[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 186 (Tuesday, November 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7119-S7121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       INF and New START Treaties

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, today, along with several other colleagues 
from the Senate, I wrote to the President on the subject of the 
possible extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New 
START.
  Several people have been encouraging the President to begin studying 
whether we should extend New START, which expires in 2021. That is a 
couple years from now, but obviously, if one is going to consider 
renewing something of this import, it is good to be thinking about it 
early. In this regard, we offered to the President suggestions of 
things that he should take into consideration in determining whether to 
extend New START with Russia and whether to begin negotiations with the 
Russians. We suggested three things that he should consider in deciding 
whether to proceed with these discussions. I am going to discuss one of 
them in great detail, but the first two are also important because they 
represented factors that were considered by the Senate at the time that 
it ratified the first START agreement.
  The Senate declared in the New START resolution of ratification that 
``the United States is committed to proceeding with a robust stockpile 
stewardship program and to maintaining and modernizing the nuclear 
weapons production capabilities and capacities that will ensure the 
safety, reliability, and performance of the United States' nuclear 
arsenal at the New START treaty levels.'' That was our commitment. That 
is what we said in the resolution of ratification, and President Obama 
had written a letter to the Senate confirming that it was his 
intention, as long as he was President, to follow this program of work.
  Regrettably, what we posited as an underpinning requirement for 
participation in New START has not been maintained as the years have 
gone by. The infrastructure and weapons capabilities that were pledged 
at the time that the Senate gave its consent to the treaty have been 
significantly delayed

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or reduced in scope, and the result of this is a risk that the symmetry 
that potentially existed between Russia and the United States as a 
result of the New START treaty will be changed and that the United 
States will be disadvantaged with the continuation of the New START 
limits.
  Another consideration that we brought to the President's attention 
was also referred to in the resolution of ratification of the New START 
treaty--and this was in 2012, by the way--we said that the President 
should ``pursue an agreement with the Russian Federation that would 
address the disparity between the tactical nuclear weapon stockpiles of 
the Russian Federation and of the United States in a verifiable 
manner.'' We did that because even at the time that New START was 
ratified, the Russians had a 10-to-1 advantage in tactical nuclear 
weapons over the United States, and the New START treaty didn't do 
anything about that. It dealt only with strategic weapons.
  We raised the issue with the Russians. We tried to negotiate it as 
part of the New START treaty, but Russia was not interested. We went 
ahead anyway, but what we said was that we really ought to try to 
address this asymmetry between what the Russians have and what we have 
in terms of tactical nuclear weapons.
  By the way, that hasn't been done, either, so we thought it was 
important for the President to bear that in mind as he considered what 
to do about talking to the Russians about extending the New START 
treaty.
  The reason it is important is that the Russians, with this enormous 
advantage in tactical nuclear weapons, have actually changed their 
doctrine of war to potentially use those weapons--to use nuclear 
weapons in a military conflict with the United States or our NATO 
allies. They believe that this might be beneficial to them under what 
has been called a doctrine of ``escalate to de-escalate.''
  What that means is, they start some kind of a conflict with little 
green men or other kinds of hybrid warfare where they can blame it on 
somebody else. Maybe there are some cyber attacks that are simultaneous 
and confuse the issue. In the context of all of this confusion, it is 
very difficult to put the blame anywhere, but the Russians are finally 
identified, and an actual military conflict breaks out.
  Well, in order to dissuade NATO or the United States from stopping 
the Russian aggression, if that is what is going on here, the Russian 
doctrine says: We reserve the right here to use tactical nuclear 
weapons on the battlefield there, which would enable us to win the 
battle, obviously, and send a signal to the United States that ``You 
had better just let us be. Stop there.'' Maybe they will say: We don't 
intend to go any further, and so don't escalate this conflict because 
you can already see that we are willing to use nuclear weapons, and if 
you escalate it, you can expect Russia to use nuclear weapons.
  Obviously, we don't want to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. The 
reason we possess the nuclear weapons is to try to defer conflict. But 
our weapons are very large, devastating weapons that were built to be 
delivered on long-range missiles or bombers to the Russian--or then the 
Soviet heartland that could do great destruction to Soviet cities and 
military installations. They weren't designed to offset tactical 
attacks by another adversary, like Russia. So we don't have the kinds 
of tactical weapons that Russia has. As a result, we believe that, on 
this escalation ladder that could occur in a conflict, we are at a 
disadvantage, which is why we suggest to the President that in order to 
be sure that Russia doesn't ever miscalculate and determine that it is 
worth the risk to Russia to actually conduct an attack, including using 
nuclear weapons--we need to be sure that they don't miscalculate here, 
and the President should take into account this disparity in nuclear 
weapon capability between Russia and the United States today in 
determining whether to extend the New START treaty.
  It may be that in renegotiating this, we need to take all of this 
into account. These are changed circumstances in doctrine since 2012; 
they are not changed circumstances in terms of the asymmetry of weapon 
possession.
  There is a third thing that has changed--although in one respect it 
hasn't changed--that we also asked the President to consider, and that 
is the fact that a treaty is obviously only as good as the willingness 
of the parties to abide by it. In the case of the New START treaty, we 
would expect the Russians to abide by that, as we would expect them to 
abide by any other treaty. Well, it turns out that at the time that the 
New START treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate, the Russians had been 
in gross violation of another treaty--the INF Treaty--and the 
government didn't make that clear until after the New START treaty was 
adopted.
  The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is a treaty of several 
decades long now that prohibits either Russia or the United States from 
developing or deploying a missile that has a range between 500 and 
5,500 kilometers. This is a treaty that only binds Russia and the 
United States. It doesn't bind China, for example, which does possess 
these weapons. So both Russia and the United States would be at a 
disadvantage in a conflict with China, for example.
  We were simply asking that the President consider whether Russia 
abides by the treaties that it signs, and in that regard, whether it 
has violated the INF Treaty. Well, it is a question that has already 
been answered. The U.S. Government has already confirmed--and others 
have as well--that Russia has been in violation of the INF Treaty at 
least since the year 2008.
  The onsite inspections regime of the INF Treaty terminated in 2001. 
It hasn't been particularly easy to verify, but the State Department's 
2014 annual compliance report found that Russia was in violation of the 
INF Treaty. This is the first time we actually made our knowledge of 
this public.
  In April of 2016, the U.S. Government, again, in more detail, 
revealed Russia's violation of the treaty, and it did so very 
explicitly, pointing to the particular type of weapon the Russians had 
been developing--a ground-launched cruise missile. In November of that 
year, the United States convened a meeting of the Special Verification 
Commission of the INF Treaty, and through this and other engagements 
with the Russian Federation, we provided detailed information to Russia 
about the nature of the violations of which we were aware. This is 
important because the modus operandi of the old Soviet Union was to 
say: We are not in violation of the treaty. If we are, prove it to us. 
Then the United States would have to come forward with information we 
had gathered through intelligence sources that would demonstrate how we 
found out they were in violation, thus compromising our so-called 
sources and methods. We thought this violation was important enough to 
do that, and therefore we informed the Russians through the Commission 
of what we understood about their program, including information 
pertaining to the missile, the launcher, Russia's own internal 
designation for the mobile launcher chassis, and the names of the 
companies involved in developing and producing both the missile and the 
launcher. We gave information on the test history of the ground-
launched cruise missile program--the GLCM--that we were aware of, 
including the coordinates of the test and Russia's attempts to 
obfuscate the nature of the program. We provided all of this 
information.
  We also provided knowledge about the range--between 500 and 1,500--
and the fact that violating the treaty with this missile was actually 
distinct from two other missiles that Russia had developed. I will not 
give you the descriptions of them, but we have them, and we made all of 
that public.
  We even gave, in a subsequent report, the 2018 annual compliance 
report, the specific designator for this missile, the 9M729.
  We continued to raise these issues throughout 2017, 2018, and in fact 
it wasn't just the United States. In December of 2017, the North 
Atlantic Council urged Russia to address the serious concerns raised by 
its missile system ``in a substantial and transparent way, and actively 
engage in a technical dialogue with the United States.''
  Just a couple of weeks ago, on November 12, NATO Secretary General 
Stoltenberg stated in a speech that

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``the deployment of new Russian missiles is putting this historic 
treaty in jeopardy.''
  He was talking about the New START treaty. He completed his thought 
by saying: ``Russia now acknowledges the existence of a new missile 
system.''
  If Russia cannot be trusted to comply with treaties and if we have 
this long history of violation of the INF Treaty and now the President 
is being asked to consider reupping the New START treaty, we urge him 
to consider this in the context of Russia's current violations. 
Clearly, at a minimum, this would call for additional verification and 
enforcement with respect to the New START treaty.
  It seems to me it calls for more than that because Russia has clearly 
believed it is in its country's best interests to blatantly violate the 
INF Treaty and take whatever the consequences are rather than abide by 
the treaty. If it believes that with respect to the development of a 
new cruise missile, it could very easily conclude the same with respect 
to violations of the New START treaty irrespective of any sanctions or 
other punishment the United States would mete out.
  There is very little one can do to a country that chooses to 
unilaterally violate a treaty. You can point it out, you can say they 
shouldn't do it, and you can pull out of the treaty itself, but that 
doesn't fix the problem; namely, their violation in the first place.
  We have actually acted on some things with regard to the INF 
violation. In December of 2017, the United States imposed economic 
sanctions on the two Russian companies that were involved in the design 
of this prohibited missile. We also began examining the range of 
military options for the United States, both that were INF Treaty-
compliant and also what would happen were we to leave the INF. By the 
way, the President has unofficially said that in view of the Russian 
violation, the United States will leave the INF Treaty. He hasn't made 
that public announcement formally yet, but it is clear this is what he 
intends to do. Under the circumstances, one can hardly blame him when 
the Russians have gone ahead to develop a missile that threatens both 
Europe and U.S. interests, and we need to react to that in various 
ways.
  One of the things we have done is for Congress to authorize the 
administration to study what we ought to do in response, both in terms 
of potential active defenses and potential offensive capabilities to 
match what the Russians have done. In the 2018 National Defense 
Authorization Act, we authorized $58 million to develop active defenses 
to counter ground-launched missiles of the prohibited range and 
counterforce and countervailing capabilities to prevent attacks from 
these missiles and also to establish a program of record to develop an 
intermediate range, conventional, road-mobile, ground-launched cruise 
missile of our own. There are additional potential military response 
options that obviously come to mind, but the point is, there are two 
countries to an agreement, and when one country deems it important 
enough to violate the agreement, even to suffer whatever consequences 
may exist, then the President ought to take this into consideration in 
deciding to extend yet another nuclear weapons treaty; in this case, 
the New START treaty.
  There are some other things I think the United States would want to 
consider doing that it can only do if it leaves the INF Treaty, and 
that is why I think the President is wise to, in effect, give the 
Russians notice that this is what we intend to do. Russia can still try 
to come back into compliance, I suppose, by destroying not only the 
weapon itself, the cruise missiles it has already deployed, and 
destroying the launchers on which these missiles would be launched 
because they too would be in violation of the INF Treaty. They have 
time to do this.
  By announcing in advance his intentions, the President has also given 
us an opportunity to think about our future. It doesn't do any good for 
defense planners to think about potential weapons or defenses that the 
United States could develop if there is never a prospect, in the case 
of the offensive weapon, of ever actually building it or deploying it. 
That is a career-ender to be sure. The INF Treaty would currently 
prohibit that. So nobody is going to spend any time planning activities 
for the United States that would themselves be a violation. By letting 
Russia know we are now willing to consider doing that, Vladimir Putin 
should understand that the President is serious about potentially 
withdrawing from the treaty. Hopefully, that would give him time to 
think about the consequences and decide to come into compliance, but it 
may not.
  If it doesn't, and he remains out of compliance, then not only could 
the United States potentially develop weapons of our own to counter the 
Russian violation, but we could also begin thinking about what this 
means in terms of other treaties we have with Russia, changes that we 
would want to make in order to ensure that these treaties are worth 
complying with.
  The New START treaty only applies to the United States and Russia. 
What it says is, we will both maintain an existing level of nuclear 
weapons--a little over 15,000 each. The United States had to bring our 
stockpile down to meet that level. Russia did not. So the practical 
effect of the New START treaty, at the time, was for the United States 
to reduce its nuclear weaponry and Russia basically to do nothing.
  What Russia has done in the meantime, however, is to continue to work 
on the modernization of its strategic missile and nuclear weapons 
programs. It has developed new missiles. It has tested. It has 
developed new doctrine, as I said, in the potential use of nuclear 
weapons, and it has a capability for nuclear warhead production that 
the United States does not have.
  It is not known today, but we don't have a nuclear weapon warhead 
production capability. We couldn't do it. We could build one in a lab 
or two over time. Russia has a production line, and it is constantly 
replacing the warheads it has with new warheads and developing new 
missiles, as I said. Now, I think all of that is relevant to the 
consideration of whether we should stay in the New START treaty. If we 
think Russia will comply with the terms, maybe we would conclude again 
that it is wise to stay in that treaty. This is a little hard to 
conclude, however, if Russia remains in violation of the INF Treaty.
  For all these reasons, we thought it important to recite a little bit 
of the history of the New START treaty and to quote from the resolution 
of ratification so the President could see what the Senate's intention 
was when that treaty was ratified at the end of 2012 and to think about 
what those factors mean in today's world if the President has an 
intention to think about potentially extending the terms of the New 
START treaty.
  Again, it doesn't happen until 2021. It is smart to start thinking 
about it now, but in thinking about it, instead of just blindly 
considering that it is a wonderful thing and we need to move forward 
with it without expressing an opinion against extending it, the signers 
of this letter wanted the President to appreciate some of the 
background and to understand what we thought the intentions were and 
what we hoped would occur after the New START treaty was adopted and 
ratified and how we thought it would improve the relationship between 
Russia and the United States at the time. If anything, conditions have 
gotten worse, not better. As a result, these are factors the President 
should take into consideration when determining whether to consider 
extending the New START treaty.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Johnson). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.