[Senate Hearing 107-486]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-486
THE NEW STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. SECURITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 6, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware, Chairman
PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland JESSE HELMS, North Carolina
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota BILL FRIST, Tennessee
BARBARA BOXER, California LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia
BILL NELSON, Florida SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
Virginia
Edwin K. Hall, Staff Director
Patricia A. McNerney, Republican Staff Director
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, prepared
statement...................................................... 30
Helms, Hon. Jesse, U.S. Senator from North Carolina, prepared
statement...................................................... 4
Perry, Hon. William J., former Secretary of Defense, Michael and
Barbara Berberian Professor, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. 8
Weinberger, Hon. Caspar W., former Secretary of Defense,
Washington, DC................................................. 6
(iii)
THE NEW STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. SECURITY
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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:20 a.m. in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph R.
Biden, Jr. (chairman of the committee), presiding.
Present: Senators Biden, Bill Nelson, Lugar, Hagel, and
Allen.
The Chairman. The hearing will come to order. I am
delighted today that we have the second of what will be a
series of hearings on the future of American foreign policy,
and two of the most distinguished men who served in this town
and are still listened to closely by many.
Just over a decade ago the Soviet Union collapsed and, with
that, the world view that had sustained us for half a century
was basically swept away. No longer did any country seek world
domination. No longer did we face the threat of
totalitarianism, and for the last 10 years, though, we faced a
new, or newly important challenges. That is, managing the
transition from the cold war's nuclear stalemate to the more
stable force posture with less reliance upon nuclear weapons,
preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and long-
range ballistic missiles, rooting out terrorism and the
conditions that lead to it, and stemming the international
narcotics trade, combating the spread of HIV/AIDS and other
infectious diseases, including, I might add, those that might
actually be biological weapons, and reducing the gap between
the haves and the have-nots which might otherwise breed wars,
terrorism, and destabilize population flows.
In a sense, every once in a while I say to the two
Secretaries I yearn for the good old days every once in a while
where things were very dangerous but, in a sense, very stable.
Now the world may be changing again. The attacks of September
11 have made international terrorism, or at least radical
Islamic terrorism, an enemy that must be defeated. The
aspirations of al-Qaeda for weapons of mass destruction and the
anthrax attacks this fall have made nonproliferation a vital
theater in that war on terrorism. Our world and our thinking
are still in transition, and we still have much to learn about
where we are headed.
To help us get some perspective, the Foreign Relations
Committee is holding a series of hearings with distinguished
witnesses on, ``securing America's future.'' We began with the
Secretary of State yesterday, and tomorrow we hear from Sandy
Burger and Bill Kristol and retired general George Joulwan
regarding the war on terrorism. Later hearings will feature
Madeleine Albright, Robert Rubin, and many others.
Today's hearing features two former Secretaries of Defense,
very distinguished men. It was preceded by a briefing for the
media and staff by three Carnegie Endowment staff members, and
I want to thank them for arranging and participating in that
event. Professor William Perry, former Secretary of Defense, is
now back at Stanford University, and he has brought unusual
clarity to the post of cold war strategic policy during the
first Clinton administration. I would guess that no Secretary
before or since has used a reporter's question to explain to
the American public what circular area probable, or CAP,
actually means.
Then Bill Perry co-authored with Ash Carter a tremendously
thoughtful book on the threats we face entitled, ``Preventive
Defense, A New Security Strategy for America.'' One of the
questions, and generic questions we have to ask today is, does
9/11 warrant a revised edition of that book, or is it still
applicable, and how? Secretary Perry hopefully will shed some
light on that for us shortly.
And former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was
Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, when a major
buildup of our conventional and nuclear armed forces was
followed by renewed emphasis on arms control, leading to the
first START treaty. President Reagan stunned the world at
Reykjavik when he said, ``we should rid the world of nuclear
weapons,'' but he also popularized the old Russian saying,
``trust but verify.''
Secretary Weinberger can speak to that decision and how it
plays out today. As long-time CEO of Forbes, Inc., he can also
speak to our nuclear force posture in both strategic and
economic terms.
I look forward to hearing our witnesses' testimony and
asking them some questions that I believe are the difficult
questions we up here face today as part of the process of
making policy. What are the threats that America faces, and how
should we deal with them? Are they different from what they
were just on the 10th of September, and not just how, not just
in the short run how we deal with them, but over the long haul.
What role should nuclear weapons play in meeting those
threats? Russia's President Putin's reaction to President
Bush's declaration of the intent to withdraw from the ABM
treaty was muted, even cooperative. What will it take for that
relationship to endure, and how does it blossom? Does this
affect it negatively or positively? Should we seek further arms
reduction treaties, or should we stay unfettered, even if the
price is to leave Russia unfettered and its nuclear force
numbers unverifiable?
Having a ban on the START II treaty, should we still try to
get the Russians and China to do without MIRVd ICBMs, or is
crisis stability now an irrelevant concept in the post cold
war? As Secretary of State Powell said yesterday, it does not
matter. It is up to the Russians, whatever they need, whatever
they want is fine by us, and we will decide what we want, so
the whole notion of crisis stability, is it still a relevant
concept? If we build a national missile defense, should it be
one that threatens China's nuclear deterrent, or should we
choose an architecture that recognizes the impact on China's
nuclear weapons, and if we do not, if it is viewed by the
Chinese as threatening them, is it likely to have an impact on
the new arms race in Asia and in the subcontinent?
We do not know the answer to these questions, but I am
looking forward to some insight from our witnesses, and how
serious is the risk of an aberrant reaction by China and then
by India, Pakistan, and other Asian countries in response if we
build a national defense that the Chinese feel threatens their
deterrent capability?
How should we deal with North Korea? Is the so-called Perry
process dead, or can it be revived, or is it still able to
function?
How can we stop Russia and Chinese proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction, or long-range missile materials and
technology? Can we secure Russia's cooperation with diplomatic
and economic initiatives and, if so, what will the price be? Is
it a price worth paying?
As I said, these are tough questions for all of us, but
today's witnesses are men of unusual breadth and experience.
Gentlemen, in this time of both peril and opportunity you have
my attention, the committee's attention and, I suspect, the
Nation's attention, but first a word from a man who has already
shaped many of the issues that we will discuss today, the
acting chairman for the day, or acting ranking member for the
day, former chairman of this committee and a person of unusual
insight and depth, in my view, on these issues, the Senator
from Indiana, Senator Lugar.
Senator Lugar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
congratulate you again on the schedule of comprehensive
hearings covering most of the major foreign policy issues, and
your success in obtaining such quality witnesses, as evidenced
by our two guests today. Senator Helms is ill, and he has asked
me to introduce into the record, which I would like to do, his
statement, without objection.
There are some important parts of Senator Helms' statement
which I would like to quote, because I think they are a good
preface for the hearing, and Senator Helms in his statement
says: ``President Bush's policy regarding Russia reflects this
change and moves the United States away from a concept of
mutually assured destruction, which was based on the
identification of one government, the Soviet Union, as our
mortal enemy. That was true then, but no more. The President's
strategy envisions a new relationship with Russia, anticipates
a broad range of new threats, and proposes to build a force
employing a variety of nuclear and conventional capabilities to
defer and defend against those foes.''
Senator Helms progresses on to suggest that: ``The United
States is obliged to treat Russia on the basis of shared goals
and interests, not nuclear arms control, as we already do with
France and the United Kingdom, two other nuclear powers,'' and
he says in ``our relationship with Russia I think we must move
in this direction,'' but he cautions also that ``Russia must
stop its proliferation to Iran, the human rights abuses in
Chechnya, its inclination to claim new spheres of influence,
and move toward the rule of law, and a flourishing democracy.''
Now, Senator Helms also would have raised as his first
question a question that I will pose now and ask that it also
be inserted in the record, and perhaps in your testimony.
Secretary Weinberger. ``When the Reagan administration
negotiated the START I treaty, the Soviet threat determined the
United States' nuclear force requirements, but that is no
longer the case, and since the United States reductions are not
linked to any reciprocal cuts by Moscow, would you agree that
it no longer makes sense to codify our nuclear reductions in
the cold war era treaties with Russia, particularly since they
are inherently costly, time-consuming, and adversarial, and
would you also agree that it is possible for more transparency
and predictability through less formal arrangements, much like
the agreements the United States has with the OSCE and various
multilateral export control regimes?''
I ask not that you answer that immediately, but obviously
that is one of the arguments that we will have today, and
Senator Helms has posed it in a concise manner.
Let me just say what a pleasure it is to be with these two
distinguished Secretaries. I remember so well visiting with Cap
Weinberger clear back in the days in which he was involved in
local government and state government in California, and then
his distinguished career in Washington in so many capacities,
and I appreciate that friendship over the years.
And Bill Perry was on the initial flight of the Nunn-Lugar
group. He was then at Stanford, but he joined Sam Nunn and I on
a trip to Russia 10 years ago, and offered great vision and
advice. Of course, we had no idea he would become Secretary of
Defense, but he did.
In Ukraine, he planted sunflowers where hundreds of acres
of cables linking up nuclear sites where warheads sat atop
intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at the United States
of America. Under Secretary Perry's leadership in the
Cooperative Threat Reduction program came into its own with
American businesses providing great support and expertise to
dismantle weapons that threatened American security in a
transparent way, so that the American people knew what was
being spent and for what. He is a tremendous leader of the
Pentagon and the Nunn-Lugar and I appreciate that very much, as
he knows, but I simply wanted for the record to make that point
clear.
Again, I look forward to hearing from both of you, as do
the members of our committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Senator Helms follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Jesse Helms
This committee is honored and grateful that Secretaries Weinberger
and Perry have agreed to meet with us this morning to talk about the
new relationship between the United States and Russia, and the new
strategic framework that should define it.
Russia today is not the same Russia of the Cold War. The government
in Moscow is no longer a threat to the United States. The evil empire
of the Soviet Union--as President Reagan justifiably called it--no
longer exists, and it is often that our two countries have almost
identical interests around the world.
President Bush's policy regarding Russia reflects this change and
moves the United States away from the concept of ``mutually assured
destruction,'' which was based on the identification of one
government--the Soviet Union--as our mortal enemy. That was true then,
but no more.
The President's strategy envisions a new relationship with Russia.
It anticipates a broad range of new threats, and it proposes to build a
force employing a variety of nuclear and conventional capabilities to
deter and defend against these foes.
As such, the President is unquestionably justified in saying that
the U.S. and Russia must move beyond the adversarial diplomacy,
outdated strategic concepts, and cumbersome arms control agreements of
the Cold War. This legacy of confrontation and mistrust is sustained
through structures and procedures that continue to hinder, rather than
improve, our relations.
That is why the President's plan to cut nuclear weapons by nearly
two-thirds over the next ten years should not be delayed by lengthy
negotiations, formal treaties, and other activities that keep the U.S.
and Russia hog tied in a bygone era.
There are those, of course, who believe that arms control
agreements alone are enough to ensure our security and promote
stability. There are voices clamoring that only through formal treaties
and high-level summits can the United States uphold Moscow's self
esteem, ensure stability, prevent arms races, and hold at bay Russian
belligerence.
I don't agree with that kind of day dreaming. The United States is,
I think, obliged to treat Russia on the basis of shared goals and
interests--not nuclear arms control--much as we already do with France
and the United Kingdom, two other nuclear powers. Our relationship with
Russia must, I think, move in this direction.
That is why I was not surprised by Moscow's relative indifference
when President Bush announced his intention last year to withdraw from
the ABM Treaty. Much to the chagrin of our fine President's critics,
the sky did not fall--and President Putin made clear that this action
would not harm U.S.-Russian relations.
However, and this is important, the hope for more normal relations
by the United States with Russia must not lead us to ignore that
serious issues still must be resolved by our two countries.
Russia must stop its proliferation to Iran, its human rights abuses
in Chechnya, and its inclination to claim new spheres of influence.
The health of Russia's democracy will depend on reinvigorating the
rule of law and permitting an independent media to flourish.
Thanks you, again, gentlemen for being here today.
The Chairman. Thank you, and gentlemen, our biggest problem
today--and I have been here a long time; I am going on my 30th
year sitting here, and Senator Lugar about the same--is we
have, as they said in the old B-movies, ``Smokey and the
Bandit,'' what we have here is, ``we have ourselves a priority
problem,'' and there are a number of things we would like to
do, and I do not think anyone disagrees with the list that the
President has set out and others have added to, but there is a
matter of money and there is a matter of threat perception
generally. I would just note that.
Up at Davos in New York I met with the Foreign Minister of
France, Mr. Vedrine for about an hour and a half at his
request, and the point I tried to make to him when he talked
about, he did not understand some of our policies, was that
there is a genuine difference in the perception of what the
threat is to each of our countries. I said, with regard to
Iraq, for example, the American people and I think that Saddam
Hussein has essentially painted a bull's-eye on the back of
America and says, you are my target.
The French do not feel that way. I understand why you do
not feel that way, but understand this is a real threat to us,
and I think the greatest threat to the alliance is how we
arrive at determining whether or not our threat perceptions are
similar, otherwise our interests will not be the same.
So from cost standpoint and from a foreign policy
standpoint, we have to prioritize much of what we do based upon
what we think the threats are, and how real they are and how
urgent they are, and so I am anxious to hear from both of you
on that and anything else you wish to speak to.
As a matter of protocol, the usual way we do this is, the
majority's witness goes first, and the minority's witness goes
second, but I do not consider it that way at all. I do not
consider you either majority or minority, and so I would rather
proceed in terms of seniority here, and so Secretary
Weinberger, I would invite you to address the committee first,
if you are willing, unless you guys have worked out a different
way you want to do it.
Dr. Perry. That is very agreeable to me.
STATEMENT OF HON. CASPAR W. WEINBERGER, FORMER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Weinberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do not
think anybody is senior to me now, at least in age, so you
probably have reached a proper compromise. I appreciate the
honor of appearing before the committee, and appreciate also
the nice comments that you and Senator Lugar have made.
Senator Lugar and I go back a very long way. I actually
used to be a Young Republican, although it certainly does not
look like it now, and Senator Lugar was one of the people who
was willing to come out all the way to San Francisco and help a
struggling party at that time. He was an even younger
Republican.
I thought primarily the hearing was to be mostly of your
interest in the nuclear posture----
The Chairman. It is.
Mr. Weinberger [continuing]. So I have prepared a few very
informal notes about that. That was, as you know, a document
required by the Congress, which requirement was met by the
administration on time, and the Nuclear Posture Review was
submitted, and basically it followed along with many of the
points that you, Mr. Chairman, have made with respect to the
changes that have occurred.
It is important, however, to note that while there is a
better relationship, there are still some causes for concern,
because first of all they have many thousands of nuclear
warheads, biological, because of the great lack of funds in
Russia to maintain them, and they have used some of our
basically unsupervised, unaudited economic aid for new weapons,
they are constructing and working on new missiles, and we know
that they began working on defensive measures within a very
short time after they signed the ABM treaty agreeing not to do
it 30 years go, so there are still some causes for concern, as,
of course, their increasingly warm relationship with China and
their continued opposition to most of the positions we take in
international organizations.
None of this is to detract from the fact that we do have a
better relationship, we want one, and we have to ensure that we
do everything we can to achieve that while at the same time
being extremely careful to make sure that a sudden worsening of
that relationship we would be prepared to deal with.
The other conditions that have changed, I think, is that
while the Russians have fewer nuclear weapons, and they want
fewer nuclear weapons because they do not have the money to
maintain what they have, even though they are working to
acquire new ones and frequently using economic aid money to do
that. The economic aid and the aid for carrying out Nunn-Lugar
and all of the other things that are given to them should be
audited and should be very carefully monitored, exactly as we
did with the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was called the
most altruistic gesture in history, but every nickel of it was
audited, every penny of it was monitored to make sure that it
went precisely for the purposes intended.
We are eager, however, to have nuclear arms reductions.
President Bush offered unilaterally to take ours down to
somewhere between 1,700 and 2,200 from something well over
6,000, and that process is basically underway now.
There are a lot of other countries, however, now that have
nuclear weapons and nuclear programs, and that is another of
the things that has changed since the end of the cold war. The
count actually is that 12 nations have nuclear weapons programs
underway now. And 28 have ballistic missiles on which the
nuclear weapons and biological and chemical can be mounted, of
course. And 13 nations have biological weapons, and 16 have
chemical weapons, so it is a quite different world.
The potential for evil has proliferated, if you like, and
we are in a situation where we need to take into consideration
all of the changes that have occurred, both good and bad. We
are at last freed from the constraints on our ability to defend
ourselves. June 14 is the date that I believe will go down in
history as a sort of independence, because that is the day on
which, under the 6 months' notice that President Bush gave
sometime ago, we will be free to begin deploying and developing
the strategic defenses, effective strategic defenses as soon as
possible.
We can and should do this as quickly as possible, because
we need to make sure that we have the ability to defend
ourselves against a much wider set of contingencies and
possibilities than we faced before. You pointed out correctly,
Mr. Chairman, that it was in some ways simpler with a single
enemy, even though that was a very powerful enemy, an enemy who
was intent on world domination, but we now have to deal with
other changed circumstances, one of which is that there are
these large number of other nations that I just listed that are
working on many of the same capabilities, and that means that
we will face multiple kinds of threats.
One threat, of course, was September 11. There are many
others, and it is essential that we move on a number of
different fronts to modernize the triad, so to speak. The triad
when I was there many, many years ago was simply ground-based
and sea-based and air-based missiles that would have the
capability of retaliating against an attack. It was basically
considered in those days as an offensive deterrent. That was
all we had. We had three different legs of it. We wanted to be
survivable, and so we kept that degree of redundancy.
Now we need, I think, to bear in mind that we are freed of
the inability to use any defensive systems, will be on June 14,
and from there on we are then able to add a different concept,
a different framework to our triad, and that is, defense. We
were forbidden to do that before. Now we can do that.
We will also, I think, have to employ advanced conventional
weapons, conventional weapons that are even more accurate and
have basically other capabilities, such as going after
differentiated targets, targets in caves, targets deep
underground, targets that are heavily camouflaged, and in order
to do this properly we will need to improve also, in addition
to defense, the intelligence capability, particularly the
HUMINT, the human intelligence capability, and our special
operations. The special operations forces are made up of
remarkable people who have done an extraordinarily good job in
Afghanistan, and whose function is to pick out targets, to help
the artillery targets be accurately placed, and to gather
intelligence about what the enemy is possibly going to do.
We need more of this, of course, and we need particularly
to know if we can with human intelligence being able to
penetrate and become agents who can become a part of these
terrorist organizations who let us know well in advance what it
is they are planning. That is the best defense of all, to know
where and when they are planning to attack, and we are sadly
not capable of doing very much of this at this time.
So the new triad, then, would be a triad that included both
the old triad--and I know there are some criticisms, as there
constantly are, of course, about almost everything we do, but
there is some criticism that we are abandoning a lot of the
elements of the old triad, and we are not, and we should not.
What we are doing is including them, incorporating them in a
new triad which includes the old triad of defense and also
greater emphasis on infrastructure, particularly on
intelligence, command and control and communications.
We have also said that we will go to the 1,700 to 2,200
operationally deployed warheads by the year 2012. It is vital,
I think, to preserve and keep many of the formerly, of the
downloaded warheads just in case other threats arise, or
countries that we were counting on turn hostile. There is a
great deal of improvement--it is a great deal better, let me
put it that way, to be able to revive downloaded warheads than
it is to construct new ones if we should suddenly need them.
Mr. Chairman, there are, of course, a tremendous number of
other elements, as you indicated. Those are the ones I wanted
to highlight, but based primarily on the Nuclear Posture Review
I would be glad, after my distinguished colleague completes his
statement, to try to take your questions, including the one
that Senator Lugar posed a moment ago.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
Secretary Perry.
STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM J. PERRY, FORMER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE, MICHAEL AND BARBARA BERBERIAN PROFESSOR, STANFORD
UNIVERSITY, STANFORD, CA
Dr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A few years ago, Dr.
Ash Carter and I wrote a book, ``Preventive Defense,'' which
the chairman mentioned in his opening comments. The thesis of
this book was that the end of the cold war marked an end to
type A threats to the United States. Type A we defined as
threats to the survival of the United States.
But it also, we said, marked an increase in type B threats,
threats of regional war, and therefore required maintaining a
defense posture which has come to be called 2MRC, or the
ability to deal with two major regional contingencies.
We have to talk about that as a separate issue. The primary
focus of the book was the emergence of what we called type C
threats. Type C are the new threats to the homeland that could
result in casualties comparable to those that America has
suffered in major wars. We described several different kinds of
type C threats. The first one was the reemergence of a major
adversary and a restart of the cold war. Much of the book was
devoted to a description of how to prevent that unfortunate
contingency from developing. We concluded that a necessary but
not sufficient condition was maintaining positive, constructive
relationships with Russia and China.
A second type C contingency would be the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction to hostile regional powers. The
fear was that this could change their calculus of deterrence,
or could even lead them to believe that they could blackmail
the United States. Therefore, we said it was a high national
priority to prevent such proliferation. We talked about ways of
doing that through diplomacy with North Korea and Iran. To be
sure, this might be coercive diplomacy, but nevertheless
diplomacy.
In the case of Iraq, we believed then and believe now that
diplomacy will not be sufficient, that with Iraq we must take
stronger action and be prepared to take military action, if
necessary, to prevent proliferation.
Now, for success in any of these diplomatic endeavors, even
the course of diplomacy, a necessary but not sufficient
condition is some cooperation of the other nuclear powers,
including some cooperation with Russia and China, and I will
return to that point before I finish my introductory remarks.
The third kind of type C threat was a threat of what we
called catastrophic terrorism. The entire chapter 5 in the book
was devoted to a discussion of catastrophic terrorism. By that,
we did not mean truck bombs. We meant a terrorist action that
could result in casualties comparable to what Americans
suffered in war. That was our definition of catastrophic
terrorism.
In this book we forecast that such an attack would happen
in the United States within a few years, and we prescribed the
actions to prevent such attack--not prevent, that is too strong
a word, to minimize the possibility of such an attack.
We also forecast that those actions would not be taken
until after the first major attack occurred. Unfortunately,
both of those forecasts have proven to be correct.
The good news is that 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax
incident were a wake-up call both to the public and to the
government. The bad news is that 9/11 is not the worst that the
terrorists are planning. We know that the terrorists are trying
to get chemical weapons, biological weapons, even nuclear
weapons, and if they get them no one--no one--should doubt that
they would use them.
Well, now that we are awake, and now that we understand
that the worst is still ahead of us, what should we do? It
seems to me that our government should make its highest
priority, not just a priority, but the highest priority dealing
with the threat of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
What do I mean by dealing with? First of all, doing
everything we can, taking every action we can to prevent the
success of their operations and, second, understanding that
that will not always be successful, being prepared to manage
the consequence if the terrorist operation succeeds. I will
talk about both of those, the prevention and the management of
the consequences.
First of all, prevention. No. 1 on my list are the
antiproliferation actions we can take, especially
antiproliferation of nuclear weapons. That will include
investing new capital in antiproliferation programs, of which
the Nunn-Lugar is the most prominent.
Second, investing real political capital in getting serious
cooperation from the other nuclear powers in this regard, in
particular, serious cooperation from, Russia and China.
And third is, being prepared to take coercive action
against proliferators, and that could include military action.
I have in mind here particularly the possibility of military
action against Iraq, if we cannot prevent them from moving
ahead with their programs to proliferate to nuclear weapons.
The second prevention tactic is to dismember the terrorist
bases and remove the governments that are hosting them. The
operation in Afghanistan is exemplary in that regard. It not
only serves the purpose of greatly diminishing the threat of
al-Qaeda, but it also is a clear lesson to other nations who
may be hosting terrorists.
Third is to break up the terrorist cells around the world.
This is a law enforcement function, primarily, but is an
international law enforcement function, and therefore its
success requires much greater cooperation with foreign law
enforcement officials than we have previously had, and there
should be a high priority to achieving that cooperation.
Fourth is detecting and preempting terrorist operations
before they occur. This is an intelligence function, and to
succeed in it, it also requires much greater cooperation with
foreign intelligence agencies than we have ever had, and I
might say this, to be fully successful it will include
cooperation with the intelligence agencies of Russia and China.
To say the least it is countercultural for our intelligence
agencies to effect such cooperation. Nevertheless it is very
important.
The fifth prevention area is to improve the protection of
likely targets of terrorists. Commercial air is an obvious one.
Nuclear reactors is another obvious one. Also, the ventilation
system in public buildings is an important area. We are never
going to be able to make all of these impervious to attack, but
we ought to convert them from soft targets to hard targets.
An example of a hard target in commercial air is the
Israeli airline, El Al, which has made itself a hard target. No
terrorist has succeeded in getting into El Al now for more than
a decade, so it can be done.
Incidentally, to the extent we are successful here, this is
going to involve standardizing these approaches to foreign
carriers as well as the United States carriers, because foreign
carriers fly into American airports, Americans fly into foreign
airports, so this is something that is going to also require an
international effort.
Now, in the consequence management area, it is especially
important for biological and chemical weapons for two reasons.
First of all, because it is so much harder to prevent
terrorists from getting biological weapons. There are huge
barriers to terrorists getting nuclear weapons. Those barriers
do not exist in the case of biological weapons.
Also, because good consequence management, fast response to
a biological or chemical attack can dramatically decrease the
number of fatalities that result from that attack.
What are the things we can do in consequence management?
First of all is stockpile antibiotics and vaccines that are
necessary, and in that regard I am pleased to hear the
government has decided to stockpile 300 million doses of
smallpox vaccine by the end of the year. I think that is a very
important step.
Besides stockpiling vaccines and antibiotics, we should be
developing new and more effective antibiotics and vaccines. In
that regard, it is very important that we develop cooperation
with other nations, and of the other nations who might
cooperate, Russia is No. 1 on the list. There is every reason
to believe that Russia is more advanced in this field than
other nations, including the United States, for reasons that
are not always attractive, but nevertheless important reasons,
and therefore we should develop a cooperative program with
Russia in this regard. We can benefit from it.
Second, we should be organizing the pharmaceutical and
medical industries and the first responders to biological or
chemical attack. This can and should be done through the
Centers for Disease Control.
And finally, we should be organizing and training our
National Guard, the National Guard in various localities to
assist the first responders if and when the terrorist attack
occurs in their region.
I might mention parenthetically that cooperation with
Russia on dealing with biological attacks could also be
extended to include cooperation in dealing with other epidemics
or pandemics, such as HIV, to the benefit of both countries.
Now, what I have described here requires many actions on
the part of our government, some of which I am happy to say are
already underway. These actions require bold leadership, as we,
for example, have demonstrated already in Afghanistan. These
actions are going to be expensive, but I would say not as
expensive as the 9/11 attack.
They will be inconvenient. Anybody who has flown commercial
air as much as I have flown it since 9/11 will understand what
inconvenience means, but the point--and here is the point I
want to emphasize. They will require for their success greatly
increased cooperation with other nations, including greatly
increased cooperation with Russia and with China. We can and we
should lead in this regard, but we cannot go it alone. Whether
we are talking about a military operation in Afghanistan, or a
military operation in Iraq, we need the cooperation and support
of other nations if not for military strength, at least for the
bases and logistical support that are required.
If we are talking about shutting down nuclear
proliferators, proliferating material and technology, we need
the cooperation of other nuclear nations, and in particular we
need the cooperation, and serious cooperation, of Russia and
China.
If we are talking about shutting down terrorist cells, we
need cooperation of foreign law enforcement officials.
In detecting and preempting planned terrorist attacks, we
need the cooperation of intelligence agencies of other
countries, and in developing the most effective vaccine and
antibiotics, we need the cooperation of other nations,
particularly including Russia.
So if we make the highest national priority dealing with
terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, then we must make
constructive cooperation with other nations the top priority.
Certainly this includes cooperation with our allies, Britain,
France, Germany, Japan, but it also includes cooperation with
Russia and China, which is not always so easy to get; but real
cooperation, especially real cooperation with those two
countries will dramatically increase our security and therefore
we should move seriously to efforts to create joint programs
with them.
Now, creating those joint programs may decrease flexibility
and freedom of action we have in other areas. We have to weigh,
make a balance between which of these will increase our
security more. That should be the acid test. Does it increase
our security, or does it not?
On this last point of forming cooperative programs with
other nations, I want to close with a quote as I remember it
from Winston Churchill, talking about the importance of
coalition, and he was, of course, referring to the World War II
coalition which was critical to Britain's success in the war,
but he was also talking about the difficulty of such
coalitions, and his statement, as I remember it, is that
coalitions are difficult because even allies sometimes have
ideas of their own. That is the problem we will face in trying
to form these cooperative programs. Our allies, our coalition
partners will have ideas of their own, and we will have to
decide when we have to accommodate those ideas and when we go
it alone.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you both very much. With the permission
of my colleagues, since we have a manageable group, could we do
10-minute rounds, if that is OK, and again, thank you both
first of all for being here. I realize it is not convenient. I
realize how difficult it is, not just because it is
inconvenient to fly, but you both have busy schedules and it is
not easy, and I thank you very much, and I mean that sincerely.
As usual, Secretary Perry, the professor in you is very
much appreciated by me and my colleagues, because you are able
to capsulize what I think is the single biggest dilemma we have
here, and as you quoted Churchill, even allies have ideas of
their own, as you both know, the disconnect in our capability
and our NATO allies' capability, military capability is
producing some dilemma.
It is factually the case that without going into detail,
and you both know it better than I, that some of our military
folks, when asked the question in terms of planning particular
operations, those including our NATO assets to greater increase
our capability, in some cases it will degrade our capability in
the sense that it slows us up, so we have had this debate.
We have had this debate--I would say to my friend Senator
Lugar, we have basically been on the same side of this issue. I
am about to say that we had this debate in the Balkans. We had
this debate about, we would come back here and everyone would
bemoan the fact that in dealing with Kosovo or Bosnia, we had
to check out with Chirac, or we had to check with Schroeder or
whoever happened to be in power among our allies, and how
tedious and time-consuming this was, and would it not be better
just to move without them.
But as you point out, there is a price to pay both ways
here, and one of the things I hope we get over is this notion
that there is an easy way, that we either just simply go it
alone--and we should understand the price we pay when we go it
alone. We may be able to solve the immediate problem more
rapidly, and more convincingly, but it may create us other
problems, and I think we are sort of--I would argue, Mr.
Secretary, that that is one of the changes that is dawning on
policymakers in this town on both sides of the aisle. They come
down different ways.
But this notion that there are tradeoffs, you talked about
cooperation with Russia and China and joint programs, but they
would decrease some freedom of action, and at the end of the
day the question I keep coming back to is, whatever action we
take, are we more or less secure? Are we better prepared, or
less prepared to deal with whatever the threat is that we
considered, and I would like to pursue that a little bit with
you if I may.
And obviously--and I have questions as well, Secretary
Weinberger, for you, but if you want to chime in in any of
this, I would rather this be a freeflowing conversation, and I
would invite my colleagues, at least on my time, if they want
to augment anything I have asked or said, because it is
appropriate that moment to interrupt, and please do it.
Mr. Secretary, or Secretary Perry, you laid out what you
thought the single greatest immediate threat was and required
the most immediate attention. Am I correct in assuming that
that does not mean you think we should be doing other things as
well, in addition to that? Your prioritizing is not an
exclusive list. You think the single most important problem we
face today is what you accurately characterize in your book,
and the reason I like your book so much is, you prioritized,
you laid out in clear fashion what you and Ash thought were the
threats, the nature of the threats and what assets and
attention should be directed to them in a timely fashion in
which it should be and today you have amended it--not amended
it, but you have emphasized that this third category, the
category C threats require the most urgent attention. At least,
that is how I understood your comments, and you indicate they
will be expensive, inconvenient, and require cooperation with
other nations.
Talk to us for a minute about what kind of cooperation,
what kind of agreements, whatever you want to phrase it,
cooperation, we should be seeking at this moment from Russia
and from China to deal with this proliferation threat,
proliferation, as I understand you, more in the hands of
international organizations, terrorist organizations, and in
some cases in the hands of heads of state who are not
particularly rational.
What kind of cooperation in specific terms would you be
looking to, and what other actions we are contemplating might
be, our freedom to move in that direction might be decreased,
and the tradeoffs you are willing to pay in terms of U.S.
security interest?
That is very broad, but I hope you understand the thrust of
what I am trying to get at.
Dr. Perry. First on the list is the cooperation which is
basically the extension of the Nunn-Lugar program, where we and
Russia cooperate in reducing the threat that their nuclear
weapons and their nuclear technology and their nuclear know-how
will get in the hands of terrorists.
This has been a goal of the Nunn-Lugar program for 10
years, and we have had dramatic success in it to this point,
but I think we need more substantial effort along those lines,
but that has to be a cooperative program. We cannot impose that
on Russia. It requires their cooperation. Now, since it suits
their interest also, it is relatively easy to get that
cooperation in that field.
Another example is the side of commercial nuclear
technologies to other nations. For example, Russia is selling
nuclear technology to Iran. This we are concerned will increase
the risk of nuclear proliferation in Iran, the proliferation of
nuclear weapons. Russia does not agree with that assessment. In
this case, it does not suit their interests, because their
commercial interests are very much in favor of making those
sales, so that is much harder to get cooperation in that field.
The Chairman. Can I interrupt at that point? Senator Lugar
and I, among others--it is not unique to us, but the particular
program we do not advertise as a be-all and end-all, is to deal
directly with the Russians, and I have raised this personally
with Mr. Putin, deal directly with the Russians on that
economic interest side of the equation as well as with Iraq.
For example, you have read, and you are aware that the
Russians, whether they are able to be executed or not, have
some significant contracts with the Iraqis, as well as with the
Iranians to a lesser degree, that they view as a bonanza for
them economically. It is estimated that the contracts
theoretically are worth somewhere close to $40 billion over the
next several years in Iraq, and that there is--and I ask
Senator Lugar's staff to correct me, but I think their balance
of trade on the positive side of the equation with Iran is
several billion dollars a year, based upon the only thing they
have to trade.
They do not have many widgets people want to buy, and that
maybe we should be in the business of being a little bit
innovative here, and trading off the debt that is owed us, and
even dealing with, as Senator Lugar has with our German friends
and others, about it is to their benefit to deal with
nonproliferation, as well as going to the Russians now and
saying there is a way to work out a deal. You change your
attitude toward Iraq, we will make sure you are in the mix when
that oilfield is developed.
We are not just going to take those contracts and award
them to American companies, because those economic interests
seem to be serious drivers of Soviet policy now, because, and I
tend to believe him, as Putin said to me in response to a
question, and I will end with this, he said, don't you think I
understand, Senator, that a long-range missile developed by
Iran is as likely to strike Moscow as it is to strike the
United States, but yet they continue.
So should we be exploring these different avenues that are
somewhat unconventional, or is the price too high for that?
Dr. Perry. In a word, yes. I do not have a formula how to
deal with this problem, but I believe that the beginning of
wisdom is understanding that this is an economic issue with the
Russians, and therefore any success will have to be an
economic-based approach.
A third area of cooperation which might have some of the
same elements is in the biological field, and Nunn-Lugar has
never been successfully applied to biological weapons, and yet
to me, that is probably as great a threat, if not a greater
threat of terrorists getting biological weapons to use in the
United States. Here the same basis for which the Nunn-Lugar
program was set up for nuclear weapons applies to biological
weapons.
Two facets of it. First of all, you want cooperation from
the Russians in guarding and protecting their biological
materials, and know-how. That is just as important as it is in
the nuclear field.
And second, as I mentioned in my testimony, you want
cooperation from the Russians in their ways of dealing with
biological weapons where they may be more advanced than we in
some respects. So all of those are very practical and important
areas of cooperation with the Russians.
I mentioned, incidentally, Russia and other nations'
cooperation in the law enforcement field and the intelligence
field, very important in the protection of terrorists, much
greater cooperation than we have had in the past. I am
confident that that can be achieved, but there might be some
prices attached to it.
The Chairman. Is your sense that they have reached the
point, after September 11, that it is in their interests to
cooperate in the biological and chemical side of the equation?
Do you think they have had that epiphany?
Dr. Perry. I believe so, but I have not been able to put
that personally to a test. I can testify that when I was
Secretary of Defense and tried to elicit cooperation with the
Russians in the biological field, and tried very hard to elicit
that cooperation, I was not successful. That is the only major
lack of success I can point to in that field.
Mr. Weinberger. Mr. Chairman, I did not want to interrupt
the flow here, but I think it is important to deal with the
thing Secretary Perry has been talking about. I think it is
also important to bear in mind that our best intentions may be
thwarted by actions that they take that we do not really even
know about, or would not necessarily approve.
Nunn-Lugar involved giving substantial amounts of money to
them for specific purpose of helping to take down their nuclear
weapons and then proliferation and all of that. As I understand
it, they have used either directly, or because the money is
fungible, indirectly, some of those funds at least for the
procurement of very new and advanced weapons systems, including
the submarine that went down, the Kursk, which was a very
advanced, modern day submarine, things that do not necessarily
help their economy, but indicate a continued concern about
their need to watch them very carefully.
All of these things should be done--you spoke about trust
and verify a moment ago, and that in a very broadly applied
sense is something that is vital to do. If we do not do it, I
think we are going to find a lot of our mixed intentions
frustrated by elements of one kind or another within Russia, or
within China, using these things that they get for one purpose
or another that is directly antithetical to the things we need.
The Chairman. Thank you. I would yield to Senator Lugar.
Senator Lugar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Weinberger is right money is fungible, but that
is why the Nunn-Lugar contracts with American businesses to
implement the dismantlement operations instead of the Russian
Government. It is also important to recognize that most Nunn-
Lugar assistance takes the form of material and technical
assistance, not money. It is difficult to imagine how a piece
of equipment provided by Nunn-Lugar to cut up Russian strategic
bombers can be used to modernize the Russian strategic nuclear
force. Furthermore, let us not forget that the budget for the
entire Russian Government was about $50 billion, and the
defense budget was $7 or $8 billion, as opposed to our $379
billion defense budget request. In other words, fungibility is
a viable argument if one believes that Russia was going to
perform the dismantlement in the absence of Nunn-Lugar funding.
Without Nunn-Lugar, I do not believe Russia could have met its
commitments under START I.
It is not an argument against failing to verify. I think
most of us, including Secretary Perry, were aware of this and
reported consistently on new developments concerning our
intelligence, and followed that closely. I saw an interesting
article written by Fred Kemp of the Wall Street Journal Europe
about the Davos conference, and he made the point that whereas
it was anticipated that attendance might be down but as a
matter of fact, most of the lectures were filled with people.
Two years ago most of the people were executives from dot-com
firms and electronics firms discussing the future. This year
much of the audience were chief executives listening to people
like the two of you.
Now, one of the persons who spoke was our mutual friend,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Kemp quotes Brzezinski as offering
some generalized ideas about how the world is going. Brzezinski
believes the United States will continue to grow in general
power and authority in coming years, and the disparity between
our power and authority and other countries' will become
greater.
Therefore, other nations might become increasingly
resentful. Regardless of whether a nation is a friend or foe
the rich were getting richer, namely us, and the rest are
falling farther behind. He pointed out, like you have, that our
threat comes from asymmetrical threats and not from the nation
states that are growing weaker relatively, but subgroups who
seek to harm us.
Now, this is coincident with your testimony, because you
talked today, and the chairman has, about how we gain
cooperation. If the Brzezinski theory is correct, and people
become more and more resentful as time goes on, we may say,
well, we are simply tired of hearing all of this criticism and
carping. You folks have got to pull your own weight, or we will
have to turn to unilateral actions more often. Most of us would
say that will not do, and it appeared to me when I visited with
the NATO Permanent Representatives in Brussels last month that
the alliance is not on the same page in terms of seeing the
same threats.
I think Secretary Perry made that point in his testimony:
suggest horribly an airliner flying into the Eiffel Tower, or
the House of Commons, or various other types of attacks. People
will say, we appreciate the threat.
And they also would suggest that they are less likely to be
attacked than we are because of our disproportionately higher
interest with regard to the world economic system. But Great
Britain, Germany, France, Italy are all major countries with
major economies, major interests, and to the extent that they
begin to share the thought that there really is a problem here,
then they are more likely to begin to think about cooperation
with NATO in this case.
But in the case of the Russians or the Chinese, in terms of
our bilateral relationships, it just occurred to me as I
listened to the testimony today that one of the great
challenges for our diplomacy, whether it be at the State
Department, Defense, Intelligence, or wherever, is really to be
able to paint these scenarios of why we do have coincidence of
interest, and why cooperation ought to be possible.
Now, in some cases, as the chairman's questioning of
Secretary Perry has pointed out, we have disparate interests.
Russians may have a strong commercial interest, whereas we are
worried about proliferation, even though they have a subsidiary
interest in that, too, and we try to narrow the gaps between
what seem to be national interests.
And we may not be successful in every respect. That would
be a miraculous thing, that all nations would have national
interests that were coincident, but it just appears to me that
we are going to have to narrow this gap very rapidly or we
finally do get into a situation in which we are acting by
ourselves, not because we wanted to, but because others do not
see the threat. They do not have the resources. They have not
been galvanized by the realism of the threat, and that is a
very disturbing prospect.
Just to take the Nunn-Lugar program as an example
proliferation has been understood as a threat for a long time,
but by and large most nations have not stepped forward and
suggested we ought to make this a multilateral affair with the
United States, share 25 percent, or 30 percent of the cost, or
something of that variety.
With biological and chemical weapons there is a possibility
other nations will step up. Norway, Germany, Canada and the
United Kingdom have stepped forward and pledged to contribute
to chemical weapons elimination. There are other possibilities
for nations to see proliferation of these weapons as a threat,
and with terrorists who really might visit their countries with
suitcases, or however they deliver them.
Do you have any thoughts as to how we narrow the gap in
terms of our national interest expectations, our sense of
mutual threat, and do you agree with me that this is a
promising area of inquiry with regard to priorities of our
diplomacy as to how, in fact, we do narrow these gaps, because
otherwise cooperation will be talked about frequently, but the
parties involved may never come to the table?
Dr. Perry. I would be happy to take a stab at that. Let me
first preface it by saying that after the previous
conversation, just to clarify the issue on Nunn-Lugar, since I
administered that program for 4 years, we did not make grants
or write checks to the Russian Government. That is not the way
the Nunn-Lugar money was spent.
What we did, we spent the money with contracts made to
corporations, typically American corporations such as Bechtel,
for example, which Secretary Weinberger is very familiar with,
and that those contracts, as the Secretary rightly pointed out,
were all audited contracts, and so the money was audited. It
typically went to American contractors, and I want to
emphasize, they were not grants and writing checks to the
Russian Government.
Now, on the question of the asymmetrical threat, and the
disparity between the allies and the Americans on how to do it,
I agree completely with your assessment that they do not see
the same threat that we see, and that that is a real problem in
developing cooperation with them, but I point out that before
9/11, those same threats were unthinkable in the United States
as well, and it is now part of our consciousness, so how do we
deal with the problem with our allies? First of all we jawbone.
We explain as well as we can why we believe what we believe,
but we will still fall somewhat short.
I think this problem, however, is unfortunately going to be
a relatively short-term problem, because I believe that sooner
or later there will be a 9/11 in Germany or France or the
United Kingdom, and therefore it will be in their consciousness
as well as our consciousness. In the meantime, we do the best
we can in dealing with them.
Mr. Weinberger. I think, Mr. Chairman and Senator Lugar,
one of the problems is that throughout all democracies and all
of the friends we have identified are democracies, there is a
great dislike of spending money on the military, including the
United States, and it takes a great deal of advocacy and a
great deal of persuasion to bring that up.
One example, the $48 billion increase which President Bush
recommended this year is more than the entire defense budget of
Germany, and when you talk about the fact that Russia is only
spending perhaps $8 billion for their defense budget, we always
have difficulty using the comparable terms, because the
Russians are able to get a great deal more at far lower labor
costs than we are, so that comparisons are difficult.
There is no doubt, however, that the unhappiness with large
defense expenditures translates itself into a minimizing of the
threat, and that can happen not so easily after September 11,
and it did not happen easily, and that is the reason NATO was
so successful, was that that threat there from the Soviets was
ever-present, was right there next to them, and it gave them a
much greater incentive to meet the NATO contributions and so
on.
So it is going to be a difficult job. I think that it does
require a great deal of advocacy and a great deal of emphasis
on the kinds of threats that they face, even though the United
States is there, and one of the reasons they do not feel it
really necessary to spend all that themselves is because we do
it and we do it very well, and we should do it. It is in our
interests to do it. It is in our interests to have coalitions
and to have alliances, but we need to work unceasingly at
trying to persuade them that the alliances work best when both
sides contribute.
Senator Lugar. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. We have had Senator Baker and White House
Counsel Cutler here for a most engaging discussion, and I would
like to have the value of your opinion. Do you think the
present administration is doing enough to implement the Baker-
Cutler report?
Mr. Weinberger. Oh, I think, as the chairman pointed out,
along with a number of very large priorities, the answer would
be yes. There are a lot of other things to do, and there are
resources that are not totally unlimited, but when you look at
all the things we have to do and all the new things we have to
do, I think the answer to your question is yes.
Dr. Perry. I have a different view on that. I think the
Baker-Cutler report made some very positive and constructive
recommendations, and I think we should do more to support those
recommendations.
Senator Nelson. In 1992, I had the good fortune of being a
Fellow at the Kennedy School and met Ash Carter there, and at
the time asked him, was he convinced that we were not in the
disintegration of the Soviet Union, that we were not allowing
materials to get out into dastardly hands, and he opined that
yes, he thought that we were, but I have never been convinced
of that, and now it is 10 years after I asked that question. I
would like to have your sense about the proliferation out of
the old Soviet Union of weapons or materials.
Dr. Perry. I believe that against all odds we have been
successful in keeping weapons, nuclear weapons proliferating
out of Russia or the other nations of the former Soviet Union,
but to the extent we have succeeded it has been because of
programs like Nunn-Lugar which not only allowed us to work
cooperatively with the Russian Government and the Ukrainian
Government and so on, but most importantly, it performed
programs which safeguarded those materials to a higher level of
standards than they otherwise would have been.
Having said that, though, I must say that we can never be
complacent in this regard. The situation is still worrisome,
and there could be a break. There could be a breach tomorrow,
and it is something I always worry about.
Probably one of my highest worries in terms of threats to
the United States is, a nuclear weapon gets out somehow, gets
out of Russia and into the hands of terrorists, so that is a
worry, but I think we have been remarkably successful to this
date. We cannot say with 100 percent confidence but with
relatively high confidence I do not believe that any of those
weapons have gotten into the hands of terrorists.
Mr. Weinberger. I would agree, we cannot be 100 percent
certain. I have worries about Russia's proclivities to sell
things to Iran, and I think probably also to Iraq and to China,
and it is one of the reasons that I advocated in my remarks a
few moments ago that we be particularly careful in the various
agreements we have made with Mr. Putin, and that it might well
be a good idea to condition those a lot more on some kind of
restraints on the sales that they make to countries which are,
I think, not only potentially but actually hostile.
Senator Nelson. Would your opinion be the same that we have
had the success in the escape of brain power, i.e., the
scientists as well?
Dr. Perry. Yes, I believe so, and also I would point out
the Nunn-Lugar program has made substantial contributions to
setting up science programs within Russia that involve nuclear
scientists, nuclear technicians in nonnuclear weapon programs,
and therefore kept them gainfully employed in-country. I think
in the absence of that program there would have been a
hemorrhaging of intellectual talent and probably out of Russia
into other undesirable countries.
Senator Nelson. How do we get the leadership in today's
Russia to understand that it is not in their self-interest to
sell weapons and know-how to a country like Iran?
Dr. Perry. I think they understand that, Senator Nelson,
but I think they have rationalized that they can sell
commercial nuclear technology and that there will not be any
consequences from doing that. I do not agree with their
assessment of that, but I think they rationalize themselves
into believing that.
Mr. Weinberger. I think that is a very kind way of phrasing
it, but I think the simplest way to phrase it is, they do not
understand dual use, or they pretend not to.
I think also the problem is that there are a number of
different elements within Russia that have dominance in
particular fields, and I think certainly the commercial and
trade elements would be able to prevail in any kind of internal
argument over the idea that it would be much better in their
overall national interest not to sell, because they continue to
sell, and that is the worst of it of all.
Senator Nelson. It kind of reminds me of some of the
dominance of our commercial elements----
Mr. Weinberger. There are plenty of them here.
Senator Nelson [continuing]. In selling when it is not in
the interest of the United States.
Mr. Weinberger. They do, and I think we need to look at the
provisions that we have for licensing and authorizing
transfers. If the transfer is done against American lives. I
think you will find it substantially reduced, particularly in
these days.
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is large part
because of what I am learning and what I have learned about
these questions that I have asked that I favor much more the
granting of commercial licenses here in the United States from
the State Department and from the Defense Department, instead
of from the Commerce Department, for exactly the concerns of
the transfer of technology to hostile hands.
Mr. Weinberger. It has been 25 years since I dealt with
those problems, but I would agree with you fully. The views of
the Department of Defense were not always adhered to, and we
had many long and distressing arguments with Commerce and
others who wanted to sell anything to anybody anytime.
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Allen.
Senator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
these two outstanding witnesses. It has been wonderful
listening to you all. I do not know Secretary Perry that well,
but I do know Secretary Weinberger, who has been a great help
to me from the days I was a member of the House of Delegates in
Mr. Jefferson's district to while I was Governor, and I just
want to say for everyone that Secretary Weinberger, you are one
of my heroes.
Mr. Weinberger. Thank you, sir.
Senator Allen. I always have enjoyed listening to you.
I would say to Secretary Perry that some of your remarks on
bioterrorism were very apt yesterday in the Commerce Committee.
I am the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Science,
Technology, and Space, and looking at how we can use research
from our universities, the private sector also working in a
team effort with local, state, law enforcement, Federal law
enforcement obviously, the hospitals and all the rest. It was
very apt, and thank you for your testimony.
Now, there was a comment made earlier by one of my
colleagues in giving the impression that we need to narrow the
gap between our country and other countries. To me, that is I
suppose like a race, and you have a race for certain distance,
and we are ahead by 10 paces, and so everyone is moving toward
the finish line, but we want to narrow it.
I always like to run like you are half a lap behind. It
makes you run harder, and I think we need to, as Americans,
always be looking at ways that we allow the people of our
country to compete and succeed against anyone in the world, and
so I am not worried about narrowing gaps.
I want to make sure that Americans--it is not because we
have a strong military, it is because we have a strong economy.
That is how you pay for a strong military, but more
importantly, as we advance in technological capabilities of our
armaments and our equipment for our men and women in uniform so
that it can be more precise, whether it is in our intelligence
detections, or whether that is in our armaments for their
safety, I think it is important that our economy continues to
get stronger and not worry about others, or wanting them to
catch up.
I think that when you look at threats around the world, or
competition, there are tremendous opportunities in Latin
America, Central and South America and Central Europe and
Southeast Asia. You look at the People's Republic of China,
great opportunities there, only because their government is
making some improvements as far as commerce, but the only thing
holding back a lot of these countries is allowing people to
have initiative, and allowing people to believe as they want,
and private property rights.
So we are only going to remain strong and have good quality
of life and security if we continue what I would call
Jeffersonian type principles of trusting to free people and
free enterprise, and the way I look at the advancement, some of
our foreign policy obviously helps advance not only our
interest and our security and jobs in our country, and there
are a lot of people who worry about international competition,
especially in the textile industries, and only those who have
the most advanced technology for manufacturing are the ones
that are keeping those jobs going, in that they have better-
quality products, less waste, and everything else that matters.
The same with communications services, and there is great
opportunities in biotechnology for life sciences and health.
Now, one area that is going to come up later this year is
an expansion of NATO, and to me, NATO is clearly--and I am sure
you would agree--primarily a defense military organization and
alliance but it also signifies a commonality and understanding
basic freedoms, individual freedoms, and with it comes
commercial, or quality of life economic freedoms, and I would
like to ask both Secretaries what are your views, whether you
believe NATO should be enlarged--there will be that meeting in
Prague later this year in November--and if so, what standards
would you set for new membership in NATO?
Mr. Weinberger. I definitely believe it should be enlarged.
I think that NATO is one of our most important alliances. I
think it has performed extraordinarily well, and that while we
certainly may have made major contributions to it, and should,
they were very well-rewarded, so I would agree that NATO should
be enlarged.
I was distressed by the fact that we kept three nations
waiting about 3 years because we seemed to be worried about
whether it would offend Russia or not. Poland, the Czech
Republic, and Hungary are valuable members. They have been
under the thumb of the Soviet Warsaw Pact for a long time. They
wanted to join the West, and I thought they should be
encouraged, and I think many of the newer applicants are in
somewhat the same category.
I do not think the enlargement of NATO should be viewed as
a threat by anybody, unless that person or that country has
hostile intentions in mind, because NATO is a defensive
alliance, and it was with the greatest of difficulty that we
ever persuaded any of the NATO countries to permit any
operations out of the NATO area, and so they are not an
offensive operation. They should not be viewed as a threat.
They are an addition to the defense of the United States, and
to the defense of freedom in the world, so my answer is
unequivocally yes, I think they should be expanded.
As far as conditions are concerned, again I think we should
be very careful about setting very rigid or difficult
conditions to make. It is far better to have countries in the
alliance and work up to being able to make the kind of
contributions that are needed than it is to put some kind of
very strict entry bars and entrance fees and all the rest in
front of them, and so I would minimize the requirements, and
maximize the encouragement.
Senator Allen. Thank you. Secretary Perry.
Dr. Perry. I have a nuanced difference in my answer to
that. I think NATO should be opened to enlargement, which is a
somewhat different statement than Secretary Weinberger made,
and the qualifications, and it should be open, then, to
qualified nations.
What do I mean by qualified? Well, when I was Secretary, I
told other nations what I thought the qualifications for
membership were. First of all, they must be a democratic
nation. Second, it has to have a free market economy. Third,
not involved in major border disputes with its neighbors.
Senator Allen. Say that again.
Dr. Perry. Not involved in major border disputes with its
neighbors, and by the way, that was very critical in getting
Hungary and Czechoslovakia to resolve the border dispute they
had underway at the time.
And finally, the ability to contribute to the NATO
military. NATO is not an old warrior society. It is not a
fraternity. It is a military coalition. Therefore, there has to
be some minimum ability of a nation to contribute to that
military capability.
Those are the criteria I would put for membership.
Mr. Weinberger. I would very briefly say that I think the
more restrictions or restraints or rules you have for admitting
into NATO, the more you overlook the desirability of having
NATO large and strong, and capable of defense, and at the
beginning we did not put any restrictions on anybody. We were
delighted to welcome them.
In fact, we begged Spain for years to come in without any
conditions and finally they did, but if you put these
restrictions on you are preventing the admission and potential
improvement of a great many countries that we need, and if you
had those restrictions in the past, neither Greece nor Turkey
would have qualified.
Senator Allen. For the countries we are considering,
generally the Baltics and a few others, they seem to be
democratic. They seem to be relatively free market. I am not
sure about all the border disputes. The ability to contribute
militarily, some of it is just a logistical matter. Some may
have some ports, obviously, some can contribute a certain
amount. We do not expect smaller countries to contribute as
much as would, say, Great Britain, the wealthier or stronger
economic countries. Do you see any of those that are being
considered to have any of your conditions, Secretary Perry, as
impediments?
Dr. Perry. I think the countries you mentioned meet these
tests, in my judgment.
Senator Allen. Secretary Weinberger mentioned Russia, and
saying Russia should not be worried about this. Do you think
that Russia should be involved in in any way determining or
discussing who should be joining the NATO alliance?
Dr. Perry. No.
Mr. Weinberger. No, I certainly do not.
Dr. Perry. Some people have suggested that Russia and
Ukraine might have actually become members. I would point out
they do not meet the requirements I have pointed out at this
time.
Senator Allen. You are saying Russia and the Ukraine would
not? Neither of you are suggesting that Russia join NATO?
Dr. Perry. No. We may have different reasons. My reason is,
they do not meet the criteria which I have indicated.
Mr. Weinberger. Just a simple no is enough.
Senator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you both,
gentlemen, for all of your many years of service to our country
and the cause of freedom. Thank you.
The Chairman. One of the advantages of being chairman is
you get to set the agenda and you get to turn the lights out,
but I would like to, if I could, just for another few minutes
trespass on your time a little bit more if I may, and would
either of you like a cup of coffee or a drink? I would like to
keep you for another 20 minutes or so, until 12. Is that OK? Is
that possible?
Mr. Weinberger. How long, Mr. Chairman?
The Chairman. Until 12.
Mr. Weinberger. That is fine.
The Chairman. There are so many areas I would like your
input on, and if I could begin with the Nuclear Posture Review
that was mentioned earlier.
In early January, the administration released the results
of the Nuclear Posture Review, including the target reductions
of 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed U.S. nuclear warheads
by 2012. Pentagon officials talked about this as the end of the
so-called threat-based nuclear posture, sized in the past to
meet a Russian threat, and adopted instead what they called the
capabilities-based approach, sized to meet any possible threat
in the decades to come, but as I look at this review it is more
notable for its absence of any real change.
The goal of 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed U.S.
warheads is lower than President Clinton's objective for START
III only because we basically changed the counting rules. In
any case, administration officials emphasize that this goal can
shift any time, and defense officials indicate that we will
maintain a sizable number of warheads in, quote, active reserve
to respond to future contingencies, and only Russia has a
nuclear force large enough to require us to maintain 2,000
operationally deployed warheads, let alone hundreds or
thousands more.
So the review, as I look at it, does not change the fact
that the U.S. nuclear arsenal will be continued to be sized to
respond to potential Russian strikes, and if we maintain a
sizable reserve of warheads Russia is likely to retain similar
but perhaps less secure reserves, or stated another way, you
say we are going to go down to 1,700 and 2,200 in the next 10
years, but we will have anywhere from 100 to several thousand
operationally ready warheads able to be deployed, and nobody
suggests that I am aware of at the Pentagon that you need that
many to deal with contingent threats, other than Russia,
around.
So it seems to me, based upon counting rules, we still have
a Russian-threat-based system here, and what concerns me is, if
the Russians attempt to maintain a similar stockpile of
operational nuclear warheads, which they would be entitled to
do, is there a concern about, or should we be concerned about
the notion of how secure they are, and what foreseeable
contingencies over the next 10 years require us to maintain
what is likely to be a very large reserve of operational
warheads able to be deployed very quickly? That is really the
question. Either or both.
Mr. Weinberger. Well, basically we used to size the force
on the number of targets that were apparent to us, and were
reported to us, targets that had the capability of destroying
our own deterrent capabilities, and targets that were of
military value.
The Chairman. So called SIOP?
Mr. Weinberger. Yes. These were in the Soviet Union,
because the Soviet Union was the enemy, as you pointed out, so
the Soviet Union is gone. That is not to say that there are not
other potential enemies or actual enemies, so I do not know the
basis on which the Nuclear Posture Review was calculated, but I
think it was calculated on the basis of the capabilities that
we had, as opposed to the idea of a specific number of targets
we had to hit.
Part of those capabilities are deterring other nations from
even thinking they could try. Part of those capabilities are
designed to ensure that if there was an accidental launch, or a
temporary gaining control by terrorists or some rogue elements,
that there was a launch of three or four, or something of that
kind, that we have an ability to go back immediately and stop
that from ever happening again.
There are all different kinds of ways of counting these
things, but the simple fact of the matter is that we now have a
great many more potential targets that are not just in Russia,
and are coming from areas like Iraq, and I think your
description, Mr. Chairman, is a very apt one, that they painted
a large bull's-eye on the back of the United States, and I see
Libya in the same basic category, and Iran, and North Korea, so
that all of these are elements that have to be considered in
any sizing number.
I would assume the various factors that went into
calculating these things were all taken into account by the
people who drew up the Nuclear Posture Review. It seems to me a
very substantial reduction from the 6,000 to 7,000 we have now,
and that the idea of keeping a ready reserve--and I do not know
what the size of that would be, but I do not think it is
several thousand.
The Chairman. I do not know, either.
Mr. Weinberger. I think it would be very few, but it is
important to have a reserve in any kind of combat. You do not
want to commit everything you have got and have nothing left,
depending on how the tide of battle would change, or how it
would flow, so all of these things are reasons why I think it
is important to have some kind of ready reserve and some kind
of capability, rather than building new ones or acquiring more
warheads should we need them.
The Chairman. Secretary Perry.
Dr. Perry. Mr. Chairman, I favor the reduction that is
postulated in the policy review. I prefer it at the lower end
of the range rather than the upper end of the range, but more
importantly, I prefer that we dismantle those weapons, not put
them in reserve. We have weapons in reserve already, but we are
talking about additional weapons in reserve.
But my statement about dismantle is, I want to dismantle
the Russians' as well as ours. I want to emphasize that point.
I am not in favor of dismantling ours unless the Russians
dismantle as well. That means, then, that we need some
agreement by which we codify their reduction and our reduction,
and some way that there is a commitment to both governments
that that reduction takes place and is verifiable.
And finally I prefer, greatly prefer that any weapons we
have in reserve be well-secured, and that means my concern here
is primarily about the Russians, because I believe ours are
well-secured.
Now, the contingency, you raise the question, what
contingency would we need? The weapons that are going to be
put, or additional weapons put in reserve, or dismantled, the
only conceivable contingency I can think of is, we need to deal
with some major change in government in Russia which leads them
to want to reconstitute their nuclear weapons. But since we
cannot do anything about or even predict how their government
might change, the danger is attendant to their reconstituting
their nuclear weapons. That is why I get back to the point that
if we are going to destroy our nuclear weapons, we need to
destroy or dismantle theirs as well, so the key here is the
Russian dismantlement as well as the American dismantlement.
The Chairman. If I can keep you on that line, if I may,
without rehashing whether we should or should not have walked
away from the ABM treaty, or formally noticed our getting out
of it, one of the impacts of that was that Russia had ratified
SALT II with the caveat that if we walk away from ABM they walk
away from SALT, or START II, excuse me. I have been here too
long--START II--and one of the things we spent a lot of time, I
think justifiably giving credit to the Bush administration for
Bush it was that START II required the Russians to destroy the
one weapon we heard the most about, or I heard the most about
in my career here, the SS-18 and other mobile warhead weapons,
and the rationale, for the record--and I know you both know it
better than I.
The rationale was that it related to crisis stability. If
we know they have one weapon with 10 independently targeted
warheads that has a capacity, each one of those warheads, that
far exceeds the capacity of the combined effect of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, then that has to be a target for us when we look
at targeting.
The other side knows it is a target. Therefore the other
side knows, in a moment of crisis, if they do not use it,
quote, they lose it. At least that has been the operational
theory we have worked on, those of us who have tried to master
strategic doctrine for sometime.
Now, with that abandonment of ABM and with evidence from
the National Intelligence Estimate that we have gotten here, on
the ballistic missile threat to the United States, the reports
are that Russia has begun a life extension program on those
aging multiple warhead missiles, and so is--and when I ask, and
Secretary Rumsfeld as well as the Secretary of State yesterday
have basically said--and I will not quote them, because I have
it and I cannot find it--basically said, well, so be it, that
is not our problem. That is not a problem.
Now, does the goal of eliminating, Secretary Perry,
multiple warhead ICBMs no longer matter, or should we try--
notwithstanding the fact there is no formal agreement now,
should we try to maintain or achieve the goals set out in START
II with the Russians as we enter this new relationship with the
President and President Putin having agreed to move down to
levels of 1,700 to 2,200 warheads?
Dr. Perry. Mr. Chairman in short I believe the crisis
stability still should be a goal of the United States, and I
believe the land-based MIRVs, like the SS-18, aggravate the
problem of crisis stability, therefore it should be a goal to
get rid of those weapons.
Having said that, let me say that I believe the situation
with Russia today is very, very different from the situation
with Russia or the Soviet Union during the cold war, and the
reasons, the ways of looking at crisis stability are very
different. Nevertheless, I think we still have to have a
concern for crisis stability, and we have to be concerned with
the fact that the government in Russia could change a year from
now, 5 years from now. In the meantime, the weapons still
persist, so I do believe that this is an issue that should have
our attention and concern.
The Chairman. Secretary Weinberger, you mentioned before,
and just stated by Secretary Perry, that there could be a
change in Russian attitude or the Russian Government and the
need to, as we are talking about the Nunn-Lugar kind of
initiatives, to be able to verify. Do you think we should be
able to verify nuclear agreements that we have with the
Russians? Should they be verifiable, or is it sufficient that
we just unilaterally say, and they say, this is what we are
going to do, but without any verification regime tied to it?
Mr. Weinberger. There are two or three answers to that, Mr.
Chairman. One is that the verification regime itself has to be
airtight, and it is almost impossible to construct an airtight
verification regime, because they simply can deny access, as
Iraq has done repeatedly, or they can use other facilities to
construct other things and so on.
Your earlier linkage of the abandonment of the ABM treaty
to their extension programs and all the rest brings to my mind
a question as to, if the ABM treaty was so instrumental in
preventing proliferation, why do we have this enormous
expansion of nuclear weapons and attempts to get nuclear
weapons all the time the ABM treaty has been in effect?
My own feeling has been that if you tell a country and you
tell the world that there is one class of weapons that is never
going to be defended against, that is going to encourage all of
the hostile elements everywhere to try to get that class of
weapons, so I think the greatest factor for proliferation is
keeping a defenseless regime, which is what the ABM treaty
guaranteed, and so I think the abandonment of the ABM concept,
and the ABM treaty, is not only a very beneficial but a very
wise thing to have done, and I hope we will proceed with the
second half, which is to acquire the capable effective defenses
as quickly as possible.
The Chairman. Well, in the interests of time, as I
indicated in my statement, without talking about the merits or
demerits of the decision, I was anxious to see what the
attitude was about this notion of crisis stability, but let me
move on in the interest of time here.
Secretary Perry, obviously, things have changed a bit in
terms, at least attitudinally, between the United States and
North Korea over the last year or so, and I suspect they have
changed even more, arguably, possibly better. I do not think
so, though.
In terms of the President's State of the Union Address,
what would you be doing now to try to promote a more sensible
North Korean policy on long range missile production, not
production but development on proliferation and on North
Korea's relations with South Korea? Where would you be trying
to take this now, in light of where we are at the moment?
Dr. Perry. Mr. Chairman, I would start off by saying that
nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea I think is a
danger, an unacceptable danger to the United States, and we
should take every reasonable action to try to keep that from
happening.
During the time I was Secretary, the actions we were
considering taking included the threat of military action, and
we were very close to military confrontation with North Korea
over the nuclear weapon program in 1994. Happily, that did not
lead to military action. It was resolved, finally, by a
diplomatic action. To be sure, a coercive diplomatic action,
but nevertheless, a diplomatic action, and so that was a
satisfactory resolution to what otherwise could have been a
very dangerous situation, and so that is No. 1 on my priority.
Adding their development of a long-range missile program
simply adds to the concern there, but I wanted to hasten to say
the missile itself is not a problem unless they have a nuclear
warhead for it, and the nuclear warhead is a problem even if
they do not have the long-range missiles, because there are
other ways of delivering nuclear warheads, so my emphasis has
always been on the nuclear weapon and less on the missile.
If they were to develop missiles, there are a variety of
ways of defending against them. We have talked about midcourse
defense system, we have talked about boost phase defense
system. My own favorite is pre-boost phase defense systems.
The Chairman. That is mine as well, preemptive.
Dr. Perry. I think if I had any influence on the policy
today, I would be first of all stressing a robust diplomatic
program to get the North Koreans to voluntarily give up their
long-range missile as well as their nuclear program, and I
thought a little over a year ago we were within a hair of
having such an agreement, and could still get such an
agreement, I think. Second, if that were unsuccessful, and they
persisted in moving forward with long-range missiles that
threaten the United States, and ICBMs, I would favor a pre-
boost phase defense system, which I think would be very
effective.
Mr. Weinberger. Mr. Chairman, just a very short comment. I
do understand the time, but the problem is that I think it
would be extremely easy to get an agreement with North Korea,
and I think it would be absolutely worthless.
I do not think it is a government you can trust, and I do
not think anything they promise can be expected to be kept, and
I do not think there is any verification that is going to work
with them. I think the change of the regime is the only
solution, and that is a pre-boost phase arrangement, so perhaps
I am in agreement with Secretary Perry on that, although I
rather doubt it, although I think that changing the government
is the only solution to a government like North Korea.
The Chairman. Well, speaking only for myself, I hope the
President's reference was merely to a pre-boost phase
rationale, rather than to another, but time will tell that.
If I may ask and explore one more area, even if I miss this
vote, and that is, over the past years President Bush and other
officials have sought to reassure China that our missile
defense will be intended to defend against rogue states rather
than China, and they constantly say this is not about China.
The fact remains that the defense intended to defend against
rogue states could have, at least for the present structure of
the Chinese nuclear deterrent, could have a nuclear deterrent
effect. At least if you are sitting in Beijing you might think
that.
Now, what concrete steps could the United States take as it
develops this nuclear defense architecture to respond to or to
emphasize or to make clear that our assertions meet our
actions, that they should not be threatened, and No. 2, should
we be concerned about the impact that the reciprocal action
taken by China, what impact they might have on the nuclear
architecture in Asia?
If they go into a massive new effort, and arguably they are
already doing some of that anyway, are you concerned about the
reactions in India or Pakistan or Japan, for that matter, in
terms of relying upon our nuclear umbrella, if you will, and so
the first question is, what can we do, or should we do, if
anything, to reassure the Chinese that our architecture for
national missile defense is what we say it is, not directed at
them, because that is what President Bush keeps saying?
Mr. Weinberger. Mr. Chairman, a missile defense program is
not directed against anybody. A missile defense program is only
directed toward protecting the United States.
The Chairman. Then let me amend what I said. President Bush
has said he has attempted to reassure the Chinese that any
missile defense system we have would not impact on their
nuclear deterrent capability. He has gone further than saying
it is not intended. He has gone on to say, to be reassuring
them that it would not affect their deterrent capability.
Mr. Weinberger. A missile defense program can only be
opposed by somebody who has an offensive intention in mind. If
you have no offensive intention in mind, the fact that we are
building a defense should not be of alarm to anybody.
The Chairman. Well, that sounds good, but what happens if
overnight, and it is not realistic at all, but if all of a
sudden Russia or China developed a system that could defend
against all of our nuclear weapons, I think we might change our
mind about whether or not--and we have no offensive intention,
but if we knew that there was no possibility of us being able
to respond to an attack by them with nuclear weapons, I suspect
it might change the way we view the world.
Mr. Weinberger. That is a hypothetical which I am really
not prepared to follow.
The Chairman. For us it is a hypothetical. For them, it is
a realistic possibility, but in any event, Secretary Perry,
would you be kind enough to respond?
Dr. Perry. Any national missile defense system that is
being seriously considered, if it is effective, would be
effective against the Chinese missiles. The only system I can
conceive of that would offer some level of defense for the
United States without affecting the Chinese system would be a
ground-based boost-phase system. I do not advocate that because
a ground-based boost-phase system unfortunately is ineffective
against other systems you want it to be effective against,
because it cannot reach many of the targets we are concerned
with, so that would be my answer to the question.
Mr. Weinberger. Mr. Chairman, again, it is exactly the
dilemma, if you build something that is of no concern to and
does not worry the Russians and does not trouble the Chinese,
you are building an ineffective system.
The Chairman. Why, then, Mr. Secretary, does the President
and Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State keep telling
the Chinese, do not worry, this will not affect you? I guess
they do not mean it, right?
Mr. Weinberger. They are in power. They have the ability to
set policy. I am an individual who is 20 years out of any
cycle, so they are the people you should listen to if you want
the administration policy.
The Chairman. That is a very accurate comment, and I do
appreciate it. I am sorry that--and I am sure you all are not,
because we have kept you so long, but I am sorry you have not
had a chance to get to a number of other issues that I would
like to discuss with you, gentlemen, including outer space and
the weaponization of outer space, and the nuclear test ban
treaty and whether it has any relevance any more, but maybe if
you are willing, if I could just send you one or two questions,
without burdening you with more than one or two, I would
appreciate it if you would be wiling to answer them.
Mr. Weinberger. I would be delighted to try.
The Chairman. I thank you both very, very much. I consider
it an honor to have you both before us, and I thank you for
your time, and we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the committee adjourned.]
----------
Statement Submitted for the Record
Prepared Statement of Senator Russell D. Feingold
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this important hearing. The
horrific events of September 11 brought into sharp focus that the
threats of the 21st century are far different from the threats of the
last century. During the 20th century, our adversaries were easily
named and contained within defined national borders. The adversaries
that our men and women in uniform are currently fighting belong to
mobile, well-financed terrorist cells that do not have a centralized
structure and exist in the shadows around the world, and even in our
own country. This new kind of enemy challenges our conception of
traditional warfare and demands a different kind of response, and a
different strategic framework.
While we should allow our strategic framework to evolve to meet the
challenges of the 21st century, we should be careful not to undermine
the foundation of carefully structured arms control agreements that
supports our strategic relationship with the rest of the world.
I am concerned that unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty could seriously weaken the United States'
ability to pursue our most urgent foreign policy priorities. This
unilateral action could dramatically alter our strategic relationship
with Russia, and gut the underpinnings of the global arms control
regime. And it is all the more troubling that the President announced
his intention to withdraw the United States from this important treaty
without seeking support from the Senate.
At a time when our global strategic relationships are of paramount
importance, we should do nothing that could risk undermining the
strength and staying power of the global coalition against terrorism.
In addition, we should take further steps to combat the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to thwart the attempts
of terrorists and states of concern to acquire nuclear, chemical, and
biological weapons and the means to deliver them. We should ensure that
our export control regime prevents sensitive dual-use technologies from
being exported to countries of concern, and we should urge our allies
to do the same.
Finally, we should proceed cautiously with the planned national
missile defense system. While I have not opposed legislation
authorizing development of a missile defense system, I have serious
concerns about the Bush Administration's aggressive proposal. We should
not close the door on options for defending the United States against a
possible missile attack, but we must ensure that the system that we
eventually choose is cost-effective and will actually work, I will
continue to scrutinize carefully the progress of this system and the
price that taxpayers will be asked to pay for it.