Executive Session

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Risch amendment and would refer all of us to the constitutional provision under which we are discharging our responsibility. Of course, it is article II, section 2 of the Constitution that says:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties. .....

The problem here is that even though Congress has told the administration about our concerns about constraining our missile defense capability and has told the administration about our concerns with regard to the exclusion of tactical weapons that are covered by the Risch amendment, in reality, the administration really does not want our advice but merely seeks our consent.

I believe this matter is being treated with the kind of gravity and seriousness on a bipartisan basis that it deserves. But there are some very real differences between those of us who think this treaty is as good as we can get and that Congress's role is really to consent to something negotiated without our advice having been taken, and those who believe the Senate should play more than a rubberstamp role when it comes to matters as serious as these. Indeed, in section 1251 of the national defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2010, the Senate did provide advice on these matters. But, as I indicated earlier, most of that advice was ignored in favor of a strategy of seeking our consent after this treaty was basically a fait accompli.

It concerns me that--and I admire our distinguished floor leader, Senator Lugar, who has a wealth of experience in this area, and I think we all acknowledge that--it worries me that any attempts by the Senate to offer amendments are called treaty killers. I do not really understand what our role is here if it is not to offer amendments to conform the treaty to what we believe is the best national security interests of the American people.

But one of the treaty's problems that I think the Risch amendment reveals is, that by excluding tactical nuclear weapons, we are giving the Russians a huge advantage and increasing rather than decreasing instability. The Congressional Research Service has written a document that illustrates this, a research document dated January 14, 2010, entitled ``Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons,'' otherwise called tactical nuclear weapons. On pages 4, 5, and 6, they go through a factual distinction between strategic and nonstrategic nuclear weapons.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that those pages be printed in the Record following my remarks.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(See exhibit 1.)

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, the Congressional Research Service points out that the distinction between strategic nuclear weapons that are covered by this treaty and nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapons that are not covered by this treaty is, frankly, a muddled topic. We do know that some types of weapons, by exclusion, are left out and not included under the treaty. In other words, intercontinental ballistic missiles, sea-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers are included as strategic weapons, and, by definition, everything that is not included would be a nonstrategic or tactical weapon. They also point out in those pages that are being made part of the Record that part of the definition has traditionally been determined by the range of delivery vehicles and the yield of the warheads. But I think it is important to try, as well as we can, to paint a clearer picture of what we are talking about when we say nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapons.

I have in my hand an unclassified report taken from Jane's Information Group publications called ``Strategic Weapon Systems, Fighting Ships, Naval Weapon Systems, and All the World's Aircraft'' that covers a so-called nonstrategic Russian weapon known as the SH-11 Gorgon ABM, otherwise called the UR-96.

The reason I raise this example of a type of weapon that the Russians reportedly have, which is not covered by this treaty, is that the yield of this weapon is 1 megaton--1 megaton. If you look at the size of the nuclear weapon that was used on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, that killed anywhere from 80,000 to 140,000 people--actually, no one knows the exact number because of radiation-induced injuries and the like, but suffice it to say it caused enormous devastation and brought Imperial Japan to its knees in World War II--that was, by contrast, a 10-kiloton nuclear warhead. In other words, this so-called nonstrategic nuclear warhead not covered by this treaty is 100 times more powerful than the nuclear warhead that killed perhaps 100,000 people or more in Hiroshima in 1945.

So I mention this example--and this is, by the way, an unclassified document. We cannot go into, here on the floor, more detail about the distinction or, frankly, really, what we should call a continuum between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. But we are not talking about firecrackers. We are not talking about bottle rockets. We are talking about weapons that can wreak death and destruction that really, I think, most of us hesitate to even contemplate.

So this is not an inconsequential amendment. This is a very important amendment that the Senator has brought. I listened to him a little earlier. I was in my office in the Hart Office Building, but I listened to Senator Risch cite some very distinguished authorities on the other side of the aisle, and this comes from the Congressional Record in March of 2003, talking about the Moscow Treaty. Senator after Senator--Senator Dorgan, the distinguished Senator from North Dakota; Senator Biden, now Vice President Biden but then a Senator from Delaware; Senator Reed from Rhode Island, a distinguished expert on the Armed Services Committee on national security matters; Senator Conrad, the other Senator from North Dakota--to a man, they noted and expressed concern about the failure to deal with tactical nuclear weapons in the Moscow Treaty of 2003. The Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, also noted the absence of any dealing with tactical nuclear weapons. I mention this to say, again, no one is talking about divisions among us. We are talking about a unified concern with the threat tactical nuclear weapons poses.

So I think it is simply a mistake--but it is a correctable mistake--that the negotiators of this treaty and the administration have excluded tactical nuclear weapons. As others have stated, the United States has an advantage at this time on strategic nuclear weapons. So basically we are going to have to cut our stockpile, while the Russian Federation, which does not currently have as many weapons as this treaty would allow, would be allowed to build up to that cap. But in the area of tactical nuclear weapons, the Russian Federation has--one classified estimate was around 10 times what the United States has in terms of tactical nuclear weapons.

I was talking in my office with Tom D'Agostino, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, someone who has long served in this area and who has confirmed that this tactical nuclear asymmetry is very real. According to him--he said--``the actual numbers are classified''--as I alluded to earlier--but he confirmed that ``there's a ten to one ratio, roughly, give or take. You know, it's a big difference between the two.''

It seems to me that from a bargaining standpoint, it would have made all of the sense in the world for the Obama administration to have insisted on reductions in the Russian tactical nuclear weapons as part of the New START. If not now, I would say, when. If not in 2003--if all of our colleagues whose names I have mentioned earlier thought it was a good idea to deal with tactical nuclear weapons back in 2003, it strikes me as even more important to do it now rather than kick the can down the road and not take advantage of the leverage we would have due to the Russians' desire to maintain their current arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.

But Vice President Biden recognized, in 2003, that this omission was potentially dangerous. I will quote him. He said:

Getting a handle on Russian tactical nuclear weapons must be a top arms control and nonproliferation objective of the United States Government.

So one has to question why that top objective remains unmet under New START.

James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the now-defunct U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, has testified that ``the significance of tactical nuclear weapons rises steadily as strategic nuclear arms are reduced.''

This is a sobering conclusion, and it helps illustrate the importance of this glaring omission in the New START treaty.

Simply put, this treaty in its current form represents a lost opportunity to compel the Russian Federation to downsize their tactical nuclear arsenal. This amendment provides an opportunity to lay the groundwork for that goal to be accomplished in the future.

Following Senate ratification of the START I treaty, President George Herbert Walker Bush committed the United States to unilaterally reducing our tactical nuclear weapons. Not surprisingly, while the Russians made a similar commitment, they failed to follow through and never completed their promised reductions.

Today, Russia's widespread deployment of tactical nuclear weapons raises concerns with their safety and security. These weapons are often located at remote bases close to potential battlefields, sometimes far from central command authority. Questions have been raised regarding the stability and reliability of those Russian troops charged with monitoring and securing those weapons. In 2008, Secretary Gates said he was worried that the Russians themselves didn't even know the numbers and locations of old land mines, nuclear artillery shells, and so on, that would be of interest to rogue states and terrorists.

In addition, unlike strategic nuclear weapons, tactical weapons have very little transparency and very little accounting. The treaty should at least take a step in the direction to provide more transparency and an accounting requirement.

Achieving reductions in Russian tactical nuclear weapons would also reduce the supply of those weapons that could be acquired by groups such as al-Qaida. Tactical nuclear weapons are among those that are the most susceptible to theft or illicit transfer because they are relatively small and compact, including so-called suitcase nukes. They are the most susceptible to theft and illicit transfer to terrorists and also rogue states.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was known to have produced and deployed smaller tactical weapons, sometimes called suitcase nukes, as I mentioned a moment ago. These nuclear weapons--unlike large strategic weapons that New START would limit--are the terrorist's dream. They are easily concealed and highly transportable. They could all too easily be moved across our border and positioned in almost any building in the United States.

Additionally, the Strategic Posture Commission, in its 2009 report to Congress, found that Russia's tactical nuclear weapons advantage opens up new possibilities for Russian efforts to threaten the use of nuclear weapons to influence regional conflicts and threaten our allies. The Commission observed that there is an ``evidently rising value in Russian military doctrine and national security strategy'' of tactical nuclear weapons.

These fears are coming to fruition, as U.S. officials say that Russia has moved tactical nuclear weapons to facilities near NATO allies several times in recent years, most recently this past spring. These actions, again, would run counter to pledges made by Moscow that they would pull back tactical nuclear weapons and reduce their numbers.

By ratifying the New START treaty without addressing this asymmetry, the United States would squander valuable leverage to negotiate a future reduction in Russian tactical nuclear weapons. The administration says no matter, we must ratify the New START treaty and we can deal with the tactical nuclear weapons sometime in the future. Well, again, we didn't do it in 2003 when Vice President Biden and others pointed out the omission and the potential danger, and here we are in 2010 being asked in a lameduck session to ratify this treaty and leave tactical nuclear weapons excluded once again. It leads me to wonder whether instead of the doctrine of ``trust, but verify,'' we are embracing a doctrine of ``ignore it and it will simply go away.'' We all know it won't. Russia would have little reason to agree to reduce its arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons in a future treaty without extracting major concessions from the United States. We can fix this issue now if we would simply adopt the Risch amendment.

I join my colleagues in urging the adoption of the Risch amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, would the Senator from Texas yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. I am happy to yield for a question.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from Texas has mentioned a statement I and some others have made with respect to the Moscow Treaty. I simply wanted to observe that then and now, I wish we had included tactical nuclear weapons, but I then voted for the Moscow Treaty and I will vote for this treaty. The reason for that is making progress on strategic nuclear weapons, reducing the stock of nuclear weapons, and reducing delivery vehicles, it seems to me, is major progress. This administration has indicated it intends to move forward on tactical weapons negotiations with the Russians. I didn't want it to stand that somehow my concern--back in the discussion about the Moscow Treaty, the concern about not including tactical weapons had me voting against the treaty. I did not. I voted for that, and I will vote for this treaty because I think it advances the ball in a very significant way with respect to arms control.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from North Dakota coming out and making that statement. I didn't mean to suggest that he voted against the Moscow Treaty, but I do believe I accurately quoted his concerns, which he has reconfirmed here, in the failure to deal with tactical nuclear weapons.

I would say in response to my colleague that we are making a unilateral reduction in strategic nuclear weapons and the Russians are not going to have to reduce any in their current stockpile because we are presently over the cap set by the treaty and they are under the cap. So it seems to me there is even further evidence we got out-negotiated on this, and particularly when it omits this important part of the nuclear arsenal and a threat to the stability of not only the region but also of the world.

Exhibit 1

The Distinction Between Strategic and Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons

The distinction between strategic and nonstrategic (also known as tactical) nuclear weapons reflects the military definitions of, on the one hand, a strategic mission and, on the other hand, the tactical use of nuclear weapons. According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms, a strategic mission is:

``Directed against one or more of a selected series of enemy targets with the purpose of progressive destruction and disintegration of the enemy's warmaking capacity and will to make war. Targets include key manufacturing systems, sources of raw material, critical material, stockpiles, power systems, transportation systems, communication facilities, and other such target systems. As opposed to tactical operations, strategic operations are designed have a long-range rather than immediate effect on the enemy and its military forces.''

In contrast, the tactical use of nuclear weapons is defined as ``the use of nuclear weapons by land, sea, or air forces against opposing forces, supporting installations or facilities, in support of operations that contribute to the accomplishment of a military mission of limited scope, or in support of the military commander's scheme of maneuver, usually limited to the area of military operations.''

DEFINITION BY OBSERVABLE CAPABILITIES

During the Cold War, it was relatively easy to distinguish between strategic and nonstrategic nuclear weapons because each type had different capabilities that were better suited to the different missions.

DEFINITION BY RANGE OF DELIVERY VEHICLES

The long-range missiles and heavy bombers deployed on U.S. territory and missiles deployed in ballistic missile submarines had the range and destructive power to attack and destroy military, industrial, and leadership targets central to the Soviet Union's ability to prosecute the war. At the same time, with their large warheads and relatively limited accuracies (at least during the earlier years of the Cold War), these weapons were not suited for attacks associated with tactical or battlefield operations. Nonstrategic nuclear weapons, in contrast, were not suited for strategic missions because they lacked the range to reach targets inside the Soviet Union (or, for Soviet weapons, targets inside the United States). But, because they were often small enough to be deployed with troops in the field or at forward bases, the United States and Soviet Union could have used them to attack targets in the theater of the conflict, or on the battlefield itself, to support more limited military missions.

Even during the Cold War, however, the United States and Russia deployed nuclear weapons that defied the standard understanding of the difference between strategic and nonstrategic nuclear weapons. For example, both nations considered weapons based on their own territories that could deliver warheads to the territory of the other nation to be ``strategic'' because they had the range needed to reach targets inside the other nation's territory. But some early Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missiles had relatively short (i.e., 500 mile) ranges, and the submarines patrolled close to U.S. shores to ensure that the weapons could reach their strategic targets. Conversely, in the 1980s the United States considered sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) deployed on submarines or surface ships to be nonstrategic nuclear weapons. But, if these vessels were deployed close to Soviet borders, these weapons could have destroyed many of the same targets as U.S. strategic nuclear weapons. Similarly, U.S. intermediate-range missiles that were deployed in Europe, which were considered nonstrategic by the United States, could reach central, strategic targets in the Soviet Union.

Furthermore, some weapons that had the range to reach ``strategic'' targets on the territory of the other nations could also deliver tactical nuclear weapons in support of battlefield or tactical operations. Soviet bombers could be equipped with nuclear-armed anti-ship missiles; U.S. bombers could also carry anti-ship weapons and nuclear mines. Hence, the range of the delivery vehicle does not always correlate with the types of targets or objectives associated with the warhead carried on that system. This relationship between range and mission has become even more clouded since the end of the Cold War because the United States and Russia have retired many of the shorter and medium-range delivery systems considered to be nonstrategic nuclear weapons. Further, both nations may develop the capability to use their longer-range ``strategic'' systems to deliver warheads to a full range of strategic and tactical targets, even if long-standing traditions and arms control definitions weigh against this change.

DEFINITION BY YIELD OF WARHEADS

During the Cold War, the longer-range strategic delivery vehicles also tended to carry warheads with greater yields, or destructive power, than nonstrategic nuclear weapons. Smaller warheads were better suited to nonstrategic weapons because they sought to achieve more limited, discrete objectives on the battlefield than did the larger, strategic nuclear weapons. But this distinction has also dissolved in more modern systems. Many U.S. and Russian heavy bombers can carry weapons of lower yields, and, as accuracies improved for bombs and missiles, warheads with lower yields could achieve the same expected level of destruction that had required larger warheads in early generations of strategic weapons systems.

DEFINITION BY EXCLUSION

The observable capabilities that allowed analysts to distinguish between strategic and nonstrategic nuclear weapons during the Cold War have not always been precise, and may not prove to be relevant or appropriate in the future. On the other hand, the ``strategic'' weapons identified by these capabilities--ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers--are the only systems covered by the limits in strategic offensive arms control agreements--the SALT agreements signed in the 1970s, the START agreements signed in the 1990s, and the Moscow Treaty signed in 2002. Consequently, an ``easy'' dividing line is one that would consider all weapons not covered by strategic arms control treaties as nonstrategic nuclear weapons. This report takes this approach when reviewing the history of U.S. and Soviet/Russian nonstrategic nuclear weapons, and in some cases when discussing remaining stocks of nonstrategic nuclear weapons.

This definition will not, however, prove sufficient when discussing current and future issues associated with these weapons. Since the early 1990s, the United States and Russia have withdrawn from deployment most of their nonstrategic nuclear weapons and eliminated many of the shorter and medium-range launchers for these weapons (these changes are discussed in more detail below). Nevertheless, both nations maintain roles for these weapons in their national security strategies. Russia has enunciated a national security strategy that allows for the possible use of nuclear weapons in regional contingencies and conflicts near the periphery of Russia. The Bush Administration also stated that the United States would maintain those capabilities in its nuclear arsenal because it might need to counter the capabilities of potential adversaries. The Bush Administration did not, however, identify whether these capabilities would be resident on strategic or nonstrategic nuclear weapons. That distinction will reflect the nature of the target, not the yield or delivery vehicle of the attacking warhead.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source