[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
[[Page S7121]]
``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.