[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 171 (Monday, December 20, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10774-S10775]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              START TREATY

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, over the weekend, I indicated that I 
would be voting against the START treaty. This morning, I would like to 
explain my decision in a little more detail. And I will begin with the 
most obvious objection.
  First and foremost, a decision of this magnitude should not be 
decided under the pressure of a deadline. The American people don't 
want us to squeeze our most important work into the final days of a 
session. They want us to take the time we need to make informed, 
responsible decisions. The Senate can do better than to have the 
consideration of a treaty interrupted by a series of controversial 
political items.
  So leaving aside for a moment any substantive concerns, and we have 
many, this is reason enough to delay a vote. No Senator should be 
forced to make decisions like this so we can tick off another item on 
someone's political check list before the end of the year.
  Yet looking back over the past 2 years, it becomes apparent why the 
administration would attempt to rush this treaty. And it is in this 
context that we discover another important reason to oppose it. I am 
referring, of course, to the administration's pattern of rushing to a 
policy judgment, and then subsequently studying the problem that the 
policy decision was intended to address, a pattern that again and again 
created more problems and complications than we started out with.
  First there was the Executive Order to close Guantanamo Bay without 
any plan for dealing with the detainee population there. As we now 
know, the administration had no plan for returning terrorists who were 
held at Guantanamo to Yemen, and it is still grappling with questions 
of how best to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
  Next was the President's rush to remove the intelligence community 
from interrogating captured terrorists, without any consideration as to 
how to deal with them, whether they were captured on the battlefield or 
at an airport in Detroit. This became all the more concerning when the 
President announced his surge strategy in Afghanistan, which 
predictably led to more prisoners. And even in announcing the strategy 
itself, the President decided to set a date for withdrawal without any 
sense at the time of what the state of the conflict would be in July 
2011.
  Then there was the administration's approach on don't ask, don't 
tell. The President announced his determination to repeal this policy 
during his campaign, before the military had the time to study whether 
this change in policy was in the best interest of combat readiness, 
before senior enlisted staff and noncommissioned officers of the 
military had testified, and before those who are currently serving had 
told us whether, in their expert opinion, the policy should be 
repealed. Moreover, when the Commandant of the Marine Corps suggested 
the change would harm unit cohesion, he was ignored.
  The administration has taken the same cart-before-the-horse approach 
on the treaty before us. In this case, the President came to office 
with a long-term plan to reduce the Nation's arsenal of nuclear weapons 
and their role in our national security policy. The plan envisioned a 
quick agreement to replace the START treaty that was allowed to expire, 
with no bridging agreement for arms inspections, followed by efforts to 
strengthen international commitments to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, 
reconsideration of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and further 
reductions in nuclear arms over time. And he spoke of ultimately 
reducing nuclear weapons to ``global zero.''
  In other words, the New START treaty was just a first step, and it 
needed to be done quickly. Leave aside for a moment the fact that the 
New START treaty does nothing to significantly reduce the Russian 
Federation's stockpile of strategic arms, ignores the thousands of 
tactical weapons in the Russian arsenal, and contains an important 
concession linking missile defense to the strategic arms. We had to 
rush this treaty, according to the logic of the administration, because 
it had become an important component in the effort to ``reset'' the 
bilateral relationship with the Russian Federation. It was brought up 
for debate prematurely because it was the first step in a pre-
determined arms control agenda. The Senate's constitutional role of 
advice and consent became an inconvenient impediment.
  The debate over the McCain amendment to strike the language in the 
preamble of the treaty was instructive. The language in the preamble 
concerning missile defense is harmful to

[[Page S10775]]

our foreign policy because of how it will be viewed not by our 
President, but how it will be viewed by our allies in Europe and by the 
Russians. The Russian government opposed the Bush administration plan 
to place 10 silo-based missiles in Poland and a fixed radar 
installation in the Czech Republic. Although the Bush administration 
had reached agreement with the governments of our two allies, and the 
proposed ballistic missile defense plan posed no threat to Russia's 
overwhelming ability to strike Europe and the United States, Russia 
sought to coerce our eastern European allies.
  It is worth noting that neither Poland nor the Czech Republic 
ratified the agreements to go forward with the plan, which the Obama 
administration cancelled. The McCain amendment would have removed any 
strategic ambiguity that the Russian Federation will exploit to 
intimidate NATO members. Many of our NATO partners have been slow to 
accept the concept of territorial missile defense, and rest assured 
that they will be slower to fund the program. It is a certainty that if 
the language in the preamble survives, and this treaty is ratified, the 
Russians will mount a campaign to obstruct missile defense in Europe. 
There is no good argument for having voted against the McCain 
Amendment, which would have significantly improved this treaty.
  The principal argument raised against the McCain amendment was that 
any amendment to the treaty would result in the State Department having 
to return to a negotiation with the Russian Federation. That may be 
true, or the amended treaty could be considered by the Russian Duma. In 
either case, the argument brings into question the Senate's role in 
providing advice and consent to ratification. If it is the position of 
the majority that the treaty cannot be amended, as the Senate was 
unable to amend so many other matters before us these last weeks of 
this session, why have any debate at all?
  This leads us to the subject of verification--a second matter of 
serious concern. Although the Senate will meet today in closed session 
to discuss the flawed nature of the verification procedures envisioned 
by the New START treaty, the majority has filed cloture and stated that 
the treaty cannot be amended. The senior Senator from Missouri, the 
vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has provided his views to 
the Senate on this matter, and I join him in his concerns.
  Senator Bond has provided a classified assessment of the details 
related to verification and chances of Russian breakout of the treaty's 
warhead limits which is available for all Senators to review. To quote 
the vice chairman of the Intelligence 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.

  I agree with the conclusion that the New START treaty central warhead 
limit of 1,550 cannot be conclusively verified. The New Start treaty 
allows the Russians to deploy missiles without a standard or uniform 
number of warheads. The limited number of warhead inspections provided 
for under this treaty also limits the access of our inspectors to an 
upper limit of three percent of the Russian force. It can thus be said 
that this treaty places higher confidence in trust than on 
verification.
  Compounding these concerns is the history of Russian treaty 
violations. As the State Department's recent reports on arms control 
compliance make clear, the Russians have previously violated provisions 
of the START treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Conventional 
Forces in Europe treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention.
  This is a not a track record to be rewarded with greater trust. It is 
a reason to take our verification duties even more seriously.
  Despite my opposition to this treaty, I hope the President remains 
committed to modernizing the nuclear triad. The war on terror has 
required an expansion of our nation's ground forces, the Marine Corps, 
the Army, and our Special Operations Forces, and our near-term 
readiness. As we continue the effort to dismantle, defeat and disrupt 
al-Qaida, we must also plan for the threats that our country will face 
in the coming decades.

  We must invest not only in the delivery systems and platforms that 
will preserve our nuclear delivery capability, such as the next 
generation bomber, nuclear submarines and a new intercontinental 
ballistic missile, but also in the strike aircraft and naval forces 
required to control the Pacific rim as economic growth and the military 
capabilities of China increase.
  Although the President has decided there is value in pursuing a 
disarmament agenda, this country may determine in the coming years to 
place a greater reliance upon the role of strategic arms, and we must 
remain committed to defense modernization. Our Nation faces many 
challenges in the coming decades, some economic, some strategic. It 
would seem short-sighted to think that as North Korea, Iran and others 
work to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities we could draw our arsenal 
down to zero.
  So I will oppose this treaty. I thank the chairman and ranking 
members of the Foreign Relations, Armed Services and Intelligence 
Committees for the service that they have provided the Senate in 
reviewing it. It is unfortunate that something as important as the 
Senate's consideration of a treaty like this one was truncated in order 
to meet another arbitrary deadline or the wish list of the liberal 
base. And it is deeply troubling to think that a legislative body 
charged with the solemn responsibility of advice and consent would be 
deprived of this role because it would inconvenience our negotiating 
partners.
  As debate over this treaty has intensified over the past few days, 
these and other concerns have become increasingly apparent to a number 
of Senators and to the American people. We should wait until every one 
of them is addressed. Our top concern should be the safety and security 
of our Nation, not some politician's desire to declare a political 
victory and host a press conference before the first of the year. 
Americans have had more than enough of artificial timelines set by 
politicians eager for attention. They want us to focus on their 
concerns, not ours, and never more so than on matters of national 
security.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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