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CLOSING ADDRESS Senator Jack Reed DARYL KIMBALL: I am pleased to introduce to you Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island. He is the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, among other key posts. He is one of the key leaders on the issues that we’ve been discussing today. As a member of that committee he is in the rough-and-tumble on the policy debates—the defense authorization bill really debates on these issues. He’s agreed to share with us his perspectives on the role of arms control in building U.S. national security in the future. He is, in my view, one of the most informed and active members in the Senate on these issues. He has been a stalwart defender of our first line of defense, proven preventative arms control strategies, at a time when there are those, as we’ve heard earlier today, in the administration who are not so enamored of these approaches, and at a time when we’re seeing these approaches being undercut in various ways. I just want to note in particular something that he did last year, which is particularly important and will continue to be an issue in the years ahead. He was pivotal in the debate concerning the future research on U.S. nuclear weapons. He introduced a very important amendment on the floor of the Senate that I think would have been approved if it was allowed to be voted on directly, but it was second-degreed by the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator [John] Warner. And his amendment would have essentially preserved the 1994 ban on research leading to the development of low-yield nuclear weapons. And though that vote was narrowly lost, I know from hearing him, his speeches, and talking to his staff that he’s going to remain a dedicated and outspoken proponent of rational policies on this particular topic. And I just want to quote for you something that you said, Senator Reed, after that debate. I don’t know if you remember, but I thought it was a very important statement at that stage and a very relevant statement for our conference today. You said on the floor on September 16 th that “After 50 years of being the leading nation in the world arguing for arms control, arguing for sensible constraints on the development of nuclear weapons and the limits on nuclear weapons, we have become a nation that is casual about our commitment to arms control, that denigrates it too often, and that course has left us with other options which I think are less appropriate. If there is no arms control, then there is a higher probability of arms usage with nuclear weapons. This is a thought that no one wants to contemplate.” I think these are very important words as we go into the 21 st century, and I’m pleased to introduce Senator Jack Reed. SENATOR JACK REED (D-RI): Thank you very much, Daryl, for those very kind words of introduction. I’d like to recognize of course Daryl but also John Steinbruner of the Arms Control Association. Professor Steinbruner was a young professor when I was a young but very unprecocious student at the Kennedy School of Government, so it’s nice to join him again. I’d also recognize Robert Gallucci, the dean of Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and Michael Brown, the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies. And a special word about Paul Warnke, who devoted his life to diplomacy, who was a tireless advocate and practitioner of arms control, and in whose honor and memory this conference is being held. In 1946, in a speech to the governing board of the Pan-American Union, President Harry Truman, the only person ever to authorize the use of nuclear weapons, said, “Before us now lies a new era in which the power of atomic energy has been released. That age will either be one of complete devastation or one in which new sources of 66 66
SENA ENATOR JACK REED power will lighten the labors of mankind and increase the standards of living all over the world.” For more than 50 years, the United States has been in the vanguard in ensuring that President Truman’s first alternative never becomes a reality. The United States has both urged and acted to de-legitimize the use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction through the earliest Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, presidential nuclear reduction initiatives, the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, various nuclear weapons testing limitation treaties, and bilateral diplomatic efforts to encourage other states to forswear nuclear weapons. The United States, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, has worked to reduce the possibility of devastation. Today, however, the Bush administration is implementing a departure from this decades-long bipartisan policy of arms control and risk reduction. President [George W.] Bush has neither reduced the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, nor decreased the nation’s reliance on nuclear weapons. Instead, he has pushed Congress to adopt measures that may actually lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. These new nuclear weapons policies are being implemented as part of a broader national security strategy that increasingly relies on pre-emptive military action to compel states concerned not to pursue weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, the Bush administration has not substantially increased efforts to reduce the risk associated with the former Soviet Union’s Cold War weapons and material. On the contrary, the Bush administration initially cut these programs. Recognizing their importance, Congress restored the funding, but notwithstanding statements of support for these programs, the president has failed in his budget to fund these programs at levels commensurate with their importance. The administration is pursuing an agenda which promotes nuclear weapons during a time when the need to de-legitimize and stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons-related technologies is as important as ever. Revelations about the capabilities of the Iraqi nuclear program prior to the 1991 Gulf War, the North Korean, Iranian, and Libyan nuclear programs, as well as the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of 1998, have demonstrated that nuclear weapons remain highly sought after. In practical terms, however, North Korean and other tough WMD proliferation cases defy quick military solutions. Military pre-emption alone cannot replace a comprehensive and preventive arms control and nonproliferation strategy. Nonproliferation rules and standards of behavior establish the legal, political, and moral basis for organizing U.S. and international pressure to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials to states or to terrorist groups. New proliferation dangers and changing threats to our national security continue to require nonproliferation strategies. These strategies must change as the threats change to remain effective. Changing, strengthening, and adapting, not abandoning, preventive diplomacy in arms control should remain at the heart of U.S. national security policy. The Bush administration, however, has set a different course. It has clearly shown its distaste for treaties. Administration officials may argue that it did conclude the Moscow Treaty with Russia. Unfortunately, this treaty is arms control in name only. It does not actually require the elimination of any nuclear weapon. There is not timetable for compliance, no definition of deployment, and it does not provide for additional verification mechanisms. Under the Moscow Treaty, the reductions in deployed nuclear weapons do not have to be achieved until December 31, 2012, and can be fully reversed on January 1, 2013. The Moscow treaty is not an effective adaptation of arms control. The trend toward abandoning, not adapting, arms control is evident in the administration’s passive neglect of treaties and in its aggressive actions to revitalize the role of nuclear weapons. In December of 2001, the Bush administration completed its Nuclear Posture Review [NPR]. The NPR supported budget requests to fund the production of hundreds of new plutonium pits per year—a necessary component of a nuclear weapon—to support the design of new weapons, and to shorten the time necessary to plan and conduct a nuclear test. These initiatives strongly suggest that the resumption of nuclear weapons testing is the desired goal, not as the last resort to maintain the existing stockpile—as contemplated under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty—but to support the development of new, smaller, or otherwise more usable nuclear weapons. The NPR also indicates for the first time that the United States is prepared to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations that are not aligned with a nuclear power, including the possibility of first-use and a preemptive strike. The Bush nuclear posture review combines and thus blurs the traditional distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear offensive strikes. Instead of deterring an attack by a nuclear power—the Cold War deterrence approach—the Bush NPR makes nuclear weapons just one more tool in our toolkit, one more option to exercise. The president’s intentions became clearer in September 2002 when the president issued his national security strategy and in December 2002 when he issued his strategy to combat weapons of mass destruction. Each document lays out a clear strategy of preemption as an option regardless of the immediacy of the threat. These documents, coupled with the administration’s budget request, set forth the administration’s desire to have a nuclear weapon that could be used in a first-strike preemptive fashion against a non-nuclear or a nuclear state. 67 67
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