Opening Statement of Senator Carl Levin, Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on the New START

Statement

Good morning. Today the Armed Services Committee begins hearings on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the New START. I would like to welcome our witnesses, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is a pleasure to have all of you with us this morning.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that is before us today is an important treaty that will, as Admiral Mullen said earlier this month, "make our country more secure and advance our core national security interests." This treaty is in keeping with a long tradition of bilateral, verifiable arms control agreements with Russia, and its predecessor the Soviet Union, and it strengthens the United States commitment to nonproliferation.

The Senate has previously approved 10 bilateral arms control agreements with Russia and before that, the Soviet Union, with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. Only one was opposed by more than 6 votes (19 votes opposed) and that was in 1993. Three of these treaties were considered during some of the most difficult days of the Cold War and yet they were all approved with overwhelming support.

This new START treaty supports a credible nuclear deterrent and maintains the nuclear triad, while allowing both the United States and Russia to reduce the total number of nuclear weapons. Between them the United States and Russia have more than 90% of the world's nuclear weapons. While each country clearly has more weapons than needed, reductions will happen only through treaties, as neither side wants to be unilaterally disarming. This new Treaty will help ensure that needed reductions continue--one measured step at a time. Reductions of both nations' nuclear inventories are also required by the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a treaty we strive to have nonnuclear nations adhere to.

This treaty continues the reductions started in the Moscow Treaty, which President George W Bush negotiated. Unlike the Moscow Treaty, however, this treaty is a verifiable treaty with inspections and other mechanisms that will ensure transparency in the nuclear arsenals of each side. This treaty will continue, although with different mechanisms than the START I treaty, the means to allow both the United States and Russia to monitor each other's nuclear systems.

This new treaty, and the attention that President Obama has brought to the threat from the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials, are critically important. The proliferation threat is real and includes the possibility that nuclear weapons and materials could fall into the hands of terrorists or others who wish to threaten the use of, or use, nuclear materials. Through this treaty, and the related efforts to secure weapons grade fissile materials, these dangers will be reduced. Fundamentally this treaty is a treaty that limits strategic offensive nuclear arms. It does not limit anything else. Some might want it to limit more or fear that it does limit more--it does not.

For instance, there have been many statements suggesting that the treaty imposes constraints on our missile defense plans and programs, but that is simply incorrect. From the very beginning of the negotiations everyone in the Administration has been very clear; this treaty limits strategic offensive nuclear arms, not missile defenses. A unilateral statement made by Russia concerning missile defense does not limit or constrain our missile defense efforts.

A U.S. unilateral statement makes it clear that our "missile defense systems are not intended to affect the strategic balance with Russia," and that the U.S. "missile defense systems would be employed to defend the United States against limited missile launches, and to defend its deployed forces, allies and partners against regional threats." It also states that the United States "intends to continue improving and deploying its missile defense systems in order to defend itself against limited attack and as part of our collaborative approach to strengthening stability in key regions." The US unilateral statement will be made part of the record.

While the United States must maintain the stockpile with or without this treaty, this treaty does bring renewed attention to the nuclear stockpile. This new focus on maintaining the nuclear stockpile through increased scientific and technical rigor ensures a credible nuclear deterrent and paves the way to future reductions.

In the early days of the stockpile stewardship program, significant strides were made in the ability of the nuclear weapons complex to maintain nuclear weapons without testing. It has been almost 18 years since the last explosive nuclear weapons test was conducted and still the stockpile remains safe, secure, and reliable--in many ways the scientists and engineers know more today about nuclear weapons and how they function than they did in the days of testing. Over the last years of the Bush administration the budgets to sustain the nuclear complex were inadequate. President Obama, Secretary Gates, Secretary Clinton, and Secretary Chu have laid out a plan to restore the needed funding for the nuclear weapons complex and ensure a robust capability for the foreseeable future. Linton Brooks, the former Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that he would have truly welcomed a budget as robust as this budget plan.

I look forward to a good discussion of all of these issues with our distinguished witnesses.

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