June 15, 1971
Page 19808
NOTICE OE HEARINGS OF THE ARMS CONTROL SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the American people want to spend less on nuclear forces which can only be used to destroy civilization. The SALT negotiations, if they are successful, will be a step in that direction. But in the meantime the arms race goes on. We and the Soviets continue to plan and to build additional strategic forces which may reduce the security of both nations, which waste billions of dollars, and which increase the difficulties of negotiating arms limitation agreements.
We cannot afford to go on this way. We must examine our military budget decisions today to see if we can slow down the arms race of tomorrow. Once weapons systems are deployed, it is difficult to dismantle them, causing more problems in obtaining arms limitation agreements.
This means that we must carefully examine our military deployment decisions before they are made. We must know, before we agree to build a weapon, that it is needed to protect our security and that it will not fuel the arms race or preclude the chances of meaningful arms agreements in the future. We cannot wait until a system is tested or deployed before beginning to ask ourselves what its implications are.
We need to approach this task with a fundamental understanding of the fact that buying more arms does not necessarily lead to more security, and that the control of arms can provide us with a more stable peace, and more security than the best weaons that money can buy.
In order to explore these questions as they affect our present choices about the strategic weapons systems of tomorrow, the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Arms Control will open on June 16 the set of hearings which I discussed before the Senate on May 6. The initial 2 days of hearings will focus on the nuclear triad. We will be exploring the questions raised by our decision to maintain three separate strategic systems each capable of destroying the Soviet Union. I approach the hearings with an open mind about what we should do, but with questions about whether our systems should not be altered to emphasize the types of weapons that do not speed up an endless arms race.
We will have testifying before the subcommittee, in addition to Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Dr. John S. Foster, Jr., Director of Defense Research and Engineering, a group of distinguished Americans who have thought long and hard about these questions. The witnesses were selected because of their expertise and their concern with these issues; they represent a wide range of views on the questions we plan to explore.
These witnesses will include Dr. Herbert York, first Director of Defense Research and Engineering under President Eisenhower, and Dr. Carl Kaysen, formerly Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Kennedy.
On June 17, testimony will be heard on the various components of the nuclear "triad": Dr. Charles M. Herzfeld, former Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense-ARP will analyze overall military requirements. He will be followed by Dr. John P. Craven, formerly Chief Scientist of the Polaris project, who will testify on sea-based weapons systems. Dr. Marvin Goldberger, Chairman of the Federation of American Scientists, will discuss bombers. Mr. Fred Hoffman, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis, will analyze the land-based ICBM deterrent. Testimony for the 2 days of hearings will be concluded by Senator Joseph Clark.
I am deeply disappointed that the Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, David Packard, could not appear before the subcommittee. These hearings will explore decisions that will determine whether the arms race will accelerate during the next decade, wasting billions of dollars and perhaps undermining our security. For this reason, I had hoped the Secretary of Defense could appear to discuss the impact of his Department's budget on the prospect of a continued upward spiral of weapons spending.
We expect the various witnesses to disagree with each other and with members of the subcommittee. Out of this give and take, I hope will emerge clearer answers to some difficult questions:
What is the effect of having these three systems, in their present and planned configurations, on the possibilities for arms control agreements?
Does our desire to have a triple deterrent add greatly to the difficulties of negotiating an agreement with the Soviet Union now and in the long run?
What, from an arms control point of view, should be the priority given to each of the three systems?
How did we get the three systems in the first place, and for what reasons?
Is the present mix in the triad still the best?
How fast should the present system be modernized?