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Guest Commentary: May 4, 2001
Supporting the President's Missile Defense Initiative
The Honorable Curt Weldon (R-PA)
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It is outrageous to me...that 10 years after 28 young Americans came home in body bags from Desert Storm, that we still do not have a highly effective theater missile defense system to protect our troops.
We have made some progress. We have pushed the PAC3 system, to the extent now where it is about to be deployed. We have made progress on the THAAD program, having had successful intercepts three times. We have had success in our Navy areawide program.
The Israelis have had success with the Arrow program. We are now moving together with them on the theater high energy laser program, which offers promising potential for us. We are working with the Europeans, particularly the Germans and Italians on the Medium Extended Area Defense System, or MEADs.
We are making progress, but we still have not had the success that we need. I am convinced that part of that is because for the past 8 years we had no consensus and leadership from the White House pushing this country on military defense as John Kennedy challenged America to land on the moon in 1960, and 9 years later we did it.
All of that is changing today, as the highest elected official in our country comes out solidly in favor of missile defense as a resource for defending our people.
Now, some would say, well, why do we worry about missiles when a terrorist can take a truck bomb and do the same thing? Well, we are concerned about terrorists activities. In fact, that is why in our committee we have plussed up funding for work-related to chemical and biological terrorism significantly over the past several years; but the fact is the weapon of choice by Saddam Hussein to kill 28 young Americans was not a truck bomb. It was, in fact, a low-complexity SCUD missile that sent those young Americans, half of them from my State, back home in body bags to be buried by their families.
Some say we cannot rush to judgment on national missile defense, and I can tell my colleagues what the President is going to offer is a layers approach, much like we have advocated, where we deploy those quickest possible technologies that are proven and tested to give us some short-term capability.
I say it is about time that we begin deploying technologies that can assist us. Some of our colleagues will say, wait a minute, the Russians will be backed into a corner. I say that is hogwash. Yes, the Russians do not trust us today.
I would say if I were a Russian today, I would not trust America either on missile defense, because three times in the last 10 years, we have publicly rebuked Russia on cooperation of missile defense. The first was after Boris Yeltsin in 1992 accepted George Bush's challenge to work together, and we began the Ross-Mamedov between our State Department and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In 1993, when Bill Clinton came into office, he abruptly canceled those talks. That sent a signal to Russia, we do not want you involved. The second time was in 1996, when the only cooperative missile defense program between this country and Russia, the Ramos project, was canceled by the Clinton administration.
It was only because Carl Levin [and] people like [the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. SKELTON), the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. ABERCROMBIE), and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. SPRATT)] went to war with the White House that we were able to reinvigorate the Ramos program and keep it alive, but the signal was sent to Russia we do not want to work with you.
The third example was in 1997, at a time where almost everyone says the ABM treaty needed to be flexible. The administration sent its negotiators to Geneva to negotiate two outrageous protocols that would actually tighten up the ABM treaty. One would create demarcation between theater and national missile defense artificial differentiation, the other would be multilateralization of the treaty.
The administration knew that neither the House or the Senate, especially the Senate would ratify those protocols, but they convinced the Russians that that was our position. Even though the Constitution requires the administration to submit those kinds of changes to the Senate for their advice and the consent for 3 years, the administration never did that, because they knew the Senate would not ratify them.
The Russians for the third time were tricked in their mind, tricked into believing that America really was serious about cooperating with them.
When the Duma included those two protocols, the part of START II ratification last spring, all of a sudden our Senate said no way are we now going to pass START II, because the Duma did what the administration did not do. They attached the protocols to the ABM treaty, as additions to the START II treaty, something that we would never accept in this country.
It is no wonder the Russians do not trust us. If I were in Russia today, I would not trust America's intentions in missile defense either. It is time to get beyond that. We can, in fact, rebuild a trust that we have lost and let the Russians know that missile defense is not about backing them into a corner.
Note: This column has been adapted from a speech Rep. Weldon delivered on the floor of the House, May 1, 2001.
 How to contact Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania)
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