April 15, 1999
U.S. Vulnerability to Ballistic Missile Attack
Page
Helms, Hon. Jesse, U.S. Senator from North Carolina, opening
statement...................................................... 1
Weinberger, Hon. Caspar, former Secretary of Defense and
chairman, Forbes Magazine, Washington, DC...................... 4
S. Hrg. 106-339
BALLISTIC MISSILES: THREAT AND RESPONSE
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HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 15 AND 20, MAY 4, 5, 13, 25, 26, AND SEPTEMBER 16, 1999
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
56-777 CC WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JESSE HELMS, North Carolina, Chairman
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
PAUL COVERDELL, Georgia PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
ROD GRAMS, Minnesota RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming BARBARA BOXER, California
JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
BILL FRIST, Tennessee
Stephen E. Biegun, Staff Director
Edwin K. Hall, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
U.S. VULNERABILITY TO BALLISTIC MISSILE ATTACK
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THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice at 10:03 a.m., in
room SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Chuck Hagel
presiding.
Present: Senator Hagel.
Senator Hagel. Good morning.
Mr. Secretary, if you would like to take a seat, I think we
have fortified you well with water. If you would like anything
else, we can get that, too.
Is that seat a little low, Mr. Secretary?
Mr. Weinberger. It's all right, thank you.
Senator Hagel. I think we can get something for you. Those
seats are very low.
I started to understand early on in this business, Mr.
Secretary, that all the Senators up here looked larger than
life. I quickly realized that we were being propped up from
underneath, as most of us are, by our staffs, anyway, if not by
these seat cushions. We are just a little more direct about it.
Mr. Secretary, welcome.
Let me first explain to those who are here, if there is any
question, I am not Chairman Helms. I am Senator Hagel, a member
of this committee. Chairman Helms has been delayed on some
personal business and is hoping to arrive here before the
conclusion of this hearing. That is why I am here.
Mr. Secretary, I have a statement that I will read in
preparation for your testimony. My remarks will include some of
Chairman Helms' statement. Chairman Helms' statement will be
placed in the record.
[The opening statement of Senator Helms follows:]
Opening Statement of Senator Jesse Helms
It's an honor to have this distinguished American, former Secretary
of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, with us for today's Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearing devoted to missile defense and the Clinton
administration's proposed amendments to the 1972 ABM Treaty.
Mr. Secretary, welcome back to the Foreign Relations Committee. It
is indeed appropriate that you are leading off the Committee's
consideration of this treaty, because it was during your leadership in
the Reagan administration that the U.S. set the goal of building a
nationwide missile defense to protect this country from ballistic
missile attack. It is sad that as we sit here, eighteen years later,
America is still unprotected. With your help and guidance, Mr.
Secretary, I believe Congress may soon do something about that.
This is the first in a series of eight hearings of the Foreign
Relations Committee devoted to the missile threat to the United States,
the need for missile defense, and the question of whether the Senate
should agree to amendments to revive and expand the ABM Treaty.
Senators Hagel, Grams, Ashcroft, Coverdell and others will chair
hearings in the coming weeks on various aspects of this treaty.
As we begin this process, let it be clear at the outset: The
Committee is not here merely to consider technical changes to the ABM
Treaty. We are here to consider the ABM treaty itself.
The issue before us is: Should the United States continue to be
bound by this dangerous and antiquated arms control pact, born of the
cold war, which now prevents America from defending its territory from
ballistic missile attack? The answer, in my view, is a resounding
``NO!''
The Committee will proceed on the legal presumption that the ABM
Treaty is no longer in force--that it expired when our treaty partner,
the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. Therefore, what the Committee is
considering today is a proposed new ABM Treaty, recreated with four new
treaty partners. Now, I will not go into the detailed legal arguments
here--indeed, we will have a hearing in the coming weeks devoted
exclusively to discussing and debating this aspect of the matter.
But one thing is irrefutable: Regardless of the treaty's legal
status, the Senate vote on these ABM amendments will be a referendum on
the ABM Treaty itself. The Senate's rejection of these amendments would
strike down the Clinton administration's efforts to reconstitute the
ABM Treaty and would constitute a resounding vote of ``no confidence''
in continued U.S. adherence to that fatally-flawed agreement.
The President knows and understands this--which is why he is
refusing to honor his pledge to submit the ABM amendments to the Senate
for a vote. As we begin these hearings, I note that tomorrow will mark
exactly 700 days since President Clinton made a legally-binding
commitment to submit the ABM amendments for the Senate's advice and
consent--700 days!
Now I have been accused from time to time of holding treaties
hostage. But I don't hold a candle to the President in this matter. The
President is holding the revised ABM Treaty hostage because he fears
that the Senate will refuse to ratify it. Which, if I am successful, is
just what we will do.
We must get rid of the ABM Treaty if we are going to meet the
security challenges of the next century. During the cold war, the
United States depended on the doctrine of ``Mutually Assured
Destruction''--or ``MAD''--to deter Soviet missile attack--a pathetic
alternative to a national missile defense indeed. Even in the context
of the cold war, as President Reagan famously said, ``MAD was NUTS.''
But now that the cold war is over, continuing to intentionally expose
our nation to ballistic missile attack by rogue states, as a matter of
policy, is quite simply INSANE.
Under the MAD doctrine, we assumed that our adversary was what the
political scientists like to call a ``rational actor''--someone who
would be deterred from launching a first strike against us by the
promise of a devastating U.S. nuclear response.
I challenge anyone to argue with a straight face that the
adversaries of the 21st century--the Saddam Husseins, Kim Jong Ils, and
Ossama Bin Ladens of the world--are ``rational actors.'' We cannot
depend on MAD to deter them.
The world has changed a great deal since the ABM Treaty was
ratified 27 years ago. The U.S. faces new and very different threats
today. China has two dozen ICBMs pointed at the U.S., and both China
and Russia are recklessly proliferating dangerous technology to rogue
regimes around the world. Some twenty nations, many hostile to the
U.S., are working to develop nuclear, chemical and biological warheads
and the missile technology to deliver them. Iran is working on a
missile that can hit the continental United States, and North Korea's
unstable regime tested a missile over Japan this past fall which is
capable, TODAY, of striking Alaska and Hawaii--a capability, I might
add, which caught the United States intelligence community completely
by surprise.
Mr. Secretary, among other things, the Committee will benefit from
your assessment of the threats we will face in the coming years, how
they differ from the threats of the cold war, and how missile defense
can contribute to our national security. I also will be interested to
know whether you would advise the Committee to agree to the
administration's plan to resurrect the ABM Treaty with four new
partners.
In closing, let me emphasize: the Senate has been patient with the
administration--700 days of patience to be precise. But our patience
has its limits. As most of you know, I have set a deadline of June 1
for the administration to submit the ABM amendments to the Senate. By
then, the Committee should have concluded its hearings, and will be
prepared to vote expeditiously on the treaty amendments, so that the
Senate can vote on them before the August recess.
Now if the administration expects cooperation from the Committee on
its priorities, then I will expect their cooperation in the Senate's
consideration of the ABM Treaty. Let the President make his case for
reviving the ABM Treaty, we will make our case against it, and then the
Senate will vote. And if I have my way, we will defeat this treaty and
move forward to deploy a national missile defense.
Mr. Secretary, we look forward to your testimony.
Senator Hagel. I will keep my remarks brief so that we can
hear from you and get into a dialog which I think is going to
be important for our committee.
Let me begin, Mr. Secretary, by expressing on behalf of the
entire committee our appreciation to you and to say that, in
fact, it is a distinct honor to have you with us this morning.
This hearing is devoted to missile defense and the Clinton
administration's proposed amendments to the 1972 ABM Treaty.
It is appropriate that Secretary Weinberger be the lead-off
witness of this committee in its consideration of this treaty.
It was during Secretary Weinberger's leadership in the Reagan
administration that the U.S. set the goal of building a nation-
wide missile defense system to protect this country from
ballistic missile attack.
It is sad that, as we sit here 18 years later, America is
still unprotected. With your help and guidance, Mr. Secretary,
I believe Congress may soon do something to remedy that.
Today's hearing is the first in a series of hearings of the
Foreign Relations Committee devoted to the missile threat to
the United States, the need for missile defense and the
question of whether the Senate should agree to amendments to
revive and expand the ABM Treaty.
Senators Helms, Grams, Coverdell, and others will chair
hearings in the coming weeks on various aspects of this treaty.
As we begin this process, let it be clear at the outset: the
committee is not here merely to consider technical changes to
the ABM Treaty. We are here to consider the ABM Treaty itself.
The issue before us is should the United States continue to
be bound by this outdated and antiquated arms control pact,
born of the cold war, which now prevents America from defending
its territory from ballistic missile attack? That is the
question.
The answer, in my view, is a very clear and resounding no.
Chairman Helms has directed the committee to proceed on the
legal presumption that the ABM Treaty is no longer in force,
that it expired when our treaty partner, the Soviet Union,
ceased to exist. Therefore, what the committee is considering
today is a proposed new ABM Treaty, recreated with four new
treaty partners.
I will not go into the detailed legal arguments here.
Indeed, we will have a hearing in the coming weeks devoted
exclusively to discussing and debating this aspect of the
matter.
But one thing is irrefutable: regardless of the treaty's
legal status, the Senate vote on these ABM amendments will be a
referendum on the ABM Treaty itself. The Senate's rejection of
these amendments would strike down the Clinton administration's
efforts to reconstitute the ABM Treaty and would constitute a
resounding vote of no confidence in continued U.S. adherence to
the fatally flawed agreement.
Perhaps the President knows and understands this. That may
be why he is refusing to honor his pledge to submit the ABM
amendments to the Senate for a vote. As we begin these
hearings, I note that tomorrow will mark exactly 700 days since
President Clinton made a legally binding commitment to submit
the ABM amendments for the Senate's advice and consent.
The security of the American people is the most important
responsibility of the government. Surveys have shown that the
American people believe they are safe from ballistic missile
attack. They believe that, if a missile were fired at the
United States today, all that our military would have to do is
shoot the missile down. The reality is that the United States
cannot shoot down any incoming ballistic missile. We are
completely vulnerable to a missile attack from any country or
terrorist group, and we are vulnerable to both deliberate and
accidental missile launches.
Last summer, the North Koreans launched a Taepo Dong-I
missile over Japan, exposing our vulnerability and
demonstrating their capabilities. That missile has the
capability today to reach U.S. territory with a chemical or a
biological payload.
India and Pakistan have now joined the nuclear club by
testing nuclear devices and just this week have begun test
firing long range missiles. Our intelligence community was
surprised by these developments. Many Americans remember our
previous strategic military situation.
During World War II, vast oceans kept away these kinds of
military threats from the American homeland. Oceans again
insulated the U.S. mainland from the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Today, the strategic situation has changed, changed
dramatically, and missiles now can reach almost any American
city within minutes.
We were surprised in December 1941 by the attack on our
naval forces at Pearl Harbor. Time was on our side, then. We
had several years to rebuild our navy and raise an army. Today
we no longer have the luxury of time or of the oceans that once
protected us. We need to recognize and admit that we have a
problem in defending ourselves against missile attack. We need
to stop talking and start taking action to protect ourselves.
Now, only two things stand in our way: the ABM Treaty and
the administration's opposition to deploying a missile defense
system as long as the Russians object to renegotiating the ABM
Treaty.
Mr. Secretary, I again welcome you, and appreciate very
much your getting up very early this morning to join us. With
that, please proceed.
STATEMENT OF HON. CASPAR WEINBERGER, FORMER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE AND CHAIRMAN, FORBES MAGAZINE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Weinberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is
always an honor to be invited to speak before a Senate
committee. I am deeply conscious of that honor and am very
pleased, indeed, to be invited and to be here.
I don't have a formal statement. I have a few notes that I
would make very brief mention of, and then I would be delighted
to try to take your questions and those of any of the other
members who come.
I was very pleased, indeed, to hear you say that the
hearings are going to be about the treaty itself. This is
because I think we all need to recognize that we simply cannot
deploy any kind of effective system as long as the ABM Treaty
is in effect.
I have been talking about this subject now since 1983, when
President Reagan first proposed it and even before, when we
talked about it, before he made his formal proposal. We
recognize that article 15 of the treaty provides for any
country that feels that its national interest requires it, to
be able to step out of the treaty by simply giving 6 months
notice. I think it is long overdue that we give that notice and
step out of the treaty.
All through the Reagan administration, everything that we
did was challenged within the administration and by outsiders
on the ground that what we were talking about was not treaty
compliant. So you always had to try to tailor everything you
were doing, including the research, to make something that
would fit within the treaty.
Since the treaty bans anything that is effective, all the
work that we were doing would only have been effective if we
had coupled it with a proposal to get rid of the treaty, which
we did.
It was never done during those years. I wish it had been.
But we now have the treaty itself, which offers that
opportunity, so we are not in any sense violating a treaty we
entered into, but we would be doing what is essential if we
want to have any kind of effective defense. A lot of the
amendments to the treaty that you are talking about, that the
present administration has proposed, are amendments, first of
all, to take in four new countries because the Soviet Union, as
you said, is deceased and the treaty is no longer in effect.
These would be Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. That
would make it infinitely more difficult ever to work out a
provision by which we could step out of the treaty, as we can
under this practically defunct treaty now.
So I think it is more than time that we give our notice,
step out of the treaty, and let the world know that we are
going to proceed with effective missile defense.
Meanwhile, all of the research could be useful only--only--
if we step out of the treaty. People who said why are you
spending all of this money when you can't deploy anything had a
point. It was not a good point, but it was a point. It is
essential that we realize that the treaty itself is
deliberately designed to make it impossible to deploy an
effective defense.
I never really felt it was a wise treaty for us to have
entered into in the first place. There may have been good cold
war reasons for it, but I did not share them. In any event, the
fact of the matter is that, to my mind, it has always seemed
exactly parallel to a situation in which announced to the world
that we were not going to equip our troops with gas masks and
that we would sign an agreement with some other countries that
they would not equip their troops with gas masks, that then it
was perfectly all right to send the troops into battle knowing
that they might possibly be gassed and that they would have no
defense.
I do not think you encourage anybody to give up a weapon
when you announce that you are not going to have any defense
against it. That is one of the compelling reasons why I think
we need to step out of this treaty now, and announce to the
world that we are going to proceed not only with research, not
only to study, and not only to test, but to deploy an effective
system that makes use of space and that is the most effective
we can get.
It seems hard to believe, but we had a number of people who
were talking about some kind of changes, and whether they are
in the formal changes the administration has committed to or
not, I don't know. I don't even know if they have actually
submitted their changes yet to the Senate.
But one of those changes was designed to give some sort of
permission for very slow reentry vehicles but to ban anything
that defended against a fast reentry vehicle. So, again, you
are talking about banning anything that is effective.
Those are the principal reasons why I think we should, in
consideration of missile defense, start with the treaty and end
the treaty. Then we should get on with serious study leading to
deployment. I think we have lost a lot of time. The program was
virtually gutted in 1993, after having been started in 1983.
But I think we have a lot of valuable work that has been done
and, if we went full bore at it with no treaty blocking it,
then I think we could get it in a comparatively short time. And
I think we need it in a comparatively short time.
I think Mr. Rumsfeld's Commission did a marvelous job in
pointing out the need for it. The threat is far more imminent
than any of the intelligence agencies thought, far more
imminent than the administration announced was the case. So I
think every reason compels us to get on with this in our kind
of world and not endanger American troops, American people, or
American cities by announcing again to the world that not only
do we not have this kind of defense but that we never intend to
get one.
Those are the principal points I wished to make, Mr.
Chairman, and I would be delighted to try to deal with your
questions now.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Secretary, thank you, again, for
appearing this morning.
I have some questions that I would like to ask and Chairman
Helms has some questions, as well, which I will ask on his
behalf.
Mr. Weinberger. All right.
Senator Hagel. Let me begin, Mr. Secretary, by asking this
question. You alluded to this in your comments and I mentioned
it in my statement. The administration said that deploying a
missile defense system to protect American citizens would
violate the 1972 ABM Treaty. Would you frame up for us in some
detail what your understanding is of that treaty's provisions
that would be violated?
Mr. Weinberger. The treaty itself is designed to ban any
kind of effective defense. It authorized and allowed, as I
remember it, the United States to have two ground-based sites,
which are essentially, in this kind of world, in this kind of
day, ineffective sites. One would be to protect the national
capital and the other would be to deal with missiles at the
point where the military then thought was the most likely entry
point. It was North Dakota, as I remember it.
We decided back in 1973 or 1974 not to proceed with either
site. The Soviets then proceeded to take advantage of that and
put in some ground-based defenses around Moscow. But they also
did a lot of other things that were violative of the treaty,
such as developing a huge new radar at Krasnoyarsk that could
only have the effect of guiding, warning, and defending against
incoming missiles, and a guidance system to destroy them. It
proceeded with a number of actions of that kind that violated
the treaty.
My information is that, to this day, they are using a large
amount of their very scarce resources to continue to try to get
a missile defense system that would violate the treaty.
The treaty in effect banned all other effective defenses
except those two permitted ground-based sites. The intention
was very clear. We understood it and we accepted it at that
time in 1972. It was to ban any kind of defensive system on the
theory that if you were totally vulnerable, you were completely
safe--not a theory that I ever accepted.
Senator Hagel. Thank you.
Why should the United States continue to abide by a treaty
that may no longer be in its vital national security interests?
Mr. Weinberger. I don't think we should. I think by every
legal reasoning--and I have seen three or four opinions by law
firms commissioned to look at the question--the treaty is dead.
One of the partners, the only other partner, to the treaty,
the Soviet Union, is dead, and the treaty is no longer in
effect.
However, Mr. Clinton announced very early on that it was
going to be the cornerstone, the keystone, of our defenses and
we were going to adhere to it rigorously. He announced, as I
recall, with considerable excitement that the Russians had
agreed to the same thing. I am sure they probably tell him they
would agree to it. But they are continuing to work on missile
defense.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Secretary, one of the arguments that has
been used by opponents of a national missile defense system is
aren't we being a little short-sighted and can not weapons of
mass destruction be delivered via a suitcase and other delivery
vehicles. That is true.
What is your response to that, when they say why would we
invest billions and billions of dollars to set up a system
when, in fact, some terrorist group could bring in a nuclear
weapon via a suitcase?
Mr. Weinberger. Well, there could indeed be a nuclear
weapon brought in in a suitcase, and there have been all kinds
of other types of very lethal weapons, including the one that
hit a Japanese subway, and various others, which can cause an
enormous amount of damage. But I don't think it is an argument
for not taking the kind of protections and the kind of
precautions that a missile defense system would bring, simply
because there may be other ways that destruction can be
delivered.
The new explosives that have been developed are not as
lethal or not as devastating as nuclear weapons, but they are
enormously devastating. But this is not a reason, I think, to
not proceed with protections that ultimately can safeguard us
from the most imminent danger and the danger that can do the
most damage. A bomb in a suitcase certainly would be
extraordinarily difficult and unpleasant, and all of the other
things. But in total destruction, the destruction that could be
delivered by a nuclear missile of the kind that Korea has
tested, that China has, that Russia has, all of those are of
much greater destructive capabilities.
I don't think the argument that you could deliver one in a
suitcase is anything that should prevent us from proceeding to
do the maximum amount of defense we can against
intercontinental or intermediate range ballistic missiles. I
also think we obviously should do our best to continue our
defensive work against anybody carrying the suitcase and to
improve our intelligence capabilities so that we will know
about those sooner.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Secretary, what are your thoughts,
generally, on the Russian dynamic of this? In particular, the
critics also cite the fact that the Russians are threatening to
withhold ratification of SALT II. The Duma has been talking,
discussing, and debating SALT II for 6 years. Would you care to
enlarge on the Russian part of this equation?
Mr. Weinberger. Well, I think, first, the Russians have a
great many nuclear weapons, intercontinental and intermediate
range ballistic missiles. I have seen figures ranging up to
22,000 to 23,000 warheads and probably somewhere in the
neighborhood of 7,000 to 9,000 deliverable vehicles. But I
think that it is widely known that they have these.
It is also widely known that they have been working on
defenses, starting almost within a year after signing the ABM
Treaty. I think that they have probably a number of problems.
Their maintenance conditions are very poor. Their morale is
very poor. Soldiers have not been paid for months, and they
live in conditions that we would not put hardened criminals in.
But they are there and the missiles are there. We have
known this for a long time. It is, I think, folly not to take
every step we possibly can to defend ourselves against a
possible attack from there, from China, from North Korea, from
Iran and Iraq. As we have seen and as you mentioned correctly,
India and Pakistan are deploying them. North Korea has fired a
three stage missile over Japan. While in their first one only
two stages worked, but a three stage missile is a very
sophisticated weapon, and indicates a capability that, as they
work further on it, will enable them to hit the Western United
States and, ultimately, other parts of our country.
It seems to me that we have the capability of developing a
defensive system that can be effective. It is the height of
folly, criminal folly, I would say, not to work on it and not
to deploy it.
Senator Hagel. What is your opinion regarding the Newly
Independent States from the former Soviet Union, the CIS
States, as to would they be bound by the provisions of the 1972
ABM Treaty that the United States negotiated with the former
Soviet Union?
Mr. Weinberger. I don't think so, sir. Now that is an off-
hand legal opinion. But the Soviet Union is gone and the Soviet
Union was the official party to the treaty. Under every
interpretation that I have ever seen, with one party dead that
means that the contract, treaty, agreement, or whatever it may
be, under those circumstances is nullified and is no longer in
effect.
However, the Clinton administration is attempting, as we
said, to bring in four new members of the former Soviet Union
and have them all be part of this. This would simply make it
more difficult for us ever to get out of it and would make it
more of a tempting threat to the Russians and the three other
countries of the former Soviet Union to violate the treaty
since we will be announcing that we will not have any defenses.
Senator Hagel. Would you develop for this committee some of
the specific perspectives that you mentioned were in the
Rumsfeld Commission's work on the timing of the threat from
Iran, North Korea, and other nations? You know better than
anyone, Mr. Secretary, that intelligence communities in this
country constantly have understated and underestimated the
ability of these rogue nations to come up with these
sophisticated weapons.
Mr. Weinberger. Mr. Chairman, I think that for one reason
or another the threat has been seen by the intelligence
community or members of it to be much farther out in time than
I would see it. And I think the Rumsfeld Commission performed
an enormously valuable service by pointing out that the
assumptions behind some of the intelligence community's
analyses were that countries like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea
did not have the indigenous capability to develop these weapons
by themselves and that, therefore, in order to acquire that
kind of capability, it would be anywhere from 9, 10, 12, or 15
years before they posed any kind of threat.
Well, even 12 or 15 years seems to me to be a comparatively
short time the way things go.
But what the intelligence community's analyses did not
point out was that these countries are not limited by their
indigenous capability. They are perfectly capable of buying, as
Russia is perfectly capable of selling and has sold, valuable
components to these rogue countries that will enable them to
get these kinds of weapons much sooner.
It is very clear from North Korea's testing and exploding
the three stage weapon that they have proceeded much farther
along this path than any of the intelligence analyses
indicated. I think the estimate now has been reduced to 4 to 5
years. I would think that, if they put their minds to it--which
they would do since we have said we will not have any defenses,
thereby encouraging them to do so--they could get it in
probably a couple of years.
We don't know what they are doing. We don't know what they
are doing underground. We found out when the U.N. inspectors
were finally permitted, in response to Saddam Hussein's various
solemn promises, to look at a few things, that Iraq had a lot
more underground than we knew about. It was not destroyed in
the aerial war because it was underground.
So I don't think anyone can say with any confidence how far
along they are. It is not an area in which I would feel there
is much room for error. I don't think that we could shrug our
shoulders later on and say well, we didn't quite give you the
accurate information on that, we made a mistake. That might
comfort them in a few years but I don't think it would comfort
anybody else.
I think in this case we have to use the worst case
assumption, and that is that I think it is quite possible that
some extremely devastating weapons could be put together by
essentially hostile countries in anywhere from 2, to 3, to 4
years. That is a very, very short time.
It is sooner than it would take us to get an effective
system now that we have postponed all of the active research
and development work that had started in 1983.
Senator Hagel. Would you care to frame up your perspective
on what is going on in India and Pakistan with their nuclear
efforts?
Mr. Weinberger. Well, they have been working on this for a
long time, Mr. Chairman. I was struck--I would not say amused--
but I was struck by the fact that, when India exploded a
nuclear device, as it is always called in the press, there was
great shock and astonishment expressed by the administration a
few months ago. What surprised me--what I found to be rather
ironic, was that the DJP Party in India that is in office now
had made it a point of their campaign that they were, indeed,
going to deploy and test nuclear weapons. That was one of the
promises on which they were elected.
I can only assume that the failure to accept that was based
upon the theory that some people never keep campaign promises.
But this was a campaign promise. They kept it and they
exploded the ``device,'' and it should not have been a surprise
to anybody. Pakistan's following was a perfectly normal thing
to expect because Pakistan has to demonstrate that it, too, has
the same capability as a means of trying to keep their country
defended.
Senator Hagel. All of these are obviously inter-related
pieces to the broader issue that we are dealing with today and
will continue to deal with over the next few weeks in hearings
on ABM. But I also would welcome your perspectives on China.
We have many dynamics that are part of our relationship
there, especially now in light of the Los Alamos issue which
has complicated, further complicated, an already complicated
relationship. Focus, if you would, Mr. Secretary, on the
nuclear capability and where you think China may be headed with
that capability for their own defense interests.
Mr. Weinberger. Well, we know and I think it is generally
accepted that the People's Republic has about 400 missiles of a
range that is possible to reach areas of the United States and
other countries, of course.
They have had these and have been working on them for quite
a long time. They have had a lot of technical difficulties with
launching, and that is one of the things that we helped them
with by the transfer of technology and by the technology that
was stolen.
We also helped them improve their guidance, the accuracy of
their guidance systems which, of course, is tied to the
accuracy of the missile. And we helped them, again, I think
inadvertently, with their theft of technology that had enabled
us to design and deploy a very effective, small warhead, the W-
88. They have obtained this.
Now I know that Zlu Ronji said that they could do all of
these things by themselves, so they would not have any
necessity to steal them. But the simple fact of the matter was
they did want and need them and they did obtain them. I am not
privy to exactly how they got them, but they did get them.
Senator Hagel. I will exercise the Chair's prerogative
here, Mr. Secretary, and veer somewhat away from ABM to Kosovo.
I noted a piece that you wrote in the New York Times a few days
ago which I thought was on target--speaking of military
capability.
I would welcome for the record and this committee would
welcome any thoughts you might have on where we are in Kosovo
and what we must do to pursue our goal there.
Mr. Weinberger. I certainly would be glad to do that, Mr.
Chairman. I don't have any special knowledge or access to very
much intelligence information anymore. But I do have a lot of
strongly held opinions--some people call them prejudices--and I
will be glad to discuss those, if you want me to, briefly.
I think that in Kosovo we are in a war situation. What
bothers me more than anything else is it strikes me as having
great similarity to the situation in Vietnam, which was the
first time we ever went into a war not intending to win. We
sent about 565,000 American troops to a war that we did not
consider important enough to win, that we did not consider
important enough to support them to win, to put in the
resources to win. We did not intend to win it.
It strikes me that that is what we are doing now in putting
in resources to attack Serbia. I think we are 2 to 3 years late
about it. I think we should have done it when Serbia first
practiced their most brutal atrocities in Bosnia. I think it is
proper that we are in Kosovo and proper that we are now trying
to stop Milosevic.
But what disturbs me is that I have not seen, among all of
the wide variety of statements of the administration as to what
their aims are, what their goals are, I have not seen any
mention of the word victory or any definition of the term
victory.
We have been told that we are trying to degrade Milosevic's
military capability. Of course, you do that every time you hit
a truck or a tank. We are told that the aim is to bring him
back to the negotiating table. If that succeeded, he would make
all of the same kinds of promises he always makes and always
breaks. But we have never said anything about getting him out
of power or doing anything except negotiate with him. This, I
think, is not a solution that is going to solve this thing nor
is it going to produce any kind of permanent change. Nor is it
going to get the Kosovars back into their own country.
When you displace close to a million people, and it is now
something over 900,000 people who were forcibly displaced under
the most brutal conditions imaginable, including kidnapping,
pillage, robbery, rape and all the rest, which we have seen
every day and every night--these are not just television shots,
these are conditions that are actually happening, as we know
from other information--you have a situation that can only be
corrected if you go to the root of it, go to the heart of it.
I thought you had an excellent piece, Mr. Chairman, in one
of the papers, the title of which was ``The Exit Strategy: The
Only Exit Strategy Is Victory.''
We hear a lot of very stilted terminology about exit
strategy and that we might go in in a permissive environment. I
suppose this means that you get formal permission to invade
somebody. But it just seems to me to be a little difficult to
accomplish.
But we do not seem to have any intention to bring this
thing to a head and complete it the way it needs to be
completed. There have even been some suggestions that solutions
must be developed that do not humiliate Serbia or Milosevic. We
never really worried about not humiliating Tojo, or Hitler, or
some of these other people that we had to attack. It seems to
me that there is the same kind of situation now.
So I think we should set up a set of aims that makes it
very clear that, first of all, Milosevic has to go. This is
because I think as long as he is there, he will promise
anything, will lie, and will break his word as soon as he
thinks it is safe to do so.
I think that the Kosovars have to be allowed to return
peaceably. I think most of their homes will have to be rebuilt
and the damage repaired. I think there will ultimately have to
be some kind of army of occupation put together by NATO, not by
us and not by the U.N. I don't think we need to participate to
any great extent in that. But it needs to be an army that is
there, not a peacekeeping army, but an army of occupation, to
make sure that ultimately Serbia gets the kind of government
that can live in peace with its neighbors.
This clearly involves eliminating Milosevic from control.
We did it in a much smaller scale, an infinitely smaller scale,
in Panama. Mr. Noriega is in jail and I think Mr. Milosevic
should be in jail, either awaiting execution or serving a life
sentence as a war criminal, which is what we did with a number
of other people in that category in other wars.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Secretary, as always this panel is
grateful. I have occasionally referred to you as one of the
preeminent public servants of our time. I think my colleagues
have the same appreciation and definition for what you have
given our country, Mr. Secretary, over many years.
Once again, you continue to contribute and we are again
grateful.
We will look at the record and if there is any
clarification that we need, we will get back to you. But, as
always, we are grateful.
If there are any additional thoughts or comments you would
like to make, please do so.
Mr. Weinberger. I just think the hearings are a great
public service, most necessary at this time, and, really, to my
knowledge, the first time we have started to consider that the
only way we can have any kind of effective defense is to step
out of this ABM Treaty, and no longer be bound by it. This
would be under the terms stated in the treaty itself.
I think it is vital to start serious debate and
consideration of that topic now, and, as I say, I think it is a
great public service that the committee is launching on this
path.
Senator Hagel. Mr. Secretary, it was nice to see you. Thank
you.
Mr. Weinberger. Thank you very much, Senator.
[Whereupon, at 10:40 a.m., the committee adjourned, to
reconvene at 9:30 a.m., April 20, 1999.]
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