May 6, 1971
Page 13879
THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the nuclear arms race has taught us a valuable lesson, and it is time that we took this lesson to heart. It has taught us that buying more arms does not necessarily buy us more security; it may only lead to new and more chilling forms of insecurity.
The nuclear arms race should have taught us by now that in the long run, the control of arms can provide us with a more stable peace and more security than the best weapons money can buy and the minds of men can devise.
We have seen that this is true as we have watched each side develop new strategic weapons systems in response to real or imagined programs by the other side. The net effect has been, at least, a tragic waste of valuable resources. At worst, it could mean catastrophe for all mankind.
Too often, nations have resisted the idea of arms control in the mistaken belief that it would mean unilateral disarmament. And we have sometimes thought of arms control in terms only of reaching agreements and signing treaties. As in the case of the current SALT negotiations, reaching such agreements is an urgent need.
There is, however, a further dimension to arms control. Even in those areas of competitive strategic military spending not covered by treaty or agreement, we should try to establish a pattern of mutual self-restraint with other nations. We should recognize that the other side can and often does react to what we do. A pattern of mutual restraint would enhance our security as well as the security of others. Moreover, the unilateral defense program decisions we make now can alter the prospects for agreement in the future.
It is important, therefore, that we consider the effects of our strategic defense budget on the prospects for agreement at the SALT talks now and in the future and on the military spending decisions of other nations, particularly the Soviet Union.
Actions which we and the Soviets have taken since the SALT talk began have already adversely affected the prospects for agreement.
While the talks go on, the Soviets may be making changes in their offensive weapon deployments. We do not yet know what these changes will prove to be. Whatever they are, they increase our uncertainty as to Soviet intentions, and they make it more difficult for us to conclude an agreement to halt the arms race. They have also resumed work on their ABM system centered on Moscow.
Since the talks began, the United States has begun to deploy a vastly improved new warhead system, the MIRV – a multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicle – and pressed ahead with the ABM program.
In a talk which I gave in Philadelphia early last month I emphasized the urgency of making progress at the current round of the SALT negotiations. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have that speech and two earlier speeches which I delivered on SALT inserted into the RECORD at the conclusion of these remarks.
I emphasize this urgency again.
Thus far, little progress appears to have been made at this round of SALT. The Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on Arms Control will be holding public hearings at an appropriate time to explore what progress has been made and what the obstacles to agreement are. Among other questions, we will want to consider the desirability of separating out ABM systems for limitation as a first step toward a more comprehensive agreement.
While pressing for agreement at SALT, we must not lose sight of the fact that the defense programs authorized and funded by the Congress affect the prospects for agreement. This is an area of clear congressional responsibility.
The Congress of the United States in the last few years has begun to subject the defense budget to the scrutiny formerly given only to the domestic budget. The defense budget has proven no more complex than a health bill or a program to rejuvenate our cities.
In exercising the congressional prerogative on the defense budget, we have looked at:
Technical problems – will the weapon work? Is it needed or superfluous? Economic problems – how much does it cost? Foreign policy problems – how does the budget affect our commitments?
What has been missing is the arms control perspective – how our defense budget affects the possibilities for sound arms control. Too often, this perspective has been applied only after the decision to proceed with a new program has been applied, only after the decision to proceed with a new program has been made and carried out.
Mr. President, the Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on Arms Control will be holding two sets of hearings in the coming months: first, one on the arms control implications of the administration's defense program as submitted to the Congress; and, second, on the advisability and feasibility of extending the present limited test ban treaty to prohibit all testing of nuclear weapons in any environment including underground.
I want today to outline briefly the kinds of questions these hearings will explore.
First, the subcommittee will investigate the arms control implications of the defense budget. The focus of these hearings will not be whether the weapons work or how much they cost. We will want to look at the net effect of the deployment of these weapons on the arms race and thus on United States security. If we deploy new weapons knowing full well that Soviet deployment of similar weapons will follow, will the result be more or less security for our Nation?
We want to apply a new perspective and a new set of criteria to judge the billions we spend on defense. By this new measure – the effects of weapons deployment on arms control – we may find that some weapons actually reduce security precisely because they might work and the Soviets would deploy them as well; and that certain weapons, despite their high costs, actually stabilize the arms race and enhance the prospects for peace.
We have been generally aware that these problems existed, but there has never before been any really systematic examination by the Congress of these weapons systems from the arms control perspective.
The United States, ever since the beginning of the nuclear era, has been committed officially to the search for control of these armaments. Progress, though significant in some areas, has been dangerously slow and limited.
A great part of the difficulty lies with the Soviet and our own failure to see that when either makes certain military decisions, it – quite unwittingly – forecloses future arms control possibilities. They may do that directly or because of the response they induce from other countries. Too often, each side fails to analyze how its weapons decisions will look to the other side.
In this sense, arms control begins not at a bargaining table in Vienna or Helsinki, but at home in Moscow and Washington. It begins in our defense budgets and in our national debates about how we can make our Nation more secure.
There are a number of specific issues the subcommittee hopes to examine in some detail. They are:
First, the multiple-deterrence triad. It has in the past been the policy of the United States to maintain not one but three essentially independent nuclear deterrent forces, in addition to our nuclear forces in Europe. These are our Minuteman land-based missiles, our bombers, and our Poseidon and Polaris missile-carrying submarines. The fiscal year 1972 budget and the President's discussion of strategic policy in his latest annual foreign policy message make it clear that the administration proposes to continue to maintain and modernize all three systems.
Since the Safeguard ABM is admittedly inadequate, the new hard-site ABM system is being proposed to help keep the Minuteman viable for the indefinite future. The new B-1 bomber is to be developed eventually to replace the B-52's and FB-111's we now have. The new ULMS submarine missile system is to be developed as a successor to the Poseidon/Polaris force.
All this will be very expensive, and there may be technical doubts about the feasibility or wisdom of some of the specific programs. Our hearings are not going to concentrate on those economic and technical issues. They will explore the basic policy problem of what it means for the arms race and arms control if we continue to seek to maintain three essentially independent deterrent forces. I hope we can determine the answers to such questions as:
What is the effect of having these three systems on the possibilities for arms control agreements? Does our desire have to have triple redundancy in our deterrent add to the difficulties of agreeing with the Soviets on strategic arms limitation in the immediate future? In the long run?
What response are the Soviets likely to make if we carry through three independently sufficient programs? What counter-responses will we then feel compelled to take?
What, from the arms control point of view, should be the relative priorities of each of these three forces?
Assuming we do want to maintain all three forces, what is the lead time for the threat to each system? That is, how can we react fast enough to protect our security yet avoid acting prematurely and provoking a response from the Soviets negating any added security from our own efforts?
Second, MIRV's. The deployment of MIRV's on both our land- and our sea-based missiles proceeds apace. This is an area where we are far ahead. We are already deploying operational units; the first Soviet test of a true MIRV may have come late last year or it may not have come yet. The multiple warhead previously tested was only a MRV, that is, a multiple reentry vehicle from which each warhead cannot be aimed at a separate target. We have had such a MRV system deployed on our submarines – not simply; in tests – for more than 5 years.
The administration rejected the desire of many in the Senate, in the Nation, and in the world for a suspension of our deployment schedule to improve the chances of an agreement to ban MIRV's. A MIRV ban, if it has not been abandoned entirely, seems to have a very low priority in both Soviet and United States thinking about SALT. Nevertheless, the chances for agreement may not be entirely lost yet.
This is a program where current action is helping to close the door on a possible arms control agreement of potentially great importance. Before that door is finally closed, we must understand what is being done. This points up, once again, the problems of technology and of considering SALT agreements solely in quantitative and not in qualitative terms, as well.
In examining the MIRV problem, the subcommittee will consider such issues as:
Does our MIRV program seriously threaten the chances of a genuinely comprehensive agreement at SALT?
What is the actual need for these systems at this time? Would there be risks in delay even at this late date in the hope of agreement?
What problems are there about a MIRV ban?
In the long run, would U.S. security be greater if neither we nor the Soviets had MIRV 's or if both sides had them?
For the longer run, what are the implications of MIRV's for the stability of the United States- Soviet strategic relationship? How can we adjust our defense program today to minimize those problems in the future?
MIRV's, even more than other systems, pose sharply the old question of how much is enough. To put the question in its most dramatic form, a single Poseidon submarine carries about 160 independently targetable warheads, each substantially larger than the bombs which leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Third, ABM's. ABM systems have a particularly fearsome potential for fueling the arms race. The strategic balance depends on each side believing it can destroy the other after the worst attack the other can mount on it. Thus, the prospect of defenses capable of defending our population centers and, therefore, threatening the Soviet deterrent is likely to stimulate massive increases in Soviet programs.
The subcommittee's examination of the ABM issue will consider such questions as:
What are the pros and cons of following up the opening which seems to exist now to secure an ABM-only agreement as a first step toward a broader agreement?
Whether or not we seek an ABM-only agreement, ABM's would surely be included in any SALT agreement. Should we suspend U.S. ABM deployment – while continuing research and development – to improve the chances of a SALT agreement?
What types of ABM limitation agreements would be stabilizing and useful in slowing the arms race, and what would not?
What are the implications of various possible U.S. ABM programs on long run arms control possibilities? For example, if we insist on preserving the Safeguard ABM defense of some of our land-based missiles, what does that mean for the likely shape of an arms control agreement?
What is the rationale for the so-called national command authorities defense?
In this connection, too, the subcommittee will want to look at the effects of an ABM avowedly aimed at Chinese attacks.
How would it affect the prospects for agreement with the Soviet Union? What would be its effect on the chances for improving relations with China?
How would it relate to the possibility of drawing China into the framework of international arms control efforts?
Fourth, there is the question of our strategic doctrines. In a sense, what we say about nuclear weapons and what we believe to be their function in our national security are even more important than any particular weapons system. For our strategic doctrine helps to determine what kind of forces we maintain, and what we say about their purposes may have important effects on how other nations regard our strategic forces.
There have been a number of indications that the administration has made important changes – at least changes in emphasis – in our strategic doctrine. Secretary Laird in his "posture statement" has told the Congress of the criteria of "strategic sufficiency" the administration has developed.
The President, in both his foreign policy messages, has appeared to see a need for a broader range of ways to use nuclear weapons than he believes he now has available.
In his Second Annual Review of Foreign Policy, the President stated:
We have reviewed our concepts for responses to various possible contingencies. We must insure that we have the forces and procedures that provide us with alternatives appropriate to the nature and level of the provocation. This means having the plans and command and control capabilities necessary to enable us to select and carry out the appropriate response without necessarily having to resort to mass destruction.
The subcommittee is not going to try to investigate the secret details of our war plans. Instead, it hopes to look carefully at the arms race implications of the apparent changes in strategic doctrine the administration has itself publicly announced.
The kind of questions we will be concerned with are:
What exactly do these suggested revisions of established doctrine mean? Are we planning on a damage-limiting or flexible nuclear response capability?
What are the forces we would need to attain such a capability?
What would be the effect on command and control mechanisms? Would we seek to provide our forces with the ability to destroy Soviet missile sites – for example, by improved accuracy?
What would be the effects of building such forces on Soviet programs and doctrine? Is there a danger of appearing to build a first strike force ourselves?
What are the likely effects on our friends and allies of these announcements and the apparent changes in doctrine? What does it mean for such arms control objectives as non-proliferation?
UNDERGROUND TESTING
Later, in a second set of hearings, the subcommittee will explore the advantages of an extension of the nuclear test ban treaty.
The present test ban treaty, one of the great monuments to the memory of President Kennedy, is a limited one. It bans nuclear explosions in the air, in outer space, and underwater, but it does not ban tests underground. Since the test ban treaty, both the United States and USSR have conducted many tests underground.
In fact, there has been more nuclear weapons testing since the treaty than before. To be sure, this testing does not normally affect the atmosphere because, except in the case of accidents, little radioactive material emerges. This is an important consideration from an environmental point of view.
But from the point of view of arms control, the continued high rate of testing poses serious problems. It facilitates the continued arms building on both sides. It makes it more difficult to get France and China to adhere to the limited treaty. A ban on underground testing would discourage other countries from developing nuclear weapons.
The subcommittee will consider whether the United States ought now to make a high priority arms control objective the extension of the test ban treaty to cover underground tests as well. We will examine:
The risks and benefits of continued underground testing. Previously, we have thought that underground tests at least had no potential danger for the environment. But with huge explosions like the one in Alaska 2 years ago – and particularly with the several-times-larger one planned for Amchitka this fall – that assumption is being questioned by some. The plans for this test, in particular, require the most careful scrutiny which the Congress and the public can give. What are the dangers? What will be the reaction of other nations?
How, if at all, do underground tests contribute to our national security? What would be the net effect on our security if all nations agreed not to conduct underground tests?
What kinds of weapons are we developing in these tests?
What do we learn we could not learn from other methods?
Has technology now developed to the point where an underground test ban could be verified without on-site inspection?
A major reason for the limitation on the current treaty was the consensus at that time that we could not be sure of verifying a ban on relatively small underground tests without on-site inspections, which proved impossible to negotiate. But technology has not stood still since 1963.
There have been press reports that a group of scientists, meeting last summer under the auspices of the Advanced Research Project Agency, suggested that it is now scientifically possible to detect with very high confidence even very small nuclear explosions underground and to distinguish them from earthquakes and other disturbances. The hearings will explore these technical issues to see whether there is now a new and real opportunity to negotiate a broader test ban treaty.
Mr. President, I, for one, would feel irresponsible if we were to continue to learn of the arms control agreements we could have reached only after it is too late. We need to get on the record now the arms control implications of what is happening in the United States and the U.S.S.R. in developing new weapons systems. The subcommittee will try to get ideas from all knowledgeable quarters on what can be done.
It is time that we begin to act on what we have known all along: that arms control can yield greater security than the further accumulation of new military hardware.
There being no objection, the items were ordered to be printed in the RECORD as follows:
[From the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Oct. 28, 1969]
STATEMENT BY SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE
In paying tribute to Meyer Weisgal and the Weizmann Institute, we are honoring the spirit of Israel; courage in the face of danger, tenacity under continuing pressure, and humanitarian concern in spite of the demands of war.
Israel is more than a patch of real estate in the Middle East. It is a dream come true and a challenge to all those who believe in freedom and the rights of man. It deserves our continuing support in the preservation of its freedom and independence.
In one of his last speeches at the first session of Knesset in Jerusalem in February 1949, Dr. Chaim Weizmann said:
"Let us build a new bridge between science and the spirit of man. Where there is no vision the people perish. We have seen what science leads to when it is not inspired by moral vision ... All my life I have tried to make science and research the basis of our national endeavor, but I have always known full well that there are values higher than science. The only values that offer healing for the ills of humanity are the supreme values of justice and righteousness, peace and love."
The Institute which bears Dr. Weizmann's name is a testament to his wisdom and vision. Amidst a virtually continuous period of war and near war, the Institute has devoted its energies and resources to the betterment of life for all mankind. Yet, while the Institute applies science to improve the human condition, too much of the world seems preoccupied with harnessing technology to develop newer and more destructive weapons.
Since the end of World War II the United States and the Soviet Union have engaged in competition to develop more powerful armaments.
No one questions that – under present circumstances – military power is an essential part of our security system; but there is a point where preoccupation with purely military strength may diminish rather than increase our security. I believe we are at that point.
We are already involved in a new cycle of an ever more costly and perilous competition for nuclear superiority. At the same time, we and the Soviet Union have within our grasp a way to restrain this competition and to reassert a saner ordering of our national priorities.
We rationalized development of a MIRV system as a response to a limited Soviet ABM system and its possible expansion. The Soviets, in turn, started development of a MIRV system to insure parity in intercontinental missile systems for themselves. We moved to develop an ABM system in response to the Soviet moves to develop and deploy MIRVs. And so the arms race continues, unrelated to the real security of either nation.
While the development of MIRV will not alter the strategic stalemate between the Soviet Union and the United States, it can make it less and less possible to reach a nuclear arms control agreement.
At the present time, we and the Soviet Union can, through our own surveillance systems, tell with great accuracy the number of missile launchers the other has in place. But we cannot detect the number of warheads fitted inside a single missile. Thus, if MIRV missiles – with their multiple warheads – are deployed, it will be virtually impossible to achieve genuine arms control arrangement without detailed on-site inspection rights.
If we can achieve a ban on testing and deployment of such multiple reentry missiles, both nations, on their own, could police the testing of such missiles. Halting the final testing of such missiles is, therefore, crucial to reaching a self-enforcing agreement with the Soviets to bar their deployment.
Early last summer Senator Brooke, supported by myself and forty other Senators, proposed that a mutual moratorium on MIRV testing and deployment be negotiated with the Soviets as soon as possible. At the time of the Brooke proposal, it appeared that after a series of delays by both powers, the Soviets and the United States were about ready to commence such talks. The talks have not begun, and no dates have been fixed.
A strategic stalemate exists between the United States and the Soviet Union today. Neither nation can launch an attack on the other without bringing on its own destruction. Neither nation can realistically hope to break this stalemate by developing a new generation of nuclear weapons. Each nation has the capacity to match any weapons developed by the other. Both sides tend to react to the potentialities as well as the actualities of action. It is precisely this cycle of action and reaction which fuels the arms race.
In spite of this fact, the public has been allowed – even encouraged – to believe that somehow there is safety in ever growing weapons strength and that it still means something to be ahead numerically in nuclear weapons.
These are assumptions which must be challenged if we are to slow down the arms race, contribute to a reduction in international tension and apply our resources to the restoration of our society.
We have a unique opportunity to slow the arms competition. The strategic stalemate and the costs of further weapons development make an agreement restraining the arms race attractive and in the self-interest of the United States and the Soviet Union alike.
If we fail to seize this opportunity, we can, in fact, jeopardize our national security. The diversion of resources from human needs to unnecessary weapons development is a tragic waste. At the same time, as weapons grow more complex and numerous, it becomes ever more difficult to establish adequate safeguards against the risk that such weapons may be unleashed by accident or miscalculation. The question is whether we are taking the initiatives we might take to reduce the pressures for new weapons development and avoid these consequences. Unfortunately, forces are now in motion which can undermine our chances for achieving a nuclear arms control agreement with the Soviets. The decision to proceed with the deployment of the ABM was a setback, but ever more serious is the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union are rapidly developing the capacity to deploy multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles – so called MIRV – missiles which can carry several warheads and launch them at separate targets. The MIRV-ABM development is a classic example of arms escalation which results in less, rather than more, national security.
There is some evidence that the Russians are not anxious to talk about substantive armaments control agreements with the United States until they have resolved their border dispute with Communist China. We should not let such delays prevent us from acting to keep MIRV missile development from jeopardizing chances of reaching an arms limitation agreement.
Let the United States unilaterally postpone the testing of all our multiple reentry missiles for a period of six months, announcing that we will not begin testing thereafter unless the Soviet Union initiates such tests.
It should be clearly understood that such a suspension in MIRV testing is not proposed as a step toward unilateral disarmament. It is not proposed as a unilateral commitment never to test MIRV.
It is proposed as a meaningful step to stimulate mutual efforts by the United States and the Soviet Union to control the escalation of nuclear weapons systems before it is too late.
If the Soviet Union ignores our gesture and goes forward with testing their multiple re-entry missiles, or if they expand the scope at their ABM system, we can promptly resume our own MIRV program. Since the time needed to complete our development of the MIRV is far less than it would take the Soviets to construct a massive ABM system, and since a six-month moratorium would not provide significant lead-time for the Soviets, a moratorium on testing our multiple reentry missiles would not involve any appreciable risk to our security.
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed over a hundred years ago: "Every act, every thought, every cause is bipolar, and in the act is contained the counteract. If I strike, I am struck. If I chase, I am pursued. If I push, I am resisted."
As in the case of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the road to peace may require the United States to take the first step on its own. Hopefully, the Soviets would, in response to our action, act with similar restraint. If they did respond, and the two countries moved into the strategic arms limitation talks, the question of the MIRV and ABM systems could be taken up in the context of mutual efforts to reduce the level of terror.
To reverse Emerson's thought: "If we lead, the Soviets may follow," recognizing that the interests of their own people are served if man can be pulled back even one step from the brink of nuclear confrontation.
In this Twentieth Century the United States and the Soviet Union must break through the terrible cycle of distrust which breeds distrust, of action which produces reaction, of new weapons which beget newer weapons.
The overriding reality of our time is the interdependence of the human condition. Man has wrested from nature the power to make this earth an uninhabitable wasteland or to make it a fertile planet.
History demonstrates that conflict and hostility between nations is not immutable.
Accommodation and compromise are possible. Our problems are man-made and can be solved by the imagination and wisdom of man.
I am not suggesting that national rivalry and hostility can be ended in our lifetime. At this moment it would be utopian to hope for the end of all conflict with the Soviet Union. However, we can realistically seek to remove some of the danger from the conflict when, to do so, is in the self-interest of each.
As Adlai Stevenson once wisely counseled: "We must never fear to negotiate with the Soviet Union, for to close the door to the conference room is to open a door to war."
The time has come to embrace a broader vision of the route to peace.
Let us look beyond our missiles and military alliances and make the pursuit of arms control and reduction in the size of national military forces the heart of our national security objectives.
Let this nation demonstrate not only prudent concern for its military defense but also leadership in moving the world away from the infamy of war.
REMARKS BY SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE TO THE TOWN MEETING,
WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL, PHILADELPHIA, PA., APRIL 6, 1971
I have chosen to speak to you tonight about nuclear weapons and the need to control their cost and their dangers.
Today the United States and the Soviet Union have enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other many times over. They are each capable of ending civilization on this planet.
Nevertheless, in their search for military security, they have been building new offensive weapons. And each has developed defensive weapons in an attempt to neutralize the offensive missiles. This has led to new offensive weapons to overcome the defensive weapons.
The result is an arms race in which each side is less secure than before. Each has put precious resources – amounting to billions of dollars each year – into more expensive and more dangerous weapons because neither dares to stop.
For one and a half years the two countries have been engaged in strategic arms limitation talks – usually referred to as SALT talks. The purpose of those talks has been to reduce the pressure to develop new weapons and to end the push for more weapons. That, at least, has been our hope, but what are the prospects?
The fact is that there is no sense of urgency about the negotiations. Both sides seem to ignore the risk that, as the talks continue, still more weapons will be built, as they have, raising new uncertainties and new fears.
I wish I could say that the arms talks will soon lead to a firm agreement, or that the talks are slowing down the arms race. But this is not so. We are not likely to get an agreement during the current round of talks.
The talks are in trouble for several reasons. First – while the talks go on – the Soviets may be making changes in their offensive weapon deployments. We do not yet know what these changes will prove to be. Whatever they are, they increase our uncertainty as to Soviet intentions, and they make it more difficult for us to conclude an agreement to halt the arms race.
Second – since the talks began – the United States has begun to deploy a vastly improved new warhead System, the MIRV – a multiple, independently-targetable re-entry vehicle. Our Minuteman missiles are each being converted to carry three of these warheads. That means that each Minuteman missile can attack three separate targets instead of one.
We are now putting MIRV warheads on Poseidon missiles aboard 31 submarines. There will be ten warheads on each of the sixteen missiles carried by each submarine. Each submarine will be able to attack as many as 160 different targets. The first submarine fitted with these missiles was launched last Wednesday.
When these programs are completed, our arsenal of nuclear weapons, capable last year of delivering about 2,500 missile warheads, will total more than 7,000 warheads. Each of those warheads is considerably more powerful than the atomic bomb which killed 68,000 people at Hiroshima.
Understandably, the Russians are making every effort to match this weapon.
Third, while the talks go on the United States is continuing to install the defensive Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system to protect three offensive Minuteman missile sites. The Russians, on the other hand, have one obsolete anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow.
Our ABM systems does not threaten the Russians' ability to retaliate, because it is too small and it does not protect our cities. But it does permit military leaders in the Kremlin to argue that our ABM system can be expanded. Therefore, it can make them uncertain about our intentions.
In addition, as we build the Safeguard system the pressures to keep it will become stronger. As a result, the development of our ABM also hurts the chances of agreement.
Fourth, while each side has made a proposal in the talks, neither proposal has been given any encouragement by the other.
If we are to solve these problems, the Russians will have to give positive evidence that they will restrain their nuclear weapons program. They will have to be more responsive to our arms limitation proposals.
But we, too, must be willing to restrain our program and to respond to Soviet proposals. We must be willing to take the initiative in moving toward the other side.
In October, 1969, before the announcement of the opening round SALT, I urged a six month moratorium on the testing of our MIRV warheads. That moratorium would have permitted the talks to open on a positive and constructive note. The Nixon administration rejected my suggestion.
When the second round of the SALT talks opened a year ago, I recommended that we try to negotiate an interim standstill by both sides on all strategic weapons. That standstill would have placed an immediate freeze on all further deployments of offensive and defensive strategic weapons systems. It would have halted the testing of multiple warheads.
If that standstill had taken place, the arms race would have come to an end, for all practical purposes. All that would have remained would be a formal agreement. But my proposal was ignored by the Nixon administration, as was a similar proposal which passed the Senate by a vote of 72 to 6.
We have seen the consequences, both in the continuing arms race and the slow pace of the talks.
I remain convinced that such an interim agreement would greatly improve the prospects for success at the arms talks. I urge the President to propose such standstill in strategic weapons. It should cover the testing, production and deployment of offensive and defensive missiles.
I regret to say that the Nixon administration does not seem ready to take such an initiative. Instead, it seems to be operating on a double standard. It has called for Soviet restraint in deploying weapons, yet it is not willing to exercise comparable restraint. It fears the development of a Soviet MIRV – which the Soviets have not even tested adequately, if they have tested it at all – yet it refuses to admit that the Soviets have cause for concern about our MIRV, which is already being deployed.
At the SALT talks, we have proposed to include an ABM agreement in a package that would also place a numerical ceiling on both sides' offensive weapons, and a special sub-ceiling on the largest of the Soviet missiles. The Administration's package puts numerical limits on both offensive and defensive weapons, but it does not limit qualitative changes in the weapons systems.
The Russians have proposed a limitation on ABM defensive systems.
Each of these proposals is a limited – not a comprehensive – proposal. Ours involves a wider range of problems to be solved before agreement can be reached.
The question then, is whether we should try to work out an ABM limitation as a first step toward a broader agreement. The Nixon Administration has apparently rejected this possibility. It has said that such an agreement would reduce the incentive for the Russians to bring the entire arms race to a halt.
I disagree. An agreement on defensive missiles would reduce the pressure for further development of offensive missiles. Therefore, if we cannot get the Soviets to agree on the United States proposal at this round, I urge the President to try to negotiate an agreement limiting or banning anti-ballistic missiles. Such an agreement should be made with the clear understanding that it is the first step toward broader controls of offensive weapons as well. Both sides would have the right to reconsider the commitment if, after a specified time, they had not achieved further progress toward arms limitations.
Such an agreement would be in the interest of each side and could lead more quickly to the next step.
It is important to take that first step at a time when there is a balance in nuclear weapons, when neither side dares attack the other, and before ongoing developments on each side upset that balance.
Such a first step can slow down the waste of precious resources on a fruitless arms race, which only increases our danger, while reducing our ability to meet pressing human needs.
The costs of the arms race are very high. This year alone, the Nixon Administration is asking about $3 billion to carry on construction of the Safeguard anti-ballistic missiles systems and deployment of MIRV warheads.
This $3 billion could virtually cover the cost of Medicaid this year; or could help us to make major strides in providing good schools and adequate health care for all our citizens; or it could pay for the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency more than six times over.
In coming years, funds committed to nuclear weapons programs could provide untold benefits for our people in a host of critical areas.
We face, therefore, a basic decision. How can we best take advantage of what may be a fragile opportunity to reduce the dangers and the costs of nuclear arms?
If each side holds out for its own proposal in this fourth and crucial round of the arms control talks, the prospects for agreement may be reduced. I urge, therefore, that we improve those prospects by taking the most likely first step which I have described.
It would be a step in the right direction – a reduction in the hazards to survival for all mankind.
REMARKS BY SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE OF MAINE IN SUPP0RT OF THE NONPROLIFERATION TREATY IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
For more than two decades, the United States has sought to bring a halt to the spread of nuclear weapons. Every American President, from Harry S. Truman to Richard Nixon, has committed his Administration to that goal. The American people have overwhelmingly supported all our efforts to reach realistic understandings with other countries to stop the nuclear spread – to end the threat of a world armed to the teeth with the implements of its own ruin.
Now those efforts have borne tangible fruit, and the Senate is called on to give its advice and consent to the ratification of the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, signed last summer by the U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union and almost ninety other countries.
President Nixon has termed the treaty "an important step in our endeavor to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. . . ." The Foreign Relations Committee has found that the treaty is "the best that can be negotiated at this time" and has, on two occasions, urged that the Senate act favorably upon it.
I share these judgments without reservation, and I call upon the Senate to ratify the treaty while time remains to substitute reason for the slow unraveling of world security.
No one could rightly say that the non-proliferation treaty will itself guarantee that this or future generations will be saved from nuclear war. Even when the treaty comes into force, patient negotiation will be required to extend its provisions to additional important countries and to reach practical agreements on safeguards over peaceful nuclear activities. In and of itself, the treaty does nothing about the vast arsenals the nuclear powers now possess, and that could, at any time, destroy mankind.
But the treaty buys us time, precious time, to gain control over our destiny. With American adherence, coupled with energetic efforts to bring the treaty's mechanisms into force among the widest possible number of States, the non-proliferation treaty can help stop nuclear arms races from multiplying around the world. Without the United States, the effort to stop proliferation can be no more successful today than the League of Nations was fifty years ago. The tragedy for the world would be all the greater.
Since achieving the role of a major power early in this century, our burdens of leadership have grown. We face enormous demands on our patience and strength in meeting global commitments while our society at home undergoes stresses more dramatic and far-reaching than at any time in history.
For our own security and the security of our friends, this country can never withdraw from its central responsibility for the preservation of peace. In all prudence, we can, and we must, work to keep the dangers of nuclear war from getting worse.
It is for this reason – its elemental prudence – that I support the non-proliferation treaty, as I supported the limited test-ban treaty five years ago. Eighty Senators voted in favor of the test ban then. This treaty, which complements and strengthens the mechanisms of the test-ban treaty, is a further step along the same path of reason.
There are three basic respects in which I find the merits of the non-proliferation treaty compelling.
First, the treaty promises to be effective in creating a global consensus against the growth of nuclear arms races to new and terrifying levels of violence. For the almost ninety non-nuclear nations already pledging to accept a commitment not to acquire nuclear weapons, the treaty represents relief from the prospect of deepening instability and the enormous cost these weapons represent in the diversion of resources.
Although several important non-nuclear nations have yet to agree they will adhere to the treaty, the consensus developed on behalf of the treaty will bring united pressures to bear upon the hold-outs. And even if nations such as West Germany, Israel and India do not unequivocally block out their options to acquire nuclear weapons, broad acceptance of the treaty by others will serve as a useful restraint to hinder and deny legitimacy to unilateral decisions on the acquisition of such weapons.
From the point of view of United States security and diplomacy, the treaty would thus dramatically lessen the risk that the spread of nuclear weapon capabilities would require major expansions of American commitments to protect threatened allies. At the same time, pressures on the United States and other nuclear powers to foster or tolerate selective proliferation would be negated by reciprocal commitments blocking the further spread of nuclear weapons. It should be noted that the treaty would not prohibit the evolution of our NATO allies to a nuclear armed federated political union including one or more existing weapon States.
Second, the treaty's safeguards provision offers a major breakthrough in the principle of international inspection of arms limitations agreements. This is of utmost importance as a working precedent for the kind of reciprocal verification necessary for effective arms control.
When International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards are applied to non-weapon States, major acceptance will have been achieved of the principle that arms reduction requires meaningful verification. The United States has long asserted that principle, but the communists have rejected it, providing the major stumbling block to all efforts toward negotiated arms controls.
International inspection will, in turn, make possible the exploitation of the atom for peaceful purposes at the fastest pace technology will realistically permit, without the fear that peaceful projects will serve as the cover for nuclear weapons. I, for one, am fully satisfied with the assurances forwarded to the Senate that American participation in these peaceful nuclear activities can be conducted on a sound and practical basis.
Finally, the treaty embodies a unique pledge shared by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union to work to control the arms race between the major powers. In the words of the Foreign Relations Committee, the treaty "formalizes the mutual concern" of these major powers "in containing the spread of nuclear weapons" embodying "a commitment to pursue with good faith and urgency new arms limitation agreements."
As a quid pro quo, between the non-weapons powers on the one hand, who are asked to give up their options for nuclear status, and the nuclear signatories on the other, whose nuclear competition represents a constant threat to world peace, the treaty's pledge to good-faith negotiation comes at a welcome time. The effort to line up nonweapon powers to complete the non-proliferation treaty will benefit from early negotiations by the major powers, and the prospects of meaningful agreement in these negotiations will, in turn, be strengthened by the climate of trust and give-and-take which the success of the non-proliferation treaty can help create.
It is my earnest hope that the shared commitment of the non-proliferation treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union can now be broadened into other fields. Getting on with the non- proliferation treaty, after almost five years of effort has thus become a desirable and even necessary basis on which to strengthen this promise of U.S.-Soviet cooperation in strategic arms talks, and perhaps too in such other related areas of vital U.S. concern as Vietnam and the Middle East.
Mr. President, it has been a long, long time Since John F. Kennedy called on the Senate to ratify the limited nuclear test-ban treaty and "let history record, that we, in this land, at this time, took the first step." The next step, I submit, is the agreement before us today. I urge the Senate to act promptly and favorably upon the non-proliferation treaty, in the interest of moving on to the further efforts and opportunities for peace that lie ahead.