BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I think, having spoken to a couple colleagues, it is quite likely the first amendment that will be offered, relatively soon, will be on the treaty itself so that issue will not have been--we will have time to work the question out that Senator Kerry and Senator Corker have been talking about.
Senator Kerry and I were involved in a discussion about missile defense last evening. I think that will be probably further debated in connection with the first amendment that is likely to be offered. So let me turn to another matter that is of great concern to some of us and I think will require some resolution, either in an amendment of the treaty or preamble or in the resolution of ratification, and that is the limitation that was placed on our potential prompt global strike--conventional global strike weapon. This is a matter on which the Senate gave its advice. Our role, of course, is advice and consent. In the last Defense bill, section 1251 of the fiscal year 2010 NDAA, we included a statement that the New START treaty should not include any limitations on advanced conventional systems, otherwise known as conventional prompt global strike.
For the purposes of this, let me refer to that now as CPGS. Despite the assurances from some in the administration that wouldn't happen, it did happen. There is both limiting language and language in the preamble that sets the stage for further limitations on CPGS. We were clear about this because I believe we are going to need this. General Chilton has said the same thing. First, let me make it clear, what we are talking about is a conventional warhead on top which is a missile that has ICBM-like capabilities, that can quickly reach a spot a long way away to deliver a nonnuclear warhead.
With the WMD and terrorist and other rogue state kinds of threats that exist today, our administration and many of the rest of us have concluded this is a capability we need.
Let me quote General Chilton:
To provide the President a better range of non-nuclear options against rapidly emerging threats, we also require a deployed, conventional prompt global strike capability to hold at risk targets in denied territory that can only be rapidly struck today with nuclear weapon platforms.
That is the rationale for it. That is the administration's statement, and I agree with that.
The Senate provided its advice in Section 1251 of the Defense bill, and here is what Under Secretary of Defense Tauscher assured Senators. She said:
[T]here is no effect for prompt global strike in the treaty.
A March 26, 2010, White House fact sheet assured that:
..... the treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development, or deployment of ..... current or planned United States long-range strike capabilities.
Obviously, that statement was meant to assure us that CPGS would not be constrained or limited. But the kicker in there were the words ``current'' or ``planned.'' That is because there is no current CPGS, and the administration is studying what particular system or systems to move forward with.
So while technically correct that there is nothing current or planned, it is also true the constraints in the treaty will limit whatever system we eventually come up with. The question, therefore, is what happens when, as General Chilton urges us, we develop a CPGS in the future.
Incidentally, General Chilton is the head of our Strategic Command. He is the person responsible for understanding what the threats are and how we can deliver the right ordnance in the right place with perishable intelligence in a very constrained atmosphere, and that is why his views on this are very important. Yet we conceded to Russian demands to place limits on CPGS.
How was this done? The Russians were very clever about this. They knew they were not going to get the United States to back off our plan, so what they said was: You will have to count any of those missiles against the 700 launcher limit on your nuclear delivery vehicles.
That is not a good deal. Most of us believe the 700 is too low to begin with. What we will have to do is, for every single one of these, we will have to subtract that number from the 700. So if you have 25, now you are down to 675 launchers for nuclear weapons.
That is a constraint. There is no way to describe that in any other terms. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said, on March 29:
For the first time, this treaty sets the ceiling, not only for strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, but also for those ones which will be fitted with nonnuclear warheads. The U.S. is carrying out this work, which is why it would be extremely important to set a limit precisely on these types of weapons.
I think he was more straightforward about this than the spokesman for the administration. He said: Sure, we put limits on it, and the United States is moving forward on it. That is why we wanted to put limits on it.
So despite the relationship between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons--but we would not dare deal with tactical weapons either in the preamble or the treaty. Yet in another concession to the Russians, the preamble to the treaty notes that the parties are ``mindful of the impact of conventionally armed ICBMs and SLBMs on strategic stability.''
Well, first of all, I do not agree with that statement. What is the impact? The impact assumes that we cannot segregate the two, which can be done. Second, are we to believe that tactical nuclear weapons, which the Russians enjoy a huge advantage--some say a 10-to-1 advantage over us--have no impact on strategic stability while conventionally armed ballistic missiles do?
What do Russia's neighbors think of that argument, I might wonder. Clearly, these limits on CPGS and the dangerous language in the preamble were concessions to the Russians. It is not in our interest because we do intend to go forward with this. I think, taken to its extreme, the treaty could prevent the United States from acquiring the nonnuclear strategic capabilities necessary to counter today's principal threats, terrorists and regional adversaries armed with weapons of mass destruction.
We recognize the resolution of ratification has language on this. It does not rescind, and could not rescind, the specific limitation on counting conventionally armed ballistic missiles or mitigate the potential for severe disagreement with the Russians over this issue in the very near future.
I do not think we should ratify a treaty without knowing what kind of CPGS systems may be counted and how that will affect the nuclear triad at the much reduced levels now of 700 delivery vehicles. According to the Department of Defense, an assessment on treaty implications for CPGS proposals will not be ready until 2011. So under the resolution approved by the committee, Senators will not know until the treaty enters into force, when, obviously, it would be too late.
So the bottom line is, with a 700-launch vehicle limit, and CPGS counting against that limit, we will have fewer nuclear delivery vehicles than we negotiated for in the treaty, and that limit will be a disincentive to develop the CPGS as a result.
Second, the language in the preamble regarding the impact of CPGS on strategic stability opens the door to further Russian pressure against the United States not to develop and deploy these systems. Why should we accept these constraints in a treaty that was about nuclear weapons?
Now, I think Senator Kerry had three main points, if I distilled it correctly. First was, well, the Russians wanted to limit us from doing this at all. So, in effect, we should be thankful the only limitation was on the number. I do not think that is a very good argument. As I said, we wanted to talk tactical. The Russians said no, so we did not talk tactical in the strategic treaty. There is no reason why, in a strategic nuclear treaty, we need to talk conventional arms either. But we agreed to do that.
Another argument that Senator Kerry--well, it goes along with some in Russia who have said: Well, it would be very hard for us to know whether a missile launch was a strategic nuclear weapon or one of these conventional Prompt Global Strike weapons.
That is sort of a justification for the Russian position. But most of the experts with whom I have talked say that is not a limitation we need to worry about at all. We could easily agree with the Russians in various ways to assuage their concerns. For example, we can deploy the conventionally armed ballistic missiles in areas that are distinct from our ICBM field, allow them to periodically conduct onsite inspections under separate agreement. That could be done. And there are other mechanisms as well. The key point is that we need these capabilities. I do not think we should limit them in an arms control treaty dealing with strategic nuclear weapons.
The other argument is, well, we are not going to develop these for maybe 10 years, which is outside the life of the treaty. First of all, we should not have constraints on developing them at any point. We should not create the precedent that whatever we do with Prompt Global Strike is going to count against our nuclear delivery limits, which is what this treaty does.
But, finally, there are programs that are being studied right now in the United States that would allow us to put the Prompt Global Strike capability into service quite quickly. We need it; we need it now. For example, there have been proposals for weapons on conventional Trident missiles, to cite one example, that would count and could be deployed in less than 10 years. The National Academy notified Congress in May of 2007 that conventional Trident missiles could be operationally deployed within 2 years of funding. And there are others.
My point is, we should not be saying: Well, because certain things are not going to happen for 10 years, the treaty lasts 10 years, therefore, we do not have to worry about it. It takes a long time to plan these systems, and if they are going to be constrained by what is in the treaty today, they are likely going to be constrained by provisions in future treaties as well.
This is a bad precedent. It is one of the reasons we think before we were to proceed with this treaty, we would need to have some resolution either in the preamble or the treaty or the resolution of ratification that would give us assurance that we could develop Prompt Global Strike without detracting from our ability to deliver nuclear warheads as well.
I would like to turn to another matter. I mentioned briefly when I began my conversation yesterday morning about the treaty--and that is, that looked at in a larger context, some people have said: Well, this treaty, in and of itself, may not put that many constraints on the United States. Therefore, they are willing to support it. I appreciate the rationale behind the argument.
But there is an argument that this treaty has to be considered in its context. That is one of the reasons the people are concerned about the missile defense issue. But another element of context is the whole modernization issue, which is directly related to, but in a slightly different way relevant to the consideration of the treaty.
But the other aspect of context is that this is a treaty seen by the administration as moving a step forward toward the President's vision of a world without nuclear weapons. There are a lot of people who disagree with that vision and who believe if this treaty is ratified, then, in effect, the administration's very next step is going to be to begin negotiations to do that.
Indeed, administration spokesmen have said precisely that. Secretary Clinton, when New START was signed, talked about the President's vision of the world without nuclear weapons, and said: We are making real progress toward that goal.
There have been numerous administration spokesmen who have made the same point. I will just mention three. Under Secretary Tauscher, whom I referred to earlier; Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, who actually negotiated this treaty; and Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow have all indicated the next round of negotiations the administration intends to engage in, beginning immediately after the ratification of the START treaty, is the march toward the President's vision of a world without nuclear weapons.
I said I do not share that vision. I do not share it
for two reasons: I think it is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, and I question whether it is a good idea at all. I do not think anybody believes that is something that is achievable in anybody's lifetime, even if it is ever achievable.
But, right now, focusing on this diverts attention, as I think this treaty does, from the efforts to deal with the true threats of today: countries such as Iran and North Korea and nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. As I said--in fact, let me quote Dr. Rice, who just recently wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. December 7 is the date. She said:
Nuclear weapons will be with us for a long time. After this treaty, our focus must be on stopping dangerous proliferators, not on further reductions in the U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals, which are really no threat to each other or to international stability.
I agree with that. Let me quote George Kennan, who wrote this a long time ago, but I think it applies today:
The evil of these Utopian enthusiasms was not only or even primarily the wasted time, the misplaced emphasis, the encouragement of false hopes. The evil lay primarily in the fact that those enthusiasms distracted our gaze from the real things that were happening. The cultivation of these Utopian schemes, flattering to our own image of ourselves, took place at the expense of our feeling for reality.
I would apply that to today. While we make a big hullabaloo about signing a treaty between Russia and the United States, countries that are no longer enemies, who are bringing down our strategic arsenals because it is in our own self-interest to do so, and ignore the threats--and I should not say ``ignore'' because that is to suggest the administration and others have not spent time working on the problem of Iran and North Korea. I ask, however, how much success we have had and whether we need to devote more attention and effort to resolving those problems that are immediately in front of us rather than dealing with a nonproblem in the START treaty with Russia.
Also, I would ask my colleagues to just reflect for a moment on what such a world would be like. You can divide, at least in my lifetime, barely, pre-August 1945, in the last century, and post-August 1945. World War II claimed between 56 and 81 million lives. It is astounding to me we cannot even get a more accurate count of that. That is how destructive and disruptive and cataclysmic World War II was.
But it was ended with two atomic weapons. Since that time, the major powers--Russia, the United States, China--have not fired a shot in anger against each other. Major wars such as World War II, World War I--these kinds of wars have been avoided at least in part because the countries that possess these weapons know they cannot be used against each other in a conflict.
That is the deterrent value. Would it be nice if they had never been invented? Yes. Except for what they accomplished in ending World War II. But they cannot be uninvented, and the reality is, today it does provide a deterrent for the United States to have these weapons, and 31 other countries in the world rely on that deterrent.
So I would just ask those who say it would be wonderful if these weapons did not exist, what would the world look like today, with all of the conflicts that exist, and the opportunity for conventional warfare, unconstrained by the deterrent of a nuclear retaliation?
Nobel Prize winner and arms control expert Thomas Schelling recently observed that: In a world without nuclear weapons, countries would maintain an ability to rearm, and that ``every crisis would be a nuclear crisis ..... the urge to preempt would dominate.....it would be a nervous world.''
Well, to be sure, and that is an understatement. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote:
A world without nuclear weapons sounds nice, but of course that was the world that brought us World War I and World War II. If you like the sound of that, the touchy-feely `Ground Zero' bandwagon is probably for you.
General Brent Scowcroft, who is actually a proponent of this treaty wrote:
Second, given the clear risks and the elusive benefits inherent in additional deep cuts, the burden of proof should be on those who advocate such reductions to demonstrate exactly how and why such cuts would serve to enhance U.S. security. Absent such a demonstration, we should not pursue additional cuts in the mistaken belief that fewer is ipso facto better.
This is a point that was also made by the Bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the so-called Perry-Schlesinger Commission, in which they concluded:
All of the commission members all believe that reaching the ultimate goal of global nuclear elimination would require a fundamental change in geopolitics.
Again, quite an understatement. As I said, even the notion that we would be immediately pursuing, trying to reach this goal after the START treaty is ratified is to bring into question--at least I would suggest--in the minds of the 31 countries that depend on our nuclear deterrent for their security, whether this is a wise idea. There are plenty of folks around the world who have commented on this, national leaders who have commented on this.
Let me just quote a couple to illustrate the breadth of concern about it.
The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy:
It--
Referring to the French nuclear deterrent--
is neither a matter of prestige nor a question of rank, it is quite simply the nation's life insurance policy.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, at the conclusion of my remarks, a list of comments and quotations by people who have spoken to this. Let me just cite maybe one.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1).
Mr. KYL. Bill Kristol, who is, I think, a very astute observer of these matters, wrote in the Washington Post in April of last year:
Yet to justify a world without nuclear weapons, what Obama would really have to envision is a world without war, or without threats of war ..... The danger is that the allure of a world without nuclear weapons can be a distraction--even an excuse for not acting against real nuclear threats. So while Obama talks of a future without nuclear weapons, the trajectory we are on today is toward a nuclear- and missile-capable North Korea and Iran--and a far more dangerous world.
The point of all of the people whom I don't quote here but will include for the Record is that the genie will not be put back in the bottle. Countries will have nuclear weapons. As one of them pointed out, if we were ever, by some magic, able to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the threat of one nation quickly acquiring them would be the most destabilizing thing one could imagine. The reality is, it is not going to happen. The United States moving toward that goal is not going to influence anyone, including North Korea or Syria or Iran or other countries that may mean the United States harm.
For those who believe this is a bad idea and who would like to see the President step back from that goal and instead focus more convincingly on dealing with the threats that are near term, ratification of this treaty presents a real problem, especially when the administration talks about the very next thing they want to do after beginning those negotiations is to bring to the Senate the comprehensive test ban treaty which this Senate defeated 11 years ago, and there are even stronger reasons to reject it today.
The bottom line is, one can argue that the dramatic reduction in the arsenals of Russia and United States of strategic weapons has been a good thing. It certainly has been an economically justifiable action for both countries because they are costly. But it has had no discernible effect on nuclear proliferation. We have had more proliferation since, after the Cold War, we began to reduce these weapons. They are unlikely, between the United States and Russia, to be a cause of future conflict.
It is time for global disarmament, starting with President Obama, to recognize this reality and channel their considerable efforts and good intentions toward the true dangers of which I have spoken.
I would like to address one other subject, if I may.
Mr. KERRY. I don't want to interrupt the Senator, but I wonder if, before he goes to another area, he would like to engage in a discussion on this particular one?
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would be happy to do that.
Mr. KERRY. If he is pressed for time, I understand that.
Mr. KYL. I am always happy to yield to my friend, and we always engage in interesting colloquies. I had indicated that, as a predicate to amendments, several of us had opening statements we would like to give. I am ready to go to amendments, but there are a couple of things I would like to say before we do.
Mr. KERRY. Then I will reserve my question until later.
Mr. KYL. I will enjoy the colloquy we have when we do get around to it.
Mr. President, we don't have time to get into a lot of detail, but there is the question of verification. This is one of the other major matters people have written about, including Senator Bond, who is the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee. It is going to be important for the Senate to have an executive session to go over intelligence, classified information that relates to the question of verification and past Russian compliance or noncompliance with agreements they have made with the United States.
In this short period, I wish to rebut something that continues to be repeated and is simply not true or at least the implication is not true--that we have to do this treaty because we need the verification provisions. The implication is that they are good and strong and will be effective. They won't. The verification provisions are far less than we had in the START I treaty. In the view of many people, they are not going to be effective.
Secretary of State James Baker, who testified early on this treaty, said:
[The verification mechanism in the New START treaty] does not appear as rigorous or extensive as the one that verified the numerous and diverse treaty obligations and prohibitions under START I. This complex part of the treaty is even more crucial when fewer deployed nuclear warheads are allowed than were allowed in the past.
My colleague Senator McCain said:
The New START treaty's permissive approach to verification will result in less transparency and create additional challenges for our ability to monitor Russia's current and future capabilities.
Senator Bond said:
New START suffers from fundamental verification flaws that no amount of tinkering around the edges can fix.
He also said:
The Select Committee on Intelligence has been looking at this issue closely over the past several months ..... There is no doubt in my mind that the United States cannot reliably verify the treaty's 1,550 limit on deployed warheads.
In very simple terms, the reason he is saying that is that there is no overall verification of those warheads. We can look at an individual missile and see how many warheads are on the top, but that doesn't tell us whether they are in compliance with 1,550. That is one of the fundamental flaws.
The amount of telemetry, unencrypted telemetry, from Russian missile tests is reduced to zero unless the Russians decide to give us more than zero.
There is no longer onsite monitoring of the mobile missile final assembly facility at Votkinsk, which has existed for all these years under START I. The Russians didn't want us hanging around there anymore. We didn't even fight for that. It is a critical verification issue with respect to potentially a railcar or other mobile missiles the Russians will be developing. Secretary Gates spoke to that eloquently with respect to the verification provisions in START I. There are fewer onsite inspections. And I can't imagine the Russians would declare a facility, which is the only place we get to visit, and then be doing something nefarious at that particular declared facility. It is the undeclared facilities that represent a big part of the problem.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey said:
New START's verification provisions will provide little or no help in detecting illegal activity at locations the Russians fail to declare, are off-limits to U.S. inspectors, or are underground or otherwise hidden from our satellites.
He makes the point, when he refers to satellites, those are sometimes referred to as our national assets. They do good and they tell us a lot, but they can't possibly tell us all we need to know. That is why we had much more vigorous verification under START I.
There are other things we will be discussing when we get into the classified session on this, but let me conclude this point and my presentation with this reality. We will find--I can say this much, at least, in open session--that the Russians have violated major provisions of most of the agreements we have entered into with them for a long, long time: START I, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, the conventional forces in Europe treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, and, by the way, others I won't mention.
The concern would be for a breakout. Today, Russia and the United States are not enemies. That is why a lot of this is of less concern than it ordinarily would be. The big concern is just that ultimate concern of a breakout. What if all of a sudden they decided to confront us over some issue relating to a country on their border or something else and we were not aware they had gained a significant advantage over us? Again, the preparation of the United States to deal with that takes a long time. I won't get into it here, but it takes a long time. That is why verification and intelligence is so important.
I have talked about two things this morning: the conventional global strike and the verification issues, as well as the general concept of a world without nuclear weapons, which, unfortunately, this treaty, at least in the minds of a lot of people, is viewed as a predicate for and which would be very dangerous.
There are some other issues I eventually wish to speak to, including the whole question of whether, as a rationale
for this treaty, the reset relations with Russia have really provided very much help to the United States and whether this treaty should be used as a way of assuaging Russian sensitivities or convincing them to cooperate with us on other things.
Others have talked about tactical nuclear weapons, and there will be amendments we will be offering to deal with that, and we can discuss that later.
There is also the very important matter of the Bilateral Consultative Commission, recognizing that this group of Russian and American negotiators could in secret change terms of the treaty. The resolution of ratification provided for a notice provision, but it is not adequate. I am hoping my colleagues will agree with us on that. We will provide a longer term for notification, with an ability of the Senate to reject terms that are deemed central to the treaty and for which we really need to be providing our consent or nonconsent.
Then finally, something I alluded to here, which is that the United States really ought to be spending more time dealing with the threats that I think are more real to us today, threats coming from places such as Iran and North Korea, rather than assuming that our top priority is to rush it right up to Christmas in order to get it done.
We will have more opportunity to talk about all of those matters later. Hopefully this afternoon, we can begin debating amendments, and we do need to get squared away the issue that Senator Corker and Senator Kerry talked about, which is how we go about doing that in a way that does not cut off people's rights to offer amendments which are to the resolution of ratification.
Exhibit 1
Additional Statements on the Folly of Zero
``The presumption that U.S. movement toward nuclear disarmament will deliver nonproliferation success is a fantasy. On the contrary, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has itself been the single most important tool for nonproliferation in history, and dismantling it would be a huge setback.'' \94\
``The Obama administration's push for nuclear disarmament has a seductive intellectual and political appeal, but its main points are in contradiction with reality. And when a security policy is built on fantasy, someone usually gets hurt.'' \95\
Kenneth Waltz, leading arms controller and professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley: ``We now have 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It's striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states.'' \96\
``And even if Russia and China (and France, Britain, Israel, India, and Pakistan) could be coaxed to abandon their weapons, we'd still live with the fear that any of them could quickly and secretly rearm.'' \97\
Secretary James Schlesinger, post-Reykjavik (1986): ``Nuclear arsenals are going to be with us as long as there are sovereign states with conflicting ideologies. Unlike Aladdin with his lamp, we have no way to force the nuclear genie back into the bottle. A world without nuclear weapons is a utopian dream.'' \98\
Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France: ``It [the French nuclear deterrent] is neither a matter of prestige nor a question of rank, it is quite simply the nation's life insurance policy.'' \99\
``The idea of a world free of nuclear weapons is not so much an impossible dream as an impossible nightmare.'' \100\
``A world that was genuinely free of nuclear weapons would look very different. War between big powers would once again become thinkable. In previous eras, the rise and fall of great powers has almost always been accompanied by war. The main reason for hoping that the rise of China will be an exception to this grisly rule is that both the U.S. and China have nuclear weapons. They will have to find other ways to act out their rivalries.'' \101\
William Kristol: ``Yet to justify a world without nuclear weapons, what Obama would really have to envision is a world without war, or without threats of war ..... The danger is that the allure of a world without nuclear weapons can be a distraction--even an excuse for not acting against real nuclear threats ..... So while Obama talks of a future without nuclear weapons, the trajectory we are on today is toward a nuclear- and missile-capable North Korea and Iran--and a far more dangerous world.'' \102\
``As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we'll be all right. But if the Nobel Committee truly cares about peace, its members will think a little harder about trying to make it a reality. Open a history book and you'll see what the modern world looks like without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description.'' \103\
``So when last we saw a world without nuclear weapons, human beings were killing one another with such feverish efficiency that they couldn't keep track of the victims to the nearest 15 million. Over three decades of industrialized war, the planet averaged about 3 million dead per year. Why did that stop happening?'' \104\
``A world with nuclear weapons in it is a scary, scary place to think about. The industrialized world without nuclear weapons was a scary, scary place for real. But there is no way to un-ring the nuclear bell. The science and technology of nuclear weapons is widespread, and if nukes are outlawed someday, only outlaws will have nukes.'' \105\
ENDNOTES
\94\ Keith Payne, ``A Vision Shall Guide Them?'' National Review. November 2, 2009.
\95\ Id.
\96\ Jonathan Tepperman, ``Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb.'' Newsweek. August 29,2009.
\97\ Id.
\98\ Sec. James Schlesinger, ``The Dangers of a Nuclear-Free World.'' Time. October 27, 1986.
\99\ French President Nicolas Sarkozy Nuclear Policy speech, March 21, 2008.
\100\ Gideon Rachman, ``A nuclear-free world? No Thanks.'' Financial Times. May 4, 2010.
\101\ Id.
\102\ William Kristol, ``A World Without Nukes--Just Like 1939.'' Washington Post. April 7, 2009.
\103\ David Von Drehle, ``Want Peace? Give a Nuke the Nobel.'' Time. October 11, 2009.
\104\ Id.
\105\Id.
Mr. KYL. I think it is true, Senator Kerry said that under the precedents of the Senate, we first have to attempt to amend the treaty and the preamble, and to do otherwise or to mix the two up would require unanimous consent.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, we have no intention of trying to use any technicality to deny an ability to offer an amendment. When each amendment comes up, we will find a way to make certain it is appropriate. We obviously have to send a signal at this point where you have to go off the treaty and onto the resolution of ratification. That happens automatically when we file cloture. So once that is done, it really becomes irrelevant.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, when the Senator says that happens automatically, if cloture is filed and invoked, then both amendments to the treaty, the preamble, and the resolution of ratification are cut off at that point, correct?
Mr. KERRY. No. There still are germane amendments allowed to the resolution of ratification at that point, providing we have at that point completed issues on the treaty.
Mr. KYL. In other words, cloture cuts off both the resolution of ratification amendments as well as treaty and preamble amendments.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT