Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, today the Senate will resume consideration of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, with approximately 6 hours of debate time remaining. As a reminder, the two amendments in order to the treaty must be filed at the desk by 9:45 a.m. today. By previous consent, at 4:30 p.m. the Senate will resume debate on the conference report to accompany the Agriculture appropriations bill. Following 1 hour of debate, the Senate will proceed to a cloture vote on the conference report. Therefore, the first rollcall vote of the day will occur at approximately 5:30 p.m. For the information of all Senators, this week will be extremely busy so that action on the CTBT and the Agriculture appropriations conference report can be completed. The Senate will also begin consideration of the campaign finance reform legislation and take up any conference reports available for action. Senators may expect votes throughout the day and into the evening.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I want 30 seconds to respond to the challenge of my friend from Delaware with respect to unilateral disarmament. I think the point the Senator from Kentucky was making was that the United States will consider itself bound to the zero-yield standard. We will abide. But we know that certain other countries don't see the treaty that way, don't interpret the language that way. We suspect they have reason to and probably will be conducting so-called hybrid nuclear tests and, second, couldn't verify whether those kinds of tests are conducted. As a result, the United States would not be conducting any kind of nuclear tests, whereas other countries would have the capability and, indeed, the motivation to do so. I believe that is what the Senator was talking about when he talked about the concept of unilateral disarmament.

Mr. KYL. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, a number of us have concluded that we cannot support ratification of the CTBT, that it will be defeated. But some have urged that we put the vote off out of concern that rejection would send an undesirable message to the world. I believe, however, that we should vote precisely because the world would get a desirable message that the Senate took a stand that treaties such as this must meet at least minimum standards for sensible arms control. The CTBT fails that test. It is a sloppy, altogether substandard piece of work, and it deserves rejection. Our colleague, Dick Lugar, opposes the CTBT ratification, as he has explained, because he does not believe the treaty is of the same caliber as arms control agreements that have come before the Senate in recent decades. He cites two of the CTBT's many deficiencies: ``an ineffective verification regime and a practically nonexistent enforcement process.'' Contrary to what treaty supporters have argued, the CTBT's rejection would strengthen the hands of U.S. diplomats on such matters in future negotiations. When they insist on more effective provisions, citing the need to satisfy a rigorous U.S. Senate, their warnings would become credible and influential. Such warnings would help free the United States from having to go along with wrong-headed treaty terms dictated by countries that lack U.S. responsibilities around the world. I note that as a good example of our negotiators changing their position from that originally supported by the administration to go directly to the heart of key objections to this particular treaty. As you know, no President had ever sought a zero-yield test ban treaty in perpetuity. In this case, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued that we should not have such a treaty. The original position of the administration in the negotiations was to grant the United States an option without having to invoke the supreme national interest clause to retire from the treaty after 10 years and not to insist upon a zero-yield but, rather, to permit low- yield, what are called hydronuclear tests. Over time, our negotiators' position was undercut, and in the end, according to the very people who negotiated the treaty, in order to reach an agreement with other countries, the United States conceded on those and other important points. Those are two of the critical deficiencies in this treaty. By rejecting the treaty now, the Senate would strengthen the hands of our future diplomats who negotiate these arms control agreements to enable them to make the point to their counterparts that the United States is serious about treaties at least achieving minimal standards; we consider these to be the kinds of minimal standards that are necessary to bind the American people; and those negotiators would know that Senate ratification would not occur unless the terms were as proposed by the United States. As I said, no other President ever supported a zero-yield treaty, let alone one that would bind the United States forever, and neither should the Senate. If we proceed today to reject the CTBT, future U.S. negotiators will be more inclined to seek the Senate's advice before the deal is finalized and the administration demands our consent. This will serve the U.S. national interests in various ways. First, the Senate was never intended to be a rubber stamp, approving any ill-advised treaty negotiated by an administration. Our constitutional duty in treaty-making is to perform the equivalent of quality control. Under the Constitution, the Senate's role is of equal stature with the President's. We in the Senate are entitled--indeed, we are obliged--to second guess the President's national interest calculations regarding treaties. There would inevitably be complaints from abroad, including from friends, if we upset the CTBT apple cart. But that unpleasantness would be minor and transitory, especially in light of the permanent harm the CTBT would do to our national security. The embarrassment of the President for buying into such a flawed treaty in the first place is not desirable, but the Senate cannot avert it at any price. Consider again Senator Lugar's words: [The CTBT] is problematic because it would exacerbate risks and uncertainties related to the safety of our nuclear stockpile. Those are the stakes, and they are serious. That crucial observation should put into perspective the issue of likely complaints from foreign foes and friends. The Senate must fulfill its constitutional duty to ensure that treaties meet at least minimum standards. We do the Presidency no favors by shirking, and we do the Senate and the Nation harm if we accede to the President's diplomatic recklessness simply to spare him the chore of mollifying the other states that forged the flawed treaty. A query to my colleagues who are interested in delaying this vote to avoid the embarrassment of rejecting a treaty negotiated by the administration: Will the Senate defer to the President on the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty or the ABM multilateralization or demarcation treaties? Some administration spokesmen have used the offensive argument that Senate rejection of the CTBT would be a message to the world that we are not serious about arms control. To the contrary, rejecting this treaty will help establish that we demand real arms control--not the show, not the empty symbols, not the flimflam treaties that cannot accomplish their purposes. In rejecting the CTBT, we will be asking the world to join in real antiproliferation measures, such as enforcement of the nonproliferation treaty which Russia, China, and North Korea violate every time they spread nuclear weapons technology. I quote again from Senator Lugar: If a country breaks the international norm embodied in the CTBT, the country has already broken the norm associated with the nonproliferation treaty. Mr. President, that is because 185-some nations have agreed not to possess these nuclear weapons, except for the nuclear powers. The testing is simply a redundant violation of the possession in the first place, which is already a violation of the NPT. So this treaty won't accomplish its minimal objective. Second, enforcement of the United States resolutions requiring inspection of Iraq: It would be very helpful if our allies would help in this very meaningful and important activity rather than undercutting the United States at every turn. Again, Senator Lugar hit the point squarely: The CTBT verification regime seems to be the embodiment of everything the United States is fighting against in the UNSCOM inspection process in Iraq . . . [which is] best not repeated under the CTBT. Third, perhaps we could get their support in our efforts to free U.S. policy from the dead hand of the ABM Treaty and to deploy missile defenses. These are real, meaningful actions against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction rather than empty symbolic gestures. In asking the Senate to postpone the vote on this treaty until he has the votes, the President is asking, first, to spare him personal embarrassment; and, second, to give him a chance to bind the United States to a treaty that most do not think should ever go into force. The CTBT will not improve with age. Most Senators would have been content never to have voted on the treaty. But the President has now denied the Senate that option. He will not agree to forbear demanding consideration of the treaty next year when he hopes to have the votes to pass it. Republicans have not politicized this debate, but it is clear that unless we defeat this treaty now, it will be a political issue next year when allegedly changed circumstances--created, for example, by a new test by India or Pakistan--will give the President the pretext to revive the debate. It has become clear that the assurances we may now get from the President and our Democratic colleagues will not be the ironclad commitments we recently agreed were necessary to induce the Senate to defer this vote. Therefore, to avoid the President politicizing the issue next year, we should vote now. Sometimes it is necessary to say or do the right thing and just let the chips fall where they may. Ronald Reagan knew he would ruffle lots of foreign feathers--including some of our respected allies--when he called the Soviet Union an evil empire and when he stood his ground against Gorbachev in Reykjavik in favor of strategic defense. These messages he sent were criticized by many as disruptive. They were sound. They served our national interests and the interests of decent people around the world, and history has judged them favorably. The Senate now has a chance to demonstrate strength and the good sense worthy of Ronald Reagan. If we do it, we will be flouting much conventional thinking, but we will, in fact, enhance our Nation's diplomatic strength, protecting our national security and vindicating the wisdom of America's founding fathers who assigned to the Senate the duty to protect the country from ill-conceived international obligations. Let the Senate vote to reject the CTBT.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the Senate has a solemn obligation under our Constitution to be a backstop. We are not supposed to be a rubber stamp to treaties. If we were simply to rubber stamp whatever the President sent to us, our founding fathers wouldn't have provided a separate advice and consent responsibility for the Senate. As a matter of fact, we would be doing the Office of the Presidency a big favor by exercising that responsibility in a responsible way, saying that when we find treaties that lack even minimal standards, then we need to say no, so that our negotiators in the future will be able to negotiate stronger provisions--provisions that we seek because we understand their importance and necessity for sensible arms control. If we simply ratify what is acknowledged to be a flawed treaty, then our negotiators are never going to be able to say no to bad terms and we are always going to have to then go to the lowest common denominator in these treaties--treaties which then become bad for the United States; treaties which are unverifiable and unenforceable. Those are concepts that used to cause the Senate to say no, to say we won't approve a treaty that doesn't have good verification or enforcement provisions. Those are minimally necessary for sensible treaties. Our negotiators tried to avoid a zero-yield basis in this treaty but they couldn't so they gave up. They tried to have a 10-year limit rather than having this treaty be in effect in perpetuity, but they couldn't get it done. So in order to make a deal, they said: All right, we will agree to something less. If they knew and if their counterparts understood that the Senate at that point would say: No, we are not going to ratify such a treaty, they would more likely have stood firm and been able to hold their ground. The same thing is true with respect to these monitors. Administration officials have tried to suggest that actually we will have a better chance of monitoring in the future than we do today, while many of the experts have debunked that. The fact that the treaty calls for monitoring sites around the world is irrelevant if the sites are not placed in the positions that are best for detection of nuclear weapon explosions. What this article is pointing out is that when the United States tried to interpose that requirement on Russia and China, the Russians and Chinese said no, and we backed down. So now we don't have monitoring stations in key locations in the world near the Chinese and Russian test sites that would enable the United States to understand whether or not they have violated the treaty by engaging in nuclear tests. Let me quote further from the article, while it points out that Russia and China will have some seismic stations: None of these stations, however, is located close enough to the main Russian and Chinese testing facilities to be able to detect tests conducted covertly inside underground caves, or tests of very small nuclear blasts, the official said. By contrast, the United States has five primary seismic monitoring facilities under the treaty, including one in Nevada, where the main U.S. nuclear testing site is located. It will also have 11 secondary sites. Michael Pillsbury, a former acting director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, said China would have agreed to better seismic monitoring if Beijing were pushed into it. ``Chinese officials have told me that if the Clinton administration had pushed harder they would have agreed to a primary site near the test site,'' said Mr. Pillsbury, who also took part in a recent Defense Science Task Force study on nuclear weapons, ``but the Chinese had the impression the Clinton administration didn't place as high a priority on treaty verification as they did on maintaining good trade relations.'' A Senate defense specialist said Russia agreed to allow more sensitive seismic monitoring to be placed near Novaya Zemlya, but only if the United States agreed to provide Moscow with advanced computers and U.S. nuclear weapons testing data. The administration refused. I think the point of this article and the point of the testimony of several of the people who came before the committees was that the people who negotiated this treaty gave up too soon on too many important provisions, and because they wanted a treaty more than they were concerned about the specific provisions--such as verification and enforcement--they were willing to commit the United States to a series of obligations that will have a profound negative impact on our nuclear stockpile and yet do very little, if anything, to ensure that other nations in the world will not proliferate nuclear weapons. The President has signed the treaty. That doesn't mean the United States needs to ratify it. We should exercise our independent judgment, our constitutional prerogative, to provide, as I said, before the quality control. If we do that, this President and future Presidents' hands will be strengthened when they go to the negotiating sessions to talk about such things as where to place the monitors. Maybe the Chinese and the Russians and others at that time will understand they are not going to bamboozle our negotiators. Because the Senate provides a backstop, we will say no. That is the way the Founding Fathers understood we could ensure that the United States did not take on inadequate or offensive international arms obligations or limitations. I have mentioned all the safeguards but the last one. These safeguards add nothing to the status quo. In fact, I hope they will be more robustly pursued than this administration has pursued. Last is the withdrawal under the supreme interest clause. Even this was something that the administration sought to avoid when it negotiated the treaty initially. The negotiators understood how very difficult--in fact, how almost impossible--it is to invoke the supreme interest clause. There are two reasons for that. They are very simple. First, if a country hasn't tested for a decade and all of a sudden this clause is invoked, that country is, in effect, telling all the rest of the world, whoops, we have a problem; please excuse us while we test. That is not a good message to send to the rest of the world. As difficult as the political inability to invoke this clause, if we think it is hard now to reject this treaty--which most on this side believe should be rejected--if we think it is difficult now because world opinion will react badly to a negative vote by the Senate, what do Members think world opinion will be after the treaty has been in effect for a decade and all of a sudden the United States tries to withdraw from it because we need to test? That is real pressure. It is a virtual impossibility. In fact, President John F. Kennedy said exactly that in speaking about the moratorium that he inherited from the Eisenhower administration. He said never again should we do that because it is not only difficult, it is impossible to go back to testing without political ramifications after having had a moratorium condition. The supreme interest clause is certainly something that would be part of any administration's options; whether or not it is added to the treaty is irrelevant. The administration always has that option. It adds nothing. The reason we were happy to accept the amendment offered by the Senator from Delaware is that it adds nothing to the treaty. We assume those provisions would be extant and therefore there is no reason to object to it. There is also no reason to celebrate because it adds nothing to what we already have. As I said, unless we are a lot more serious about providing the funding that is called for under the amendment and doing the science that is required, we are going to find ourselves getting further and further behind, especially with respect to the Stockpile Stewardship Program. I don't think we should say that the safeguard package has made the treaty any better than it was to begin with. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from John H. Nuckolls.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I know that earlier the Democratic side proposed an amendment which was accepted by this side. I did want to speak to that for just a moment because I don't believe anyone should suffer any illusions that the so-called safeguards that are part of this amendment are going to in any way enhance the treaty and make it more palatable. We accepted it because it is what is being done anyway. It wouldn't have to be added to the treaty. The President theoretically is pursuing these things. He should pursue them. But they are not going to make the treaty any better or worse. For example, the first item is the Stockpile Stewardship Program. It has been assumed all along that there would be a Stockpile Stewardship Program. We don't have to amend this in order to achieve that. The problem is, the Stockpile Stewardship Program is very troublesome even if you assume there would be assurance at the end of the day that it could do the job it was designed to do because some people are assuming that design is a total replacement of testing. It was never designed to totally replace testing but merely to give us a greater degree of confidence in the reliability and safety of our nuclear weapons, not that it could totally replace testing. But even if you laid that aside, the notion was that the Stockpile Stewardship Program would be ready in a decade. This was announced about 3 years ago. Now we are being told it will be ready by the year 2010. There are slips along the way that suggest problems with the Stockpile Stewardship Program. It is behind budget. We haven't been budgeting the amount of money that was indicated as necessary to maintain it--the $4.5 billion a year. We have also not indexed for inflation. So each year that we supply the $4 billion or so, we are getting further behind because we are not indexing that to inflation. We have also included other programs within the Stockpile Stewardship Program that were never intended to be funded out of it, such as the tritium production facility for our nuclear weapons. That was to be a separate area of funding. This administration has folded that into the Stockpile Stewardship Program, with the result that even more of the money necessary for the ASCI Program and other key parts of the Stockpile Stewardship Program will be shorted if we have to spend that money for tritium. In addition to that, let me quote a letter I received from the former Director of one of our National Laboratories. This is a letter sent to me in September of this year from John Nuckolls who is the former Director at Livermore. Here is what he said: A post-CTBT or other funding reduction would increase the uncertainty in long-term stockpile reliability. Current and projected funding is inadequate. Substantial additional funding is needed for SSP experimental efforts including construction of an advanced hydro facility. I also note that the so-called ignition facility, which is planned as a part of this, is also behind schedule and over budget. As Mr. Nuckolls pointed out, we are already behind. We are getting further behind, and I don't think anyone should put that much reliance as a result in the Stockpile Stewardship Program. Another safeguard is the nuclear laboratory facilities and programs. Of course, we are going to maintain our nuclear laboratories and facilities. I don't think anybody would ever assume we were not going to do that. So this adds nothing to the treaty. The question is, Can you maintain these without nuclear testing? It turns out it is much more difficult to do so. Again, quoting from Mr. Nuckolls' letter to me, I will quote the first part of his answer: In an extended duration nuclear test ban, confidence in the stockpile would be adversely affected by loss of all nuclear test trained and validated expert personnel, major gaps in our scientific understanding of nuclear explosives, nuclear and chemical decay of warheads, accidents and inadequate funding of the Stockpile Stewardship Program. All nuclear test trained/validated expert personnel would eventually be lost. Training of the replacement workforce would be seriously handicapped without nuclear testing, and expert judgment could not be fully validated. A serious degradation of U.S. capabilities to find and fix stockpile problems, and to design and build new nuclear weapons would be unavoidable. In other words, what is perceived as a good thing--these nuclear laboratory facilities and programs--is actually being allowed to deteriorate without testing. We simply won't have the people available in order to maintain those facilities and to be prepared to do the things he says are necessary to be done. A serious degradation of U.S. capabilities would be unavoidable. We are not talking about something hypothetical and unimportant. We are talking about the U.S. nuclear stockpile. This is the person who used to run this National Laboratory. He is telling us we had better be careful putting our reliance on that program. The third of the so-called safeguards is the maintenance of nuclear testing capability. That is fine, except that we are not doing it. This President should be doing it. He claims to be doing it. But it is not being done. We now know it would take 2 or 3 years to get back to the point where we could test. I again quote from Mr. Nuckolls' letter: In an extended duration nuclear test ban, the nuclear test site infrastructure is likely to decay or become obsolete. Nuclear test experienced personnel would be lost. A series of nuclear tests to diagnose complex reliability problems and to certify a fix, or to develop new weapons could take several years. . . . Nuclear testing has been essential to the discovery and resolution of many problems in the stockpile. The point he is making is that you can't just say you are going to be able to resume testing unless you take active and take serious steps to maintain that readiness. We are not doing it. And he says in a test ban of this kind, we would not be able to do it. The fourth item is the continued comprehensive research and development program. Of course, we are going to be doing that. Intelligence gatherings, analytical capabilities--we will do the best we can on that, although, as has been pointed out, it is inadequate. Senator Richard Lugar, an arms control advocate and an expert in this body, has concluded reluctantly that this treaty is not verifiable and enforceable and, as a matter of fact, it cannot be made so. Let me quote from the Washington Times of today because it talks about how we negotiated this treaty and how we negotiated the provisions for verification and enforcement. Let me read from the story which is headlined, ``Moscow, Beijing balk at monitors. Testing sites not included in nuke treaty.'' I am quoting now: Russia and China refused to permit seismic monitoring near their nuclear weapons test sites that could have resolved some verification problems now troubling the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, according to U.S. government officials. Clinton administration officials and congressional aides said the failure of U.S. negotiators to win the cooperation of Moscow and Beijing was a ``negotiating failure'' that undermined the treaty. It also is a key reason U.S. intelligence agencies said both nations could conduct hidden nuclear tests without detection. Before I finish this quotation, let me point out why this is important.

Mr. KYL. The Washington Times, Tuesday, October 12. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that The Washington Times article be printed in the Record.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I think my colleague from New Hampshire wishes to speak. Let me take a minute before he does to respond to two things that the Senator from Delaware said. I find it interesting that North Korea would be used as the example of a country that will pursue nuclear weapons if we don't ratify the test ban treaty, according to Secretary Perry.

Mr. KYL. Please do.

Mr. KYL. I think that is a very important distinction. I thank my colleague for making it because, clearly, North Korea is not going to be persuaded to eschew nuclear weapons by the United States ratifying the CTBT. North Korea will do whatever it wants to do regardless of what we do. That is pretty clear. To suggest that we need to ratify this treaty in order to satisfy North Korea is absurd. North Korea is a member of the nonproliferation treaty right now. By definition, North Korea is in violation of that treaty if it ever decides to test a nuclear weapon because it would be affirming the fact that it possesses a nuclear weapon which is in violation of the NPT. North Korea is not a country the behavior of which we can affect one way or the other by virtue of a moratorium on testing. If that were the case, then North Korea would have long ago decided to forego the development of nuclear weapons because the United States hasn't tested for 8 years. Clearly, our actions have had no influence on North Korea, except to cause North Korea to blackmail the United States by threatening to develop nuclear weapons and by threatening to develop missiles unless we will pay them tribute. I don't think North Korea is a very good example to be citing as a reason for the United States to affirm the CTBT. Moreover, I remember this argument a couple of years ago when the chemical weapons treaty was being brought before the body. They said this was the only way to get North Korea to sign up to the CWC, and we certainly wanted North Korea to be a signatory to that treaty because they might use chemical weapons someday. We ratified it. They still haven't signed up--2 years later. I don't think North Korea is going to care one way or the other whether the United States ratifies the CTBT. To my friend's other point on the comparison between nuclear weapons and missile defense, I think it makes our point. Missile defenses can work. They are not easy to develop. We have seen several tests that failed with the THAAD system. What it demonstrated to us was that testing is required to know that missile defense will work, just as the experts have all indicated testing is the preferred method of knowing whether our nuclear weapons will work. So I think it makes the point that either for missile defense or for nuclear weapons testing it is the best way to know whether it will work. That is why we need to test both the missile defense systems that we have in development right now, and that is why we need the option of being able to test our nuclear weapons as well.

Mr. KYL. We may put off the Senator from New Hampshire for a good time.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from New Hampshire to delay his remarks for a moment so I can make a point and perhaps ask Senator Biden, if he could answer a question regarding something he has said. I think it is, first of all, dangerous to suggest that the Senate cannot do its business with respect to a treaty because a coup is occurring in another country. I fail to see, if the coup is occurring today and tomorrow, and we reject the CTBT, how anyone could argue our action precipitated this coup. Or somehow by failing to approve this treaty we caused unrest in Pakistan. I ask the Senator to answer that question on his own time. First, I make another point. I wasn't trying to make a debater's point but trying to be absolutely conservative in what I said a moment ago.

Mr. KYL. In this letter he said: Other nations will be able to conduct militarily significant nuclear tests well below the verification threshold of the Treaty's monitoring system, and our own unilateral capability. In other words, the treaty is not verifiable. Testifying last week, one of the experts acknowledged by Senator Biden, Dr. Paul Robinson, who is the Director of the Sandia National Laboratories, said: The treaty bans any ``nuclear explosion,'' but unfortunately, compliance with the strict zero-yield requirement is unverifiable. Finally, the third and most prominent of all experts that I would like to suggest we pay some attention to with respect to verification is our own colleague, Senator Richard Lugar from Indiana. I ask unanimous consent that his press release, dated October 7, 1999, be printed in the Record.

Mr. KYL. And I appreciate that more than you know. When I say that testing was the preferred method, what the lab Directors and former officials who have had responsibility for this have said with these highly complex weapons is that testing is the preferred method. They have also said in contradiction to the Senator from Delaware that there is no certainty with respect to the other method, which is the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which is not complete and has not gone into effect and cannot provide certainty, in any event. Dr. John Foster, who chairs the congressional committee to assess the efficacy of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, said this in his testimony last week: I oppose ratification of the CTBT because without the ability to perform nuclear weapons tests the reliability and safety of our Stockpile Stewardship Program will degrade. There is nobody who is more respected in this field than Dr. John Foster. He further said the testing, which has been performed over the years, ``has clearly shown our ability to calculate and simulate their operation is incomplete. Our understanding of their basic physics is seriously deficient. Hence, I can only answer that a ban on testing of our nuclear weapons can only have a negative impact on the reliability of the stockpile.'' Dr. Robert Barker, former assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, who reported the certification of the stockpile to three Secretaries of Defense, said: Sustained nuclear testing is the only demonstrated way of maintaining a safe and reliable deterrent. Our confidence in the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons has already declined since 1992, the year we deprived ourselves of the nuclear testing tool. It should be of grave concern to us that this degradation in confidence cannot be quantified. The point is that the reason testing is preferred is because it is the only demonstrable way of assuring ourselves of the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile. There could be, may be, in a decade or so, some additional confidence or assurance through a successful Stockpile Stewardship Program but we won't know that until the time. Until then, that is why testing is the preferred method. It is the only way to assure the safety and reliability of our stockpile. To respond to that and to respond to the first question I asked, I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. KYL. Madam President, let me make a couple comments and then I will yield to the Senator from New Hampshire. I appreciate the Senator from Delaware making a slight concession, and asking for one in return. His concession, of course, is that it is better to test. I think we would all agree it is better to test. The question is whether or not there is an adequate substitute if we do not test. And upon that the jury is still out. He also asked the question: Isn't it also better not to test if we can persuade others not to do so by our own willingness to forego testing? I think that question has actually been answered because for 8 years we have had a moratorium seeking to persuade others not to test. During that time, we know of at least five countries that have tested: France, China, Russia, Pakistan, and India. So it is clear that our foregoing testing has not created the norm against testing that proponents of the treaty would like to see. It is also not better to forego testing in an effort to get others to do so as well if, in fact, our own stockpile would be unduly jeopardized as a result. On that, there has been a variety of expert opinion testifying this past week suggesting that the reason it is better to test is precisely because we cannot confirm the safety and reliability of our stockpile to an adequate degree of certainty without that. To the question of whether or not it is a fallacy of logic to quote experts, I would simply suggest that while it may not be the most persuasive argument in the world to quote experts in support of your position, it is at least some weight of evidence. Both sides have engaged in that. It is true that on many of these issues there are opinions on both sides of the issue. Dr. Edward Teller certainly is an expert in nuclear weapons design and on many other matters that relate to it. But let's assume he does not know what he is talking about here and go to people whose job it was to verify a compliance with arms control treaties. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter dated October 1, 1999, from Fred Eimer, Former Assistant Director of ACDA, the Arms Control Agency Verification and Implementation Office, to Senator Helms.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, let me just pose one unanimous-consent request before we begin. To the extent that it is possible with respect to people in the Chamber ready to make statements, I ask unanimous consent that the debate on the proposition be divided in a way that proponents and opponents speak in opposition to each other, one following the other.

Mr. KYL. That is precisely why I framed it the way I did.

Mr. KYL. It would not be appropriate to say Republican and Democrat, since I know Senator Specter would like to speak not in opposition.

Mr. KYL. With the understanding that Senator Biden and I just reached, and the Senator just articulated, I withdraw the request, and I assume we can proceed in that fashion. Mr. President, I rise today to explain why I strongly oppose the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that has been submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent. I think the words of six distinguished Americans who formerly bore the responsibility for safeguarding our nation's security as Secretary of Defense frame the issue before the Senate quite well. In a letter to the majority leader this week, James Schlesinger, Dick Cheney, Frank Carlucci, Caspar Weinberger, Donald Rumsfeld, and Melvin Laird who served as Secretaries of Defense in the Reagan, Bush, Ford, and Nixon administrations, stated: As the Senate weighs whether to approve the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), we believe Senators will be obliged to focus on one dominant, inescapable result were it to be ratified: over the decades ahead, confidence in the reliability of our nuclear weapons stockpile would inevitably decline, thereby reducing the credibility of America's nuclear deterrent. For this reason, these former Secretaries of Defense conclude that the CTBT is ``incompatible with the Nation's international commitments and vital security interests . . . Accordingly, we respectfully urge you and your colleagues to preserve the right of this nation to conduct nuclear tests necessary to the future viability of our nuclear deterrent by rejecting approval of the present CTBT.'' I couldn't agree more with the considered judgment of these distinguished Americans who have had the awesome responsibility of maintaining the U.S. nuclear deterrent throughout the cold war and beyond. Before discussing some of the flaws of the CTBT and how it will undermine the credibility of our nuclear deterrent, a few words on the importance of nuclear deterrence, and the limits of arms control I think are in order. As my colleagues recall, during the cold war, the Soviet Union enjoyed a tremendous advantage in conventional military forces in Europe. The United States was able to offset this advantage in conventional forces, and to guarantee the security of Western Europe until the cold war ended peacefully, through the maintenance of a credible nuclear deterrent. Our nuclear ``umbrella,'' as it is called, was extended to our allies in other parts of the world as well. Since the end of the cold war, some have argued that nuclear deterrence is an outdated concept, and the U.S. no longer needs to retain a substantial nuclear weapons capability. However, deterrence is not a product of the cold war and has been around since the beginning of diplomacy and war. Over 2,500 years ago, the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote about the value of deterrence stating, ``To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.'' Furthermore, the end of the cold war does not mean national security threats to the United States have evaporated. James Woolsey, President Clinton's first Director of Central Intelligence, aptly described the current security environment when he said, ``We have slain a large dragon [the Soviet Union]. But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes.'' Rogue nations like North Korea, Iran, and Iraq have weapons of mass destruction programs and are hostile to the United States. China is an emerging power whose relationship with the United States has been rocky at best. And Russia retains significant military capabilities, including over 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads. The gulf war is an excellent case study of the continuing importance of nuclear deterrence in the post-cold-war world. In that conflict, the maintenance of a credible nuclear weapons capability, coupled with the understanding that it was possible that the United States would respond with nuclear weapons if attacked with other weapons of mass destruction, saved lives by deterring such an attack. As my colleagues recall, Iraq possessed a large arsenal of chemical weapons that it had used against its Kurdish population, and against Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. It is widely acknowledged that Iraq did not use chemical weapons against the United States-led coalition during the gulf war because we possessed a credible nuclear deterrent. Prior to the start of the gulf war, U.S. leaders practiced the art of deterrence by issuing clear warnings to Saddam Hussein. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney stated: He [Saddam Hussein] needs to be made aware that the President will have available the full spectrum of capabilities. And were Saddam Hussein foolish enough to use weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. response would be absolutely overwhelming and it would be devastating. He has to take that into consideration, it seems to me, before he embarks upon a course of using those kinds of capabilities. President Bush also sent a strongly worded message to Saddam Hussein which said: Let me state, too, that the United States will not tolerate the use of chemical or biological weapons. . . . The American people would demand the strongest possible response. You and your country will pay a terrible price if you order unconscionable acts of this sort. Iraqi officials have confirmed that these statements deterred Baghdad from using chemical and biological weapons. In 1995, Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz reported to Rolf Ekeus, chairman of the U.N. commission charged with inspecting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities, that Iraq was deterred from using its arsenal of chemical and biological weapons because the Iraqi leadership had interpreted Washington's threats of devastating retaliation as meaning nuclear retaliation. Aziz's explanation is corroborated by a senior defector, General Wafic Al Sammarai, former head of Iraqi military intelligence, who stated: Some of the Scud missiles were loaded with chemical warheads, but they were not used. We didn't use them because the other side had a deterrent force. I do not think Saddam was capable of taking a decision to use chemical weapons or biological weapons, or any other type of weapons against the allied troops, because the warning was quite severe, and quite effective. The allied troops were certain to use nuclear arms and the price will be too dear and too high. Mr. President, as these statements show, a credible nuclear deterrent remains vitally important to our nation. I would hope that we could begin this debate on the CTBT by agreeing that a strong U.S. nuclear deterrent remains essential and that the Senate should reject any actions that would undermine the credibility of this deterrent. To the second preliminary point, the fallacy of arms control: Unfortunately, the CTBT negotiated by the Clinton administration would do just that. This is not surprising since the Clinton administration has sought to protect our national security with a fixation on arms control that columnist Charles Krauthammer aptly calls ``Peace through Paper.'' Of course, arms control is not a new idea. After all, in the year 1139, the Roman Catholic Church tried to ban the crossbow. Like so many other well-intentioned arms control measures, this one was doomed to failure from the start. And who can forget the Kellog-Briand treaty, ratified by the United States in 1929, that outlawed war as an instrument of national policy. This agreement and others spawned in its wake left the United States and Britain unprepared to fight and unable to deter World War II. Yet despite these and many other notable failures, the Clinton administration still looks to arms control as the best way to safeguard our security. Under Secretary of State John Holum explained this philosophy during a speech in 1994, stating. The Clinton Administration's policy aims to protect us first and foremost through arms control--by working hard to prevent new threats--and second, by legally pursuing the development of theater defenses for those cases where arms control is not yet successful. The administration continues to cling tenaciously to the ABM Treaty, which prevents us from defending ourselves against missile attack, and numerous other arms control measures have been proposed by senior officials like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, such as bans of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, laser weapons, anti- satellite weapons, landmines, and even a proposal to limit the availability of assault rifles. As George Will has said of the administration's arms control philosophy, ``The designation `superstition' fits because the faith of believers in arms control is more than impervious to evidence, their faith is strengthened even by evidence that actually refutes it.'' There is enduring wisdom in President Reagan's statement of ``Peace through strength.'' In 1780, our Nation's first President, George Washington said, ``There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy.'' Two hundred years later another President, Ronald Reagan, called this doctrine ``Peace Through Strength.'' I urge Senators to think about the enduring wisdom of these statements in the coming days as we debate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the negative effects its ratification would have on our Nation's security. Let me turn now to a discussion of the CTBT's many flaws. America's nuclear weapons are the most sophisticated in the world. This was the point of the letter of the former Secretaries of Defense. They pointed out that each one typically has thousands of parts, and over time in nuclear materials and high-explosive triggers in our weapons deteriorate, and we lack the experience predicting the effect of these changes. Some of the materials used in our weapons, like plutonium, enriched uranium, and tritium, are radioactive materials that decay, and as they decay they also change the properties of other materials within the weapon. We lack experience predicting the effects of such aging on the safety and reliability of our weapons. We did not design our weapons to last forever. The shelf life of our weapons was expected to be about 20 years. In the past, we did not encounter problems with aging weapons, because we were fielding new designs and older designs were retired. But under the CTBT, we could not field new designs to replace older weapons, because testing would be required to develop new designs. Remanufacturing components of existing weapons that have deteriorated also poses significant problems. Over time, manufacturing processes will change, some chemicals previously used in the production of our weapons have been banned by environmental regulations, and our documentation of the technical characteristics of older weapons, in some cases, is incomplete. Furthermore, as James Schlesinger--who formerly served as Secretary of defense and Secretary of Energy--has testified to the Senate, the plutonium pits in some of our weapons are approaching the end of this life-span. According to Dr. Schlesinger, one of our national laboratories estimates the pits used in some of our weapons will last 35 years. Since many of the pits used in the current arsenal are about 30 years old, this means that we will soon need to replace these pits. But without testing, we will never know if these replacement parts will work as their predecessors did. As the former Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Dr. John Nuckolls said last month in a letter to me: Key components of nuclear warheads are ``aging'' by radioactive decay and chemical decomposition and corrosion. Periodic remanufacture is necessary, but may copy existing defects and introduce additional defects. Some of the remanufactured parts may differ significantly from the original parts--due to loss of nuclear test validated personnel who manufactured the original parts, the use of new material and fabrication processes, and inadequate specification of original parts. There are significant risks of reducing stockpile reliability when remanufactured parts are involved in warhead processes where there are major gaps in our scientific understanding. The fact is that, despite our technical expertise, there is much we still do not understand about our own nuclear weapons. As C. Paul Robinson, Director of the Sandia National Laboratory has aid, ``some aspects of nuclear explosive design are still not understood at the level of physical principles.'' These gaps in our knowledge do not merely present a theoretical problem. As President Bush noted in a report to Congress in January 1993, ``Of all U.S. nuclear weapons designs fielded since 1958, approximately one-third have required nuclear testing to resolve problems arising after deployment.'' Furthermore, in 1987, Lawrence Livermore Lab produced a report titled ``Report to Congress on Stockpile Reliability, Weapon Remanufacture, and the Role of Nuclear Testing'' in which it extolled the importance of testing, noting that ``. . . there is no such thing as a `thoroughly tested' nuclear weapon.'' The report also goes on to state that of the one-third of weapons designs introduced into the stockpile since 1958 that have required testing to fix, ``In three-fourths of these cases, the problems were discovered only because of the ongoing nuclear testing.'' This report went on to say that ``Because we frequently have difficulty understanding fully the effects of changes particularly seemingly small changes on the nuclear performance, nuclear testing has been required to maintain the proper functioning of our nation's deterrent.'' Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger summed this point up nicely in 1986 when he said: The irreducible fact is that nuclear testing is essential to providing for the safety and security of our warheads and weapons systems. It also is essential if we are to maintain their reliability. This is not a matter of conjecture, but a lesson learned through hard experience. For example, in the case of one nuclear system--the warhead for the Polaris [SLBM]--testing allowed us to fix defects that were suddenly discovered. Until corrected, these defects could have rendered the vast majority of weapons in our sea-based deterrent completely inoperable. The importance of testing to the maintenance of any complex weapon or machine cannot be underestimated. As the six former Secretaries of Defense noted in this letter opposing the CTBT, The history of maintaining complex military hardware without testing demonstrates the pitfalls of such an approach. Prior to World War II, the Navy's torpedoes had not been adequately tested because of insufficient funds. It took nearly two years of war before we fully solved the problems that caused our torpedoes to routinely pass harmlessly under the target or to fail to explode on contact. For example, at the Battle of Midway, the U.S. launched 47 torpedo aircraft, without damaging a single Japanese ship. If not for our dive bombers, the U.S. would have lost the crucial naval battle of the Pacific war. The Clinton administration has proposed a program that it hopes will replace actual nuclear tests with computer simulations and a much greater emphasis on science-based experiments. It is called the Stockpile Stewardship Program. According to the Fiscal Year 2000 Stockpile Stewardship Plan Executive Overview, released by the Department of Energy in March this year: The overall goal of the Stockpile Stewardship program is to have in place by 2010 . . . the capabilities that are necessary to provide continuing high confidence in the annual certification of the stockpile without the necessity for nuclear testing. I support the Stockpile Stewardship Program because it will improve our knowledge about our nuclear weapons. But as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and former CIA Director John Deutch said in a letter this week, ``the fact is that the scientific case simply has not been made that, over the long term, the United States can ensure the nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing.'' First, the Stockpile Stewardship Program faces tremendous technical challenges. As the Director of Sandia National Laboratories, Dr. Robinson has said, ``the commercially available and laboratory technologies of today are inadequate for the stockpile stewardship tasks we will face in the future. Another hundred-to- thousand-fold increase in capability from hardware and software combined will be required.'' Dr. Victor Reis, the architect of the stewardship program, said this about it during a speech in Albuquerque: Think about it--we are asked to maintain forever, an incredibly complex device, no larger than this podium, filed with exotic, radioactive materials, that must create, albeit briefly, temperatures and pressures only seen in nature at the center of stars; do it without an integrating nuclear test, and without any reduction in extraordinarily high standards of safety and reliability. And, while you're at it downsize the industrial complex that supports this enterprise by a factor of two, and stand up critical new manufacturing processes. This within an industrial system that was structured to turn over new designs every fifteen years, and for which nuclear explosive testing was the major tool for demonstrating success. Senior officials at the Department of Energy and our nuclear labs are generally careful in how they couch their remarks about the Stockpile Stewardship Program. They typically state that the stewardship program is the best approach to maintaining our weapons in the absence of testing. But they are also careful not to guarantee that, despite the unquestioned brilliance of the scientists, the Stockpile Stewardship Program will succeed in replacing testing. In fact, the Stockpile Stewardship Program has already experienced setbacks. For example, the National Ignition Facility, which is the linchpin of the program, has recently fallen behind schedule and is over budget. It still faces a critical technical uncertainty about a major goal of its design: will it be able to achieve thermonuclear ignition? Another problem with relying on computer simulation to replace testing is the increased risk of espionage. Former Lawrence Livermore National Lab Director John Nuckolls made this point in his letter to me as well: ``Espionage is facilitated when U.S. progress is frozen, and classified information is being concentrated and organized in electronic systems.'' In short, in order to achieve the vast increases in computing power required for the stewardship program, much of the computer code required for the program will be written by hundreds of people at participating universities and colleges--in many cases by people who are not even American citizens. Mr. President, the bottom line is that a credible nuclear deterrent is just too important to put all our eggs in the stewardship basket. In addition to impairing the reliability of our nuclear arsenal, the CTBT will prevent us from making our nuclear weapons as safe as they can be. This is extraordinarily important. Nuclear weapon safety has always been a paramount concern of the United States. Throughout the history of our nuclear weapons program, we have made every effort to ensure that even in the most violent of accidents there would be the minimum chance of a nuclear explosion or radioactive contamination. The results of such an accident would be catastrophic. That's why President Clinton's Secretary of Defense, Bill Cohen, opposed a test moratorium when he was a Senator. During debate on an amendment imposing a moratorium on testing, August 3, 1993, then- Senator Cohen said, A vote to halt nuclear testing today is a vote to condemn the American people to live with unsafe nuclear weapons in their midst for years and years--indeed until nuclear weapons are eliminated. Not just a few unsafe nuclear weapons, but a nuclear stockpile in which most of the weapons do not have critical safety features. I digress a moment to note when he was asked about this statement this week, now-Secretary Cohen said, we have replaced those weapons with weapons in our inventory now that are safe. I know defense Secretary Cohen would agree, that is not a correct statement. All of the weapons in our current inventory lack one or more of the essential safety features that we have been talking about here. As the Director of Los Alamos National Lab, Dr. Sig Hecker, indicated in a letter to me in 1997, ``with a CTBT it will not be possible to make some of the potential safety improvements for greater intrinsic warhead safety that we considered during the 1990 time frame.'' The reason is that nuclear tests must be done in many cases to confirm that once new safety features are incorporated, the weapons are reliable and still operate as intended. The CTBT makes it pointless to try to invent new, improved safety features because they could not be adopted without nuclear testing. Even worse, the CTBT eliminates the possibility of improving the safety of current weapons through the incorporation of existing, well understood safety features. Safety features include items such as insensitive high explosive and fire resistant pits. Insensitive high explosive in the primary of a nuclear weapon is intended to prevent the premature detonation of the high explosive trigger, resulting in a potential nuclear explosion should the weapon be subjected to unexpected stress, like being dropped or penetrated by shrapnel or a bullet. Fire resistant pits are intended to prevent the dispersal of plutonium resulting in radioactive contamination of an area should the weapon be exposed to a fire, such as an accidental blaze during loading of a weapon on an aircraft. Unfortunately, few people know that many of our current weapons do not contain all the safety features that already have been invented by our National Laboratories. Only one of the nine weapons in the current stockpile incorporates all six available safety features. In fact, three of the weapons in the stockpile--the W78 warhead, which is used on the Minuteman III ICBM, and the W76 and W88 warheads, which sit atop missiles carried aboard Trident submarines--incorporate only one of the six safety features. Another weapon, the W62 warhead, does not have any of the six safety features incorporated into its design. The bottom line is that a ban on nuclear testing prevents us from making our weapons as safe as we know how to make them and creates a disincentive to making such safety improvements. Mr. President, another point I think is extraordinarily important as we debate this CTBT is that the purpose of the treaty cannot be achieved by its ratification. In addition to undermining our nuclear deterrent, as I have just spoken to, the treaty will not achieve its goal of halting nuclear proliferation. Supporters of the treaty say the United States must lead by example, and that by halting nuclear tests ourselves, we will persuade others to follow our example. Yet the history of the last eight years shows this theory is false. Since the United States halted testing in 1992, India, Pakistan, Russia, China, and France have all conducted tests. Furthermore, the CTBT will not establish a new international norm against nuclear weapons testing or possession. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the NPT ratified by 185 countries has already established such a norm. The NPT calls for parties to the treaty, other than the five declared nuclear powers--the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France--to pledge not to pursue nuclear weapons programs. Yet North Korea and Iraq, to name two who are parties to the NPT, have, of course, violated it. They have pursued nuclear weapons programs despite their solemn international pledge never to do so. The CTBT will not add anything useful to the international nonproliferation regime since these nations, in effect, would be pledging not to test the nuclear weapons they have already promised never to have under the NPT. So much for the international norm. Nor will the CTBT pose a significant impediment to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by rogue nations since, although nuclear testing is essential to maintaining the sophisticated nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal today, it is not required to develop relatively simple first- generation nuclear devices, like those needed or being developed by Iran and Iraq. For example, the United States bomb dropped on Hiroshima was never tested, and the Israeli nuclear arsenal has been constructed without testing. Incidentally, the Clinton administration does not dispute this point. In Senate testimony in 1997, CIA Director George Tenet stated: Nuclear testing is not required for the acquisition of a basic nuclear weapons capability (i.e. a bulky, first- generation device with high reliability but low efficiency.) Tests using high- explosive detonations only ([with] no nuclear yield) would provide reasonable confidence in the performance of a first generation device. Nuclear testing becomes critical only when a program moves beyond basic designs to incorporate more advanced concepts. I believe Director Tenet is absolutely correct, based on the letter of the Secretary of Defense that I quoted earlier. We can't afford to underestimate the weapon described by Director Tenet--a ``bulky, first generation device with high reliability but low efficiency'' is a lot like the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima to change world history. It is a strategic weapon--if North Korea or Iran were able to deploy such a weapon, they could--to put it mildly--severely reduce our ability to protect our interests in East Asia or the Persian Gulf. These are weapons that would be designed to intimidate and kill large numbers of people in cities, not destroy purely military targets, as the United States weapons are designed to do. Another problem with the CTBT is that it is totally unverifiable. It cannot be verified despite the vast array of expensive sensors and detection technology being established under the treaty, so it will be possible for other nations to conduct militarily significant nuclear testing with little or no risk of detection. Effective verification requires high confidence that militarily significant cheating will be detected in a timely manner. The United States cannot now, and will not in the near future, be able to confidently detect and identify militarily significant nuclear tests of one kiloton or less by the way, that is roughly 500 times larger than the blast which destroyed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. We cannot detect a test of that magnitude. What is ``militarily significant'' nuclear testing? Definitions of the term might vary, but I think we'd all agree that any nuclear test that gives a nation information to maintain its weapons or to develop newer, more effective weaponry is militarily significant. In the course of U.S. weapons development, nuclear tests with yields between 1 kiloton and 10 kilotons have generally been large enough to provide ``proof'' data on new weapons designs. Other nations might have weaponry that could be assessed at even lower yields. As we know, crude but strategically significant weapons, like the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima, don't need to be tested at all. But for the sake of argument, let's be conservative and assume that other nations would also need to conduct tests at a level above 1 kiloton to develop a new nuclear weapon design. The verification system of the CTBT is supposed to detect nuclear blasts above 1 kiloton, so it would seem at first glance that it will be likely that most cheaters would be caught. But look at the Treaty's fine print--the CTBT's International Monitoring System will be able to detect tests of 1 kilotons or more if they are nonevasive. This means that the cheater will be caught only if he does not try to hide his nuclear test. But what if he does want to hide it? What if he conducts his test evasively? It is a very simple task for Russia, China, or others to hide their nuclear tests. One of the best known means of evasion is detonating the nuclear device in a cavity such as a salt dome or a room mined below ground. Because it surrounds the explosion with empty space, this technique--called decoupling--reduces the noise, or the seismic signal, of the nuclear detonation. The signal of a decoupled test is so diminished--by as much as a factor of 70--that it will not be possible to reliably detect it. For example, a 1,000-ton hidden test would have a signal of a 14-ton open test. This puts the signal of the illicit test well below the threshold of detection. Decoupling is a well-known technique and is technologically simple to achieve. In fact, it is quite possible that Russia and China have continued to conduct nuclear testing during the past 7 years, while the United States has refrained from doing so. They could have done so by decoupling. There are also other means of cheating that can circumvent verification. One is open-ocean testing. A nation could put a device on a small boat or barge, tow it into the ocean, and detonate it anonymously. It would be virtually impossible to link the test to the cheater. While evasive techniques are expensive and complex, the costs are relatively low compared to the expense of a nuclear weapons program, and no more complicated than weapons design. Further, established nuclear powers are well positioned to conduct clandestine testing to assure the reliability and undertake at least modest upgrades of their arsenals. Russia and China do not have good records on compliance with arms control and nonproliferation commitments. In addition, according to the Washington Times, United States intelligence agencies believe China conducted a small underground nuclear test in June and Russia is believed to have conducted a nuclear test earlier this month. While neither country has ratified the CTBT, both have signed the treaty and have promised to adhere to a testing moratorium. Again, so much for the norm. The bottom line is that a determined country has several means to conceal its weapons tests and the CTBT is not effectively verifiable. Let me stress here that my assessment is not based on opinions. Our inability to verify a whole range of nuclear testing is well-known and has been affirmed by the U.S. Intelligence Community. As the Washington Post reported earlier this week, our intelligence agencies lack the ability to confidently detect low-yield tests. We would be irresponsible in the extreme to ratify an unverifiable arms control treaty--especially when that treaty will inevitably reduce our confidence in our own nuclear deterrent. President Clinton's first Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, James Woolsey, summed up the problems with verification of the treaty stating in Senate testimony that, I believe that a zero-yield Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is extraordinarily difficult, to the point of near impossibility--and possibly to the point of impossibility--to verify from afar. In addition to the negative consequences that would result from treaty ratification, I would also point out that this accord is very poorly crafted. The CTBT is weakest at its very foundation--it actually fails to say what it bans. Nowhere in its 17 articles and 2 annexes are the terms ``nuclear weapon test explosion'' or ``nuclear explosion'' defined or quantified and these are the terms used in the treaty's basic obligations. Acting Under Secretary of State John Holum admitted this point in responses to questions for the record on June 29 of this year stating: The U.S. decided at the outset of negotiations not to seek international agreement on a definition of ``nuclear weapon test explosion'' in the Treaty text. The course of negotiations confirmed our judgment that it would have been extremely difficult, and possibly counterproductive, to specify in technical terms what is prohibited by the Treaty. May I read that again: The course of negotiations confirmed our judgment that it would have been extremely difficult, and possibly counterproductive, to specify in technical terms what is prohibited by the Treaty. But another nation might choose to apply a less restrictive definition and conduct very low-yield testing, what we call hydronuclear testing. While the United States interprets the treaty to ban all nuclear explosives testing--that is why they call it a zero ban test--other nations could conduct very low-yield testing, as I said, which we could not verify but which they would consider in compliance with the treaty. This so-called hydronuclear testing is very useful to nuclear weapons programs by helping improve the understanding of fundamental nuclear weapons physics, develop new weapons concepts, ascertain existing weapons' reliability, and exercise the skills of scientists, engineers, and technicians. The nuclear energy released in a hydronuclear test can be less than the equivalent released by four pounds of conventional high explosives. This is virtually nothing, and such a low-yield test would almost certainly escape detection. This is where the treaty's vagueness is actually harmful to our interests. Even if we were able to detect it, the nation conducting a hydronuclear test could simply argue that it was legal under the treaty. And they would have the historical CTBT negotiating record on their side. Many drafts of the CTBT prior to the Clinton administration allowed for low-yield ``permitted experiments.'' The verification regime of the CTBT--centered around the International Monitoring System, or IMS--will not be able to detect tests with far greater yields than hydronuclear tests. These tests can be conducted with virtually no risk of detection by either the IMS system or U.S. technical means. There is much more to say about this treaty, but I believe I have outlined the primary reasons why the only prudent course for the Senate is to reject the CTBT. It will jeopardize rather than enhance our national security. It will undermine our vital nuclear deterrent by jeopardizing the reliability of our nuclear stockpile. It will prevent us from making our weapons as safe as they can be. It will not stop nuclear proliferation, and it is not verifiable. It is not worthy of Senate approval.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I am going to take just a couple of minutes until Senator Coverdell arrives, at which point I will suspend my remarks so that he can make some comments. I want to talk a little bit about a common thread of the remarks of many of the people who are in opposition to the treaty; that is, that it is difficult for the United States to sustain our position as the world leader, that many in the international community would find it objectionable if the United States rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and that this would hurt our ability to lead with respect to proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world. Let me quote from a newspaper story today in the Washington Post, the headline of which is, ``U.S. Allies Urge Senate To Ratify Test Ban.'' It is certainly true that they have done that. There are a variety of them that made comments hoping we would adopt the treaty, not defeat it. Let me quote a couple of things. International anxiety also has been compounded by new worries over U.S. efforts to escape constraints imposed by the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which limits the ability of the United States to build systems to defend against missile attack. Russia and China say it would destabilize the strategic balance if the United States built a missile defense system, because Washington could be tempted to attack others if it felt invulnerable to retaliation. Jayantha Dhanapala, the U.N. under secretary for disarmament affairs, said many countries agree to a permanent inspection regime four years ago only on the basis of a written guarantee by the nuclear powers to negotiate and ratify a worldwide test ban as one of several key steps toward nuclear disarmament. I read two parts of the Washington Post story to suggest the world community, which does not want the United States to develop a ballistic missile defense, which doesn't want the United States to do anything that requires an amendment to the ABM Treaty, and some of which is very much in favor of total nuclear disarmament and has agreed to participate in this treaty only after leaders promised them this Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would be one of several key steps toward nuclear disarmament, all of those people in the world, I submit, are not people who we want to make U.S. national defense policy. Their goals are not the same as our goals. We have an obligation as the leader of the free world to ensure our nuclear deterrent is safe and reliable; they don't. We may have to do things they could never dream of doing, including nuclear testing to ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile. They don't have to worry about that, but we do. While they can lament the fact that the United States is not willing to sign onto the treaty, they don't have the same responsibility as we do, just as they can call for us not to amend the ABM Treaty or to build a national missile defense or even theater missile defenses without the obligations that The United States has. The United States has to defend our troops around the world--which most of these countries don't have to do--to defend allies around the world and, of course, even to defend the United States. I, frankly, don't care much if people around the world who don't want the United States to defend itself against ballistic missile attack are going to criticize the Senate for rejecting a flawed unverifiable ineffective CTBT. Finally, quoting from the last two paragraphs of this article: I don't like to talk about any country exercising world leadership, but in this case we see that the United States must play a special role, Sha Zukang, China's top arms control official, said in an interview. Sha added that China is even more alarmed by U.S. efforts to develop a regional missile defense system than by the Senate's reluctance to approve a test ban treaty. So I presume that next, in order to assuage the concerns of the Chinese, we will forego the development of a regional missile defense system because it would upset them if we proceeded with that. Why would it upset them? Because, of course, they wouldn't be able to threaten Taiwan. We have obligations that other countries don't have. If we are to be the great leader that people on this side of the aisle have urged the United States to be, then we have to exercise leadership. Sometimes that means doing things other people in the world are uncomfortable with. Boris Kvok, Russia's deputy chief of disarmament issues, said the U.S. decision on the test ban treaty would not affect the deliberations of Russia's parliament on the pact or alter his country's test moratorium. ``But if the U.S. moves ahead with ballistic missile defense, it would be a disaster . . . and we would have to start developing new weapons. . . .'' He is saying we don't really care about the CTBT in terms of what we are going to do, but if the United States moves ahead with ballistic missiles, that would be a disaster. I presume next we hear people come to the Senate floor and say international opinion says we should not develop a missile defense to protect the people of the United States so we should not move forward with that. My point is this: The United States cannot be held hostage to world opinion. We have obligations they don't have, and if they don't care about building a defense for their people, we need to because we can be a target of rogue nations whereas other countries may not be. They are not making the decisions and actions in the world that may cause these terrorists or rogue states to want to retaliate against them. However, the United States, by taking a world leadership role, has put itself in that position. It is not a political issue; it is a physics issue. We have to have confidence in our nuclear stockpile. The whole world thought Ronald Reagan was wrong, that he had left his senses when he said no to Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik. They both talked about trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons. When Gorbachev said the price of that agreement was that the United States would have to forego the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan said no. All of the world leaders gasped--except Margaret Thatcher. But the rest of the world leaders gasped and said: Mr. President, you should reconsider that. All of the arms control advocates said it was a bad mistake for President Reagan to have said no. Of course, it later transpires that George Shultz mentioned the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev told him that was the turning point of the cold war. That is when Gorbachev concluded that he could not win the cold war and called it the turning point. Ronald Reagan, in calling the Soviet Union the evil empire, upset a lot of the world leaders, but he stood his ground and history has proven him correct. I submit that history will prove us correct if we return this flawed treaty and say let's go back to the drawing board. We can do better. We can persuade world leaders it is in the best interest of long-term peace that we do better than this flawed treaty.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, after their two speakers, Senator Allard will be next.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I yield 12 minutes to the Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Hagel.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Helms, has asked that I manage the time until he is able to arrive, and in that regard I would like to make an opening statement.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Brad Sweet, staff assistant on the Government Affairs Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services be given floor privileges during consideration of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, today the Senate will begin consideration of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty with debate taking place throughout the day. Debate time is limited to 14 hours and will resume at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 12. I encourage my colleagues to come to the floor to discuss this important issue. As a reminder, cloture was filed on the conference report to accompany the Agriculture appropriations bill on Thursday, and by previous consent the Senate will proceed to that cloture vote on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. It is hoped that the vote regarding the treaty can be stacked to follow the 5:30 vote. I thank my colleagues for their attention.