, which is being exchanged for imported goods. The 
     state today is no better than Gosplan was in the Soviet 
     Union.''
       Russia's trade surplus is shrinking. As imports grow, so 
     does pressure on the rouble. The government is now running a 
     budget deficit. Mr. Aven says Russia's budget balances at an 
     oil price of $123 a barrel. Three years ago it balanced at 
     $30. For all the talk of stability, only 6% of the population 
     can imagine their future in more than five years' time, which 
     may explain why only 2% have private pension plans.
       To keep up his approval rating, particularly among 
     pensioners and state workers, Mr. Putin has had to increase 
     general government spending to nearly 40% of GDP (see chart). 
     To pay for this he has raised taxes on businesses, which are 
     already suffocating from corruption and racketeering. While 
     Russia's peers in the BRIC group of leading emerging 
     economies are coping with an inflow of capital, $21 billion 
     fled out of Russia in the first ten months of the year. 
     Unlike foreign firms such as Pepsi (see article), Russia's 
     private firms are too nervous to invest in their own economy.
       That economy is growing by less than 4% a year. This would 
     be respectable in many Western countries, but as Kirill 
     Rogov, an economic and political analyst, argues, it is not 
     enough to sustain the political status quo. When the pie of 
     prosperity was expanding, dissension within the elite made no 
     sense. However, now that money is scarcer and the world is 
     divided into ``Mr. Putin's friends and everyone else'', as 
     one businessman put it, conflicts are inevitable.
       A sense of injustice is now growing in many different 
     groups. Private businessmen and even oligarchs complain about 
     the lack of rules and bureaucratic extortion. Middle-class 
     Muscovites moan that officials in their black luxury cars, 
     with their flashing blue lights, push them off the road and 
     occasionally run them over. People in the north Caucasus feel 
     they are treated like aliens rather than Russian citizens. 
     Everyone is fed up with corruption.
       The discontent does not register in Mr. Putin and Mr. 
     Medvedev's joint popularity ratings, which remain at 70%. But 
     growing numbers of the elite feel that the present political 
     and economic model has been exhausted and the country is fast 
     approaching a dead end. ``The problem is not that this regime 
     is authoritarian, the problem is that it is unfair, corrupt 
     and ineffective,'' says one leading businessman. ``Corruption 
     will erode and bring down this system.'' The paradox is that 
     few Russian government officials disagree with this.
       At a recent government-sponsored conference on Russia's 
     competitiveness, everyone agreed that the system does not 
     work. Russian politicians sometimes sound like opposition 
     leaders, and Mr. Medvedev makes pledges as if he were a 
     presidential candidate. If Mr. Putin has stopped lamenting 
     the level of corruption in Russia, as he used to, it is only 
     because he believes this is futile and that other countries 
     are the same.
       In a democracy, such confessions of impotence from top 
     officials would probably prompt their resignations. In Russia 
     it leads to a discussion of how best to preserve the system. 
     Which tactics work better will be the subject of a 
     conversation between Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev when they 
     decide, probably next summer, which of them will become 
     Russia's next president. As Mr. Putin said, the decision will 
     be made on the basis of what is best for Russia. (``Think of 
     them as co-heads of a corporation,'' Mr. Oslon suggests.) The 
     aim is the same, but the styles vary.
       Mr. Medvedev calls for innovation and technical 
     modernisation to revive growth. He is appealing through 
     the internet to the most enterprising people in Russia, 
     and is inviting Russian and foreign scientists to come and 
     innovate in a specially created zone, called Skolkovo, 
     which would be protected against the rest of the country 
     by a high security wall and honest police.
       The president, who is keen to keep his job after 2012, will 
     try to persuade Mr. Putin that it is in the interests of the 
     corporation, and of Mr. Putin as one of its main 
     stakeholders, for his predecessor not to return to the 
     Kremlin. He could cite the need for better relations with the 
     West to legitimise the

[[Page S10339]]

     financial interests of the Russian elite, and the 
     inefficiency of the security services as a support base. But 
     even if Mr. Putin would like to retire, can he afford to?
       The two men may belong to the same system and want the same 
     thing, but they are formed by different experiences. Mr. 
     Putin, despite his belligerence about the 1990s, is the very 
     epitome of that period. He operates by informal rules and 
     agreements rather than laws and institutions. He became 
     president at the end of a revolutionary decade, when the job 
     carried more risks than rewards. He is cautious, dislikes 
     making decisions and rarely fires anyone, putting loyalty and 
     stability above all else.
       Mr. Medvedev, on the other hand, was installed as president 
     after nearly a decade of stability, when the political 
     landscape was cleared of opposition and the coffers were full 
     of money. He is a stickler for formality, though he is a lot 
     less careful, and makes decisions that can destabilise the 
     system--such as firing the previous mayor of Moscow, Yuri 
     Luzhkov. But he is also weaker than Mr. Putin, and may not be 
     able to hang on to power.
       The likeliest outcome is that the two will try to preserve 
     their tandem one way or another. Kremlin officials dismiss 
     talk of dead ends as pointless whining and alarmism from 
     liberals. The prevailing view is that the system works and 
     everything will carry on as usual. That may be wrong, 
     however. ``Mr. Putin can return to the Kremlin technically, 
     but he cannot do so historically,'' Mr. Rogov argues. His 
     popularity may be buoyant, but the historic period of 
     stabilisation and restoration which he initiated is coming to 
     an end. Mr. Putin always took great care over symbols, 
     marking the beginning of his rule with the restoration of the 
     Soviet anthem. At the time, it was a symbol of continuity and 
     greatness. Today it sounds increasingly archaic.
       As stability turns into stagnation, Mr. Putin is becoming a 
     symbol of the bygone 2000s. Mr. Medvedev, on the other hand, 
     with his tweets and his iPad, has absorbed hopes of change 
     among the younger, more restless set. He has done nothing to 
     justify this; as a recent editorial in Vedomosti, a Russian 
     business daily, argued, ``Medvedev is strong not because of 
     his deeds, but because he rides an illusion.'' Nonetheless, 
     the wish for change is real.


                           Dissenting voices

       This is reflected in the media. Glossy lifestyle magazines 
     are becoming politicised; one has even put Lyudmila Alexeeva, 
     an 83-year-old human-rights activist, on its cover. The 
     beating-up of Oleg Kashin, a journalist from Kommersant, a 
     mainstream newspaper, troubled the well-heeled more than the 
     murder of Anna Politkovskaya did three years ago, precisely 
     because Mr. Kashin--unlike her--did not oppose the regime or 
     write about Chechnya. And recently Leonid Parfenov, a stylish 
     Russian TV presenter, caused a scandal when, at an awards 
     ceremony attended by Russia's most powerful media executives, 
     he said that Russian television reporters have turned into 
     servile bureaucrats. ``Our television'', he said, ``can 
     hardly be called a civic or public political institution.''
       It was not what Mr. Parfenov said that was news, but the 
     fact that he said it at all. He used to steer clear of words 
     like ``civic'' or ``duty'', and argue that Russian liberalism 
     was not found in politics, but in fashion boutiques and 
     Moscow coffee shops. Many young, successful Russians shared 
     his view. Mr. Parfenov's speech reflects a change of mood 
     among them, as well as a growing interest in politics. 
     Although state television has enormous sway over older 
     Russians, the young, urban and educated get their news and 
     views from the internet, which remains largely free of 
     Kremlin propaganda.
       Stanislav Belkovsky, a political commentator, sees a 
     similarity between Russia's situation and the period of 
     Perestroika reform under Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s. 
     As then, a large part of the elite has realised that the 
     system is ineffective and is no longer willing to defend it. 
     When ordinary people come to share this view, the system is 
     in grave danger.
       That moment may be some time away: the Russian economy is 
     more flexible than the Soviet one, the elite is more diverse, 
     the borders are open and there are safety valves to release 
     dissatisfaction. But as Mr. Khodorkovsky said in a recent 
     interview from jail, the tensions between the declining 
     performance of the Russian economy, the expectations of the 
     population and the corruption of the bureaucracy will erode 
     the system, whoever is president.
       With Mr. Putin in power, Russia may suffer deep stagnation, 
     but a collapse of the system would be all the more dramatic. 
     With Mr. Medvedev stagnation may be shorter, but his grip on 
     power would be weaker. This may matter little in the long 
     run, but it makes a big difference for Russians living now--
     not least for Mr. Khodorkovsky himself.

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. Khodorkovsky, the Economist writes, is a symbol of 
the injustices perpetrated by corrupt bureaucrats and members of the 
security services who epitomize the nexus between power and wealth.
  The article goes on to describe the staggering scale of corruption in 
Russia today.

       Shortly before his arrest Mr. Khodorkovsky estimated state 
     corruption at around $30 billion, or 10% of the country's 
     [gross domestic product]. By 2005 the bribes market, 
     according to INDEM, a think-tank, had risen to $300 billion, 
     or 20% of GDP. As Mr. Khodorkovsky said in a recent 
     interview, most of this was not the bribes paid to traffic 
     police or doctors, but contracts awarded by bureaucrats to 
     their affiliated companies.

  I go on to quote from the Economist:

       Their wealth is dependent on their administrative power, 
     rather than newfangled property rights. The profits are often 
     stashed away in foreign bank accounts or quickly spent: on 
     luxury property in European capitals, or on their children's 
     education in British private schools.
       Unsurprisingly, surveys now show that the young would 
     rather have a job in the government or a state firm than in 
     private business. Over the past 10 years, the number of 
     bureaucrats has gone up by 66%, from 527,000 to 878,000, and 
     the cost of maintaining such a state machine has risen from 
     15% to 20% of GDP.

  Other figures point to the same conclusion as the Economist. In its 
annual index of perceptions of corruption, Transparency International 
ranked Russia 154 out of 178 countries--perceived as more corrupt than 
Pakistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. The World Bank considers 122 countries 
to be better places to do business than Russia. One of those countries 
is Georgia, which the World Bank ranks as the 12th best country to do 
business with.
  President Medvedev speaks often and at times eloquently about the 
need for Russia to be governed by the rule of law. Considering the 
likely outcome of Mr. Khodorkovsky's show trial, it is not surprising 
that President Medvedev himself has lamented that his anticorruption 
campaign has produced, in his words, ``no results.''
  Russians who want better for their country and dare to challenge the 
corrupt bureaucrats who govern it are often targeted with impunity.
  One case that has garnered enormous attention both within Russia and 
around the world is that of Sergei Magnitsky, a tax attorney for an 
American investor who uncovered the theft by Russian officials of $230 
million from the Russian treasury. Because of Mr. Magnitsky's 
relentless investigation into this corruption, the Russian Interior 
Ministry threw him in prison to silence him. He was deprived of clean 
water, left in a freezing cell for days, and denied medical care. After 
358 days of this abuse, Sergei Magnitsky died. He was 37. Not only has 
the Russian Government held no one accountable for his death, several 
officials connected to Mr. Magnitsky's imprisonment and murder have 
actually received commendations.
  Then there is the tragic case of Russia's last remaining independent 
journalist. Last month, Russian journalist Oleg Kashin, who had written 
critically of a violent youth movement associated with the Kremlin, was 
beaten by attackers who broke his jaw, both his legs, and many of his 
fingers--a clear political message to other writers.
  No one has been charged for this crime, and writing in the New York 
Times this Sunday, Mr. Kashin suggests that no one ever will.
  ``[I]t seems indubitable,'' he writes, ``that the atmosphere of 
hatred and aggression, artificially fomented by the Kremlin, has become 
the dominant fact in Russian politics, the reset in relations with the 
United States and talk of economic modernization notwithstanding. . . . 
A man with a steel rod is standing behind the smiling politicians who 
speak of democracy. That man is the real defender of the Kremlin and 
its order. I got to feel that man with my own head.''
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this entire article be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Dec. 11, 2010]

                          A Beating on My Beat

                            (By Oleg Kashin)

       On the night of Nov. 6, I was attacked by two young men 
     armed with steel rods. The assault occurred a few feet from 
     the entrance to my house, which is just a 10-minute walk from 
     the Kremlin.
       A month later, I am still in the hospital. One of my 
     fingers has been amputated, one of my legs and both halves of 
     my jaw have been broken, and I have several cranial wounds. 
     According to my doctors, I won't be able to go back to my job 
     as a reporter and columnist at Kommersant, an independent 
     newspaper, until spring.
       A few hours after the attack, President Dmitri Medvedev 
     went on Twitter to declare

[[Page S10340]]

     his outrage, and he instructed Russia's law enforcement 
     agencies to make every effort to investigate this crime. But 
     no one has been apprehended, and I do not expect that the two 
     young men will ever be identified or caught.
       Three theories quickly emerged about who was behind the 
     attack--which was, I believe, an assassination attempt. The 
     first holds that it was the municipal authorities of Khimki, 
     a town between Moscow and St. Petersburg. I had written 
     several articles criticizing a proposed highway between the 
     two cities that would run through the town, something the 
     local authorities want but many residents oppose.
       The second theory is that it was Andrei Turchak, the 
     governor of the Pskov region, who was upset by a blog posting 
     of mine arguing that he had his position only because of his 
     ties to the Kremlin.
       And the third theory is that the perpetrators came from 
     Nashi, a youth movement I have criticized. The group's 
     appearance on the public scene has accompanied a new level, 
     and acceptance, of violence in Russian politics; members are 
     called ``Nashists'' by their opponents, as a pun on 
     ``fascists,'' for good reason.
       Nashi is closely tied to the Kremlin, which founded the 
     group five years ago in response to fears that Ukraine's 
     Orange Revolution could inspire similar uprisings in Russia. 
     When newspapers reported that Vasily Yakemenko, its former 
     leader and now the minister for youth affairs, might have 
     been involved in the attack on me, he was granted an 
     unscheduled meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Was 
     this meant to show that the authorities didn't share such a 
     suspicion--or that they didn't care whether the accusation 
     was true?
       What strikes me about the theories is that, in each case, 
     the ultimate perpetrator is the state. And for some reason 
     that seems acceptable to most Russians: practically no one 
     here has questioned the right of the state to resort to 
     extra-legal violence to maintain power, even against 
     journalists.
       I don't mean to compare myself to Anna Politkovskaya or 
     Paul Klebnikov, journalists who were killed probably because 
     of their investigative work. But in a way the attack against 
     me is more disturbing. Unlike most of the reporters who have 
     been attacked in Russia in recent years, I have not engaged 
     in any serious investigations into corruption or human rights 
     abuses. I have not revealed any secret documents or irritated 
     influential figures with embarrassing material.
       What I have done, though, is criticize Nashi. Indeed, all 
     this year I have called attention to the violence that 
     accompanies the group's every public activity. Even at their 
     legally sanctioned events the members trample--and this is no 
     exaggeration; they literally stomp with their feet--portraits 
     of Russia's ``enemies,'' including human rights activists, 
     politicians and journalists.
       I also believe they were the organizers of anonymous acts 
     aimed at the opposition: fabricated video clips, hacker 
     attacks and physical assaults. Some of them were symbolic; 
     for example, an unidentified man once hit Garry Kasparov, the 
     former world chess champion who is an opposition leader, on 
     the head with a chess board.
       But even when there is strong evidence of official Nashi 
     involvement, members have gone unpunished. In the summer of 
     2005 a group of hooligans with baseball bats invaded an 
     opposition meeting and savagely beat the participants. The 
     police detained the attackers, and a list of their names, 
     including some ``Nashists,'' appeared in the papers. But all 
     of the detainees were immediately released, and the case has 
     never gone to court.
       Nobody knows for certain whether there is a direct link 
     between the flourishing of Nashi and the increased violence 
     against critics of the state. But it seems indubitable that 
     the atmosphere of hatred and aggression, artificially 
     fomented by the Kremlin, has become the dominant fact in 
     Russian politics, the ``reset'' in relations with the United 
     States and talk of economic modernization notwithstanding.
       A man with a steel rod is standing behind the smiling 
     politicians who speak of democracy. That man is the real 
     defender of the Kremlin and its order. I got to feel that man 
     with my own head.

  Mr. McCAIN. An earlier New York Times news story, dated May 17 of 
this year, and entitled ``Russian Journalists, Fighting Graft, Pay in 
Blood,'' describes the fate of other independent journalists in Russia. 
One is Mikhail Beketov, who exposed corruption in a Moscow suburb. This 
is what happened to him.

       "Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city's 
     leadership,'' Mr. Beketov said in one of his final 
     editorials. ``A few days later, my automobile was blown up. 
     What is next for me?'' Not long after, he was savagely beaten 
     outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers 
     were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his 
     assailants had sought to make sure he would never write 
     another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, 
     his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence.

  No one has been charged or held responsible for this crime either.
  The same article mentions another journalist, Pyotr Lipatov, who was 
attacked while covering an opposition rally. As he was leaving, the 
article says:

       [T]hree men pushed him to the ground and punched him 
     repeatedly on the head. ``Even when I was unconscious, they 
     didn't let me go,'' Mr. Lipatov said. This beating was 
     recorded on video by protesters. Mr. Lipatov's colleagues 
     used the video to track down the men who beat him. They were 
     police officers. While Mr. Lipatov, 28, was recovering in the 
     hospital, he said two other police officers visited and urged 
     him to sign a statement saying that he had provoked the 
     attack. . . .
       Officials later acknowledged that police officers had been 
     involved in the attack, but they still brought no charges. 
     Instead, they raided Mr. Lipatov's offices, seized computers 
     and brought a criminal extremism suit against him. They 
     asserted that he had sought to foment ``negative stereotypes 
     and negative images of members of the security forces.'' 
     Fearing for his safety and more criminal charges, he quit.

  Sadly, I could go on and on like this, to say nothing of the many 
unsolved murders. So I ask unanimous consent that the entire article be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, May 17, 2010]

           Russian Journalists, Fighting Graft, Pay in Blood

                         (By Clifford J. Levy)

       Khimki, Russia.--Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would 
     not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. 
     Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his 
     newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb.
       ``Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city's 
     leadership,'' Mr. Beketov said in one of his final 
     editorials. ``A few days later, my automobile was blown up. 
     What is next for me?''
       Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and 
     left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three 
     later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to 
     make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a 
     leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that 
     he cannot utter a simple sentence.
       The police promised a thorough investigation, but barely 
     looked up from their desks. Surveillance videos were ignored. 
     Neighbors were not interviewed. Information about 
     politicians' displeasure with Mr. Beketov was deemed 
     ``unconfirmed,'' according to interviews with officials and 
     residents.
       Prosecutors, who had repeatedly rejected Mr. Beketov's 
     pleas for protection, took over the case, but did not seem to 
     accomplish much more. Mr. Beketov's close colleagues said 
     they were eager to offer insights about who in the government 
     had been stung by his exposes. But no one asked.
       Eighteen months later, there have been no arrests.
       In retrospect, the violence was an omen, beginning a wave 
     of unsolved attacks and official harassment against 
     journalists, human rights activists and opposition 
     politicians around the region, which includes the Moscow 
     suburbs, but not the city itself. Rarely, if ever, is anyone 
     held responsible.
       One editor was beaten in front of his home, and the 
     assailants seized only copies of his articles and other 
     material for the next day's issue, not his wallet or 
     cellphone. Local officials insisted that he sustained his 
     injuries while drunk.
       Another journalist was pummeled by plainclothes police 
     officers after a demonstration. It was all captured on video. 
     Even so, the police released a statement saying that he had 
     hurt himself when he was accidentally pushed by the crowd.
       These types of attacks or other means of intimidation, 
     including aggressive efforts by prosecutors to shut down news 
     media outlets or nonprofit groups, serve as an unnerving 
     deterrent. And in a few cases in recent years, the violence 
     in the country has escalated into contract killings. 
     Corruption is widespread in Russia, and government often 
     functions poorly. But most journalists and nonprofit groups 
     shy away from delving deeply into these problems.
       The culture of impunity in Russia represents the most 
     glaring example of the country's inability to establish real 
     laws in the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet 
     Union. And this failure radiates throughout society, touching 
     upon ordinary men and women who are trying to carve out lives 
     in the new Russia, but are wary of questioning authority.
       Russia's president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, has bemoaned the 
     country's ``legal nihilism.'' Yet under Mr. Medvedev and 
     Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, it has persisted. And among 
     the major beneficiaries have been the governing party's 
     politicians.


                        Threats, Then a Beating

       Boris Gromov, the governor of the Moscow region, commanded 
     the 40th Army during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and his 
     opponents believe that he governs with a general's sense of 
     order. Mr. Gromov, appointed by Mr. Putin, has in turn seeded 
     local government with fellow Afghanistan veterans, including 
     the Khimki mayor, Vladimir Strelchenko.
       Mikhail Beketov often referred to Mr. Gromov and Mr. 
     Strelchenko as ``army boots,'' and did not think much of 
     their honesty.

[[Page S10341]]

       Mr. Beketov was brawny like a boxer, fast-talking, 
     perpetually late and prone to latching onto causes. He 
     himself had been an officer in the army paratroops, but then 
     switched to journalism, working as a war correspondent in 
     Afghanistan and Chechnya. His experiences left him with a 
     distaste for overbearing military officials.
       He established his newspaper, Khimkinskaya Pravda (Khimki 
     Truth), in 2006. He wrote regularly about what he considered 
     corruption among local officials, who were often members of 
     Mr. Putin's governing party, United Russia.
       He financed the newspaper himself. It had a circulation of 
     only about 10,000 copies, but it garnered a large following 
     in Khimki, which has a population of 185,000, and the 
     surrounding cities, especially after Mr. Beketov grabbed hold 
     of two topics.
       His articles resonated nationally when he questioned why 
     the city had demolished a monument that contained the remains 
     of Soviet fighter pilots. The work was done to widen a road.
       And he relentlessly focused on the fate of the Khimki 
     forest, a pristine expanse of old-growth oaks and wild 
     animals, including elk and boars, improbably close to Moscow. 
     With little public notice, the government had planned to 
     build a major highway to St. Petersburg through the forest. 
     Mr. Beketov suspected that officials were secretly profiting 
     from the project.
       Local officials, unaccustomed to such criticism, lashed out 
     publicly. Privately, Mr. Beketov received phone threats. He 
     asked the authorities for help, but was rebuffed, his 
     colleagues said. He returned home one day to discover his dog 
     dead on his doorstep. Then his car was blown up.
       Instead of investigating the explosion, prosecutors opened 
     a criminal inquiry into his newspaper. His friends said that 
     Mr. Beketov told them that one city official had warned him 
     about his articles.
       But he did not relent. ``You can imagine what kind of money 
     the authorities plan to fleece from this so-called 
     infrastructure,'' he wrote about the highway plan.
       ``For four years, I have observed our authorities,'' he 
     said. ``I have closely interacted with many senior officials, 
     including Strelchenko himself. Given how the authorities have 
     collected scandals with frightening regularity, I have come 
     to a regrettable conclusion: They are shameless.''
       On a November evening in 2008, Mr. Beketov was assaulted, 
     most likely by several people, outside his home. He was 
     discovered by a neighbor the next day.
       Even as Mr. Beketov later lay in a coma at the hospital, he 
     was not safe. A threat was phoned in: We will finish him off.
       His friends and colleagues grew so alarmed that they moved 
     him out of the Khimki hospital to a better, more secure one 
     in neighboring Moscow.
       Both the police and prosecutors found the case tough to 
     crack.
       Yuliya Zhukova, a spokeswoman in the Moscow region for the 
     investigative committee of the prosecutor general's office, 
     said the office had conducted a thorough inquiry, but 
     ultimately had to suspend it for lack of evidence. She said 
     that investigators needed to interview Mr. Beketov to make 
     progress, but that his doctors would not allow that. (Mr. 
     Beketov has been unable to communicate since the attack.)
       Yevgenia Chirikova, a leader of a local environmental group 
     who worked closely with Mr. Beketov on his articles about the 
     highway, said that she was eager to help, but that 
     investigators did not contact her.
       ``I waited and waited and waited,'' Ms. Chirikova said. ``I 
     knew that according to the rules, they are supposed to 
     question those closest to the victim.''
       She said she decided to approach the investigators herself. 
     They questioned her for several hours, asking her about her 
     motivations for getting involved in the case, she said.
       Ms. Zhukova criticized allies of Mr. Beketov and some 
     journalists for assuming that the attack was related to Mr. 
     Beketov's work.
       ``Very often, unfortunately, they have presented erroneous 
     information, and misled people regarding the course of the 
     investigation,'' she said.
       Governor Gromov and Mayor Strelchenko declined to be 
     interviewed for this article. After the attack, Mr. 
     Strelchenko said he had played no role in it, but also 
     complained that it was getting too much attention.
       ``I don't want to say that it was good what happened to 
     Mikhail,'' he said. ``But I want you to separate truth from 
     untruth.''


                         Attacks on Two Editors

       To the north on the M-10 highway from Khimki is a city 
     called Solnechnogorsk, where a newspaper, Solnechnogorsk 
     Forum, was publishing exposes about how local politicians 
     were seeking to do away with elections to maintain power.
       The newspaper's editor, Yuri Grachev, is 73. In February 
     2009, several men assaulted him as he left his home, putting 
     him in intensive care for a month with a severe concussion, a 
     broken nose and other wounds.
       Police officials first said he was drunk and fell down. 
     Then they said he had been the victim of a random robbery, 
     though all that was taken was a folder with material for the 
     newspaper's next issue. The muggers have not been found, and 
     politicians from the governing party, United Russia, said the 
     attack had nothing to do with Mr. Grachev's work.
       ``Maybe it was hooligans or maybe it was by chance,'' said 
     Nikolai Bozhko, the local party leader, who is also an 
     Afghanistan war veteran. ``The idea that it was ordered--I 
     don't believe that.''
       Prosecutors had better luck finding evidence that 
     Solnechnogorsk Forum had committed libel. They have brought 
     charges against the paper, aiming to shut it down.
       ``The system will stop at nothing to break you,'' Mr. 
     Grachev said.
       Farther up the M-10 Highway is Klin, where an opposition 
     rally was held in March 2009 to protest corruption and 
     increases in utility rates.
       As Pyotr Lipatov, editor of an opposition newspaper called 
     Consensus and Truth, was leaving the rally, three men pushed 
     him to the ground and punched him repeatedly on the head. 
     ``Even when I was unconscious, they didn't let me go,'' Mr. 
     Lipatov said.
       This beating was recorded on video by protesters. Mr. 
     Lipatov's colleagues used the video to track down the men who 
     beat him. They were police officers.
       While Mr. Lipatov, 28, was recovering in the hospital, he 
     said two other police officers visited and urged him to sign 
     a statement saying that he had provoked the attack. He 
     refused. The police then issued a statement.
       ``According to Lipatov, filming the meeting with his 
     camera, he found himself in the middle of a reactionary 
     crowd, was pushed and fell to the ground,'' the statement 
     said. Two videos of the demonstration show a different 
     sequence of events.
       Officials later acknowledged that police officers had been 
     involved in the attack, but they still brought no charges. 
     Instead, they raided Mr. Lipatov's offices, seized computers 
     and brought a criminal extremism suit against him. They 
     asserted that he had sought to foment ``negative stereotypes 
     and negative images of members of the security forces.''
       Fearing for his safety and more criminal charges, he quit.
       ``Everyone was against me--the judges, the police, the 
     prosecutors, everyone,'' he said. ``I took over Consensus and 
     Truth because I supported Prime Minister Putin's call to 
     fight corruption. But look what happened. The machine here 
     did everything possible to defeat us.''


                        Promises, but No Arrests

       After the attacks in Khimki, Solnechnogorsk, Klin and 
     elsewhere, the authorities, apparently concerned that the 
     region had developed a reputation as a danger zone for 
     journalists, vowed to protect them.
       ``Attacks on journalists, naturally, create a special 
     resonance,'' Governor Gromov's office said. ``The regional 
     government believes that every case of an attack on 
     journalists must be thoroughly investigated.'' Even so, no 
     arrests have been made in any of the cases.
       And the harassment has not let up.
       On March 31, The New York Times interviewed Ms. Zhukova, 
     the spokeswoman for the investigators, about Mr. Lipatov. The 
     next day, investigators approached him in the central market 
     of Klin and said they urgently wanted to question him about 
     the beating, he said.
       The session lasted more than six hours. Mr. Lipatov said 
     they tried to pressure him to sign a statement saying that he 
     had wanted to lead a mob to storm city buildings, thereby 
     justifying the police beating. He said he declined to do so.
       Back in Khimki, a new opposition newspaper, Khimki Our 
     Home, was established to help continue Mr. Beketov's work.
       The editor, Igor Belousov, 50, is a deeply religious man. 
     He publishes the Russian Orthodox calendar in his newspaper. 
     Before turning to journalism, he was a senior city official, 
     but he resigned because of what he described as pervasive 
     corruption.
       Not long after the publication got started, Mr. Belousov 
     was accused of criminal libel by prosecutors and civil libel 
     by Mayor Strelchenko. In February, the police, without any 
     notice, arrested him on charges of selling cocaine. Court 
     documents show that the case is based exclusively on the 
     testimony of a drug dealer from another city who could not 
     recall basic details of the alleged crime.
       ``We used to have so many journalists here, but they have 
     all suffered and have all given up,'' Mr. Belousov said. 
     ``Only I remained, and now I am giving up.''

  Mr. McCAIN. Russia's beleaguered political opposition, unfortunately, 
fares no better than its journalists. I have met a few times this year 
with former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, who organizes peaceful 
political rallies to protest a lack of democracy in Russia, a right 
granted under the Russian Constitution. But these rallies are often 
targeted and violently broken up by Russian authorities.
  Considering that this is how Russian officials treat their fellow 
citizens, it is not hard to see a profound connection between the 
Russian Government's authoritarian actions at home and its aggressive 
behavior abroad. The most glaring example of this remains in Georgia. 
Over 2 years after its invasion, Russia not only continues to occupy 20 
percent of Georgia's sovereign territory, it is building military bases 
there, permitting the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in South Ossetia, 
and denying access to humanitarian missions--all in violation of 
Russia's obligations under the cease-fire agreement

[[Page S10342]]

negotiated by President Sarkozy. In a major recent step, President 
Saakashvili even renounced the use of force to end Russia's occupation, 
pledging only to defend nonoccupied Georgia in the event of a Russian 
attack. And yet Russian officials responded hostilely and dismissively.
  I ask my colleagues, when the Russians illegally, in violation of all 
international law, occupy a sovereign nation--a sovereign nation--and 
have recognized these two provinces within the international boundaries 
of Georgia as independent nations, how in the world are we going to 
trust them to adhere to a treaty?
  I have met with the people in Georgia who have been displaced from 
their homes--the sorrow and the misery inflicted on them. President 
Sarkozy of France flew in and arranged for a cease-fire. The Russians 
agreed to it. They are in total violation of it. They are occupying 20 
percent of the country of Georgia. I think Nicaragua and one other 
country have also recognized these two ``independent'' states in which 
the Russians are now carrying out ethnic cleansing and stationing 
Russian military. But not to worry, we can trust the Russians to adhere 
to solemn treaties and abide by international law.
  When we consider the various crimes and abuses of this Russian 
Government, it is hard to believe that this government shares our 
deepest values. This does not mean that we cannot or should not work 
with the Russian Federation where possible. The world does not work 
that way. What it does mean is that we need a national debate about the 
real nature of this Russian Government, about what kind of a 
relationship is possible with this government, and about the place that 
Russia should realistically occupy in U.S. foreign policy. The Senate's 
consideration of the New START treaty offers a chance to have this 
debate, as does Russian accession to the WTO. Some may want to avoid 
it, but we cannot.
  I believe we need a greater sense of realism about Russia, but that 
is not the same as pessimism or cynicism or demonization. I am an 
optimist, even about Russia. I often find sources for hope in the most 
hopeless of places. Mikhail Khordokovsky has languished in prison for 7 
years, and on December 27, he will likely be forced to endure many 
more. Yet, in a final appeal to the judge in his case, Mr. Khordokovsky 
gave one of the more moving speeches I have heard in a long time.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Full Transcript of His Final Words

       I can recall October 2003. My last day as a free man. 
     Several weeks after my arrest, I was informed that president 
     Putin had decided: I was going to have to ``slurp gruel'' for 
     8 years. It was hard to believe that back then.
       Seven years have gone by already since that day. Seven 
     years--quite a long stretch of time, and all the more so--
     when you've spent it in jail. All of us have had time to 
     reassess and rethink many things.
       Judging by the prosecutors' presentation: ``give them 14 
     years'' and ``spit on previous court decisions'', over these 
     years they have begun to fear me more, and to respect the 
     law--even less.
       The first time around, they at least went through the 
     effort of first repealing the judicial acts that stood in 
     their way. Now--they'll just leave them be; especially since 
     they would need to repeal not two, but more than 60 
     decisions.
       I do not want to return to the legal side of the case at 
     this time. Everybody who wanted to understand something--has 
     long since understood everything. Nobody is seriously waiting 
     for an admission of guilt from me. It is hardly likely that 
     somebody today would believe me if I were to say that I 
     really did steal all the oil produced by my company.
       But neither does anybody believe that an acquittal in the 
     YUKOS case is possible in a Moscow court.
       Notwithstanding, I want to talk to you about hope. Hope--
     the main thing in life.
       I remember the end of the '80s of the last century. I was 
     25 then. Our country was living on hope of freedom, hope that 
     we would be able to achieve happiness for ourselves and for 
     our children.
       We lived on this hope. In some ways, it did materialise, in 
     others--it did not. The responsibility for why this hope was 
     not realized all the way, and not for everybody, probably 
     lies on our entire generation, myself included.
       I remember too the end of the last decade and the beginning 
     of the present, current one. By then I was 35. We were 
     building the best oil company in Russia. We were putting up 
     sports complexes and cultural centres, laying roads, and 
     resurveying and developing dozens of new fields; we started 
     development of the East Siberian reserves and were 
     introducing new technologies. In short,--we were doing all 
     those things that Rosneft, which has taken possession of 
     Yukos, is so proud of today.
       Thanks to a significant increase in oil production, 
     including as the result of our successes, the country was 
     able to take advantage of a favourable oil situation. We felt 
     hope that the period of convulsions and unrest--was behind us 
     at last, and that, in the conditions of stability that had 
     been achieved with great effort and sacrifice, we would be 
     able to peacefully build ourselves a new life, a great 
     country.
       Alas, this hope too has yet to be justified. Stability has 
     come to look like stagnation. Society has stopped in its 
     tracks. Although hope still lives. It lives on even here, in 
     the Khamovnichesky courtroom, when I am already just this 
     side of 50 years old.
       With the coming of a new President (and more than two years 
     have already passed since that time), hope appeared once 
     again for many of my fellow citizens too. Hope that Russia 
     would yet become a modern country with a developed civil 
     society. Free from the arbitrary behaviour of officials, free 
     from corruption, free from unfairness and lawlessness.
       It is clear that this can not happen all by itself; or in 
     one day. But to pretend that we are developing, while in 
     actuality,--we are merely standing in one place or sliding 
     backwards, even if it is behind the cloak of noble 
     conservatism,--is no longer possible. Impossible and simply 
     dangerous for the country.
       It is not possible to reconcile oneself with the notion 
     that people who call themselves patriots so tenaciously 
     resist any change that impacts their feeding trough or 
     ability to get away with anything. It is enough to recall 
     art. 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian 
     Federation--arresting businessmen for filing of tax returns 
     by bureaucrats. And yet it is precisely the sabotage of 
     reforms that is depriving our country of prospects. This is 
     not patriotism, but rather hypocrisy.
       I am ashamed to see how certain persons--in the past, 
     respected by me--are attempting to justify unchecked 
     bureaucratic behaviour and lawlessness. They exchange their 
     reputation for a life of ease, privileges and sops.
       Luckily, not all are like that, and there are ever more of 
     the other kind.
       It makes me proud to know that even after 7 years of 
     persecutions, not a single one of the thousands of YUKOS 
     employees has agreed to become a false witness, to sell their 
     soul and conscience.
       Dozens of people have personally experienced threats, have 
     been cut off from family, and have been thrown in jail. Some 
     have been tortured. But, even after losing their health and 
     years of their lives, people have still kept the thing they 
     deemed to be most important, human dignity.
       Those who started this shameful case, Biryukov, Karimov and 
     others, have contemptuously called us ``entrepreneurs'' 
     [<>], regarding us as low-lifes, capable of 
     anything just to protect our prosperity and avoid prison.
       The years have passed. So who are the low-lifes now? Who is 
     it that have lied, tortured, and taken hostages, all for the 
     sake of money and out of cowardice before their bosses?
       And this they called ``the sovereign's business'' 
     [<>]!
       Shameful. I am ashamed for my country.
       I think all of us understand perfectly well--the 
     significance of our trial extends far beyond the scope of my 
     fate and Platon's, and even the fates of all those who have 
     guiltlessly suffered in the course of the sweeping massacre 
     of YUKOS, those I found myself unable to protect, but about 
     whom I remember every day.
       Let us ask ourselves: what must be going through the head 
     of the entrepreneur, the high-level organiser of production, 
     or simply any ordinary educated, creative person, looking 
     today at our trial and knowing that its result is absolutely 
     predictable?
       The obvious conclusion a thinking person can make is 
     chilling in its stark simplicity: the siloviki bureaucracy 
     can do anything. There is no right of private property 
     ownership. A person who collides with ``the system'' has no 
     rights whatsoever.
       Even though they are enshrined in the law, rights are not 
     protected by the courts. Because the courts are either also 
     afraid, or are themselves a part of ``the system''. Should it 
     come as a surprise to anyone then that thinking people do not 
     aspire to self- realisation here, in Russia?
       Who is going to modernise the economy? Prosecutors? 
     Policemen? Chekists? We already tried such a modernization--
     it did not work. We were able to build a hydrogen bomb, and 
     even a missile, but we still can not build--our own good, 
     modern television, our own inexpensive, competitive, modern 
     automobile, our own modern mobile phone and a whole pile of 
     other modern goods as well.
       But then we have learnt how to beautifully display others' 
     obsolete models produced in our country and an occasional 
     creation of Russian inventors, which, if they ever do find a 
     use, it will certainly be in some other country.
       Whatever happened with last year's presidential initiatives 
     in the realm of industrial policy? Have they been buried? 
     They offer the real chance to kick the oil addiction.

[[Page S10343]]

       Why? Because what the country needs is not one Korolev, and 
     not one Sakharov under the protective wing of the all-
     powerful Beria and his million-strong armed host, but 
     hundreds of thousands of ``korolevs'' and ``sakharovs'', 
     under the protection of fair and comprehensible laws and 
     independent courts, which will give these laws life, and not 
     just a place on a dusty shelf, as they did in their day--with 
     the Constitution of 1937.
       Where are these ``korolevs'' and ``sakharovs'' today? Have 
     they left the country? Are they preparing to leave? Have they 
     once again gone off into internal emigration? Or taken cover 
     amongst the grey bureaucrats in order not to fall under the 
     steamroller of ``the system''?
       We can and must change this.
       How is Moscow going to become the financial centre of 
     Eurasia if our prosecutors, ``just like'' 20 and 50 years 
     ago, are directly and unambiguously calling in a public trial 
     for the desire to increase the production and market 
     capitalisation of a private company--to be ruled a criminally 
     mercenary objective, for which a person ought to be locked up 
     for 14 years? Under one sentence a company that paid more tax 
     than anyone else, except Gazprom, but still underpaid taxes; 
     and with the second sentence it's obvious that there's 
     nothing to tax since the taxable item was stolen.
       A country that tolerates a situation where the siloviki 
     bureaucracy holds tens and even hundreds of thousands of 
     talented entrepreneurs, managers, and ordinary people in jail 
     in its own interests, instead of and together with criminals, 
     this is a sick country.
       A state that destroys its best companies, which are ready 
     to become global champions; a country that holds its own 
     citizens in contempt, trusting only the bureaucracy and the 
     special services--is a sick state.
       Hope--the main engine of big reforms and transformations, 
     the guarantor of their success. If hope fades, if it comes to 
     be supplanted by profound disillusionment--who and what will 
     be able to lead our Russia out of the new stagnation?
       I will not be exaggerating if I say that millions of eyes 
     throughout all of Russia and throughout the whole world are 
     watching for the outcome of this trial.
       They are watching with the hope that Russia will after all 
     become a country of freedom and of the law, where the law 
     will be above the bureaucratic official.
       Where supporting opposition parties will cease being a 
     cause for reprisals.
       Where the special services will protect the people and the 
     law, and not the bureaucracy from the people and the law.
       Where human rights will no longer depend on the mood of the 
     tsar. Good or evil.
       Where, on the contrary, the power will truly be dependent 
     on the citizens, and the court--only on law and God. Call 
     this conscience if you prefer.
       I believe, this--is how it will be.
       I am not at all an ideal person, but I am a person with an 
     idea. For me, as for anybody, it is hard to live in jail, and 
     I do not want to die there.
       But if I have to I will not hesitate. The things I believe 
     in are worth dying for. I think I have proven this.
       And you opponents? What do you believe in? That the bosses 
     are always right? Do you believe in money? In the impunity of 
     ``the system''?
       Your Honour!
       There is much more than just the fates of two people in 
     your hands. Right here and right now, the fate of every 
     citizen of our country is being decided. Those who, on the 
     streets of Moscow and Chita, Peter and Tomsk, and other 
     cities and settlements, are not counting on becoming victims 
     of police lawlessness, who have set up a business, built a 
     house, achieved success and want to pass it on to their 
     children, not to raiders in uniform, and finally, those who 
     want to honourably carry out their duty for a fair wage, not 
     expecting that they can be fired at any moment by corrupt 
     bosses under just about any pretext.
       This is not about me and Platon--at any rate, not only 
     about us. It is about hope for many citizens of Russia. About 
     hope that tomorrow, the court will be able to protect their 
     rights, if yet some other bureaucrats-officials get it into 
     their head to brazenly and demonstratively violate these 
     rights.
       I know, there are people, I have named them in the trial, 
     who want to keep us in jail. To keep us there forever! 
     Indeed, they do not even conceal this, publicly reminding 
     everyone about the existence of a ``bottomless'' case file.
       They want to show: they are above the law, they will always 
     accomplish whatever they might ``think up''. So far they have 
     achieved the opposite: out of ordinary people they have 
     created a symbol of the struggle with arbitrariness. But for 
     them, a conviction is essential, so they would not become 
     ``scapegoats''.
       I want to hope that the court will stand up to their 
     psychological pressure. We all know through whom it will 
     come.
       I want an independent judiciary to become a reality and the 
     norm in my country, I want the phrase from the Soviet times 
     about ``the most just court in the world'' to stop sounding 
     just as ironic today as they did back then. I want us not to 
     leave the dangerous symbols of a totalitarian system as an 
     inheritance for our children and grandchildren.
       Everybody understands that your verdict in this case--
     whatever it will be--is going to become part of the history 
     of Russia. Furthermore, it is going to form it for the future 
     generation. All the names--those of the prosecutors, and of 
     the judges--will remain in history, just like they have 
     remained in history after the infamous Soviet trials.
       Your Honour, I can imagine perfectly well that this must 
     not be very easy at all for you--perhaps even frightening--
     and I wish you courage!

  Mr. McCAIN. This is how Mr. Khordokovsky saw the broader implications 
of his trial:

       I will not be exaggerating if I say that millions of eyes 
     throughout all of Russia and throughout the whole world are 
     watching for the outcome of this trial. They are watching 
     with the hope that Russia will after all become a country of 
     freedom and of the law. . . . Where supporting opposition 
     parties will cease being a cause for reprisals. Where the 
     special services will protect the people and the law, and not 
     the bureaucracy from the people and the law. Where human 
     rights will no longer depend on the mood of the tsar--good or 
     evil. Where, on the contrary, the power will truly be 
     dependent on the citizens and the court, only on law and God. 
     For me, as for anybody, it is hard to live in jail, and I do 
     not want to die there. But if I have to I will not hesitate. 
     The things I believe in are worth dying for.

  That there are still men and women of such spirit in Russia is a 
cause for hope. Eventually maybe not this year, or next year, or the 
year after that, but eventually these Russians will occupy their 
rightful place as the leaders of their nation--for equal justice can be 
delayed, and human dignity can be denied, but not forever.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to thank and congratulate the 
Senator from Arizona for his important and impassioned comments about 
the situation in Russia regarding the rights of Mr. Khordokovsky, and I 
would associate myself with those comments.
  I would say to him, though, one thing. He asked the question, how do 
you trust Russia? That is precisely why this treaty is so important. A 
treaty is not built on trust. No one taught us that more than in those 
famous words of President Reagan: Trust, but verify. We do not have 
verification today. We are sitting here with no verification. We are in 
a forced position of ``trust,'' where we do not necessarily. So the 
sooner we get this treaty ratified, the sooner we provide a foundation 
underneath the important questions Senator McCain asked; which is, if 
you cannot trust them, you have to have verification. The whole point 
is, you build a relationship even in the worst of times so your 
country--our country--is more stable and more protected.
  During the worst of the Soviet Union, during the worst years of 
confrontation, we still built up a series of treaties of arms 
agreements and various other kinds of agreements in order to try to 
tamp down the potential for hostility. Our hope is, obviously, that we 
can do that as soon as possible here.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I wish to address a couple of points raised 
by Senator Kyl earlier, and I will address a good number more as the 
debate goes forward. Let me be very clear for the record ahead of time, 
because he opened his floor remarks this morning by asserting we don't 
have time to be able to consider this treaty before the end of the 
year. Then he said that even though the START I treaty--which I 
referred to yesterday and he specifically referred to my comments--he 
said even though it was completed in 4 days--maybe 4 plus, slightly--he 
said it wasn't done under the same circumstances. It didn't have to 
compete with other legislation and so forth. Well, that is incorrect. 
So let's set the record straight.
  On the same day the Senate held a cloture vote on the START I treaty 
and votes on two amendments related to the treaty, on that same day, it 
voted on the final passage of a tax bill. The following day, when the 
Senate voted on another amendment related to the treaty, it also agreed 
to the conference report on Interior appropriations, passed the DC 
appropriations bill, and debated and held two rollcall votes on the 
Foreign Operations appropriations bill. The following day, it

[[Page S10344]]

completed the final passage vote on the START treaty. So if our 
predecessor Senate had the ability to do START I while it passed three 
or four other bills and held four or five separate votes on those other 
items, I think it is very clear we have the ability here to be able to 
do this treaty in the next days.
  More importantly, the Senate has been considering this treaty not 
just for the day and a half we have now been on it. We went on this 
treaty yesterday and some people chose to not even come to the floor 
and talk about it. Now we are back here waiting for amendments and no 
one has yet chosen on the other side to come and bring an amendment. We 
are ready to vote on the treaty. Fifty-eight Democratic Senators are 
ready to vote on the treaty. The only thing we are waiting for is the 
people who say we don't have time, who haven't brought an amendment to 
the floor. I clearly smell a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy strategy 
going on here. But they have to know that when flights are disrupted 
next week or people can't get home, we are here to do business, and I 
think it will be clear why we are not able to. So we are going to stay 
here. We have made that clear. The majority leader has made it clear, 
and the President and the Vice President made it clear. We are prepared 
to proceed forward on any amendment with respect to understandings, 
declarations, or conditions they wish to bring, and certainly to have a 
robust debate.
  I will also reiterate that starting in June of last year, the Foreign 
Relations Committee was briefed at least five times during the talks 
with the Russians. That is while the talks were going on. So we have a 
group of Senators almost 60 strong who at one time or another over a 
year and a half have been following these negotiations very closely. 
They have been briefed down in the secure facilities. They have been 
briefed by the negotiators, by the military, by the intelligence 
community. The Intelligence Committee has weighed in. The Armed 
Services Committee has weighed in. The National Security Group has had 
an opportunity to work on this. Since the treaty was submitted, there 
have been 12 open and classified hearings with more than 20 witnesses. 
The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff Chairman, the Commander of the Strategic Command, and the 
Director of the Missile Defense Agency have all urged us to pass this 
treaty.
  The question is beginning to be asked not why should we do it now; 
the question is why aren't we doing it now. I hope we can get some 
amendments and begin to proceed.
  At this point I might share a couple of other thoughts while we are 
waiting for a couple of other colleagues who requested time to speak. 
Senator Kyl asked the question: What do we get out of this treaty? He 
juxtaposed what he said the Russians get versus what we get and seemed 
to imply we are not getting very much. Well, I can assure the Senator 
from Arizona that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the 
Secretary of Defense, the leaders of our Strategic Command, and others 
don't come before the Congress willy-nilly just to say, Hey, do this, 
because we don't get anything out of it. Every single one of them has 
articulated very clearly how they believe this treaty strengthens 
America's national security, advantages our leadership in the world, 
and positions us to be able to deal more effectively with Iran and 
North Korea.
  I have to say to my colleagues, you cede the right to come to the 
floor of the Senate and talk seriously about Iran and North Korea if 
you can't talk seriously about the ways in which this treaty enhances 
our ability to be able to put leverage on those countries. Before we 
pushed the so-called reset button with Russia, we didn't have their 
cooperation with respect to Iran. In fact, the Russians were very 
skeptical about the intelligence we were offering and putting on the 
table. It wasn't until we sat down with them face to face and went 
through that that they became alarmed and they began to see, indeed, 
this question of how we respond to Iran is deadly serious. As a 
consequence of that, Russia joined with the United States.
  I agree with my colleagues, the mere fact they are joining us is not 
a reason to embrace a treaty if the treaty doesn't do all the other 
things you need to provide stability and enhance your security. But 
when it does all those other things and you know the consequences of 
turning your back on all of those achievements is going to create a 
negative relationship, you ought to try to weigh that a little bit. It 
seems to me when someone's point of view comes specifically from the 
economic engagement, business world, somebody such as Steve Forbes 
writes that this is important to the economic component of our 
relationship and to that component of the reset button, I think we can 
see the breadth of impact a treaty such as this can have.
  Let me say a few more words about what we do get out of this. First 
of all--and this is as significant as any reason there is to be 
considering this--we get nuclear stability. The fact is that nuclear 
stability enhances the relationship between the countries so we can do 
a lot of other things that assist in stabilizing this important 
relationship in a time of crisis. The fact is, as I mentioned earlier--
we all know this--the United States and Russia possess 90 percent of 
the world's nuclear weapons. Any single one of those weapons 
accidentally released, stolen, or the materials in them, has the 
ability to be able to destroy any American city. That is a reality 
today. So both countries have decided it is in both countries' 
interests to reduce the dangers that arise when you have 
misunderstandings or mistrust without the verification that builds the 
trust, and it is important to establish limits on those weapons in 
order to achieve that.
  Predictability is what comes with this treaty. Transparency is what 
comes with this treaty. Accountability comes with this treaty. Without 
this treaty, we don't have the right to count their warheads. With this 
treaty, we have a specific counting and identifying mechanism which 
will provide for greater accountability and greater stability.
  Secretary Gates said very clearly: ``Russia is currently above the 
treaty limits in terms of its numbers.'' So they are going to have to 
take down warheads. How could it not be in the interests of the United 
States to have Russia reduce the number of warheads it has today?
  There are many other reasons. I see my colleague from North Dakota 
has arrived. I will go through a number of these others as the 
opportunity presents itself later. But I think there are a host of 
reasons that are very clear, and they are part of the record already 
and we will highlight them as we go forward, as to what we get out of 
this treaty and why this is directly in the interests of our country, 
and that is the only reason the President of the United States is 
submitting this treaty to the Senate. We need to pay close attention to 
the rationale our military and intelligence community has laid out to 
us of why they would like this treaty--as Jim Clapper, the head of the 
intelligence community has said, the sooner the better, the quicker, 
the sooner, the better.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak in 
favor of the New START treaty and to do so strongly.
  First let me say I have been listening to Chairman Kerry and Senator 
Lugar discuss this treaty. I think they have been clear and compelling 
with respect to the arguments they have advanced. I think Senator Kerry 
has made abundantly clear why this treaty is entirely in the interests 
of the United States.
  This treaty simultaneously takes real steps toward reducing the 
number of nuclear arms in the world while also recognizing the 
important role these weapons play in our national defense. Above all 
else, I believe this treaty is stabilizing, which should be the goal of 
any action related to nuclear weapons.
  I currently serve as chairman of the Senate ICBM Coalition. North 
Dakota proudly hosts the only Air Force base in the country that has 
two nuclear missions. Minot Air Force Base houses both ICBMs and 
nuclear bombers. As a result, North Dakotans have a special 
appreciation for the awesome power of these weapons and their critical 
role in our national security. While most people approach the existence 
of these weapons purely from an academic standpoint, we in North Dakota 
are confronted with their reality on a daily

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basis. Still, we as North Dakotans are only observers. I assure my 
colleagues there is nothing more sobering than visiting a missile 
facility and talking with the young men and women who stand every day 
as the sentinels of our security, or talking with bomber pilots as they 
prepare to fly halfway around the world to patrol the skies for our 
protection, which I was fortunate to do this summer. Let me say 
parenthetically, these young people are extraordinary. We can be 
incredibly proud of the young men and women of our military. The 
quality of these young people is extraordinary. These brave men and 
women live the reality of nuclear deterrence and the stability and the 
security it brings to our Nation.
  As we approach this treaty, our first consideration must be its 
implications for our ability to maintain deterrence and stability and 
our overall national security. My colleagues on the ICBM Coalition and 
I watched closely throughout the negotiation of this treaty. We 
attended dozens of meetings and briefings to understand the impacts 
this treaty would have on our national security. I even visited Russia 
shortly after the treaty was presented to the world and met with many 
of their top military leadership. After careful and thorough analysis 
of this treaty, I can say with confidence that this treaty will 
strengthen our national security. I have no doubt about that fact. 
There is no question the treaty will reduce the number of launchers 
that deliver nuclear weapons. This treaty has real cuts to those 
forces--cuts that perhaps go even deeper than the ICBM Coalition 
initially would have liked. But after speaking at length with our 
military leaders, the men and women responsible for developing the 
plans for the use of these weapons, it is clear to me the numbers 
contained in this treaty remain sufficient to ensure the success of the 
nuclear deterrence mission.
  They tell me that while absolute numbers are important, there is no 
precise number that assures our security and enhances our nuclear 
stability. The bottom line is that we must maintain enough launchers to 
have a credible and secure deterrent that promotes stability in times 
of crisis. This treaty does that. It not only maintains our nuclear 
deterrent, but enshrines it for coming decades.
  Beyond protecting a sufficient, credible, nuclear deterrent, this 
treaty advances our national security in other ways as well. President 
Ronald Reagan famously said: ``Trust, but verify.'' However, for over a 
year, we have been unable to inspect Russia's weapons. That is not in 
our interests. It risks developments that harm our national security 
going undetected or even misunderstandings that could lead to a 
national security crisis. This treaty allows us to resume the extensive 
and intrusive inspections that began under the first START treaty 
signed by the first President Bush and ratified by this body on a vote 
of 93 to 6.
  This treaty also moves our nuclear security forward at a more 
advanced level. Although I doubt we can ever rid the world of all 
nuclear weapons, we are no longer in the midst of a nuclear arms race, 
and thank God for that. By signaling our commitment to reducing our 
nuclear arsenal while still maintaining a sufficient and credible 
deterrent, this treaty will advance our interests in halting nuclear 
proliferation.
  The single biggest threat to our Nation would be a terrorist 
organization with a nuclear weapon. This treaty will enhance our 
ability to deter the development of nuclear weapons by rogue states, 
and it will reduce the risk that nuclear arms races around the globe 
destabilize regions of the world or create opportunities for terrorists 
to acquire nuclear weapons.
  Many treaty opponents argue this treaty may weaken our national 
security. After closely reviewing their concerns and consulting with 
experts, I do not find their arguments persuasive. Let's look at those 
arguments in turn.
  First, some opponents greatly inflate the importance of a short 
phrase in the nonbinding preamble of the treaty to argue that it would 
somehow constrain our missile defense abilities. This ignores the 
remaining 17 pages of treaty text and 165 pages of protocol text. Let 
me say, I have long favored missile defense. I have at many times been 
in the minority on my own side on that question. If I believed this 
prevented our creating a stable and secure missile defense, I would not 
favor the treaty.
  This treaty doesn't do that. I think it is as clear as it can be. 
Other than limiting the conversion of existing ICBM launchers to 
missile defense interceptors, which our military leaders have already 
said would be more expensive than building new launchers--and more 
important, in my view--would degrade our ICBM capability, there are no 
restrictions on our missile defense--none.
  Others argue the treaty will restrict future conventional missile 
capabilities. That is simply not accurate. The treaty fully allows for 
the use of conventional missiles. We as a nation are free to 
unilaterally decide what conventional capability we want. We also hear 
that Russia's tactical weapons should be included in the treaty. I have 
also been one who has long favored restrictions on tactical nuclear 
weapons. While I recognize the importance of addressing that threat, a 
strategic arms treaty, by definition, is not the place to debate them. 
Never in history have tactical weapons been included in treaties aimed 
at strategic weapons. That hasn't stopped this Senate from ratifying 
those agreements, nor has it stopped them for serving our national 
security interests for decades.
  I am quick to recognize that tactical weapons, at some point, can 
become a strategic issue. The problem we confront is never before in 
the context of a strategic agreement have we included tactical systems. 
That is the reality.
  Frankly, I would very much like to have tactical weapons included in 
this treaty. That would be my preference. But that is not the reality 
of the history of these negotiations.
  Mr. President, some argue the number of total warheads goes too low. 
However, the treaty allows nearly twice as many warheads as launchers. 
More important, the number of total launchers available is a far more 
important deterrence for our national security than the number of 
warheads.
  This treaty shows the administration understands the critical need to 
maintain a sufficient number of launchers to assure continued nuclear 
stability. With that said, like many other military and civilian 
experts on our nuclear forces, I would be extremely wary of any efforts 
to further decrease the number of our launchers. I have argued 
repeatedly, as chairman of the ICBM caucus, against further reductions 
at this stage. I believe that is a prudent position.
  Finally, opponents argue that the administration has not committed to 
an investment in the modernization of our nuclear weapons and 
infrastructure. This argument completely ignores the dramatic increase 
in the modernization funding the President proposed in his budget. As 
chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, I can attest to the fact that 
this increase is unprecedented. This commitment ensures that the 
remaining launchers and warheads will be reliable and effective in the 
event we ever need to launch them.
  In short, the arguments advanced by those who claim this treaty would 
hurt our national security are not convincing. That is not just my 
conclusion; that is the conclusion of former Secretaries of Defense and 
former Secretaries of State from both the Republican Party and the 
Democratic Party and previous administrations, as well as current and 
former military officers who have all publicly stated that this treaty 
will advance, not harm, our national security.
  Let me say I have two major Air Force bases in my State: Grand Forks 
Air Force Base and Minot Air Force Base. I spend a significant amount 
of time talking to our top Air Force leadership. I have consulted with 
them closely on this matter, as chairman of the ICBM caucus. I am 
absolutely persuaded by the best military thinking available to me that 
this treaty is entirely in the national security interests of the 
United States. I believe that is clear.
  Mr. President, I am proud of my record in the Senate on national 
security over the past 23 years, especially when it comes to our 
nuclear arsenal. For generations, the young men and women who have 
served at Minot and Grand Forks Air Force Bases have declared peace as 
their profession, as they defended the United States from global 
threats through nuclear deterrence. Though they may not be recognized 
as publicly today as they were 50 years ago, the airmen who stand guard 
at Minot remain at the vanguard of our

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Nation's most important military mission. I would never do anything to 
undermine the mission they carry out every day.
  After a careful review and discussions with our Nation's best nuclear 
experts, both those in uniform and those who do not wear the uniform, I 
am confident this treaty makes our Nation safer and more secure.
  Mr. President, I will strongly support approving this treaty, and I 
call on my colleagues to join me in that effort.
  I want to conclude as I began, by thanking the chairman and the 
ranking member for their leadership on this matter. It is in the 
highest tradition of the United States Senate. Working together in a 
bipartisan--really nonpartisan--way, Senator Lugar and Senator Kerry 
have provided vital leadership to this body and this country. We are 
all very deeply in their debt. I express my gratitude to them both for 
the statesmanlike quality they have brought to this discussion and 
debate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana is recognized.
  Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, as we are waiting for other Senators coming 
to the floor, hopefully, to offer amendments to the new START Treaty, I 
have some interesting information that I think is relevant to our 
discussion today.
  As has been suggested by other Senators, the so-called Nunn-Lugar 
cooperative threat reduction program, in operation for the last 19 
years, has made possible, through operations of U.S. military and U.S. 
contractors, working with their counterparts in Russia, the destruction 
of very sizable amounts of nuclear weapons--threats that we took very 
seriously in 1991, and that I hope Americans take very seriously 
currently.
  I have just received a report that, since October--and that is 
specifically during the month of November--we have eliminated eight 
more SLBMs in Russia. We have secured 10 more nuclear weapon transport 
trains and neutralized 100-plus more metric tons of chemical weapons 
agent.
  I mention this because I have been fortunate enough to receive 
monthly, at least for the last 15 years, similar reports. I have a 
scoreboard in my office that, in fact, illustrates, first of all, that 
7,599 strategic nuclear warheads aimed at the United States have been 
deactivated through the cooperative threat reduction program. Each one 
of those warheads, as I have pointed out, without being melodramatic, 
may have been sufficient to completely eliminate my home city of 
Indianapolis.
  I take seriously the treaty we are looking at now, not so much in 
terms of the numbers of reductions the treaty calls for, but simply 
even if 1,550 warheads are left on both sides, it is an existential 
problem to both of our countries that we need to take seriously.
  In any event, in addition to the 7,599 strategic nuclear warheads 
deactivated, 791 ICBMs have been destroyed. These were the missiles on 
which the strategic nuclear warheads were located. So by taking the 
warheads off of the missiles, then taking down the 791 intercontinental 
ballistic missiles and destroying them--and then 498 ICBM silos in 
which these missiles were located were destroyed; 180 ICBM mobile 
launchers were destroyed; 659 submarine launched ballistic missiles 
were eliminated, SLBMs; 492 SLBM launchers were eliminated; 32 nuclear 
submarines capable of carrying and launching ballistic missiles have 
been destroyed; and 155 bombers were eliminated.
  We are talking about so-called carriers. We talk in the treaty about 
maybe 1,550 warheads left, 700 carriers on both sides. For those who 
have not followed closely these arguments over the years, these are the 
elements that have been aimed at us, and these are the vehicles that 
would have made possible what they were doing.
  Anecdotally, without taking the time of other Senators, I will say 
that during one of my visits with former Senator Sam Nunn, from 
Georgia, we went to a site in Siberia where, in fact, a missile had 
been taken out of the ground. This was a missile that we were told had 
10 warheads--the multiple reentry vehicle, where you could put multiple 
missiles on one vehicle. We were in the silo. It was like a large tube 
that had an elevator going down. I don't know on which floor we finally 
arrived, but it was a floor in the silo where the Russians stayed as 
guards or as watch officers. What authority they had was not clear in 
terms of actually launching the missile or following the orders, 
wherever they may have come from. But the impression I had from that 
visit to the silo, before it was destroyed that very day--and we have 
pictures of it being destroyed in the office. I explain that this is 
not a nuclear weapon being destroyed, it was just a silo in the ground. 
But around a table at which the Russians who were on duty sat were 
pictures of American cities. These were ostensibly the targets of the 
10 warheads. It has a chilling effect as you go around to discover 
which cities they are.
  Are they cities that I represent on the chart? The fact is, that was 
the intent.
  It was made known to us in the United States that our total 
population--not the occasional nuclear terrorist attack--was at risk. I 
mention all of this once again not as a melodramatic presentation on a 
very serious treaty, but we are talking about something that is very 
fundamental. During the course of the debate I have heard several of my 
colleagues say--and I think they are mistaken--that right now the 
American people are focused, as we all are, on how to create jobs, how 
to make a difference in the economy, and how to bring new hope into the 
lives of people whose confidence has been destroyed or badly shaken. 
That is our paramount objective. But at the same time, these problems 
occur in a world that does not necessarily wish us well and is prepared 
to leave us in our domestic economy to work our problems out while the 
rest of the world necessarily takes time out.
  I am not one who envisions, after all of this time, a nuclear attack 
using ICBMs and the carriers that we are talking about. I accept the 
fact, as a practical matter, that by and large these weapons are 
maintained for the security of the countries involved. But at the same 
time, it seems to me to have been prudent throughout the years to have 
taken the steps we could to take the warheads off of the missiles, 
destroy the missiles, destroy the silos, and take up the cable in the 
fields around them and, in essence, to eliminate a lot of the threat.
  My scoreboard starts out with 13,300 nuclear warheads. Whether that 
was the precise number, we are not sure. How did we arrive at that 
number? We literally had boots on the ground. The subject was discussed 
frequently today.
  The dilemma I foresee, and I am not trying to borrow trouble, is that 
the boots on the ground, in terms of specifics of the START treaty, 
ended, as we now know, December 5, 2009. Most of us in the Senate knew 
of that date. We lamented the fact that was occurring. But the fact is, 
we have not been able to take action until today's debate to remedy 
that. We must do so.
  This is not a question of a discretionary treaty that somehow might 
be held over to a more convenient time. The facts of life are that even 
the program I have discovered, the Cooperative Threat Reduction 
Program, has diminishing results because the Russians are waiting for 
work on this fundamental treaty.
  In due course, even though we may appropriate in our Defense budget, 
as I hope we will, substantial moneys for the Nunn-Lugar program next 
year, our ability to continue to work with the Russian military, 
Russian contractors outside a situation in which there is no START 
treaty, and which the Russians may feel there is no expectation of a 
new START treaty, could mean the monthly reports I have cited today, 
and most specifically the one for November of this year, may cease 
coming to my office. The number of warheads removed, the number of 
missiles destroyed and so forth may simply either stop or we may have 
no idea what, in fact, the Russians have decided to do.
  I appreciate in past debates some of my colleagues have said--and I 
think they were mistaken, but I understand their point of view--this is 
Russia's problem. Why were American taxpayer funds ever involved in 
helping Russians take warheads off missiles, destroying missiles, 
destroying submarines, in other words to destroy weapons that were 
aimed at us?

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  Phrased in those terms, that does not seem to be a sensible bargain; 
that if you have cooperative threat reduction, and Russians now for 19 
years have allowed us to work in their country on their sites where 
these weapons were located, with not only transparency, an actual feel 
of the hardware--the silo I was in was real. It was not by electronic 
means that we found it or surveillance of leaks from diplomacy. It was 
very real. So was the submarine base I was invited to visit at Sevmash 
entirely out of the blue during one occasion in a visit to Russia.
  Why was I asked to go there? Because they had a feeling, and 
correctly, that if they presented to me the fact that there were in 
existence then six Typhoon submarines, that each one of them had 200 
missiles, small missiles on them, that even though Tom Clancy finally 
discovered the Typhoons in the ``Hunt for Red October'' story, the 
Russians may have been operating these submarines up and down our 
eastern coast for as long as 20 years, whether we knew about it or 
not--if you saw the submarines, the largest ever produced by any 
country, and with the 200 warheads, there were chip shots into New York 
or Philadelphia or any of our large eastern coast metropolitan areas--
whether citizens there ever knew there was a threat or not is 
immaterial. There was--and a very substantial one. Yet the Russians 
were inviting us to consider the destruction of these huge submarines 
because the work is very complex, extraordinarily expensive, and it was 
beyond their abilities at that point.
  We could take a choice, to leave six Typhoons in the world that might 
begin to cruise again, maybe someplace else, or work with them to 
destroy them. I am here to say that even after several years, only 
three of the six have been destroyed. It is an extremely complex 
operation.
  This is why we need to have treaty arrangements with the Russians. So 
there are formal reasons why their government and our government might 
be prepared to send our military personnel, our civilian contractors, 
others who might wish to work with us on projects that we believe 
mutually are important because--and I will give just one more 
illustration--this is very subjective.
  But on one occasion, I was surprised, although I should not have 
been, that many nuclear warheads, when they are removed from missiles, 
are not destroyed. It is difficult to destroy a warhead, very expensive 
and complex, dangerous for the personnel involved in it.
  The Russians did not have very many facilities to do this. So they 
put many of these warheads into caves or caverns. I was invited into 
one of these caverns on one occasion. I saw warheads lying there almost 
like corpses in a morgue, which is what it reminded me of. There were 
small captions at the top of each of those corpses, in essence, which 
at least gave--and the Russians told me in translating what was on 
there--a history of that warhead: when it had been created, what sort 
of servicing it had received over the years.
  I mention this because these particular warheads were not inert 
matter like sporting goods material. For the safety of the Russians who 
were involved, they require servicing, apparently, from time to time. 
One of the reasons why Russians always ask U.S. military and 
contractors to remove the oldest warheads first was that none of us 
have had that much of a history as to how long these warheads survive 
without potential ``accidents,'' something that could make a huge 
difference in this particular case for those who were in proximity to 
that particular cave.
  It is a crucial matter for them and for us that we find solutions to 
this. This is why, I believe, there is urgency in considering the New 
START treaty, urgency in doing so right now, as a matter of fact, as 
rapidly as possible, and reentering Americans onto the scene in Russia 
and, in reciprocal manner, accepting Russians who will be interested in 
our situation. Because this is important for our two countries, and it 
is important for many innocent people who were never a part of the 
designs of these weapons but could, in fact, be vastly affected in the 
event that we make a mistake. We will make a mistake if we fail to act 
promptly, knowing what we do about the situation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I have said a couple times, during the 
course of our opening comments and subsequently, what a privilege it is 
to be working with Senator Lugar on this treaty. I listened to him 
talk, as I have heard before, about his experiences of traveling over 
to Russia and going through the process of establishing this 
extraordinary program. But the country and the world owe him a huge 
debt of gratitude for his leadership on this issue. His vision, 
together with Senator Nunn, has made a global difference, and he is 
properly recognized on a global basis for that.
  So I thank him for his comments calling every colleague to focus on 
this linkage of the threat reduction program to the START agreement and 
to the relationship that comes out of it. I know Senator Inhofe is 
here. I want to give him a chance. But I would like to say a few words 
before he does about the verification.
  I think it is important, as we go forward, to be very clear about the 
verification components of this treaty. A number of colleagues have 
requested the verification regime, and we may yet have further 
discussion on it. So let me make as clear as I can, this treaty has 
fully satisfied our intelligence community and our military community 
and our stockpile verification folks as to the verifiability of the 
treaty.
  Is it slightly different from what we had before with START I? The 
answer is yes. But, importantly, I wish to underscore why that 
difference exists because one colleague sort of raised the issue a 
little while ago. I think it was Senator Kyl who talked about why it 
was we might not have gotten them to do an extension of the START I 
treaty. Well, the reality is, it takes all parties to be party to that 
extension.

  The fact is, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus all dropped out of the 
nuclear game, and all those weapons were deposited into Russia. They 
were all party to that original agreement. But Russia made clear to the 
Bush administration, long before President Obama came to power, that 
they were not going to proceed with that same system anymore, and the 
reason was, they saw it as a one-sided structure. They felt they did 
not get anything out of it. We were the only ones who got something out 
of it. As long as they were not getting something, they made us--put us 
on notice, we are not continuing that one.
  That said, the new START succeeds in streamlining verification and 
tracking procedures, and it creates a new system, a state-of-the-art 
inspection system, and very strict reporting guidelines. The compliance 
and verification measures that are in the New START build on 20 years 
of verification experience, and they appropriately reflect the 
technological advances that have been made since 1991, as well as the 
difference of relationships between the United States and Russia 
because of the end of the Cold War.
  So colleagues need to look at those changes and measure it against 
the original benchmark, if you will. The fact is, New START's enhanced 
verification measures have a five-pronged approach, five different 
components.
  One, invasive, onsite inspections.
  Two, national technical means. We have always had that, but our 
national technical means have improved significantly. Without 
discussing them on the floor, I think colleagues are aware of the 
capacity of our national technical means.
  Three, unique identifiers that will be placed on each weapon. We did 
not have that before. Now we are going to have the ability to track 
each individual weapon, warhead, and count them. That is new. That is 
increased.
  Regular data exchange. We gain a great deal. They gain a great deal. 
It is a mutual process of exchanging data, which provides stability and 
assurances for both sides.
  Finally, prompt notifications of the movement of any weapons.
  The New START permits up to 18 short-notice, onsite inspections each 
year, in order to determine the accuracy of Russia's data and to verify 
the compliance. The fact is, this new system is every bit as rigorous 
as the system that existed previously.
  In fact, because of the change I described earlier, the Belarus, 
Ukraine,

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Kazakhstan change--we had about 70 inspection sites previously, and 
those were the nuclear facilities in each of those different countries. 
But since three of them have now denuclearized, the result is, all the 
former Soviet Union's remaining nuclear weapons are centralized in 
Russia, and they are divided between 35 nuclear facilities.
  So we go from 70 facilities that we used to have to inspect down to 
35. Thus, the decreasing number of annual inspections from 28 in START 
I to 18 in the New START is almost exactly the equivalent in terms of 
those allowed under START I because we are inspecting fewer places, and 
the inspectors are now allowed to gather more types of data during 
those inspections. The United States is also allowed to use national 
technical means, which would be reconnaissance satellites, ground 
stations, ships, all of them, to verify compliance. The treaty 
expressly prohibits tampering with the other party's national technical 
means.
  Third, Russia has to assign and inform the United States of the 
specific unique alphanumeric identifiers that are designating the 
deployed and nondeployed ICBMs and SLBMs and nuclear-capable heavy 
bombers. This information gives us a great deal more inside look with 
respect to the tracking patterns on Russian equipment throughout the 
full life cycle of any of those specific systems.
  Fourth, the treaty requires Russia to regularly provide to the United 
States the aggregate data on strategic offensive forces, including 
numbers, locations, and technical characteristics of deployed and 
nondeployed strategic offensive arms.
  Fifth, the New START establishes a comprehensive notification regime 
allowing us to track the movement of Russia's strategic forces and any 
changes in the status of their strategic weapons.
  The fact is, this agreement employs an enormously aggressive, 
forward-leaning, and effective verification system, and it has been 
predicated on decades of our doing this very thing with the same 
people. This is not new ground we are breaking. We know how to do this. 
We have built up a certain understanding of each other's capabilities, 
each other's idiosyncracies and resistances. We know how to do this. 
The verification system designed for this treaty is specifically 
designed to be less complicated, less costly, and more effective than 
the one in the original START treaty.
  I have a series of quotes, but I want our colleague to have an 
opportunity to speak. I will wait and later share with colleagues the 
number of different distinguished, respected, long-serving 
personalities within the intelligence community--former LTG Jim Clapper 
of the Air Force and others--all of whom have affirmed the ability of 
this verification system to do the job and protect the interests of the 
country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I compliment the Senator from 
Massachusetts for his endurance. I appreciate that.
  I have to say also to the Senator from Indiana, my good friend, I am 
kind of in a unique position as one who serves on both the Armed 
Services and the Foreign Relations Committee. I disagree with most of 
what was just stated by the senior Senator from Massachusetts.
  One of the concerns I have had is that we have so many people who 
want to be in on this, who should be in on this, who have been elected. 
We have new Senators, one who is occupying the chair right now. We have 
Senators Kirk and Manchin. We also have Senators-elect Blunt, Boozman, 
Portman, Moran, Lee, Johnson, Hoeven, Ayotte, Paul, and Rubio. All of 
them have signed a letter saying: This is very significant. We really 
need to be a part of this. This is important.
  It is important in a different way to me than it is to others. I am 
opposed for a number of reasons. I am one of the few bad guys who came 
out initially and said I opposed it.
  We all know what a strategic arms reduction act is. Initially, when 
we had two superpowers, it made a lot more sense to me. Frankly, I look 
at this, and I see the concerns I have.
  Verification--that sounds good. Yes, we will verify. Yet the number 
of verifications, inspections, is like 18 per year in the New START as 
opposed to some 600 over a 15-year period.
  Modernization is one thing on which we all agree. We have to 
modernize. But there has to be a way of doing it. We haven't done it 
yet.
  It was 3 years ago that Secretary Gates said:

       No way can we maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the 
     number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting 
     to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.

  That is an area where we all agree. How are we going to do that? 
Right now, I think the generally agreed upon number that it would cost 
over a period of 10 years would be $85 billion. We have right now about 
$600 million that would be coming up in the next budget cycle. We all 
know how things work around here. We can only commit funds for the next 
cycle. There is no assurance at all that we would be able to come 
through with the other $84.5 billion in that period. The modernization 
is not set up in a way where we are in the current year demonstrating 
the commitment we have to modernize our fleet.
  The fact that we are handling this in a lameduck session--most of the 
stuff we are trying to cram in right now is what we should have been 
talking about all year long and have not been. They all fall into a 
category where it looks as if things are going to change in the Senate. 
We know the House, after the November election, is now a Republican-
dominated House. We know we have gained large numbers in the Senate. We 
also know there are several of my good colleagues who are up for 
reelection in 2012. I am not sure they all want to join in all of these 
issues coming up at the last minute. This is one of them.
  I look at the quotes we have--the missile defense issue has not been 
addressed. I know it would take a lot of discussion. There are probably 
potentially, with the new Congress coming in in January, 40 or 50 
different amendments just addressing the missile defense issue. They 
say: Well, no, this is not a problem. But anytime you have a unilateral 
statement that was made--which was made by the Russians early on--that 
this treaty can only operate and be viable only if the United States of 
America refrains from developing its missile defense capabilities 
quantitatively and qualitatively--that has been stated, and it has been 
stated and reaffirmed more recently when Sergei Lavrov said:

       We have not yet agreed on this [missile defense] issue and 
     we are trying to clarify how the agreements reached by the 
     two presidents. . . . correlate with the actions taken 
     unilaterally by Washington.

  The problem is that when the American people look at this, they say 
that maybe back during the Cold War and maybe back when we had two 
superpowers, this thing made sense. Frankly, I was not as supportive of 
this concept back then. But there is certainly justification for it.
  Where are we today? Right now, we are probably in the most endangered 
position we have been in as a nation. I say this from the experience I 
have had on both of these committees. We have problems. There are 
certainly problems with North Korea and what they have developed in 
their capabilities, problems with Syria, certainly problems with Iran. 
Our intelligence says--and it is not even classified--that Iran would 
have the capability of sending a missile to Western Europe and the 
Eastern United States by 2015.
  One of the most disturbing things that happened at the beginning of 
this administration, a year and a half ago, was when the President came 
out with his budget and did away with our site in Poland which was a 
ground interceptor site that would have given us the capability of 
defending the geography I just mentioned. They took a risk. It wasn't 
easy for Poland or the Czech Republic, in terms of their radar system, 
to almost defy Russia, but they were willing to do it. I always 
remember being a part of the negotiation over there when they said: Are 
you sure, if we take this bold step, we start agreeing to build a 
ground interceptor in Poland that would protect that area, are you sure 
you will not pull the rug out from under us? I said: Absolutely. I had 
no hint that this would happen, but it did. So in February, right after 
the new President was inaugurated, of

[[Page S10349]]

the many things he did that I found objectionable with our defense 
systems, that was the most egregious.

  We are talking about doing a type of strategic arms reduction with 
Russia. I am not concerned about Russia; I am concerned about these 
other places. The threat is there. The threat is real. I don't think 
there are too many people around since 9/11 who don't know that the 
terrorists would in a heartbeat come after the United States.
  When we have something that is written in the preamble--statements 
have been made over and over again that it would be a violation of this 
treaty if we were to enhance our missile defense system. Yet we know 
that Syria is going to have a capability by 2015. To me, that is mind-
boggling that people could be sitting around here worrying about this 
treaty between two countries when I don't look at them as being a 
threat.
  Then we have the issue of force structure. I think we know that not 
only do we have to have a weapon, we have to have a way of sending it. 
We all know the triad and how they are not being enhanced by this. That 
is my major concern.
  I was against it from the very beginning. However, this is where we 
are today. We are in the middle of it. I know I keep hearing on the 
radio: You are going to be here until Christmas; you shouldn't do that. 
I will be spending New Year's Eve with our troops in Afghanistan. I am 
also concerned about what we are doing here in America. Why are we 
waiting? Last year, we waited until Christmas Eve. I always remember 
going home Christmas Eve. It happened to fall at the same time. It was 
the worst snowstorm in the history of Texas and northeastern Oklahoma. 
I barely made it in time to get home. Yes, I have 20 kids and 
grandkids. I would kind of like to see them at Christmas. These are 
things we could have been doing a long time ago. You wait until the 
last minute. This is when you want to cram things through that the 
American people don't want and that should take time. We beat up this 
thing on this treaty for long enough.
  But let's look at what we should be talking about now; that is, 
running government into the next year so we don't have some type of a 
stoppage, some type of a crisis on our hands. So the liberals have the 
omnibus bill that they have up, a bill that is $1.3 trillion. Here we 
are talking about we have come up with $2 trillion--$3 trillion--$2 
trillion in the first 2 years. This is unheard of in terms of deficits. 
Look where we are going right now with $9 billion more in spending than 
last year, and we thought last year was an absolute disaster.
  At the same time, where is the spending going? We have such things as 
their agenda--$1.4 billion for a variety of climate change programs. 
They are not going to give up on that. They are going to keep coming 
forth trying to spend money. They are talking about the money for the 
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, talking about zeroing out the 
efforts in Yucca Mountain. These are things that are in this bill.
  What it does to the defense system--everything is enhanced except 
defense. What is this aversion to trying to rebuild America's defense 
system? Overall, the defense spending cuts in the omnibus bill amount 
to $10.3 billion. That is from the President's request of 2011. It 
includes the $450 million to include work on the second engine, the 
alternate engine. We have already talked about that. We have been 
discussing that in the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House 
Armed Services Committee.
  We decided, I believe justly--I was on the single engine side of that 
argument because of the sheer cost. Yet I know the arguments on both 
sides. We have already done that. We have already debated it. I don't 
know why we have to come to the floor after we have made these 
decisions and then look at a bill that cuts the proposed purchase of 
the F-35s from 42 to 35.
  Let's remember what happened a year and a half ago. They talked about 
doing away with the F-22s, which are the only fifth-generation 
capability we have. The justification was, look what we are doing with 
F-35s. That is fine. But so it is going to be 42. This bill would cut 
it down--further cuts.
  So while we are talking about a bill of $1.3 trillion, it throws 
money at every kind of social engineering, everything you could have 
except defense.
  The CERP--this program used to be called the commander's emergency 
relief program. It was one that was my program. You talk to the 
commanders in the field, and they will tell you they have a capability 
of taking care of some of these needs. Whether it used to be Iraq, now 
Afghanistan, they can accomplish so much more if they can do it right 
now. That is called CERP. They are already bringing the funding of that 
down in this bill. I look at over $1 trillion in funding to implement 
the very unpopular health care law. If anybody is out there thinking 
this is going to be an easy lift, I personally think we will be able to 
defeat this omnibus bill. I think it will be defeated by almost all 
Republicans and a few of the Democrats, particularly those coming up 
for reelection in 2012. I would hate to be in a position where I would 
say: What I am going to run on is the fact that I already voted to put 
more than $1 trillion into funding this form of socialized medicine.
  That is where we are right now. I do think we need to take a deep 
breath and just figure that we have a new Congress coming in, a new 
Senate coming in right after January. We will have plenty of time to 
allow other Senators who were elected to weigh in on this very critical 
issue of the New START treaty.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would like to briefly join my colleagues 
in explaining some of my concerns, first of all, about the process by 
which we are taking up something as important as a treaty with regard 
to nuclear arms. Of course, this is the second part of a two-part 
constitutional process.
  The President sent this treaty to the Senate, along with a 
transmittal letter dated May 13, 2010, and here we are on December 16, 
shortly before the Christmas holidays and adjournment, taking up a 
treaty as important as this. Of course, under article II, section 2 of 
the United States Constitution, a treaty cannot be ratified without the 
vote of at least two-thirds of the Members of the Senate.
  I know everyone--whether they are for this treaty, whether they are 
against this treaty, whether they are merely questioning some aspects 
of the treaty and are perhaps seeking to make some modifications--I 
believe everyone is approaching this issue with the kind of seriousness 
and gravity that should be required of a Senator approaching something 
this serious.
  But I have to make this observation: Here we are, as I said, on 
December 16, 2 days--2 days--after having dropped on us a 1,924-page 
Omnibus appropriations bill which calls for the Federal Government to 
spend an additional $1.2 trillion. The idea that we would later today 
take up the issue of funding the Federal Government and consider this 
Omnibus appropriations bill while we would have to basically detour and 
lay this treaty by the side--this is, to me, just irresponsible. I do 
not know any other word to describe it.
  We have, in fact, been in session 151 days during 2010. That is 
right. You heard me correctly. The Senate has actually been in session 
151 days this year. I think most people would love to get a paycheck 
across America and only be expected to show up and do their job 151 
days a year.
  Now, I know when we go back home, we continue to work with our 
constituents, to listen to their concerns and otherwise, but my simple 
point is, when the President sends this treaty over on May 13, 2010, 
and at the same time, simultaneously, we are being asked to consider 
this huge Omnibus appropriations bill of $1.2 trillion--some 2,000 
pages long--the idea that we would try to jam through or give expedited 
consideration to the serious, substantive issues being raised by this 
treaty is, as I said, poor time management, to say the least, and I 
think irresponsible.
  I want to raise some of the substantive concerns I have about the 
treaty on which I know there will be further discussions.
  First of all, I would point out that the treaty does not itself 
address tactical----
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have the floor.

[[Page S10350]]

  Mr. KERRY. I know. I am just asking if the Senator would yield for a 
question.
  Mr. CORNYN. I would be glad, after I get through my remarks, to yield 
for some questions.
  Mr. KERRY. I appreciate it.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would note, as others have noted, that 
the treaty completely excludes consideration of a limitation on 
tactical nuclear weapons, even though Russia possesses a significant 
superiority in terms of numbers over the United States for these types 
of weapons.
  I would just note that some at the Department of Defense have noted 
that the difference between strategic weapons and tactical weapons has 
become somewhat muddled and less meaningful in recent decades. I 
believe a legitimate cause for concern is why we would exclude tactical 
nuclear weapons, that the Russians have numerical superiority of, and 
not even seek to regulate or contain those at all, while we are focused 
strictly on strategic nuclear weapons, of which the United States would 
have to cut our current numbers and the Russians not at all in order to 
meet the goals of the treaty.
  I would say, secondly, I have concerns about the treaty's provisions 
on verification. Of course, President Reagan was famous for saying we 
should trust, but verify when it comes to this type of treaty. I would 
point out that Brent Scowcroft, in 1997, pointed out the importance of 
when we are actually reducing the overall number of weapons, 
verification becomes that much more important. He said, in 1997:

       Current force levels provide a kind of buffer because they 
     are high enough to be relatively insensitive to imperfect 
     intelligence and modest force changes. . . . As force levels 
     go down, the balance of nuclear power can become increasingly 
     delicate and vulnerable to cheating on arms control limits, 
     concerns about nondeployed ``hidden missiles'' and the 
     actions of nuclear third parties.

  So we need to be extraordinarily careful, even more careful now than 
perhaps we have been in the past with regard to the verification 
measures.
  We know the Russians have taken every advantage to cheat on previous 
treaties and to be untrustworthy. According to the official State 
Department reports on arms control compliance, the Russians have 
previously violated--or are still violating, even as we speak--
important provisions of most of the key arms control treaties to which 
they have been a party, including the original START treaty, the 
Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, the 
Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, and Open Skies.
  The New START treaty does not close that gap on verification 
loopholes that the Russians are already exploiting or, in fact, 
evading.
  As my colleague, Senator Bond--who is, notably, the vice chairman of 
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence--has told us, the annual 
10-warhead limit on inspections allowed under this treaty permit us to 
sample only 2 to 3 percent of the total Russian deployed force and, 
therefore, it will be impossible--it will be literally impossible; 
limited to 10 annual warhead inspections over a 10-year treaty--to 
inspect all, much less most, of the 1,550 limit on deployed warheads.
  So why would we call this a robust verification provision if we are 
only allowed to see 2 to 3 percent of the total Russian force?
  The New START treaty, unlike its predecessor, permits any number of 
warheads to be loaded on a missile. So even if the Russians fully 
cooperated--which I do not believe they have in the past, nor can be 
trusted to do so in the future--even if they do cooperate with all of 
the provisions in the New START treaty, these inspections cannot 
provide the sort of conclusive evidence that you would think would be 
required given the gravity of the potential risk. They cannot provide 
conclusive evidence that the Russians are, in fact, complying with the 
warhead limit.
  Third, the New START treaty handcuffs the United States from 
deploying new capabilities we need to defend our Nation and our allies 
from missile attacks.
  I would just point out that this chart I have in the Chamber 
demonstrates the ballistic missile threat that is presented in a map of 
Europe and Africa and Asia. You will notice that Russia is not even on 
this map. But you will notice a number of other ballistic missile 
threats that could affect not only the United States but most certainly 
our allies. This map is a compilation from the Missile Defense Agency 
based on information from several agencies in the intelligence 
community and shows that more than a dozen nations--more than a dozen 
nations--have developed or are developing ballistic missile 
capabilities. Several of these nations are notorious for that--North 
Korea, Iran, and Libya, just to name a few. But we know others, such as 
Yemen and Pakistan, have al-Qaida operatives or other extremist groups 
operating within their borders.
  The fact is, we need a robust missile defense capability, not to 
protect us from Russian ballistic missiles but from ballistic missiles 
from some of these other nations that have developed them, some of whom 
have groups such as al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations there 
that would love to get their hands on some of these weapons and use 
them against America or our allies. That is why it makes absolutely no 
sense to constrain our future missile defense options in exchange for 
reductions in the strategic nuclear weapons of just one country, and 
that is Russia.
  Now, some of my colleagues may be arguing there are no limitations on 
missile defense in the treaty and that the language in the preamble, 
which ties our strategic offensive arms to our strategic defensive 
arms--for the first time ever, by the way--that this preamble language 
does not mean anything, does not operate as a constraint on our missile 
defense programs.

  But that is not what the Russians have said. That is not how they 
read it. Of course, the Senate has been denied the negotiating record 
by which we could actually clarify what was said by American 
negotiators and Russian negotiators in coming up with this language. 
Isn't that something you would think the administration would want 
clarified, if they could clarify it by providing this information? But, 
no, we have been stonewalled and told: You cannot have it, Senate, even 
though under article II, section 2 of the Constitution, you have a 
constitutional duty when it comes to treaty ratification.
  I just think it is a very poor way to do business, to say the least, 
and causes me to question whether there is a uniform understanding of 
constraints on our missile defense system. Again, you can see that the 
risk is not just from Russia, it is much more widespread, 
unfortunately, than that.
  Russia has also made a unilateral statement that it claims the right 
to withdraw from the New START treaty if the United States does, in 
fact, expand our missile defense capability. Doug Feith shed some light 
on this issue earlier in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.
  Mr. Feith, of course, as you remember, is a former Under Secretary of 
Defense under the Bush administration, and he helped negotiate the 
Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, known as the SORT treaty. He 
says during those negotiations, the Russians were constantly trying to 
get the Americans to negotiate away our right to defend ourselves from 
missile attacks. The Bush administration rightly rejected those Russian 
demands, and they got a good treaty anyway. But the Obama 
administration, in this treaty, gave Russia what it wanted when it came 
to our missile defense, among other concessions as well--a very serious 
concern, I would say.
  The New START treaty has other flaws, but even if it was an 
outstanding treaty, I think the gravity of what we are about here--in 
considering this treaty, and reductions in nuclear arms, and trying to 
make the world a more secure and safer place--that it warrants more 
careful and deliberate consideration of this treaty than we are going 
to be able to give during this lameduck session.
  I have heard people talk about, well, the fact that this is the 
Christmas season--of course, we would all like to be with our families. 
But we recognize the fact that we have important obligations to perform 
in the Senate. I think all of us are willing to perform those. But the 
problem is, we have had an election on November 2, and there are a lot 
of people, as the Senator from Oklahoma said, who were just elected by 
the American people who would be

[[Page S10351]]

denied an opportunity to let their voice be heard on such an important 
issue if this treaty is jammed through during the waning days of the 
111th Congress. Now, we know the legitimacy of our government itself 
rests upon the consent of the governed. The fact is, during the most 
recent election the American people said they don't like the direction 
Washington is heading and they want us to change. The idea that we 
would then--after the election takes place but before the new Senators 
in Congress are actually sworn in--try to rush through such important 
matters such as this treaty and deny them an opportunity, and the 
voices of the people who elected them to be heard, to me, does not 
speak well of this process, and I think indeed denies us the legitimacy 
of the consent of the governed, or certainly many of them.

  Let's be clear about what is happening. We know the administration 
wants a vote on this New START treaty because they think they have a 
better chance of passing it now than when these new Senators are sworn 
in on January 5. There is no one I have heard who has suggested there 
is a national security threat to the United States from delaying the 
ratification of this treaty by a month. No one. I don't think they 
could plausibly make such a contention.
  I think there is a little bit of an attempt to focus our attention 
away from the $1.2 trillion spending tsunami that was unleashed on 
Congress just 2 days ago in which we are told Senator Reid, the 
majority leader, is going to insist be voted on in just a few days. I 
think a better alternative to that, and certainly a better alternative 
than to go through this unnecessary drama about government shutdowns, 
is to pass a one-page continuing resolution that would keep the 
government operating until January or February, at which time these 
newly elected Senators and House Members would be able to participate. 
It would be the time when we could certainly take up this treaty and 
give it thoughtful and careful consideration, the kind of debate and 
amendment process I think our responsibility requires rather than 
trying to move it through in this irresponsible manner.
  This omnibus bill I mentioned earlier will no doubt be called up 
later today, perhaps, and be attached to a continuing resolution and 
then cloture filed, asking 60 Senators to agree to close off debate, 
denying any opportunity for amendments and the kind of consideration I 
think the American people would want us to have for a $1.2 trillion 
spending bill.
  We know Christmas is almost here and many Americans look forward to 
celebrating that important holiday and reflecting on what comes with 
the new year. I hope our friends on the other side of the aisle will 
reconsider the tactics they are employing during this lameduck session 
to try to gloss over or ignore the important substantive concerns many 
of us have about this very significant treaty and to ram through 
unpopular legislation just as happened last year on Christmas Eve with 
the passage of the health care bill. Many Americans remember passing 
that bill on Christmas Eve in the Senate, and they were outraged by the 
process, by the back-room negotiations and deals that took place in 
order to get over the 60-vote threshold.
  So this year I would submit that millions of Americans want just one 
thing from Congress, and that would be a silent night. Let's pray they 
get it. If the Senator still has a question or two for me, I would be 
glad to yield for that purpose.
  I thank the chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I wish to say to my colleague from Texas, I 
am a little surprised to hear him be quite so harsh about the--I think 
he used the word ``irresponsible''--about why we are here in this 
predicament right now. I shouldn't have to remind him, but in this 
session of Congress there have been more filibusters by his party than 
at any time from World War I all the way through until the late 1970s.
  We have nominees waiting to be passed who have sat there for months 
who cannot get a vote. When we finally have a cloture vote to get 60 
votes to get them out, they get 90, 95 votes in the Senate. They just 
delay and delay and delay. I am not going to stand here and listen to 
them come to the floor of the Senate asking why we are trying to do the 
important business of the country at the last minute because all they 
have to do is look in the mirror. That is all they have to do, and they 
will see why we are here.
  Then to say we can't do the important business of this treaty in the 
amount of time we have is totally contradicted by history of every 
treaty we have worked on. Earlier today we had a Senator say: Well, we 
can't do that. We have to--we can't dual-track. I pointed out that 
START I, which was a much more complicated treaty, took 4\1/2\ days. On 
the day they passed it, they passed two or three other pieces of 
legislation. On the day we went to it, we passed a tax bill and an 
appropriations bill.
  We have reached a new stage in America where we just say something. 
It doesn't matter if it is based on the truth. Just say it, put it out 
there, and somebody is going to believe it. Somebody will pick it up.
  So I regret that. We have been here for a day. We still haven't had 
an amendment, and all this talk about serious consideration. I am going 
to release a breakdown of who has spoken and for how long because it is 
interesting to take a look at what is going on.
  By the way, why would we have to read something? I understand we may 
have to read the appropriations bill for about a day and a half; have 
the clerk up here just reading the bill. Now, there is an act of 
stunning responsibility. Let's just chew up the time of the Senate, 
keeping everybody up all night reading a bill rather than working on 
it.
  So I have said enough about it. I think what we need to do is do the 
business of the country, and there is plenty of time to do it and still 
plenty of time to get home for Christmas if we would spend our time 
doing that rather than a lot of delay tactics.
  Some Senators have also cited an early statement by General 
Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggesting 
he had some concern about the numbers. Let me make clear, here is what 
General Cartwright said today: ``We need START and we need it badly.''
  Now, are you going to listen to General Cartwright or are you going 
to listen to some of these sort of vague and somewhat similar talking 
points that keep coming to the floor without an amendment, without any 
substantive work?
  At this point I ask unanimous consent that at 6 p.m. today, the 
Senate resume legislative session and the majority leader be recognized 
at that time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I rise to object, and I will not. I just 
want to make sure that at 3:30 I will be allowed to speak.
  Mr. KERRY. We are staying on the START agreement at that time.
  Mrs. BOXER. So is 3:30 a good time or 3:40?
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I intend to yield the floor. I ask 
unanimous consent that when I yield the floor, the Senator from 
California be recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask for your ruling on the unanimous 
consent request with respect to 6 p.m. today we move to legislative 
session and the majority leader be recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I wish to thank my chairman of the Foreign 
Relations Committee, Senator Kerry, with whom I have worked closely. I 
thank also Senator Lugar, the ranking member, who at times has been my 
chair. It does my heart good to see them working closely on this 
matter. I was also elated to see the test vote we had on this already.
  I hope that vote, that test vote, is indicative of where we are 
going. We were almost at 67. My understanding is that one Member wasn't 
there to vote. We should be at 67. I hope we can get this done at the 
earliest opportunity because despite some of the protests of

[[Page S10352]]

our colleagues saying there hasn't been enough time, my understanding 
is that we have been on this for 7 months. And no one could have worked 
harder than our chairman and our ranking member on making sure that 
every single objection to the New START treaty, every single problem 
and challenge was heard and that a lot of this was already worked out 
in the resolution of ratification. So, hopefully, we can get through 
this.
  I have had opportunities, as a member of the Foreign Relations 
Committee in particular, to ask national security experts what keeps 
them up at night, what is the one thing they worry about. Whether it 
comes from the CIA or any other place within the intelligence 
community, the answer comes back like this: What keeps them up at night 
is the possibility that a terrorist could get hold of a nuclear weapon.
  I have to say, that worrisome possibility is on the minds of many 
Americans. The New START treaty makes this less likely. Therefore, 
ratifying the treaty is in our national interest and, frankly, it is in 
the interest of the world. The New START treaty requires a 30-percent 
reduction of deployed strategic weapons on the Russian and American 
side, with on-the-ground verification. That is key. It reduces delivery 
systems to 800 per side.
  I am not going to speak for very long, I say to my colleagues who 
have come here, because so much has been said. I can't say it any 
better. So what I am going to do for most of the remainder of my time 
is quote from people, Republicans and Democrats, who have been quite 
eloquent on this issue, in addition to Senators Kerry and Lugar.
  It is clear Democrats and Republicans alike support this treaty. We 
hear a lot of talk about not labeling each other and coming together. 
Look, this is an area where we have come together, and all we have to 
do is put the finishing touches on this ratification and complete this 
very important work that is in front of us.
  In addition to all of our NATO allies supporting this, including 
those in Eastern Europe--which I think is very important to note--we 
have the support of all of these American leaders on both sides of the 
aisle. I will read some of their comments for the Record: ``I urge the 
U.S. Senate to ratify the START treaty.'' This is a statement from a 
few days ago from President George Herbert Walker Bush.
  This is from Colin Powell, Secretary of State for George W. Bush:

       I fully support this treaty and I hope that the Senate will 
     give its advice and consent as soon as possible . . . [T]his 
     treaty is in the best interest of the United States of 
     America, the best interest of the world, and frankly in the 
     best interest of the Russian Federation.

  Howard Baker, former Senator, Republican from Tennessee, said just a 
few days ago:

       A world without a binding U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control 
     treaty is a more dangerous place, less predictable, less 
     stable than the one we live in today. . . . Trust, but 
     verify. Ratify this treaty.

  George Shultz, a constituent of mine, Secretary of State for 
President Reagan, wrote with Sam Nunn, a Democrat and former Senator 
from Georgia whom we all respect on these issues:

       Noting the full support of the Secretary of State, the 
     Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
     staff, and following our own review of the treaty, we urge 
     the Senate to give its advice and consent to ratification of 
     New START as early as is feasible.

  I hope we don't have a lot of delaying, more delaying tactics around 
here because it is not necessary.
  I heard colleagues say, What is the rush? What is the rush? We have 
had 7 months. Senators Kerry and Lugar have bent over backwards and 
done everything possible to accommodate Senators, such as Senator Kyl, 
who wanted certain assurances on the modernization of our nuclear 
weapons. They did everything to answer every question. By the way, they 
will continue to do that as we get to any other issues.
  This is what James Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense for Presidents 
Nixon and Ford, said:

     I think it is obligatory for the United States to ratify New 
     START. . . . For the United States, at this juncture, to fail 
     to ratify the treaty in the due course of the Senate's 
     deliberation would have a detrimental effect on our ability 
     to influence others with regard to, particularly, the 
     nonproliferation issue.

  So James Schlesinger gets to the point of nonproliferation, the 
worrisome fact that a terrorist or rogue state could get one of these 
weapons.
  Alan Simpson, an outspoken former Republican Senator from Wyoming, 
said this:

       Nothing in the treaty constrains our ability to develop and 
     deploy a robust missile defense system as our military 
     planners see fit. The idea that this treaty somehow makes 
     major concessions to the Russians on missile defense is just 
     simply not true.

  I will quote Pat Buchanan, former White House Communications Director 
for President Ronald Reagan:

       Richard Nixon would have supported this treaty. Ronald 
     Reagan would have supported this treaty, as he loathed 
     nuclear weapons and wished to rid the world of them. And 
     simply because this treaty is ``Obama's treaty'' does not 
     mean it is not in America's interest.

  I don't think I have ever in my life quoted Pat Buchanan on the 
floor. I am just proving the point that this particular issue is 
extremely bipartisan. It unites everybody, except apparently a few of 
our friends on the other side.
  Brent Scowcroft, LTG retired, National Security Adviser to Presidents 
Ford and George H.W. Bush, said this:

       New START should not be controversial no matter how liberal 
     or conservative you are.

  That also makes the point.
  Chuck Hagel, a former Republican Senator, made this statement--and I 
will not read the entire statement. He ends it by saying:

       This would be devastating not just for arms control but for 
     security interests worldwide [if we didn't deal with this 
     issue].

  Henry Kissinger has a very long statement. I will not read the entire 
statement, but he said this:

     . . . for all these reasons, I recommend ratification of this 
     treaty. . . . I do not believe this treaty is an obstacle to 
     a missile defense program or modernization. . . . A rejection 
     of this treaty would indicate that a new period of American 
     policy had started that would have an unsettling impact on 
     the international environment.

  So here you have somebody who has been deeply involved in foreign 
relations for so many years saying, in essence--and I am not quoting 
him here, but I am summing up what I read, that it would be a radical 
departure from America's foreign policy if we were not to do this.
  James Baker, former Secretary of State for President George H.W. 
Bush, writes:

       New START appears to take our country in a direction that 
     can enhance our national security. . . . It can also improve 
     Washington's relationship with Moscow regarding nuclear 
     weapons and delivery vehicles, a relationship that will be 
     vital if the two countries are to cooperate in order to stem 
     nuclear proliferation in countries such as Iran and North 
     Korea. I agree with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates when he 
     wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal that the new 
     treaty provides verification that has been needed since START 
     I expired in December. An effective verification regime is a 
     critical component of arms control and I believe that the 
     world is safer when the United States and Russia are abiding 
     by one.

  I will close with a couple of Democratic individuals who have also 
joined their Republican friends in this.
  President Bill Clinton said this:

       The START agreement is very important to the future of our 
     national security and it is not a radical agreement. This is 
     something that is profoundly important. This ought to be way 
     beyond party.

  He said that a couple days ago. William Perry, we remember well; he 
was Secretary of Defense for President Clinton. He said:

       The treaty puts no meaningful limits on our antiballistic 
     missile defense program. In fact, it reduces restrictions 
     that existed under the previous START Treaty. I recommend 
     ratification.

  Former Senator Sam Nunn said this:

       Delaying ratification of this treaty, or defeating it, 
     would damage United States security interests and United 
     States credibility globally.

  He takes the same tack that I am taking. He is someone who supports 
this. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, former strategic nuclear commanders, 
and our intelligence community leadership all have stated that the 
treaty is essential to our Nation's security.

       I am hopeful the Senate will put our Nation's security 
     first by providing its advice and consent to this important 
     treaty.

  That was Sam Nunn.
  I will close with two more quotes, one from Vice President Joe Biden:

       Failure to pass the new START Treaty this year would 
     endanger our national security.

[[Page S10353]]

     We would have no Americans on the ground to inspect Russia's 
     nuclear activities, no verification regimes to track Russia's 
     nuclear arsenal, less cooperation between two nations that 
     account for 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, and no 
     verified nuclear reduction.

  We all know Vice President Biden was the respected chair of the 
Foreign Relations Committee, and it was my honor to serve with him.
  Finally, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said this:

       Failing to ratify the treaty would not only undermine our 
     strategic stability, the predictability, and the 
     transparency, but it would severely impact our potential to 
     lead on the important issue of nonproliferation.

  I end where I started. What keeps the intelligence community people 
up at night is the fear that we don't wrap our arms around nuclear 
proliferation, and that a weapon gets into the hands of a terrorist or 
rogue nation. New START is--as our chairman has said many times--not a 
very broad treaty. It is pretty narrow. It is essential, but it doesn't 
cover that much new ground. It ensures that we are going to have a 
mutual reduction in these arms that we will be able to verify, and it 
makes it less likely that we are going to have the type of 
proliferation that keeps a lot of us up at night, including the 
American people, I am sure. We need to take steps in this holiday 
season toward peace. We need to take steps every day to make sure that 
the threats we face in this difficult world, with all of our 
challenges, are diminished.
  Once again, I say to my chairman, his leadership has been 
extraordinary on this. I was beginning to give up hope that we would be 
able to get this done. He constantly said that we don't give up, we 
keep pursuing this. It is the right thing to do. And he has done it 
with Senator Lugar by his side.
  This is a good day. I feel good that we are doing this. I feel that 
the people, particularly at this time of the year, will feel much 
better when we get this done in a bipartisan way. I know we will.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, are we working off of already arranged time?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no operating UC for time at this 
moment.
  Mr. BURR. I thank the Chair. I want to make some introductory remarks 
about the START treaty this afternoon. My real interest lies in the 
closed session that will take place on a later date. But this is an 
important debate. I have deep respect for not just the chairman but for 
the ranking member. But like all Members, I have a passion for this 
issue. I want to make some general comments at this time about it.
  The threat of nuclear engagement between the United States and Russia 
has diminished greatly since we began arms reduction talks with the 
Soviets in the 1970s. It is a credit to the agreements of past years 
that the strategic relationship between the United States and Russia 
has evolved to a point where Americans and Russians no longer fear a 
war between NATO and Warsaw powers.
  The world has changed in many ways for the better as a result of 
those bilateral arms reduction efforts. But today, the United States 
and our allies face emerging and destabilizing nuclear threats from 
rogue nations and nonstate actors who have shown no willingness to 
follow or accept international standards or adhere to nonproliferation 
treaties.
  While the new START treaty continues a historic dialog between two 
great nations, I am concerned that negotiated language in this treaty--
especially wording in its preamble about ``existence of the 
interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic 
defensive arms''--may in fact signal a subtle yet troubling return to 
the Cold War linkage between offensive and defensive weapons. Some 
dismiss this wording as the flowery language of diplomats. But words 
have meaning. Treaty language is not filler. I can only conclude that 
this specific commitment reflects the current thinking of the President 
and his administration, which is a departure from their predecessors in 
past administrations, and offers the Russians a reason to leverage the 
treaty to their distinct advantage with respect to our efforts to 
improve upon our missile defenses.
  Even if a treaty such as the New START had a place in today's world, 
several key issues are lacking in the treaty that this body should and 
would have to address. One, the treaty does not address Russia's 
tactical nuclear weapons. Two, this treaty does nothing to address 
stored warheads. Three, this treaty is silent on rail mobile ICBMs. 
Four, this treaty allows the Russians to encrypt and hide missile test 
data for all new nuclear weapons they develop.
  This treaty places limits on our nonnuclear conventional global 
strike weapons--unheard of in the past. This treaty submits and 
subjects our Nation's objectives in missile defense to the review and 
approval of the Kremlin. This treaty ignores the nuclear capabilities, 
desires, ambitions, and plans of nations and non-nation actors who seek 
to undermine and harm U.S. national security interests.
  Many pundits have spoken about the urgent need to get the U.S. 
inspectors on the ground in Russia to verify the state of their new 
nuclear weapon systems and verify compliance. But when one examines the 
inspection protocols within this treaty, it will be clear that we must 
give such advance notification and jump through so many multiple hoops 
just to get approval to visit a site, by the time an inspection begins 
there is a high likelihood we will only see what the Russians want us 
to see and nothing more.
  Other supporters of this treaty contend that by ratifying New START 
we further enhance our relationship and leverage with the Russians, 
with respect to the destabilizing threats posed by North Korea and 
Iran. But the Russians already recognize the problems posed by these 
two countries, because they are along their borders. The Russians 
should not require this treaty as an incentive to protect their own 
regional interests.
  For these reasons, I remain concerned that by ratifying New START, 
the Senate would be allowing an outdated and narrow agenda to constrain 
our defense flexibilities and capabilities at the very point in history 
where we need a clear-eyed view of the real threats on the horizon.
  There is no urgent need to ratify New START this week, next week, or 
even next year. Given the numerous flaws in this treaty, to say nothing 
of the flawed backward-looking process that developed it, it is prudent 
for the Senate to work on ways to improve upon the treaty and how it 
has been put forth in order to better ensure the strategic interests of 
the United States and to make sure it is fully protected.
  Mr. President, my colleagues, our Nation does need a new start in our 
relationship with Russia. It needs a new approach. This treaty 
represents an old approach, based on Cold War relationships. In my 
estimation, it should be rejected by this body.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen). The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I rise in support of a treaty that I 
actually think is of vital importance to our national security, to our 
national interests, and to our international reputation in the 
nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.
  Let me first start off by recognizing Senator Kerry, the chairman of 
our Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Lugar, the ranking member. 
They have done an extraordinary job. I smile as I listen to some of my 
colleagues say it has not been reviewed enough, it has not been vetted 
enough. We have had an incredible number of sessions on the question of 
what the treaty contains and flushing out all of its points and points 
of view. In a very bipartisan way, the committee has worked assiduously 
to bring us to this point so that Members can make an informed 
decision. So I wish to salute the chairman for his incredible work in 
that regard.
  The original START treaty expired on December 5 of last year, 2009. 
So as of today, December 16, 2010, it has been 376 days since the 
United States lost the ability to conduct onsite inspections--lost it--
not knowing what has happened with those weapons. It has been 376 days 
since we lost our ability to monitor and verify Russia's nuclear 
arsenal.

[[Page S10354]]

  Now, I know some say our relationship with Russia has gotten a lot 
better. Yes, but it is their arsenal that we care about. It is about an 
arsenal that now has a Russian leadership that we are having better 
relationships with, but we never know what that relationship will be 
tomorrow. Good relationships are built on firm understandings, and the 
treaty creates a firm understanding of our respective obligations. That 
is why we need to move forward and ratify START.
  Now, I agree, I have heard some of my colleagues suggest that there 
are other nations--namely, Iran and North Korea--that presently present 
maybe a greater threat to our security and the security of our allies, 
but that is not the point. The point is that the threat of loose 
nuclear materials anywhere in the world--anywhere in the world, whether 
in Russia, Iran, or North Korea--is a major concern. The point is that 
the severity of the threat from those nations does not diminish the 
threat presented by the Russian nuclear arsenal. Those threats in no 
way negate the need to continue our nonproliferation regime and 
conclude a treaty with Russia and then move on to continuing to address 
the serious threats presented by Iran and North Korea.
  Let me just say that on one of those two, on Iran, since my days in 
the House of Representatives, I have been pursuing Iran, well before 
some people looked at Iran as a challenge. When I found out the 
International Atomic Energy Administration was taking voluntary 
contributions for the United States to help create operational capacity 
at the Bushehr nuclear facility, I raised those issues and sought to 
stem the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars going for that purpose. So I 
understand about Iran and North Korea, but that does not diminish the 
importance of knowing about this nuclear arsenal.
  It is true that political developments in the past two decades have 
greatly diminished the probability of nuclear war between our nations. 
But the fact remains that Russia continues to have more than 600 
nuclear launch vehicles and more than 2,700 warheads. It is because of 
those numbers that this Chamber needs to do what is in our national 
security interests and ratify START now. We need the ability to track 
and verify Russia's nuclear arsenal. We need onsite inspections. We 
need the enhanced flexibility of short-notice inspections of deployed 
and nondeployed systems. We need to be able to verify the numbers of 
warheads carried on Russian strategic missiles. We need the ability--
provided for the first time in this treaty--to track all accountable 
strategic nuclear delivery systems.
  We need a verification regime. Trust, but verify. Trust, but verify. 
We know those words well. They have been spoken on this floor many 
times by many of our Republican colleagues, some who are now willing to 
turn their back on the truth of those words. The truth is that at the 
heart of this treaty, the ability for this Nation to verify Russia's 
nuclear arsenal remains paramount to our security. It remains paramount 
to continued bilateral cooperation between the United States and 
Russia.
  For these reasons, START has broad bipartisan support, including 
support from the Secretaries of Defense and State and National Security 
Advisers for a whole host of Presidents--President Nixon, President 
Ford, Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. 
All of those people have come together regardless of their partisan 
labels or views, and they all believe this is in our national security 
interest and necessary if we are to show the world that we demand as 
much of ourselves as we ask of others.
  So as we press the Iranian and North Korean Governments to come into 
compliance, this treaty demonstrates to all nations that have nuclear 
aspirations that we are willing to live by the rules; that 
nonproliferation of nuclear weapons is not an empty wish but a national 
policy that is in our national interest and the interests of the world; 
that our willingness to accede to oversight and monitoring of our 
nuclear weapons and facilities, our willingness to reduce our nuclear 
arsenal in the interest of global security, and our willingness to 
cooperate with willing partners is part and parcel of American policy. 
It is what we believe is right, what we will live by, and what we will 
demand of all nations.
  I hope that with respect to global nuclear security, we can see clear 
to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Some have suggested 
in this Chamber that we can't do that. We certainly can. We can ratify 
START and continue to press Iran and North Korea.
  You know, this is the one issue I would have hoped we--and we 
certainly do in some respects, certainly in some of our leadership on 
the committee, Senator Lugar and others--it is the one place the Senate 
has always enjoyed a bipartisan effort. Put the country first in the 
case of all of those in the world and understand that on this there is 
no division.
  It was Senator Vandenberg, a Republican from Michigan, who once 
famously said:

       To me, bipartisan foreign policy means a mutual effort to 
     unite our official voice at the water's edge . . .

  He went on to say:

       It does not invoke the remotest surrender of free debate in 
     determining our position. In a word, it simply seeks national 
     security ahead of partisan advantage.

  But, sadly, I believe the efforts by some to derail START are 
politically motivated, putting partisan advantage ahead of national 
security. Nothing that protects us from the spread of nuclear weapons 
should be politically motivated, not in this brave new world.
  Let's be clear. This treaty does not in any way diminish our 
commitment to keeping this Nation safe and strong. It imposes no limits 
on current or planned ballistic defense programs by the United States. 
In fact, the President has committed to a 10-year, $80 billion plan to 
modernize our nuclear infrastructure, which represents a 15-percent 
increase over current spending levels.
  The truth is that the United States retains overwhelming strike 
capacity under this treaty. Under this treaty, we will retain 700 
deployed launchers and 1,550 deployed warheads. Keep in mind the 
overwhelming strike capacity this represents to assure any adversary of 
a devastating response to any attack on the United States or our 
allies, which is at the heart of our deterrent posture. In real terms, 
just to give us a sense of what this means, we will retain enough 
strike capacity to end civilization as we know it and destroy the 
entire ecosystem of the planet--far beyond the destructive power of the 
weapons used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  Let's keep in mind that one standard nuclear warhead has an explosive 
force equal to 100,000 tons of conventional high explosives. The use of 
1,000 nuclear warheads has a destructive power of 100 million tons of 
dynamite and the ability to darken this planet in a nightmare nuclear 
winter beyond our imagination.
  So any argument to the contrary, any argument that we do not retain 
an overwhelming nuclear strike capacity, is, in my view, a political 
argument, and I believe that some who have come and said that we can't 
do this--and then, in the midst of this discussion, in the midst of 
this treaty debate, I hear omnibus discussions. I cannot believe that 
something that is about the national security of the United States, 
making sure future generations of Americans never face that nuclear 
winter, somehow gets lumped in with all of the other political 
conversations.

  I know I have heard the leadership on the other side of the aisle say 
their Number 1 goal is for this President to fail at all costs and to 
make him a one-term President. But, my God, I thought this had nothing 
to do with that. I thought this had nothing to do with that. I would 
hope that on an occasion such as this where we are talking about the 
Nation's security, the ability to verify, the ability to understand 
what Russia's nuclear weaponry is all about goes beyond the success or 
failure of this President. It is about the Nation being able to 
succeed.
  Finally, I have heard a lot of talk about how late this is and that 
it is almost Christmas. I certainly want to be with my family as much 
as anybody else, but I have to be honest with you, I want my family and 
I want the family of every New Jerseyan I represent, of every American 
for whom I am part of this Senate to have the security that they will 
never face that nuclear winter.

[[Page S10355]]

  I cannot accept the statements I have heard here. I was not going to 
include this in my remarks, but I have heard now several times that we 
are here so late. Well, you know, this 2-year session of Congress has 
been so challenging because, time and time again, colleagues--
particularly on the other side of the aisle--have used a procedure in 
the Senate--a right they have, but it is a right that has clearly been 
abused--to filibuster. What that means is that which we grew up 
understanding as Americans from the day we were in a classroom and we 
were taught about a simple majority rule--well, here in the Senate, 
that simple majority of representing the people of the United States, 
the 300 million people, is 51. But under the rules of the Senate, when 
one Senator wants to object to moving forward, ultimately we don't need 
that simple majority that Americans have come to understand; we end up 
needing 60. Of course, since neither party possesses those 60 votes, we 
often end up in a stalemate and are not able to move forward. That has 
been used time and time again. I would have to do it over 100 times 
just for the one session of the Congress, for the 2 years of the 
Congress, to remind people why it is so late in the process--because, 
time and time again, that process has been used to delay. Even when 
that process has been broken and the 60 votes have been accomplished, 
there have been votes that soar in the 80th or 90th percentile of the 
Members of this body voting to support the proposition. But the time 
was killed. It is the time not of the Senate but the time of the 
American people.
  Then I have to hear some of my colleagues, in the midst of a debate 
about a nuclear treaty--understanding that we are trying to prevent and 
to verify the possibility that weapons get out of the hands of those 
who have the authority over them, among other reasons to have this 
treaty--talk about the omnibus. Well, I just find it beyond my 
imagination, especially when colleagues who are railing about on that 
are part of asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks in 
the omnibus. Then they come and say: Oh, this is a terrible thing, and 
the treaty is being brought up at the same time, and somehow we should 
not be able to move to this treaty because of that issue, even though 
what they rail against is what they have blatantly participated in. 
This issue is too important--too important to be wound up in that.
  In the end, the purpose of this treaty and of U.S. efforts to thwart 
other nations from going nuclear is to ensure that future generations 
will not live with the specter of a nuclear winter and the destruction 
of civilization as we know it.
  We have an opportunity to move--and I would hope move quickly--to do 
what is right, to ratify START, and lead the world by example. By 
leading the world by example, then we can also make demands on the rest 
of the world to make sure they obey and agree and ultimately concur and 
ultimately live by the same example. That is our opportunity, and that 
is an opportunity we should not lose.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I thank the Senator from New Jersey. He 
is a valuable member of our committee, diligent and articulate on these 
issues. I appreciate the comments he made, particularly reinforcing the 
comments about the delay.
  I remind colleagues that earlier the Senator from Arizona mentioned 
it is sort of unfair to be doing this at the same time we are doing 
something else. I remind colleagues that he said START I was completed 
sort of on its own, freestanding. I wish to correct the record. START I 
did not, in fact, go through freestanding. On the same day the Senate 
held the cloture vote on the treaty on START I, it voted on two 
amendments related to the treaty, and it also voted on the final 
passage of a tax bill. They managed to do two things at the same time.
  The following day, the Senate voted on another amendment related to 
the treaty. It also agreed on that day to the conference report on 
Interior appropriations. It passed the DC appropriations bill. Those 
are two separate items. And it debated and held two rollcall votes on 
the Foreign Operations bill. Those are four separate bills and items 
dealt with at the same time they were dealing with START I. The 
following day, it had the final passage on the START treaty, in about 4 
days-plus-and-a-half, I think.
  Also, I remind my colleagues, as I should have reminded the Senator 
from Texas, 13 times colleagues came on the other side of the aisle to 
Senator Lugar and asked him to slow down the process of the legislation 
piece of the treaty because of the need to work on modernization. We 
did that. Again, colleagues came to us. Way back last summer, we were 
prepared to move the treaty out of committee so we wouldn't wind up in 
this situation. Guess who came to us and said: No, it would be better 
if we had a little more time. Our friends on the other side of the 
aisle said: Please don't do that vote. I think it would be better for 
the treaty if we took our time. So we provided another 6 weeks to file 
questions, get answers, work on modernization, pull people together. 
Frankly, it was a constructive process. I am not suggesting it didn't 
provide some benefits. But we accommodated a request to slow it down to 
meet the needs of our friends on the other side of the aisle. Then, 
subsequently, when there were potential complaints that it would be 
politicizing the Senate and this treaty to have the vote and this 
debate before the election--we could have done that, but we didn't want 
the treaty to get caught up in the election process--we voluntarily 
delayed the process to meet and accommodate some of the concerns of 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Then, when we come back 
after the election, all of a sudden, we can't do it in a lameduck. We 
have to do it down the road.
  One colleague came to the floor defending the rights of people who 
are not even sworn in as Senators to somehow weigh in on this treaty. 
They are not Senators. They may have been elected in this election, but 
they haven't taken part in the year-and-a-half-long effort of preparing 
to deal with this treaty. Every Senator here has. All 100 of us walked 
up to the well, raised our hands, swore to uphold the Constitution of 
the United States. That Constitution gives us the specific 
responsibility of advice and consent on a treaty. That is why we are 
here at this moment. If I had had my druthers, we would have been here 
weeks ago, but there was always a filibuster, always a delay, always 
some longer period that some other piece of legislation was taking.
  It is important for colleagues to be honest about that. We have had 
125 cloture motions since January of 2009. That is as many cloture 
motions as had been filed between 1919 and 1974, between World War I 
and the Vietnam war. That is how many cloture motions we had filed 
since last year alone. In addition, the Republicans came back to the 
minority in 2007, and we have had to file 264 cloture motions to end a 
filibuster since 2007. That averages out to 66 per year. In the first 
44 years of the existence of this filibuster rule, it was only used 
about once a year. For 44 years, it was used once a year. In the last 
few years, it has been used 66 times a year. That is why we are here. 
That is why we were delayed.
  I, personally, look forward, when we return next year, to seeing us 
adjust that rule. I respect the rights of the minority because I know 
that is what the Founding Fathers intended. But nobody intended that we 
have to vote twice to get to a bill, filibuster on the motion to 
proceed, filibuster on the substance. It simply doesn't make sense, and 
the American people do not support it. It negates the fundamental 
concept of majority rule. I am willing to take my lumps, but I think 
there is a way to not necessarily undo it completely and still create 
responsible action in the Senate.
  Since President Obama took office last year, the Senate has had 
rollcall votes on 62 nominations. Of those 62, 27 were confirmed with 
90 votes or more; 23 were confirmed with 70 votes or more. That means 
that of the 62 nominations, fully 60 of them were confirmed with more 
than 70 votes. Over 80 percent of the nominations we have taken votes 
on have passed with overwhelming support, and almost all of those 
votes, many of them anyway, took place only after an extraordinarily 
lengthy delay. Many of these nominations sat on the calendar for

[[Page S10356]]

over 100 days while people waited for the Senate to act.
  On average, the Senate has taken more than five times longer to 
confirm a circuit court nomination after it was favorably reported by 
the Judiciary and so forth.
  I don't want to chew up all our time going through that, but the 
record should be fundamentally clear that nobody is rushing anything 
here. The START treaty debate, the original START treaty began on 
September 28, 1992, and amendments were proposed. As early as the first 
day of the debate, they were debating amendments. There were two votes 
on amendments on the second day of debate. On the third day, there were 
three amendments, and they ratified the treaty. We ought to be able to 
move here.
  I wish to add a couple thoughts quickly on the subject of the 
tactical nukes. A number of Senators have expressed concern about why 
this treaty doesn't deal with tactical nuclear weapons. All of us would 
agree, you have to acknowledge upfront there is an asymmetry, an 
imbalance between the numbers of tactical weapons that the Russians 
have and have deployed and what we have. Remember, first, we needed to 
replace the original START agreement in order to get verification 
measures back into place in order to take the steps then necessary to 
go to sort of the next tier. Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates 
explained for the record:

       A more ambitious treaty that addressed tactical nuclear 
     weapons would have taken a lot longer to complete, adding 
     significantly to the time before a successor agreement, 
     including the verification measures, could enter into force 
     following START'S expiration in December 2009.

  Their fundamental judgment was, yes, we want to get there, but START 
itself helps you get there. If we sit without those verification 
measures in place that come with START, we make it much harder to 
actually reach the agreement we are trying to get to on the tactical. 
The logic said: Get this agreement back into place. Revitalize the 
cooperation on arms control. That will empower you subsequently to be 
able to achieve your goal.
  That is not something the Obama administration dreamed up. I 
emphasize that to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. The 
very respected former Secretaries of Defense, Secretary Bill Perry and 
Secretary Jim Schlesinger, were part of a bipartisan commission. They 
reported that the first step they thought necessary was to deal with 
this. They knew nuclear tactical weapons were an issue. But they also 
knew our military leaders made it clear they didn't need actual parity 
on those weapons. Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen both stated, in 
response to a question:

       Because of the limited range of the tactical weapons and 
     very different roles from those played by strategic nuclear 
     forces, the vast majority of Russian tactical nuclear weapons 
     could not directly influence the strategic nuclear balance 
     between the United States and Russia.

  Donald Rumsfeld told the Foreign Relations Committee in 2002:

       I don't know that we would ever want to have symmetry 
     between the United States and Russia. Their circumstance is 
     different and their geography's different.

  What he is referring to is the vast gulf of the Atlantic Ocean and 
then Western Europe that is in between Russia and us and the whole 
original tactical decision of Russia in terms of the Warsaw Pact versus 
NATO that existed for so many years in the course of the Cold War.
  I don't want to be mistaken by my colleagues on the other side. Yes, 
we want to limit Russia's nuclear tactical weapons. But a desire to 
limit those tactical weapons is not a reason to reject the START 
treaty. Frank Miller, who was a senior NSC staffer in the Bush 
administration, testified to the Arms Services Committee on July 22:

       I believe this Treaty is properly focused on the strategic 
     forces of both sides. . . . The tactical forces are clearly a 
     political and military threat to our allies. . . . But I 
     think throwing this treaty away because we haven't gotten our 
     hands on the tacticals is not the way to approach this. I 
     think we have to go after the tacticals separately.

  That is exactly what President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary 
Clinton, and the rest of our military establishment want to do, but 
they want the START treaty as the foundation on which to build that 
effort to try to secure something in terms of tactical weapons.
  We should pursue a treaty on tactical nuclear weapons, one that can 
give us adequate transparency about how many Russia has and that 
ultimately reduces that number.
  Let me say to my colleagues on the other side, that is precisely why 
we put into the resolution of ratification declaration 11, which says:

       The Senate calls upon the President to pursue, following 
     consultation with allies, an agreement with the Russian 
     Federation that would address the disparity between the 
     tactical nuclear weapons stockpiles of the Russian Federation 
     and of the United States and would secure and reduce tactical 
     nuclear weapons in a verifiable manner.

  We address the issues of tactical nuclear weapons, and it was not an 
oversight. It was a calculated, tactical decision to lay the 
foundation, renew the relationship with Russia, renew our arms control 
understandings, and lay the foundation to be able to reach an 
agreement. That is what Secretary Gates said when he testified before 
the Armed Services Committee on June 17. He said:

       We will never get to that step [of reductions] with the 
     Russians on tactical nukes if this treaty on strategic 
     nuclear weapons is not ratified.

  Secretary Gates, appointed by President Bush, said clearly: If we do 
not ratify this treaty, we do not get to the treaty on tactical nuclear 
weapons.
  So I think the imperative could not be more clear.
  The Eastern European leaders see this the same way. And they, after 
all, are the ones more directly threatened by those weapons. Poland's 
foreign minister wrote, on November 20, our NATO allies see ``New START 
is a necessary stepping-stone to future negotiations with Russia about 
reductions in tactical nuclear arsenals, and a prerequisite for the 
successful revival of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe.'' 
The Secretary-General of NATO said the same thing. He said that we need 
``transparency and reductions of short-range, tactical nuclear weapons 
in Europe. . . . This is a key concern for allies. . . . But we cannot 
address this disparity until the New Start treaty is ratified.''
  I hope our colleagues will stand with our allies and stand with 
common sense and ratify this treaty so we can get to the issue of 
tactical nuclear weapons.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, first of all, let me say that there are 
big issues and small issues, some of substantial consequence, others 
that are of minor importance that are debated here on the floor of the 
Senate.
  This is one of those big issues, one of significant importance, not 
just to us but to the world. While we get involved in a lot of details 
in this discussion, the question to be resolved in all of the efforts 
that are made here dealing with nuclear weapons is, Will we be able to 
find a way to prevent the explosion of a nuclear weapon in a major city 
on this planet that will kill hundreds of thousands of people?
  The answer to that question comes from efforts about whether we are 
able to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, to keep nuclear weapons out 
of the hands of terrorists and rogue nations, and then begin to reduce 
the number of nuclear weapons.
  Let me read, for a moment, from Time magazine in 2002. It refers to 
something that happened exactly 1 month after 9/11, 2001--the terrible 
attack that occurred in this country by terrorists that murdered over 
3,000 Americans.
  One month later, October 11, 2001, something happened. It was 
described in Time magazine because it was not readily known around the 
rest of the country what had happened. Let me read it:

       For a few harrowing weeks last fall--

  Referring to October 2001--

     a group of U.S. officials believed that the worst nightmare 
     of their lives, something even more horrific than 9/11, was 
     about to come true. In October, an intelligence alert went 
     out to a small number of government agencies, including the 
     Energy Department's top secret Nuclear Emergency Search Team 
     based in Nevada. The report said that terrorists were thought 
     to have obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon from the Russian 
     arsenal and planned to smuggle it into New York City. The 
     source of the report was a mercurial agent code named 
     dragonfire, who intelligence officials believed was of 
     ``undetermined'' reliability. But dragonfire's claim

[[Page S10357]]

     tracked with a report from a Russian general who believed 
     that his forces were missing a 10-kiloton nuclear device.

  Detonated in lower Manhattan, a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb would kill 
about 100,000 civilians and irradiate 700,000 more, flattening 
everything--everything--for a half a mile in diameter. And so 
counterterrorist investigators were on their highest alert.
  I continue the quote:

       ``It was brutal,'' a U.S. official told Time magazine. It 
     was also a highly classified and closely guarded secret. 
     Under the aegis of the White House's Counterterrorism 
     Security Group, part of the National Security Council, news 
     of the suspected nuke was kept secret so as to not panic the 
     people of New York. Senior FBI officials were not even in the 
     loop. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani said he was never told 
     about the threat. In the end, the investigators found nothing 
     and concluded that dragonfire's information was false. But 
     few of them slept better. They had made a chilling 
     realization: If terrorists had, in fact, managed to smuggle a 
     nuclear weapon into a city, there was almost nothing anyone 
     could have done about it.

  Here is the number of nuclear weapons on this planet. The story I 
just read was about one small nuclear weapon, a Russian 10-kiloton 
nuclear weapon. There are roughly 25,000 nuclear weapons on this Earth. 
I just described the apoplectic seizure that occurred over the 
potential of one 10-kiloton nuclear weapon missing, potentially 
acquired by a terrorist, smuggled to New York City, to be detonated in 
one of our largest cities.
  Russia has about 15,000 nuclear weapons, the United States about 
9,000, China a couple hundred, France several hundred, Britain a couple 
hundred; and the list goes on.
  Now the question is, What do we do about all that? Will we just waltz 
along forever and believe that somehow, some way, we will be lucky 
enough to make sure nobody ever explodes a nuclear weapon in the middle 
of a city on this Earth? Because when they do, all life on this planet 
is going to change. What do we do about that? My colleagues say, let's 
ratify the START treaty. I fully agree. And there is so much more that 
needs to be done beyond that. The work that has been done here on the 
floor of the Senate by my colleagues Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar is 
extraordinary work.
  Senator Lugar is here, and I do not know that he has been here 
previously when I have done this--and people are tired of my doing it, 
but it is so important--I have always kept in my desk a small piece of 
the wing of a Backfire bomber that was given to me. Senator Lugar is 
responsible for this. This is the piece of a wing of a Backfire bomber. 
No, we did not shoot it down. Senator Lugar did not shoot it down, nor 
did our Air Force. We sawed it up. We sawed the wings off the bomber.
  How did that happen? It was done by a the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative 
Threat Reduction Program in which we actually paid to destroy a Soviet 
bomber. It makes a whole lot more sense than being engaged in warfare 
to shoot down this bomber.
  I have--and I will not show it--in my desk a hinge from a missile 
silo that was in the Ukraine that contained a missile with a nuclear 
weapon on its tip aimed at the United States of America. It is not 
there anymore. Sunflower seeds grow where a missile once resided. 
Because of Nunn-Lugar, the American taxpayers and, especially, 
importantly, arms negotiations that work. We know this works. This is 
not a theory. We know it works to reduce the number of nuclear weapons 
by engaging in negotiations and discussions.
  I have heard lots of reasons for us not to do this: too soon; not 
enough information; not enough detail; more need for consideration--all 
of those things. I have always talked about Mark Twain who said the 
negative side of a debate never needs any preparation. So I understand 
it is easy to come to the floor saying: Do not do this. Do not do this. 
But it is those who decide to do things who always prevail to make this 
a safer country when you are talking about weapons policies, nuclear 
weapons, and arms reduction.
  Let me describe why we should do this. First of all, this was 
negotiated over a long period of time with the interests of our country 
at heart and with substantial negotiation. I was on the National 
Security Working Group here in the Senate, and we sat down in secret 
briefings on many occasions, having the negotiators themselves come 
back and say to us: Here is what we are doing. Let us explain to you 
where we are in the negotiations. This treaty did not emerge out of 
thin air. All of us were involved and had the ability to understand 
what they were doing.

  They negotiated a treaty, and we needed to negotiate that treaty 
because the circumstances that exist now are that we do not have, given 
the previous treaties' expiration, the capability to know what the 
other side is doing--the inspection capability.
  Let me describe who supports this treaty. Every former Secretary of 
State now living, Republican and Democrat: Kissinger, Shultz, Baker, 
Eagleburger, Christopher, Albright, Powell, Rice--all of them support 
the treaty. They say it is the right thing for this country, it is 
important for us to do.
  Let me put up especially the comment of Henry Kissinger because he 
said it this way:

       I recommend ratification of this treaty. . . . It should be 
     noted I come from the hawkish side of the debate, so I am not 
     here advocating these measures in the abstract.

  He said:

       I try to build them into my perception of national 
     interest. I recommend ratification of this treaty.

  I just mentioned my colleague Senator Lugar. He had a partnership 
with our former colleague, Senator Nunn, and it is properly called 
Nunn-Lugar, and we have talked a lot about it. I have talked about it 
many times on the floor of this Senate. It is one of the things we 
should be so proud of having done. I am sure Senator Lugar--I have not 
talked to him about this--but I am sure he regards it as one of the 
significant accomplishments of his career, the Nunn-Lugar program.
  As a result of that program, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus are 
now free of nuclear weapons. Think of that--free of nuclear weapons. 
Albania has no more chemical weapons. Madam President, 7,500 nuclear 
warheads have been deactivated as a result of this program. The weapons 
of mass destruction that have been eliminated: 32 ballistic missile 
submarines, 1,400 long-range nuclear missiles, 906 nuclear air-to-
surface missiles, 155 bombers that carried nuclear weapons.
  It is not hard to see the success of this. I have shown before--and 
will again--the photographs of what Nunn-Lugar means and its success. 
You can argue with a lot of things on this floor, but not photographic 
evidence, it seems to me. Shown in this photograph is the explosion of 
an SS-18 missile silo that held a missile with a nuclear warhead aimed 
very likely at an American city.
  The silo is gone. The missile is gone. The nuclear warhead is gone. 
There are now sunflower seeds planted. It is such an important symbol 
of the success of these kinds of agreements.
  This next photograph shows the Nunn-Lugar program eliminating a 
Typhoon class ballistic missile submarine.
  We did not track it in the deep waters of some far away ocean and 
decide to engage it and succeed in the engagement. We did not do that 
at all. We paid money to destroy this submarine.
  I have the ground-up copper wire in a little vial in this desk from a 
submarine that used to carry missiles aimed at America.
  Here is an example of what happened under Nunn-Lugar, dismantling a 
Blackjack bomber. We paid to have that bomber destroyed. We did not 
shoot it down. We did not have to.
  Now this START agreement. ADM Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff--I want everybody to understand this because 
there are some people coming to the floor saying: Well, from a military 
standpoint, this might leave us vulnerable, short of what we should 
have. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says:

       I, the Vice Chairman, and the Joint Chiefs, as well as our 
     combatant commanders around the world, stand solidly behind 
     this new treaty, having had the opportunity to provide our 
     counsel, to make our recommendations, and to help shape the 
     final agreements.
       We stand behind this treaty, representing the best 
     strategic interests of this country.

  Finally, with respect to the issue of funding, I want to make some 
points about that because I chair the subcommittee that funds nuclear 
weapons here in the Congress. There has been some discussion that there 
is not ample funding here for modernization of our current weapons 
programs. That is not the case. It is not true.

[[Page S10358]]

  Let me describe where we are with respect to funding, and let me 
predicate that by saying Linton Brooks was the former NNSA 
Administrator; that is, he ran the program dealing with nuclear 
weapons, the nuclear weapons complex. Here is what he said:

       START, as I now understand it, is a good idea on its own 
     merits, but I think for those who think it is only a good 
     idea if you only have a strong weapons program, this budget 
     ought to take care of that.

  He said:

       Coupled with the out-year projections, it takes care of the 
     concerns about the complex, and it does very good things 
     about the stockpile, and it should keep the labs [the 
     National Laboratories] healthy.

  He says: ``I would have killed for this kind of budget.'' I would 
have killed for this kind of budget. This is the man who understands 
the money needed to make sure our stockpile of nuclear weapons is a 
stockpile you can have confidence in.
  So this notion that somehow there is an underfunding or a lack of 
funding for the nuclear weapons life extension programs and 
modernization programs is sheer nonsense.
  Let me describe what we have done. As I said, I chair the 
subcommittee that funds these programs. The President in his budget 
proposed robust funding. While most other things were held constant--
very little growth, in many cases no growth at all; in some cases, less 
funding than in the past--the President said for fiscal year 2011, he 
wanted $7 billion for the life extension programs and modernization for 
the current nuclear weapons stock, and that is because people are 
concerned if we were to use our nuclear weapons, are we assured they 
work. Well, you know what. I don't mean to minimize that, but the fact 
is we have so many nuclear weapons, as do the Russians and others, that 
if one works, unfortunately, it would be a catastrophe for this world. 
In fact, if they are used, it will be a catastrophe. But having said 
that, the proposal was $7 billion. That was a 10-percent increase over 
fiscal year 2010.
  So then the President came out with a budget for the fiscal year we 
are now going to be in and he said, All right, in response to the 
people in the Senate--there were some who were insisting on much more 
spending--he said, All right, we did a 10-percent increase for that 
year on the programs to modernize our existing nuclear weapons stock, 
and we will go to another 10-percent increase for next year, fiscal 
year 2012. So we have a 10-percent increase, and another 10-percent 
increase.
  I was out in North Dakota traveling down some county highway one day 
and was listening to the news and they described how money from my 
Appropriations Committee was going to be increased by another $4 
billion for the next 5 years. I am thinking, that is interesting, 
because nobody has told me about that: $4 billion added to this; first 
10 percent, then 10 percent, now $4 billion more. And we have people 
coming to the floor who have previously talked about the difficulty of 
the Federal debt, $13 trillion debt, $1.3 trillion annual budget 
deficit, choking and smothering this country in debt. They are saying, 
you know what, we don't have enough money. We are getting 10-percent 
increases, plus $4 billion; still not enough, we want more. And the 
people who run the place say, I would have killed to get a budget like 
that.
  Someplace somebody has to sober up here in terms of what these 
numbers mean. I swear, if you play out the numbers for the next 5 
years, the commitment this administration has made for the life 
extension programs and the modernization programs for our existing 
nuclear weapons stock--there is no question we have the capability to 
certify that our nuclear weapons program is workable and that we ought 
to have confidence in it.
  I don't understand how this debate has moved forward with the notion 
that somehow this is underfunded. It is not at all. In fact, there is 
funding for buildings that have not yet been designed. We don't ever do 
that. In fact, the money for the nuclear weapons program was the only 
thing that was stuck in at the last minute in the continuing 
resolution. All the other government programs are on a continuing 
resolution which means they are being funded at last year's level, 
except the nuclear weapons program. That extra money was put in, in the 
continuing resolution. Why? To try to satisfy those who apparently have 
an insatiable appetite for more and more and more spending in these 
areas. We are spending more than at any other time and so much more 
than anybody in the world has ever spent on these things. So nobody 
should stand up here with any credibility and suggest this is 
underfunded. It is not. It is not. The people who understand and run 
these programs know it is not, yet some here are trying to shove more 
money into these programs for buildings that haven't even been designed 
yet. We have never done that before. People know better than that.
  Another issue: They say, Well, this is going to limit our ability 
with respect to antiballistic missile systems. It does not. That has 
long been discredited. There is nothing here that is going to limit 
that. They say, Well, but the Russians, they put a provision in that 
says that they can withdraw because of missile defense--yes, they put 
that in the last START agreement as well. It doesn't mean anything to 
us. It is not part of what was agreed to. There is nothing here that is 
going to limit us with respect to our antiballistic missile programs to 
protect this country and to protect others.
  It is so difficult to think this is some other issue. It is not. One 
day somebody is going to wake up if we are not smart and if we don't 
decide that our highest priority is to reduce the number of nuclear 
weapons and stop the spread of nuclear weapons, one day we will all 
wake up and we will read a headline that someone has detonated a 
nuclear weapon somewhere on this planet and killed hundreds of 
thousands of people in the name of a terrorist act. When that happens, 
everything about life on this planet is going to change. That is why it 
is our responsibility. We are the leading nuclear power on Earth. We 
must lead in this area. I have been distressed for 10 years at what 
happened in this Senate on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This 
country never should have turned that down. We did. We are not testing, 
but we still should have been the first to ratify the treaty.
  The question now is, Will we decide to not be assertive and 
aggressive on behalf of arms control treaties we have negotiated 
carefully that have strong bipartisan support? Will we decide that is 
not important? I hope not. It falls on our shoulders here in the United 
States of America to lead the world on these issues. We have to try to 
prevent the issues of Korea and Iran and rogue nations and the spread 
of others who want nuclear--we have to keep nuclear weapons out of the 
hands of those who would use them. Then we have to continue to find 
ways to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on this Earth. My 
colleague talked about tactical nuclear weapons. This doesn't involve 
tactical nuclear weapons. I wish it did, but it doesn't. We have to get 
through this in order to get to limiting tactical nuclear weapons. The 
Russians have far more of them than we do, and the quicker we get to 
that point of negotiating tactical weapons, the better off we are.
  In conclusion, I was thinking about how easy it is to come to the 
floor of the Senate and oppose. The negative side never requires any 
preparation. That is the case. Mark Twain was right. Abe Lincoln once 
was in a debate with Douglas and Douglas was propounding a rather 
strange proposal that Abe Lincoln was discarding and he called it ``as 
thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a 
pigeon that had starved to death.''
  Well, you know, I come here and I listen to some of these debates. I 
respect everybody. I do. Everybody comes here with a point. But I will 
tell you this: Those who believe this is not in the interest of this 
country, those who believe we are not adequately funding our nuclear 
weapon stock, those who believe this is going to hinder our ability for 
an antiballistic missile system that would protect our country, that is 
as thin as the homeopathic soup described by Abraham Lincoln. It is not 
accurate.
  This is bipartisan. It is important for the country. We ought to do 
this sooner, not later.
  Let me conclude by saying, the work done by my two colleagues is 
strong, assertive, bipartisan work that builds on some very important 
work for the

[[Page S10359]]

last two decades, Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar--I don't know whether 
there will be ever be a Kerry-Lugar, but there was a Nunn-Lugar that 
has been so important to this country and to the safety and security of 
this world. I hope this is the next chapter in building block by block 
by block this country's responsibility to be a world leader in saying, 
We want a world that is safer by keeping nuclear weapons out of the 
hands of those who don't have them, and then aggressively negotiating 
to try to reduce the nuclear weapons that do now exist.
  Some months ago I was at a place outside of Moscow where my colleague 
Senator Lugar has previously visited, and that facility is devoted to 
the training and the security of nuclear weapons. I suspect Senator 
Lugar, because he knows a lot about this and has worked a lot on it for 
a long time, thinks a lot about those issues, as do I. Are we certain 
that these 25,000 nuclear weapons spread around the world are always 
secure, always safe, will never be subject to theft? The answer to that 
is no, but we are trying very hard. This treaty is one more step in the 
attempt we must make to exercise our leadership responsibility that is 
ours. So my compliments to Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar and to all 
of the others who are engaged in this discussion and who have worked so 
hard and have done so for decades on these nuclear weapons issue and 
arms reduction issues.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.

                          ____________________