Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - START Treaty Resolution

Statement

Today, Members of this Committee will vote on whether to provide our advice and consent to ratification of the New START Treaty. This vote comes after four months of consideration of New START and more than a dozen open and classified Committee hearings, hundreds of written questions and answers, letters, briefings, and more than a year of consultations throughout the Treaty's negotiation.

I strongly support the New START Treaty and believe that it deserves the bipartisan support received by past arms control treaties. It will make verifiable reductions in strategic nuclear launchers and warheads and replace the 1991 START I Treaty that expired last year. Most importantly, New START will enable American verification teams to return to Russia to collect data on the Russian arsenal and verify Russian compliance. These inspections greatly reduce the possibility that we will be surprised by future advancements in Russian weapons technology or deployment. Rejecting this treaty would inhibit our knowledge of Russian military capabilities, weaken our non-proliferation diplomacy worldwide, and potentially re-ignite expensive arms competition that would further strain our national budget.

New START has received the unequivocal support from our defense establishment led by Secretary Robert Gates, both the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our current STRATCOM commander, as well as seven former STRATCOM commanders. It also has received the strong support of national security leaders who served in the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations.

Today, I will offer an amendment, in the form of a substitute, to the underlying Resolution of Advice and Consent. I believe that it augments the Chairman's Resolution, which was a starting point for our discussion. My goal was to incorporate suggestions expressed by witnesses, Members of this Committee, and other Senators, as well as to address the major substantive concerns that emerged in our deliberations.

My substitute amendment covers at length concerns that have been raised on missile defense. It contains an understanding, to be included in the instrument of ratification, that the New START Treaty imposes no limitations on the deployment of U.S. missile defenses other than the requirements of paragraph 3 of Article 5, dealing with converted ICBM and SLBM launchers. It also states that the April 2010 unilateral statement by the Russian Federation on missile defense does not impose any legal obligation on the United States and that any further limitations would require Treaty amendment subject to the Senate's advice and consent. In a declaration, my amendment re-affirms, consistent with the Missile Defense Act of 1999, that it is the policy of the United States to deploy an effective national missile defense system as soon as technologically possible and that nothing in the Treaty limits future planned enhancements to the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system and all phases of the Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defense in Europe.

My substitute amendment conditions ratification of New START on Presidential certification, prior to the Treaty's entry into force, of our ability to monitor Russian compliance and on immediate consultations should a Russian breakout from the Treaty be detected. For the first time in any strategic arms control treaty, a condition requires a plan for New START monitoring.

Additional understandings state that nothing in New START impedes the research, development, testing, and evaluation of Conventional Prompt Global Strike systems, nor prohibits their deployment. An understanding also reaffirms that if Russia should develop any rail-mobile ICBM system, it would count under the provisions of New START.

My substitute amendment also declares a commitment to ensure the safety, reliability, and performance of our nuclear forces through a robust stockpile stewardship program and includes a requirement for the President to submit to Congress a plan for overcoming any future resource shortfall associated with his ten-year 1251 modernization plan on our nuclear weapons stockpile.

Finally, my substitute amendment urges the President to engage the Russian Federation to establish measures to improve mutual confidence regarding the accounting and security of Russian nonstrategic nuclear weapons. It requires prompt Presidential consultation with this Committee concerning substantive activities of the Bilateral Consultative Commission in order to ensure that substantive changes to the Treaty are only made with the Senate's advice and consent.

The New START Treaty serves the national security interests of the United States. I believe that my proposed amendment addresses concerns raised about this Treaty, and I urge each Senator to support it.

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