Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the New START treaty. Before I begin, I would like to thank Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar for their leadership on this important arms control agreement.

When I first began to consider this treaty, I considered the fundamental question of whether we are better off with it or without it since the previous START treaty expired a year ago. By reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons in a mutual and verifiable way, I believe that this treaty does enhance our security, but it is not without flaws.

Our choice is not, however, between some ideal treaty and the New START treaty. It is between this treaty and having no inspection regime in place at all since the previous START treaty expired in December of 2009.

In evaluating this treaty, I scrutinized several issues including the effect on our Nation's security, the need to modernize our nuclear deterrent, the effectiveness of verification and inspection regimes, and the impact on missile defense.

These and other issues were fully covered in classified briefings as well as in the seven Senate Armed Services Committee hearings that I attended that included testimony from Secretary of Defense Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Chilton, the commander of our nuclear forces. We also heard testimony from the three current directors of our national nuclear laboratories and a number of former government officials and national security experts.

I met personally with Rose Gottemoeller, the top U.S. treaty negotiator, and sought counsel from GEN Brent Scowcroft, who has served as an adviser to four Republican Presidents and was the National Security Adviser to President George H. W. Bush.

I also have met with a wide range of Mainers--foreign policy experts, religious leaders, and former members of the military--who expressed their views on the treaty to me.

Clearly, the New START treaty enjoys broad bipartisan support. Secretaries of State for the past five Republican Presidents, including GEN Colin Powell, support its ratification, as does former Maine Senator and former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen.

No Member of this body should support a treaty simply because it has strong bipartisan support. But neither should we withhold our support for a treaty simply because it was negotiated and signed by a President from a different political party.

The fact is that the New START treaty is a modest arms control agreement. The treaty does not require the destruction of a single nuclear weapon. Under the New START framework, a 30-percent reduction in the number of deployed warheads in the arsenals of the United States and Russia will be required.

As such, the New START treaty places the United States and the Russian Federation on a path to achieve mutual and verifiable reductions over the next 7 years. Failure to ratify a treaty that makes modest reductions in the deployment of nuclear weapons would represent a giant step backwards in the commitment of the United States to arms control. If we cannot reduce the deployed nuclear stockpiles of the two countries that hold 9 of every 10 nuclear weapons in the world, how can we expect other countries not to seek any nuclear weapons?

Yet the New START treaty has significance beyond its function as an arms control agreement. New START is one component of our bilateral relationship with the Russian Federation. In April 2009, I traveled to Moscow with the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin. At that time, I indicated that while I supported the President's commitment to reset the U.S.-Russian relationship, it was ultimately up to the Russians to see if they wanted to have a stronger relationship.

Since then, Russia has expanded the use of northern supply routes for our military forces in Afghanistan and has cancelled the sale of advanced surface to air missiles to Iran. These are positive steps.

During that same trip to Moscow, Chairman Levin and I sought to encourage Russian officials to cooperate on missile defense in Europe. And this issue of missile defense raises an important point about the U.S.-Russian relationship. Just because our relationship with the Russians is important does not mean that we must compromise on an issue vital to our national security. One of those issues is missile defense.

I was troubled when I read the unilateral statements made by Russian leaders who sought to make a binding tie between missile defense and the New START agreement.

The Kerry-Lugar resolution of ratification eliminates any doubt that the United States will continue to develop missile defense systems. The proposed resolution of ratification clarifies that the treaty places no limitation on the deployment of U.S. missile defense systems except for those contained in article 5. It further clarifies that the Russian unilateral statement regarding missile defense ``does not impose a legal obligation on the United States.''

The resolution of ratification goes beyond expressing the position that the United States will deploy an effective national missile defense system. It declares that the United States is committed to improving its strategic defensive capabilities, both quantitatively and qualitatively, during the lifetime of the treaty.

In addition to developing a robust missile defense capability, it is equally imperative that the United States maintain a modernized nuclear weapons program as we consider further reductions in nuclear arms.

In March, I traveled with my good friend from Arizona, Senator Kyl, to discuss nuclear modernization with our allies. I learned a great deal from an in-depth briefing with French physicists about our need to modernize our own nuclear arsenal.

As Secretary of Defense Gates has noted, ``The United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead.'' The Perry-Schlesinger Strategic Posture Commission noted that the nuclear weapons complex ``physical infrastructure is in serious need of transformation.''

In response, the administration has made a commitment to invest $14 billion in new funding over the next 10 years for the nuclear weapons complex. As a result, the safety, stability, and reliability of our nuclear deterrent can be improved. The new investments will double the surveillance within the nuclear stockpile from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2011. Finally, the Administration has proposed nearly $9 billion for our plutonium and uranium facilities, and it has made a commitment to request additional funding necessary for those facilities once the designs are completed.

While the New START treaty contributes to reducing the threat of nuclear war and strengthens nuclear nonproliferation efforts, it is disappointing to me that the treaty reflects an outdated view of one of the primary threats to our national security. This treaty does not address the significant disparity between the number of nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Russia's stockpile compared to our own.

The Perry-Schlesinger Strategic Posture Commission reported that Russia had an estimated 3,800 tactical nuclear weapons compared to fewer than 500 in our own stockpile. By maintaining a distinction between the threats of nuclear attack that warrant the ratification of a treaty from those nuclear threats that do not simply based upon the distance from which a nuclear weapon is launched or the method by which such a weapon is launched, we preserve a Cold War mentality regarding the nuclear threats facing our country.

The large numerical disparity in the number of warheads each country maintains is not the only reason they warrant a higher priority than they were given by either country in this treaty.

As the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I believe that the characteristics of tactical nuclear weapons, particularly their vulnerability for theft and potential for nuclear terrorism, make reducing their numbers essential to our national security.

President Obama correctly described the greatest threat facing our Nation in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review when he said that ``the threat of global nuclear war has become remote, but the risk of nuclear attack has increased ..... today's most immediate and extreme danger is nuclear terrorism.''

Several arms control groups, including the Stimson Center, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, have each stated that the danger of these weapons rests not only in the destructive power of each weapon but also because they are vulnerable to theft by rogue nations and terrorist groups.

Earlier this month, I wrote to Secretary Gates and Secretary Clinton about my concerns regarding this issue and requested a commitment from them to seek reductions in the number of Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

I would like to read a portion of their response for those of my colleagues who share my concern regarding this disparity:

The Administration is committed to seeking improved security of, and reductions in, Russian tactical nuclear weapons. We agree with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's call, in the resolution of advice and consent to ratification of the New START treaty, to pursue an agreement with the Russians to address them. These negotiations offer our best chance to constrain Russian tactical nuclear weapons, but we believe Russia will be unlikely to begin such negotiations if the New START treaty does not enter into force.

The letter further states that:

With regard to future agreements, we strongly agree with you that the characteristics of tactical nuclear weapons--particularly their vulnerability to theft, misuse, or acquisition by terrorists--make reducing their numbers and enhancing their safety and security extremely important.

I ask unanimous consent that my letter to the Secretaries and their response be printed in the Record at the end of my statement.

So where does that leave us? Does the New START treaty lead to mutual and verifiable reductions in nuclear arms? Does the New START treaty renew our Nation's commitment to arms control? Given the commitments by the administration, will it reinvigorate our nuclear nonproliferation efforts?

The answers to these questions were most succinctly addressed in a statement by the leader who negotiated and signed the first START treaty, former President George H.W. Bush. I will conclude by associating myself with his comments on the issue, which I will read in full: ``I urge the United States Senate to ratify the [New] START treaty.''

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD.

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