[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16584-16586]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            MISSILE DEFENSE

  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I will take a few minutes to make some 
observations about some of the discussions I have read in recent days 
in various news articles and have heard from Senators who have 
commented on these articles relating to missile defense and the 
President's efforts to discuss with Russia and other friends and allies 
around the world our intentions with respect to the development of 
missile defenses to protect the security interests of the United 
States.
  For some reason or other, in recent weeks there have been some 
misinterpretations made of comments that have appeared in news 
articles. Some have suggested that the administration, for example, is 
going to abandon the ABM Treaty or is developing plans and asking for 
funding in this year's appropriations bills to conduct tests and do 
development projects for missile defense which would violate the 
provisions of the ABM Treaty.
  It is clear from everything the President himself has said that he 
would like to replace the ABM Treaty, after full discussions with 
Russian officials, allies, and friends around the world, with a new 
strategic framework that more closely reflects the facts as they exist 
now in the relationship we have with Russia.
  The ABM Treaty was written, as we know, in 1972. It was written in an 
atmosphere where the prevailing doctrine of national security was 
mutual assured destruction where we would actually have, as a matter of 
national policy, a plan to annihilate or destroy cities with innocent 
civilians in retaliation against a nuclear missile strike against the 
United States from the Soviet Union. And the mutual assured destruction 
doctrine was very troubling in and of itself, but it was the only thing 
we had. Deterrence was a way of life--and also a promise of a way of 
death in case someone decided to authorize a strike against the other. 
This was an agreement that was entered into at a time when each side 
seemed to be intent on building new and more sophisticated and more 
lethal weapons systems targeted to military targets in the other's 
nation state.
  But times have changed. The Soviet Union no longer exists. Even 
though the Clinton administration attempted to negotiate a succession 
agreement, it has never been submitted to the Senate for ratification. 
The succession agreement lists Russia, Belarus, and another nation 
state as the successor states to the Soviet Union. Think about that. I 
am sure the Senate would discuss that very carefully and probably at 
great length, and whether or not the Senate would advise and consent 
and permit the ratification of that treaty, to permit it to go into 
effect and have the force and effect of law, is problematical.
  But that is just one indication of how times have changed. The 
Clinton administration continued to respect the ABM Treaty to the 
extent that it would not undertake testing of even theater missile 
defense systems if the Russians objected. And in the discussions with 
our representatives in Geneva and elsewhere, talking on these subjects, 
it became clear that this country was going to be inhibited in its 
testing programs of theater missile defense systems because of 
provisions of the ABM Treaty.
  By now, it ought to be very clear that there are threats to our 
soldiers and sailors who are deployed around the world from these very 
theater missile offensive systems that we saw Iraq use in the desert 
war--in the war that we helped organize and wage against them to 
liberate Kuwait. Twenty-eight or twenty-nine members of a National 
Guard unit lost their lives in Dhahran as a result of a Scud missile 
attack.
  We cannot tolerate being inhibited and subject to the approval of 
another country to test and develop and deploy a system that would 
protect soldiers in that circumstance in the future. We have already, 
as a matter of fact, developed follow-on systems to the Patriot system, 
which was the only thing we used to try to counter the Scud missile 
attacks. And we continue to upgrade and make progress in developing 
systems that will offer the kind of protection against those missile 
attacks in the future. The PAC-3 program, for example, has had a 
succession of successful tests, using the hit-to-kill technology of a 
defensive system.
  There are other examples of theater missile programs. The Army's High 
Altitude Air Defense Systems--the acronym is THAAD. It sounds like my 
name is a system that offers protection against missile attack. But to 
hear some Senators and look at the authorization committee's mark right 
now, you would think these theater systems were the same as the 
national missile defense system. We saw reports in the paper that the 
chairman had presented the Armed Services Committee with a committee 
print of a military authorization bill for the next fiscal year, and it 
cuts $1.3 billion out of missile defense. This is being described in 
the newspapers, and by Senators, too, as a reduction in the amount of 
money that would be authorized for national missile defense.
  When you look at the exact dollar amounts in the bill--and it is not 
national missile defense--approximately $347 million is cut from the 
Navy theater-wide program in the chairman's mark, along with $210 
million for the THAAD program and $80 million from the airborne laser 
program. These are not long-range missile programs. These are not 
missile programs designed to counter intercontinental ballistic missile 
threats to our country; these are designed to protect men and women in 
the military service of the United States who are deployed all over the 
world right now. And they are now under threats from the same kind of 
missile weapons systems that were used by Iraq. Now they have been 
modernized, we hear from our intelligence sources, and are more 
accurate and more reliable and more lethal than they were in the desert 
war.
  These programs should not be cut in the name of trying to restrict 
the President from using funds that the Congress appropriates for 
national missile defense. These are intermediate-range defensive 
systems, the testing and deployment of which were not intended to be 
covered by the ABM Treaty. And even though the Clinton administration 
was negotiating with the Russians our rights to test in developing 
these programs--to some degree at least--it is not the subject of the 
ABM Treaty. The ABM Treaty wasn't designed to deal with these threats 
at all.
  So what I am suggesting is that the Senate ought to be on early 
warning that we are seeing an effort being developed here--at least in 
the Armed Services Committee--to lay groundwork for restrictions on 
funding, for restrictive language, which I understand is also included 
in the chairman's mark, which would more closely restrict the President 
and the Department of Defense in their effort to fully explore the use 
of technologies that

[[Page 16585]]

would help defend our service men and women when they are in harm's way 
around the world today.
  There are some other programs that are cut in this bill that I 
understand are in the chairman's mark. One is the space-based infrared 
system, which will provide satellites to track missiles after launch--
$97 billion is cut from that program.
  So there is a pattern here of undermining the entire effort to 
develop our defenses to the capability they need to be to fully assure 
the security interests of the United States. It doesn't have anything 
to do with the ABM Treaty, in my view, but that is being used as an 
excuse to hold back these programs. The chairman's mark cuts $350 
million from a program previously known as national missile defense, 
though in reality the number is far higher, as the administration has 
sought to remove the artificial barriers between the labels 
``national'' and ``theater'' missile defense.
  The President is talking about missile defenses. We need to have an 
aggressive, robust testing program so that we can fully understand how 
these technologies can be harnessed to fully defend our country's 
interests and protect the security of our Nation.
  The chairman's mark even cuts funds that would be used for 
cooperative missile defense modeling and simulation with Russia. We are 
hearing a lot about trying to interact more in a positive way with 
Russia. Here is an example of a program that would give us an 
opportunity to do that more successfully, and that is proposed for 
cutbacks in the Armed Services Committee.
  There are various legislative restrictions, one of which will provide 
the Defense Department's missile activities can proceed only in 
accordance with the ABM Treaty.
  That is redundant, isn't it? Or it suggests that the President is 
planning to undertake something that is inconsistent with the treaty. 
He has said he is not going to do that. He recognizes the treaty is an 
agreement that is legally binding. The President has said that.
  He is hoping to replace the treaty after negotiations with the 
Russians with a new strategic framework, but everybody is pronouncing 
that around here as dead on arrival. Give the President a chance at 
least to discuss it fully with the Russians rather than rushing over 
and getting some Russian official to make some derogatory statement 
about the process and then quoting it as if it is national policy in 
Russia.
  We should give the negotiators a chance. That is what I am 
suggesting. So writing a bill here that presumes the President is going 
to violate the ABM Treaty is not getting us off to a good start, 
particularly if this sends a signal to the Russians: You do not have to 
worry about negotiating with the President of the United States in good 
faith because the Senate is going to take over, the Senate is going to 
make it impossible for the President to negotiate an agreement.
  We should not undermine the President's capacity to negotiate a 
better agreement that will serve our national security interests in a 
more effective way and replace an outdated, outmoded treaty, a cold war 
relic, when we could, if we are successful under the President's 
leadership, negotiate a better agreement that more fully protects our 
country's national security interests. This kind of provision is 
needless piling on, making it more and more difficult for our 
President. I hope the Armed Services Committee will look very carefully 
at these provisions.
  There are a lot of other concerns that I have. I know there may be 
others who want to discuss issues on other subjects of great national 
concern, but they are talking about now in one other line of articles 
that I have seen--and this was discussed in our Defense appropriations 
hearing yesterday by some Senators--the fact there was a quote in the 
paper from an administration official saying: We were not bothered by 
China's buildup, the modernization of their nuclear weapons capability 
and whether they were going to do that or not would not have any effect 
on our decisions with respect to missile defense programs.
  Secretary Rumsfeld made it very clear at the hearing, responding to 
one Senator's question, that neither he nor Secretary Powell nor Dr. 
Condoleezza Rice had made any statement of that kind, and they knew of 
no one in the Department of Defense or the Department of State or at 
the White House who had said anything like that.
  There is no quote attributed to any particular individual, but yet 
not only the press have taken that and made stories out of it and 
repeated them, but now Senators are repeating them as if it was a fact. 
The fact is, China has been modernizing its military for years. They 
did not just start a new generation of nuclear weapons or 
intercontinental ballistic missile technologies and systems after we 
began improving our missile defense capabilities. China is going to 
make the decisions they make based on their own considerations of what 
is in their interests.
  I am hopeful, of course, as everyone in this administration and in 
this Congress, we will be able to have a stable and friendly 
relationship based on mutual respect with China. Efforts are being made 
in discussions by the Secretary of State and many others with Chinese 
leaders in order to develop an understanding, trying to resolve 
problems as they develop, and we know what they are.
  The incident with the surveillance plane in the area presented its 
own special set of problems, but we worked our way through that with 
calm and thoughtful leadership and decisionmaking by the President and 
his Cabinet officials.
  The whole point of this is, we can be a party to inciting the 
passions of those who worry about the capacity of our country's 
leadership to function to protect our security interests, and we can do 
more harm than good by the things we say and the way we discuss these 
issues and the way we handle bills that come through this Senate.
  We should take very seriously the provisions that are in the 
chairman's print of this authorization bill before the Armed Services 
Committee, and all Senators ought to notice what is beginning as an 
official part of our legislative responsibility: an effort that is 
clear to undermine the President's leadership capacity in developing 
missile defense systems that will protect our soldiers and sailors and 
the security interests of our country.
  Those who say he is going to abandon the ABM Treaty need to look at 
what the President said. He is trying to replace it with a new 
framework, a new agreement. I have suggested to some that we ought to 
consider having a peace treaty as a replacement to the ABM Treaty. We 
are not at war with Russia any longer. They do not profess to be at war 
with us. The cold war is over. When wars end, peace treaties are 
signed. Let's sign a peace treaty with Russia. That would supplant the 
ABM Treaty.
  The ABM Treaty locks into law the doctrine of mutual assured 
destruction. We do not want to destroy Russia. They should not want to 
destroy us. So why perpetuate that doctrine with that treaty? Let's 
work to develop a new framework that more clearly defines the real 
relationship we have with Russia now.
  That is what the President wants to do. Why can't the Senate join 
with the President, applaud that initiative, support that effort, pass 
legislation to fund the efforts to strengthen our military forces so we 
can do the job of protecting the security of this country?
  I am not going to suggest these are political games that are being 
played because I know there are serious differences of opinion on this 
and other issues that come before the Senate.
  I am not questioning anybody's motives. I am just saying I hope 
Senators will take a careful look at the facts. As we proceed through 
this process of authorization and appropriation for our defense needs, 
let's try to work in harmony and unity as much as possible so we will 
not create any misunderstandings in Russia, in China, or among 
potential adversaries out there, the so-called rogue states, that 
continue to acquire technology, that continue to acquire systems, 
missiles, other means of developing intercontinental ballistic missile 
capability.

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  It is a dangerous place out there, and we need to be sure we are 
doing what we can do and ought to do to protect our security interests 
in this environment.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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