This is the second in a series of hearings to assist the Subcommittee in preparing a Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999. Today's hearing concerns the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA).
Our witness is ACDA's Director, Mr. John D. Holum, whom I would like to welcome back to the Subcommittee.
For many years the national security policy of the United States was based almost exclusively on the existence in the world of what President Reagan accurately called an Evil Empire. Even after the destruction of the Iron Curtain, however, the world continues to be a dangerous place. The possibilities for proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons are, if anything, even more numerous than before, and the need to verify compliance with arms control agreements has become an even more complicated endeavor.
Although we all agree on the need to continue and intensify our efforts to control weapons of mass destruction, there are serious disagreements about how they should be structured. Mr. Holum has been a vigorous and effective advocate of the position that an independent ACDA --- as a relatively small agency with specialized expertise and without institutional commitments to competing foreign policy objectives --- is the most efficient and reliable means of pursuing the U.S. arms control agenda. Others have argued that a single foreign policy structure headed by the Secretary of State would be more effective. I know Mr. Holum will address this issue in his remarks today, and I am confident that his observations will be helpful to the Subcommittee.
I hope Mr. Holum will also address some even more profound questions about our current arms control establishment --- questions not about the successes of this establishment but about its failures. For instance, the United States has recently entered into a risky and expensive agreement by which the government of North Korea will be provided with billions of dollars worth of peaceful nuclear technology in exchange for halting the further development of its destructive nuclear capacity. Once we found ourselves in a situation where that capacity existed, this was perhaps the best deal that could be made. But where were our arms control capabilities when we needed them the most: before North Korea developed the ability to produce nuclear weapons? If, as appears likely, this technology was transferred in bits and pieces to North Korea by a nation which was a party to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, why were the mechanisms for verification and enforcement of that treaty inadequate to detect and halt the violations? And, even more important, what have we learned? What systemic changes have we made to ensure that we will not be called upon in five or ten years to pay billions of dollars to Iran or Iraq in exchange for an agreement by one of these countries not to produce nuclear weapons?
Finally, I would like to thank Mr. Holum and ACDA for their submission of draft authorization language for the bill we plan to mark up on March 20. ACDA is the first agency to submit such language to the Subcommittee, and I can promise on behalf of the members of the Subcommittee that the ACDA proposals will be considered carefully in the same collegial and bipartisan spirit in which they were offered. We are hopeful that similar proposals will soon be forthcoming from USIA and the State Department.
I now yield to my friend and colleague, Tom Lantos, for any opening remarks he may have.
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