U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

i

37–955 2008

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–73]

U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS POLICY

HEARING

BEFORE THE

STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD

JULY 18, 2007

(II)

STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California, Chairman

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas

RICK LARSEN, Washington

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas

MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama

RUDY BARNES, Professional Staff Member

KARI BINGEN, Professional Staff Member

CATERINA DUTTO, Staff Assistant

(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2007

Page

HEARING:

Wednesday, July 18, 2007, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy ................................... 1

APPENDIX:

Wednesday, July 18, 2007 ....................................................................................... 29

WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2007

U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS POLICY

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Tauscher, Hon. Ellen O., a Representative from California, Chairman, Strategic Forces Subcommittee ..................................................................................... 1

Thornberry, Hon. Mac, a Representative from Texas, Strategic Forces Subcommittee .............................................................................................................. 3

WITNESSES

Drell, Dr. Sidney D., Professor Emeritus, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,

Stanford University ............................................................................................. 7

Payne, Dr. Keith B., Professor and Department Head, Graduate Department

of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri State University .......................... 11

Perry, Dr. William J., Co-Director, Preventive Defense Project, Center for

International Security Cooperation, Stanford University ................................. 4

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Drell, Dr. Sidney D. .......................................................................................... 46

Everett, Hon. Terry .......................................................................................... 33

Payne, Dr. Keith B. .......................................................................................... 53

Perry, Dr. William J. ........................................................................................ 40

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons by Dr. Sidney D. Drell ......................... 63

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Ms. Tauscher ..................................................................................................... 71

Mr. Thornberry ................................................................................................. 74

(1)

U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS POLICY

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Wednesday, July 18, 2007.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m. in room

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ellen O. Tauscher

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, STRATEGIC

FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

Ms. TAUSCHER. Good afternoon. This hearing of the Strategic

Forces Subcommittee will come to order. The purpose of today’s

hearing is to examine the United States’ nuclear weapons policy

and discuss our options regarding the future size and composition

of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Led by this subcommittee,

the House Armed Services Committee has called for a vigorous and

open debate on the future direction of the United States strategic

posture and a fresh examination of our nuclear weapons policy in

particular.

In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008,

which was approved by the House on May 17th, we call for the establishment of a congressionally appointed, bipartisan commission

to analyze and make recommendations on the United States’ strategic posture. This commission is designed to both foster and frame

the debate we believe is needed. We fully intend that Congress participate in this debate, and this hearing is part of that process.

So I am very delighted to welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses to the subcommittee today: Dr. William Perry, former Secretary of Defense and current co-director of the Preventive Defense

Project at the Center for International Security Cooperation at

Stanford University; Dr. Sidney Drell, professor and deputy director emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; and Dr.

Keith Payne, a principal architect of the most recent Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and current chair of the Department of Defense

and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University.

I want to sincerely thank each of our witnesses for appearing before the subcommittee today. Each of you brings a wealth of experience and expertise to this subject, which could not be more important or more timely.

What the United States does with its nuclear weapons and how

we do it is closely linked to our ability to dissuade other nations

around the world from pursuing the deadliest of all weapons and

our efforts to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology.

2

We have no higher security imperative than that. To be sure,

other nations will continue to make their own decisions about

whether to pursue nuclear weapons for many reasons. But how we

manage and maintain our nuclear arsenal directly impacts how

credible we can be when pressing for global non-proliferation. And

we have committed under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to work in good faith toward nuclear disarmament.

So how do we craft a nuclear weapons strategy that meets this

challenge? The most recent Nuclear Posture Review is almost six

years old. It calls for a new triad which promised to de-emphasize

nuclear weapons, but that promise was undermined by its call for

new types of nuclear weapons, and its endorsement of preemption

raised more questions than it answered.

The Bush Administration has opposed arms control treaties, rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and negotiated

an open-ended Moscow Treaty which allows for reductions in deployed nuclear weapons, but it does not achieve those with any significant reductions.

In this context, we find ourselves at a critical juncture regarding

our strategic posture. The human capital and the physical infrastructure we rely on to keep our nuclear weapons safe, secure and

reliable is aging, and the Administration’s nuclear weapons experts

tell us that, in the coming years, the Life-Extension Programs

(LEPs) currently used to maintain our legacy weapons will no

longer be cost-effective.

The Bush Administration has offered two major proposals to address these emerging challenges. The first, the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) Program is designed to modernize our weapons stockpile, and Complex 2030 is a modernization program designed to transform the nuclear weapons complex that supports

that stockpile.

These far-reaching proposals represent the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) preferred future investment and

policy strategy, but they also raise fundamental questions: How

many nuclear weapons does the United States need to meet the

President’s test of ‘‘the smallest number consistent with the United

States’ national security interests’’? What sort of weapons complex

do we need to ensure the safety and reliability of these weapons?

How large should our stock of reserve weapons be and how much

would development of the RRW affect that answer? Is it possible

to develop RRW without sending a signal to the rest of the world

that we are investing in a new generation of nuclear weapons?

I have called for extending the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

(START) and for negotiating a new legally binding agreement that

achieves greater, verifiable reductions in the United States’ and

Russia’s nuclear forces, measures that the Bush Administration

has not endorsed.

In this spirit, as the Non-Proliferation Treaty is under assault,

and as this Administration rejects the CTBT and does not negotiate a new Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), what is the role

of arms control treaties in today’s world, and how can they be made

more effective?

This is not a rhetorical question. Iran is on course to develop a

military nuclear capability. I believe a future step by Iran could be

3

to expel the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors

and withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Instead of waiting for Iran to do this on its own terms, I believe we need to rally

all of our allies around and strengthen the NPT and make it clear

that we believe that there are explicit penalties for leaving the

treaty.

Gentlemen, I would like your thoughts on this matter. Answering

these questions is as critical to our national security as any issue

before this committee or the Congress, and I look forward to a good

discussion today.

Our Ranking Member, Mr. Everett of Alabama, is busy with a

markup in another committee and cannot be here. I understand he

has a statement that he would like to enter into the record, and

without objection, it will be made part of the record.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Everett can be found in the Appendix on page 33.]

Now let me welcome my good friend and colleague, Mr. Thornberry of Texas, who will sit in for Mr. Everett for any comments

that he may have.

Mr. Thornberry, you are recognized for five minutes.

STATEMENT OF HON. MAC THORNBERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM TEXAS, STRATEGIC FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I appreciate you making Mr. Everett’s statement part of the record. I also

appreciate this hearing and the questions that you pose.

I think it is true, as all the witnesses agree, that a lot has

changed in the world and in our security environment since our

current nuclear stockpile was conceived and deployed. I think it

may also be true that we have gotten to the point where we may

take our nuclear weapons for granted, or maybe to put it better,

we take the nuclear deterrence that comes from our current stockpile somewhat for granted. In fact, I think it is a little bit hard for

us to think about what the world would be like if we did not have

the American nuclear deterrent. Would other countries who rely on

our nuclear deterrent be more inclined to have nuclear weapons of

their own? Would others be more adventurous, or would peace and

harmony break out everywhere if the American nuclear stockpile

were not credible?

I think these witnesses, and there are others that I think have

interesting opinions that we ought to consider, but I think it is very

important for this subcommittee and for Congress to ask and listen

to answers of questions like you have posed.

For example, what is the role of nuclear deterrence in today’s

world and in the future? And second, what sort of characteristics

would fulfill that role? I think sometimes we get locked into the

characteristics of the Cold War stockpile without thinking more

broadly what sort of characteristics make the most sense for our

security? And then you do have to go to questions like, can you

achieve those characteristics without testing? How would they be

deployed? What sort of complex do you need to produce those sorts

of weapons? All good questions. And I would add another: What

happens if we are wrong in our assumptions?

4

Madam Chair, we may have some differences on this committee

about how much of our security we are willing to stake on pieces

of parchment, but I think there is no doubt that it is our obligation

to ask these clear questions of nuclear deterrence and where they

fit into the broader security interests of the United States.

So I want to join you in welcoming, I think, all of these witnesses

back, for those of us who have been here a few years, and look forward to their testimony.

Ms. TAUSCHER. I thank Mr. Thornberry for his comments. We

would like to make it clear that each of our guests today, witnesses

today have submitted for the record extensive statements, and if

you gentlemen could each summarize to the extent, five, seven

minutes, that would be great, because I think what we really are

looking for is for the opportunity for members to engage you in

questions.

So with unanimous consent, we will put your statements in the

record. And if we could begin with Dr. Perry.

Welcome again, Dr. Perry.

STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM J. PERRY, CO-DIRECTOR, PREVENTIVE DEFENSE PROJECT, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL

SECURITY COOPERATION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Dr. PERRY. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.

Our government probably today is focused on Iraq for quite understandable reasons. But I believe the greatest danger our Nation

faces is that a terror group will detonate a nuclear bomb in one of

our cities. This would be the worse catastrophe of our time. Just

one primitive nuclear bomb based on the design of the Hiroshima

bomb could result in more than a 100,000 deaths, and there could

be more than one bomb. The direct economic losses from the detonation would be hundreds of billions of dollars, but the indirect economic impact would be even greater as worldwide financial markets collapse in a way that would make the market setback after

9/11 seem mild. The social and political effects are incalculable, especially if the nuclear bomb were to be detonated in Washington,

disabling a significant part of our government.

So almost 20 years after the ending of the Cold War, we still

have a dark nuclear cloud hanging over our heads. As the Cold

War was coming to an end, the Presidents of the United States and

the Soviet Union, President Reagan and President Gorbachev, confronted this danger to civilization and sought to end it. They met

in 1986 at Reykjavik and engaged in serious discussions on how to

end the danger by bringing about an elimination of nuclear weapons. In the end, the two Presidents were not able to reach agreement on the major steps they were discussing, and the Reykjavik

meeting is considered by many to have been a failure.

Last September, on the 20th anniversary of the Reykjavik summit, George Shultz hosted a conference at Stanford to see what lessons we could learn from that remarkable meeting where Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev seriously discussed eliminating not

only nuclear weapons, but also their delivery means. At our Stanford meeting, at which both Dr. Drell and I participated, we concluded that the nuclear vision pursued by Reagan and Gorbachev

at Reykjavik was valid and should be revived.

5

We put together the main ideas that came out of that meeting

in an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal. This op-ed was

signed by George Shultz, Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger and myself,

all of whom played a major role in sustaining our nuclear programs

during the Cold War. It was followed in a few days by another oped from President Gorbachev, who essentially endorsed the views

we had expressed.

Of course, we understood that it might be many decades before

that nuclear vision might be realized. And in the meantime, until

nuclear weapons are eliminated, we should focus on steps to reduce

their danger.

So we outlined in our op-ed a set of steps that could be taken

now that would have the practical effect of greatly reducing that

risk. In my written testimony, I listed those in summary steps. I

call those to your attention.

I believe that our best hope of dealing with the danger of nuclear

weapons lies in the policy for the United States that embraces the

long-term vision, coupled with the short-term programs for systematically moving toward that vision.

The long-term vision could be a vision that inspired Reagan and

Gorbachev at Reijkavik, and the short term could be the ones

sketched out in our op-ed piece.

We will follow up this op-ed with another conference at Stanford

in October where we work out the details of how to implement

these short-term programs. But even before we undertake that

task, it is clear that the programs now underway in the United

States are inadequate to protect us from this evident danger.

The centerpiece of our Government’s strategy for dealing with a

nuclear attack is the National Missile Defense System now being

installed in Alaska and being considered for deployment in central

Europe. But terrorists would not use a ballistic missile to deliver

their bomb; they would use a freighter or a truck.

So it seems all too clear that we cannot deal with the danger of

nuclear terrorism either by defense or, for that matter, by deterrence, which is not likely to be effective against a terror organization like al Qaeda.

But there is some good news in this otherwise grim picture. No

terror group is able to build a nuclear bomb from scratch; only a

nation can manage a project of that complexity. For a terror group

to get a nuclear bomb, they must buy or steal one from a nuclear

power or, with more difficulty, put one together from the plutonium

or highly enriched uranium that they acquire from a nuclear

power. So the key to success is to keep them from getting the bomb

or the fissile material in the first place.

The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) was established a few

years ago as a cooperative international program to interdict nuclear weapons or material being illegally transferred. This is a useful program in many respects, but we should never—we should

never believe it is likely to be successful in preventing a nuclear

power from smuggling a bomb to a terror group. A so-called tactical

bomb could be put in a suitcase. The plutonium needed to make a

bomb as destructive as the Hiroshima bomb is about the size of a

grapefruit. There is no interdiction system that exists or for that

6

matter that is conceivable that would have a good probability of

stopping a clever smuggler from transferring either of these.

Our Government’s near-term strategy should be focused on programs designed to accomplish two objectives: First, reducing and

protecting existing nuclear arsenals; and, second, taking all feasible

actions to keep new arsenals from being created. Both of these objectives require a concerted effort on the part of our Government,

but neither can be fully successful without the cooperation of many

other governments, most importantly, the cooperation of all of the

other nuclear powers.

During my period as Secretary of Defense, I made reducing and

protecting existing nuclear arsenals my top priority, using a program that had been inspired by two visionary Senators, Sam Nunn

and Dick Lugar. Our greatest success with the Nunn-Lugar program was getting Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to give up all

of their nuclear weapons. And at the time we started this program,

Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world, in fact,

with more nuclear weapons than England, France and China combined.

At the same time we did this, we took actions in cooperation with

the Russian Government to substantially improve the safeguards

on nuclear weapons, material, and technology. I fully believe that

it should be our top priority to strengthen the Nunn-Lugar program and extend it to include all nuclear powers, and to deal with

fissile materials associated with commercial power reactors.

The second challenge is to keep new nuclear programs from

being created. During the last six years, North Korea and Iran

have substantially advanced their nuclear weapon programs, even

though the Administration has stated that they considered such

programs unacceptable.

Beyond North Korea and Iran, there are a dozen countries that

have the capability to build nuclear weapons in a year or two.

These nations have voluntarily joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and renounced the building of nuclear weapons.

But this Non-Proliferation Treaty is threatened today by the

emergence of new nuclear powers, namely India and Pakistan, and

would be entirely undermined if North Korea and Iran are free to

build nuclear arsenals. But it also could be undermined by the two

major nuclear powers, Russia and the United States. Russia has

declared that, because of the weakness of its conventional military

forces and because of the American deployment of the National

Missile Defense System in Europe, it must depend more on nuclear

weapons. They have renounced their previously stated no-first-use

policy. They have re-MIRVed their old Intercontinental Ballistic

Missiles (ICBMs); and they are undertaking the development of

new ICBMS and maintain a large stock of tactical nuclear weapons.

The Bush Administration, for its parts, has requested congressional authority to develop new nuclear weapons, most notably the

so-called Bunker Buster, and has requested the authority to build

a Reliable Replacement Warhead.

Any attempt to prevent a hemorrhage of proliferation requires

Russia and the United States to show leadership in complying with

the requirement of the Non-Proliferation Treaty for the nuclear

7

powers to move toward nuclear disarmament. Our op-ed was written in that spirit.

One specific question faced by this committee is whether to authorize the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. There are two

valid arguments for proceeding with that program: first, that it will

maintain the capability of our nuclear weapon designers; and that

it allows the design of a warhead that cannot be detonated by a

terror group even if they were able to get one. A countervailing argument is that if the United States proceeds to develop new nuclear warheads, it will undermine our ability to lead the international community in the fight against proliferation.

My best subjective judgment at this time is that the proliferation

argument outweighs the other two, but I understand we live in a

dangerous and uncertain world, and I firmly believe that we have

to maintain an unequivocal deterrent capability for the foreseeable

future. So my judgment would be different if I thought that our

present nuclear force could not be maintained to provide that capability for many decades in the future.

In sum, I believe that we could defer for a number of years the

development of a Reliable Replacement Warhead. I have no doubt

that this would put us in a stronger position to lead the international community in the continuing battle against nuclear proliferation, which is an eminent danger to all of us. Most importantly, I believe that our best protection against nuclear terrorism

is robust programs that keep nuclear weapons and fissile material

out of the hands of the terrorists.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Perry can be found in the Appendix on page 40.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Dr. Perry.

Dr. Drell.

STATEMENT OF DR. SIDNEY D. DRELL, PROFESSOR EMERITUS,

STANFORD LINEAR ACCELERATOR CENTER, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Dr. DRELL. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for this opportunity to

testify on this important subject.

The existing international regime, grounded in the Non-Proliferation Treaty for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, is in serious danger. The inevitable spread of technology creates the danger

of more states with nuclear arms and fissile material, which in

turn provides more opportunities for theft or sale of this material

into dangerous hands, thereby increasing the risk that nuclear

weapons will be used.

Beyond North Korea and Iran, more than 40 nations have already taken substantial steps forward in nuclear technology. Even

more have indicated interest in developing such technology for civilian power. And once you can enrich uranium for a civilian power

reactor, you are well on your way to nuclear power.

If we continue the present course, the United States and the

world will soon be compelled to enter a new nuclear era that will

be more precarious and economically costly than was the Cold War

deterrence. Those concerns provide the context for my views on the

8

policy and programs on strategic nuclear weapons that this country

should follow, as well as on the RRW.

My longer statement on that is in the record. As well as I would

like to submit an article that respectfully appeared on the subject

in full detail.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 63.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. Without objection it will be submitted in the

record.

Dr. DRELL. During the Cold War, nuclear weapons were essential

to maintaining international security because they were a means

of deterrence. Sixteen years ago, the Cold War ended with the demise of the Soviet Union. Deterrence continues to be a relevant

consideration for many states with regard to threats from other

states, but reliance on nuclear weapons for this purpose is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective as the prospect of nuclear proliferation grows increasingly ominous. The time

is overdue for a fresh look at the role of nuclear weapons in U.S.

defense planning.

It should be clear that I am saying different words from Secretary Bill Perry, my friend, but I am agreeing on everything he

said.

As stated in the joint declaration of Presidents Bush and Putin

in November 2001, quote, ‘‘The United States and Russia have

overcome the legacy of the Cold War.’’ Neither country regards the

other as an enemy or threat. They emphasized that the two nations

are allies working together against the spread of nuclear weapons.

In light of this official change in policy, I have trouble understanding why we are still planning, or certainly seem to be planning based upon the stated documents under the Treaty of Moscow

negotiated in 2002, to have 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads deployed 5 years in the future from now, supplemented by

several thousand more reserves in the stockpile. What are these

multi-thousand warheads for?

I argue in my testimony, that was guided by the 2001 Nuclear

Posture Review that you referred to, Madam Chairman, a U.S.

strategic force of some 500 operationally deployed strategic weapons would be more than adequate, strategic warheads. This number allows for force readiness concerns, multiple targeting where

needed, the possibility of very sudden and unexpected surprises,

from Russia, for example, a breakdown in military command and

control, or for whatever reason.

In order to provide a considerable degree of flexibility and a fluid

security environment as present and which the Nuclear Posture

Review calls for, the 500 operationally deployed strategic warheads

would be augmented by a responsive force. As we look ahead a few

years into the future that responsive force should have on the order

of 400 to 500 warheads, a number comparable to the operationally

deployed ones.

In sizing our nuclear forces for the future, the U.S. and Russia,

who presently possess more than 90 percent of the worldwide total

of nuclear weapons, will have to enter into multilateral negotiations with other nuclear weapon states as we make significant

force reductions. These numbers that I have proposed above asVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:14 Oct 01, 2008 Jkt 037955 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-73\199290.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
9

sume that such negotiations are successful in establishing a nuclear-restrained regime, and of course, Russia in their reductions

follows along our path.

As Russia and the United States move further away from the nuclear deterrence trap in which we are still ensnared, the sizing of

our stockpiles would depend on other concerns and could be further

reduced and, in time, perhaps a decade, nuclear deterrence might

be maintained, and I would hope so, entirely with the responsive

force alone. That might be on the order of 500 now initially proposed to be in the operationally deployed force.

These arguments are worked out in more detail in an article

written several years ago with Ambassador Goodby which I have

previously submitted a copy of.

These actions, let me summarize this part, these actions by the

two powers that still possess more than 90 percent of the world’s

nuclear warheads would be a powerful stimulus toward preserving

and further strengthening the non-proliferation regime that is presently under severe strain, particularly but not exclusively, from

North Korea and Iran.

In order to give an impetus to prospects for achieving further reductions in these forces, the United States and Russia will have to

negotiate an extension or revision of the formal provisions for verifying such measures of reduction by extending or revising, as I say,

the provisions of the existing START Treaty that will expire in December 2009. There is little time for delay in getting started, and

I strongly endorse your call for getting down to business on that

one, Madam Chair.

Turning to the RRW. Beyond numerical reductions in our nuclear

forces, measures of restraint by the United States in managing and

modernizing our nuclear arsenal will also be important to achieving success in meeting challenges to the non-proliferation regime.

If the United States, the strongest Nation the world, were to conclude that it cannot protect our vital interests without relying on

new nuclear weapons for new military missions, it would be a clear

signal to other nations that nuclear weapons are valuable, even

necessary for their security. It would also be counter to their repeated urging that the nuclear states reduce reliance on the weapons, reduce numbers of these weapons and work toward ratifying

the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Indeed, that was a condition

at the United Nations (UN) in 1995, to get most of the nations all

to sign on to the extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This brings me to the RRW then, whose stated purpose is both

to transform the nuclear infrastructure, that is Stockpile 2030, and

the nuclear weapons themselves so the U.S. can maintain its alleged long-term high confidence in our arsenal as it reduces its

size.

The part of the RRW program directed at transforming the nuclear infrastructure is not controversial. The infrastructure needs

attention. Some of it dates back to World War II. If you visited, you

would see how obviously it needs attention.

However, in planning a modernized nuclear complex that will be

more efficient, flexible and environmentally friendly to maintain,

we need to decide first how big an arsenal do we think we need;

5,000 or 500, for example. This will require developing an updated

10

plan for the future U.S. nuclear policy and force posture that this

committee has called for.

The more difficult and contentious part of the RRW program is

the transformation of the current stockpile with newly designed

warheads that will increase long-term reliability, safety and use

control. It is a daunting challenge to achieve these goals without

resuming underground nuclear explosive tests in order to certify

the newly-designed warheads for deployment. Such a restriction on

no testing legislated by Congress is important for our Non-Proliferation Treaty interests, as Secretary Perry has amply stated.

We are faced now with a key question then: Can we achieve the

goals of the RRW program without underground explosive testing?

Recall that in developing our modern arsenal, the U.S. has performed more than 1,000 tests over 50 years. How confident could

we be in certifying a new weapon that doesn’t have such a strong

test pedigree?

The ongoing vigorous and highly successful Stockpile Stewardship and Life-Extension Programs have established that the current U.S. stockpile, in my judgment, of nuclear weapons is safe and

reliable and does not show significant evidence of aging. That is the

basis for my technical views of what I am talking about.

Those programs do include important improvements in non-nuclear components events, for example, continually improving the

safety of the arming, fusing, and firing system and enhancing performance margins. That has enabled the lab directors to certify our

stockpile without testing for more than a decade.

I don’t thing we presently know the answer to the key question

I pose. We are not technically certain what aspects of an RRW program can be achieved without nuclear explosion testing. I do believe it is a worthwhile question to try to answer, and there is a

sensible approach to it which would follow three elements.

One, the RRW needs to proceed carefully with research on design

modifications before moving ahead to consider development and

manufacture of nuclear warheads. In other words, it has to stay at

the moment in phase 2A. Detailed analyses subjected to independent scrutiny and rigorous peer review will be needed to determine

whether it is possible to build confidence and a strong technical

consensus that the proposed changes are mutually compatible with

our security needs and that they will be able to give us higher confidence in these changed designs, untested, than we have presently

in the reliability and confidence of our present stockpile.

Second, we must recognize that implementing design changes is

not time urgent. The legacy stockpile is strong. The pace of the

work should not consume human and budgetary resources to the

extent of savaging the important and highly successful Stockpile

Stewardship and Life-Extension Programs that are going on now.

It will take more money if you want to consider doing that.

Third, the government needs to be clear about the limited scope

of the RRW program to avoid potentially harmful impacts on global

non-proliferation efforts that Bill Perry has already talked about,

which I strongly endorse, and we can think about the long-term future where maybe with Reagan and Gorbachev, we can see a world

free of nuclear weapons.

11

[The prepared statement of Dr. Drell can be found in the Appendix on page 46.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Dr. Drell.

Welcome, Dr. Payne. We are happy to hear from you.

STATEMENT OF DR. KEITH B. PAYNE, PROFESSOR AND DEPARTMENT HEAD, GRADUATE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

AND STRATEGIC STUDIES, MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY

Dr. PAYNE. It is an honor to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

The rise of hostile rogue states, new terrorist threats, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missile technology

have all highlighted our need for an effective deterrent strategy in

this post-Cold War environment. That strategy in principle should

help us to identify the preferred roles and characteristics for our

strategic forces.

Unfortunately, most of what we believed was true during the

Cold War is now misleading because international conditions have

changed so dramatically. The painful truth is now no one truly

knows what constitutes a stabilizing force structure or whether or

how deterrence will work across the wide spectrum of contrary opponents, stakes and circumstances we may confront.

This conclusion does not suggest that we discard deterrence—far

from it. It does, however, explain how our Cold War strategy of deterrence based on a mutual balance of terror must be reconsidered

in toto. One part of the answer to our current strategy question of

how to deter is tailored intelligence.

To understand how best to deter in any contingency, we need

first and foremost to understand the specific opponent’s mindset

and behavior style and the different ways opponents can perceive

and respond to our threats. Deterrence is now first and foremost

a matter of intelligence. It requires a much broader dedicated intelligence effort for this purpose than was the case in past decades.

This is true whether we hope to deter the leadership of a state or

a terrorist organization.

I should note in this regard that I have frequently heard the assertion ‘‘terrorists must be undeterrable,’’ which is mistaken. There

is considerable historical evidence that terrorists may be deterred

and have been deterred in the past, depending on the specifics of

the opponent, the circumstance, and how much we knew about

them.

It is important to understand what types of U.S. deterrent

threats will be best suited to deterring a particular opponent in a

particular circumstance, for a particular purpose. In some cases,

non-military approaches to deterrence will be best, in other words,

non-nuclear force options are likely to be adequate and advantageous, and in still other cases, nuclear threat options may be necessary to deter.

Each type of capability is likely to have a role in deterring attacks. To reject any of these capabilities at this point as unnecessary for deterrence is to presume knowledge about how foreign

leaders will think and how deterrence will function across time and

place that is wholly unsupportable.

12

Some see an incongruity in the U.S. maintaining a nuclear arsenal for deterrence while simultaneously advocating nuclear nonproliferation. In reality, the U.S. deployment of nuclear capabilities

makes an essential contribution to nuclear non-proliferation. This

positive linkage may be counterintuitive, but it is unquestionable.

Our extended nuclear deterrent is perhaps the most important

and the least recognized nuclear non-proliferation tool in existence.

How so? It is on the basis of the U.S. nuclear umbrella that allied

countries, such as Japan, have chosen to remain non-nuclear. The

continued credibility of our nuclear umbrella is critical to their decisions to remain non-nuclear, and their decisions to remain nonnuclear are critical to non-proliferation worldwide.

The contemporary environment is increasingly challenging for

our allies in this regard. North Korean and Iranian nuclear aspirations for nuclear weapons pose an unprecedented nuclear threat to

our allies, including those traditionally covered by the U.S. nuclear

umbrella. Their responses, as we have seen to date, to these emerging nuclear threats have highlighted once again the critical role

that the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent plays in non-proliferation.

It is in this context that the Reliable Replacement Warhead

(RRW), is of potential value, I believe, for the following basic reasons. It may contribute to sustaining a U.S. nuclear arsenal with

increased warhead safety and security measures without testing. It

could help preserve the special skills and expertise necessary to

maintain the U.S. capability to develop and produce nuclear weapons and to modernize portions of the industrial infrastructure necessary for that purpose. And RRW could contribute to the prudent

reduction of the nuclear stockpile.

Because the retention of U.S. nuclear capabilities is important

for U.S. deterrence, and extended deterrence—and therefore nonproliferation—each of these possible benefits of RRW is potentially

important. The Bush Administration’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, the NPR, emphasized the need for a much broader range of

deterrent options than those we inherited from the Cold War, particularly including non-nuclear options. Unfortunately, here we are

almost six years later and nuclear-armed missiles remain the only

Prompt U.S. Global Strike options available. I agree strongly with

General Cartwright that it is important to move forward on a conventional capability for Prompt Global Strike (PGS), conventional

Trident being the near-term option.

The contemporary uncertainty of deterrence compels a review of

our Cold War strategy choices with regard to the role and value of

active and passive defenses, such as air defense, civil defense and

ballistic missile defense (BMD). It may be recalled that it was the

Nixon Administration that initiated the strategy of intentional U.S.

societal vulnerability to virtually any strategic threat. The Nixon

Administration did this in the self-expressed deference to a balance

of terror strategy with the Soviet Union. The strategy choices have

consequences, as we learned on 9/11 when, according to reports, we

could muster at most a handful of interceptors, two of which apparently were unarmed.

That strategy, and its subsequent perpetuation, led to the continued limitation or further degradation of U.S. air defense, civil deVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:14 Oct 01, 2008 Jkt 037955 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-73\199290.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
13

fense and ballistic missile defense throughout the remainder of the

Cold War years and after, the fruit of which we saw at 9/11.

In the contemporary environment of multiple WMD threats and

deterrence uncertainty, it is critical that the U.S. approach to deterrence strategy include rather than eschew defensive capabilities.

A balance of terror will not provide predictable protection against

perplexing leaders, such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Il or Iran’s

President Ahmadinejad.

Deterrence can and likely will fail unpredictably in the future as

it has in the past, and in those instances, it will be most important

to limit damage to our society and to our economic infrastructure

to the extent possible.

Particularly apparent in this regard is the need to deploy regional and strategic missile defense capabilities that are sufficiently timely, adaptable and global to meet emerging missile

threats. With regional rogue states moving toward nuclear weapons

and missiles of increasing range and payload, layered missile defense, I believe, has become an essential element of U.S. post-Cold

War strategy.

In conclusion, the broad outlines of a U.S. post-Cold War deterrent strategy are apparent. They reflect both continuities and discontinuities from past strategies. Once we establish a political consensus on the hows and whys of U.S. post-Cold War strategy, we

can pursue the development and deployment of our forces consistent with that strategy.

Unfortunately, we have yet to establish a consensus on a postCold War deterrent strategy, and we need to make that a priority.

Madam Chairman, I believe the commission you mentioned in our

opening remarks could contribute significantly toward that goal.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Payne can be found in the Appendix on page 53.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Dr. Payne.

We have been informed that the House is currently debating the

Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations

bill. We expect we could be called for a very long series of votes

imminently. I know that Dr. Perry has been on the Senate side

most of the day, and Dr. Payne and Dr. Drell have both traveled.

I would ask your indulgence if it would be possible, if we get

called for votes soon, it would take us a minimum of 45 minutes

to do these votes. I would hope that you could stick around. This

is a very important issue, and I ask your indulgence. We can make

you comfortable in the meantime if we do get called soon.

We are going to keep members to the five-minute rule, myself included. I have one opening question. Dr. Payne, I will take your

last comment as a hint of where you are for our call for a strategic

commission. The question is very simple. As you know, in the

House-approved 2008 Defense Authorization bill we have called for

a strategic commission to evaluate United States strategic posture

for the future, including the role that nuclear weapons should play

in the national security strategy.

Dr. Drell, what do you think are the key questions the commission should focus on? And this will be a five-minute question. If you

could be brief, I would appreciate it.

14

Dr. DRELL. You wanted my view of the commission?

Ms. TAUSCHER. Yes.

Dr. DRELL. I think it is extremely important.

Ms. TAUSCHER. What should they focus on?

Dr. DRELL. I think they should focus on what deterrence requires

after the Cold War. With deterrence during the Cold War, we had

huge forces for immediate attack. We now need to keep deterrence

so we have some way to handle building crises if they come. I don’t

think that the fear of a first-strike exists today the way it did during the Cold War. I take seriously the document that President

Bush and President Putin signed in 2001/2002 saying we are not

Cold War enemies, literally, but we are allied against terrorism.

I think that deterrence, assuming that the Russians implement

their words the way we do, I think that having multi-thousand

warheads to be able to destroy an operating society is something

I would like to think of as in the past.

On the other hand, we have to have a hedge against a change

in the Government or continuation of what seems to be at the moment a not very happy political relationship, and that is why I

chose numbers like 500 operationally deployed, 500 reserve, looking

at the key targets.

So I think one has to look upon what is the deterrent posture we

are working on for the future; how do we understand where Russia

is going? That is the main thing, because we are between 90 and

95 percent.

Then I think that the issue, I feel very strongly, is what actions

can we take to make progress in the way we handle our forces and

make progress toward freeing the world of nuclear weapons? I

think President Reagan and President Gorbachev had it right.

Reagan said these are terrible weapons, no good. They are going

to kill us. We have to get rid of them. That man was a true nuclear

abolitionist of the deepest sort.

I think that given the fact of the spread of technology, the biggest worry we have is, building on what Secretary Perry said, the

spread of these weapons. We have to now embellish the nuclear

Non-Proliferation Treaty with the Proliferation Security Initiative,

the additional protocols for inspection, and expanding Nunn-Lugar.

Because somebody less reliable than we like to think, and using

methods of suicidal terrorism to make almost mockery of the word

deterrence, is the challenge we face.

As long as we have massive nuclear arsenals, we are going to

have that problem. So we have to ask, how do we take steps? By

making significant reductions, as I said, by taking weapons off

hair-trigger alert, by controlling the nuclear fuel supply—things

that this country has proposed.

How do we work our way out of the nuclear deterrence trap and

toward that? To the extent that we can persuade other countries—

I am not talking about only Iran or North Korea, I am talking

about our allies with whom we are cooperating, 185 nations in the

world—to try to make the Non-Proliferation Treaty effective. They

have demanded increasingly, and if you look at the record in 1995

of the renewal of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to the indefinite

future, they demand that we honor Article VI of the NPT, that we

ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, certainly don’t resume

15

testing, and that we reduce reliance on these weapons. And if we

want them to be serious partners in an effort to try and get a hold

of this nuclear journey, we have to listen to them and take it seriously.

Of course, it will help with some leverage in dealing with Iran

and North Korea, I would think, if we say we are really serious

about big reductions and reducing reliance and maybe even, I don’t

know when or how, we will get to that vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. I think those are what one has to now take a big

look at the big picture.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Dr. Payne, Dr. Perry, I will take your answers for

the record if you don’t mind because I want to get other members.

Mr. Thornberry for five minutes.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Dr. Payne, I was struck in the introductory comments that Dr.

Drell talked about the Bush-Putin agreement that we are no longer

Cold War enemies and we can thus reduce tremendously the number of nuclear weapons we have. And yet Dr. Perry went on at

some length about Russia taking steps in the opposite direction,

having more reliance on nuclear weapons and so forth since that

time. It tells me that Russia is making decisions based on what it

considers its strategic interests are that are not particularly related

to decisions we make.

So would you comment on this question about whether other

countries will necessarily follow our lead or whether—whether it is

Russia, Iran or whoever—they look at their own situation, who

their neighbors are, what their security environment is and make

decisions on nuclear weapons on that basis?

Dr. PAYNE. Sure, thank you, Congressman Thornberry. Both the

comments in fact I believe are accurate, and that is that at the

time of the Nuclear Posture Review early in the Bush Administration, there was no doubt that the goal was to have a new relationship with Russia, and that that new relationship would improve

and blossom. That was the hope, and that was one of the guiding

ideals behind what we did in that regard.

I harken to add with some disappointment that, six years later,

what we have seen on the part of the Russian Federation with regard to its programs and its plans and its development of nuclear

weapons is not heartening in that regard. What we have seen is

increased emphasis in Russian writings and in Russian development programs on nuclear weapons. Many possible reasons for

that, but it certainly hasn’t been what we hoped would be the case

back at the beginning of the Administration.

To the second part of the question, and that is, do countries essentially follow the U.S. lead? I believe, by and large, they don’t.

The notion that countries follow the U.S. lead in nuclear matters

and that essentially they mimic what we do or don’t do really is

a carryover of what used to be called the action-reaction dynamic

of the arms race. What we would do in the Cold War, the Soviets

would follow, and so on and so forth.

What happens is that same notion of what drives arms competition has now picked up and has been applied to the post-Cold War

period, so the current notion is that what we do, then many other

countries will follow and mimic. I don’t find virtually any historical

16

precedent or evidence that supports that. What we do see is regional states want nuclear weapons for their own purposes. Very

often it is unassociated with the United States. If it is associated

with the United States by their own discussion, it is because they

worry about U.S. conventional capabilities, not U.S. nuclear capabilities, per se. And so the notion that what the U.S. does with regard to its nuclear initiatives is going to drive proliferation in that regard is

overstated. To the contrary, I believe that U.S. nuclear weapons

that help support the extended nuclear deterrent can be helpful in

contributing to non-proliferation.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Let me ask one other question, Dr. Perry and

Dr. Drell. Dr. Payne makes the point that we need a whole array

of tools because many of us can’t possibly know what will deter a

leader or a terrorist in the future, and that whole array extends

from, of course, non-nuclear all the way to nuclear deterrent.

Do you agree or disagree with that notion that we need the

whole array of weaponry to help prepare for contingencies we

couldn’t possibly know now?

Dr. PERRY. If I were setting the nuclear policy of the United

States, which I am not, I would base it on the view that the greatest threat to the United States’ nuclear weapons is nuclear terrorism, and act accordingly. That is further based on the belief that

deterrence will be effective against nation states, and in that, I

even include North Korea, Iran. I do not believe those two nations

are seeking to commit suicide. They realize, that is, what would

happen if they used nuclear weapons against us.

I do not believe that deterrence would be effective against an al

Qaeda group. So I would want to base my policies on the view that

we have to deal with al Qaeda some other way.

All my testimony was intended to describe ways of dealing with

that problem. I do not believe deterrence, defense, any of those will

be useful against al Qaeda.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you.

Dr. Drell.

Dr. DRELL. I believe we do have to have a whole array of armaments, and I believe that—I would hope that the emphasis is on

having the necessary intelligence, which I agree with Dr. Payne in

emphasizing that as very important, and having a flexible and

strong conventional force.

I just think these nuclear weapons, as President Eisenhower

said, are weapons of destruction of the enemy and suicide when

you come to using them. And we want to try and meet our needs

as much as we can with the whole array.

By the way, when it comes to defense, when we are talking about

trying to strengthen our ability to contain the terrorists, the biggest threat, I think what Bush and Putin said five years ago, also

that we should be engaged in cooperative efforts at early warning

and defense, is the right way to go. I think I am troubled at what

seems to me to be an unnecessarily provocative way of trying to introduce it into Eastern Europe right now. I don’t understand why

that was not approached as a possible cooperative move because I

can see that as the offenses get down and the weapons may proliferate, we have to have some sort of appropriate level of defense.

17

Dr. DRELL. In fact, against that low-level defense might even be

effective.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you.

Mr. Spratt from South Carolina for five minutes.

Mr. SPRATT. Thank you all for your excellent testimony. We appreciate you being here.

Dr. Perry and Dr. Drell, you have each said that you look upon

the gravest threat confronting us being the threat of nuclear terrorism. If, however, someone were to read our defense budget from

start to finish with no outside knowledge of it, I doubt seriously

that he would infer or discern that this is our greatest threat.

Are we spending or putting forth the resources commensurate to

the threat?

Dr. PERRY. In my judgment, the answer to that is no. There are

many things we could be doing that would make it more effective

against dealing with that threat. One in particular would be an expanded Nunn-Lugar effort expanded to include other nations and

expanded to include dealing with the fissile material from commercial reactors, which is perhaps our greatest single danger today

falling into the hands of terrorists.

I might just add to that, Mr. Spratt, that resource funding is not

enough to deal with this problem. We do need the cooperation with

other nations. We have to have the cooperation of all nuclear nations at a minimum in this program. At the time I was secretary,

we had splendid cooperation from Russia in this field. We could not

have accomplished the dismantlement of the 4,000 or 5,000 nuclear

weapons in the former Soviet Union without help from Russia.

So we do need the cooperation of other nations in doing this.

Dr. DRELL. I totally agree.

Once we have—if our problem is nuclear terrorism, the better intelligence we have, that is, again, something that requires cooperation, the better—the more effectively we extend Nunn-Lugar to the

Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), the better we can proceed to get control of the material and the enrichment technology.

These are the matters that concern me much more.

The nuclear force at the moment, at the level we are, is really

sized for only one other country, and that is Russia, which, as I

say, we shield more than 90 percent of their weapons. To the extent that we can reduce and parallel—their numbers, by the way,

Congressman, their numbers have gone down to smaller than our

numbers now. They have begun the modernization of delivery systems, I personally don’t feel that they are fielding a force that carries the threat that a communist Soviet Union presented to us.

So I don’t know the details of the budget to know where there

are things that are there or not. But I certainly put my reliance

in intelligence, conventional forces, a whole broad range of them for

all sorts of time range of action and all levels.

Mr. SPRATT. Dr. Payne.

Dr. PAYNE. I certainly agree with the points that Dr. Perry and

Drell have made to keep materials out of the hands of terrorists.

Nuclear materials, biological weapons, chemical weapons materials,

I couldn’t agree more with that.

I guess the different point that I would put forward in this regard is that the deterrence of terrorists has been shown historically

18

to be possible. Under President Jefferson, we were to, in fact, deter

and coerce the pirates that were every bit as violent and every bit

as eccentric as the terrorists we face today. And there are any

number of historical examples since then. There are many of them.

We have seen very effective deterrence and coercion of terrorists

both by direct deterrence of the terrorists themselves and by deterrence of their state sponsors. That is where I think that, in a sense,

we need to focus and that is understanding the terrorists well

enough and the organizations well enough to understand those occasions where we can put deterrence pressure on them directly,

and those occasions where we can add pressure on their state sponsors to try to prevent their actions.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Spratt.

Do you have another question?

Mr. SPRATT. Neither one of you mentioned, I believe, the D–5.

Would you quickly give us your position on whether or not the D–

5, the idea that the Administration has advanced of possibly converting the warhead of the D–5 into a conventional warhead and

using it for conventional missions is a good idea?

Dr. DRELL. I am deeply troubled by the notion that a Trident

force would be at sea with a mixture of nuclear and non-nuclear

weapons. And therefore, there might be some ambiguity in the way

a launch might be perceived, and there might even be a command

failure in getting a conventional warhead or a nuclear warhead

being launched confused.

I am deeply troubled by the notion of a mixed deployment of nuclear and conventional.

I think there is an argument to be made for—I presume you are

talking about—D–5s with conventional warheads. There, I have

just technical problems when you think of how limited the range

of destruction is from a high explosive warhead and the requirement to have the location of the target which you are going at in

a very timely fashion to have that so well fixed and accurate that

you really are hitting what you think you are.

I mean, there are technical problems that have to be solved

which are non-trivial. I have no doctoral concern about having the

ability to deliver force promptly, whether as the D–5 or having

overseas-based drones or whatnot. There are options which haven’t

been thought through totally.

But certainly a mixed deployment is something that makes me

very nervous, not because I don’t trust the U.S. Navy—I just don’t

trust the alert systems or the warning systems of the people who

may see something coming and be a little less confident than we

are that it is non-nuclear.

Dr. PERRY. Mr. Spratt, I focused my testimony on the nuclear

terrorism attack, but in my written testimony, I do refer to what

still lingers of the danger of an accidental war occurring. That

probability is certainly lower than the ones during the Cold War,

but it still exists because we and Russia still have our nuclear

forces on high alert.

That danger, I think, is aggravated by a Trident of mixed forces.

I mean an accidental response on the part of the Soviet Union, by

Russia, which might misestimate what is happening when we fire

a Trident missile.

19

Dr. PAYNE. May I add to that?

Ms. TAUSCHER. You can quickly.

Dr. PAYNE. There is a more recent discussion, I believe, the word

is slugsome, which is the idea of putting a shorter range ballistic

missiles on the SSGN, which would not be mixed boatloads of nuclear and conventional, would not mix the boatloads at all, in fact,

in my view, it has a lot of advantages.

So I think having Conventional Global Strike is very important

and this is an initiative to get by those problems that were associated with conventional Trident. It seems to me like a very good

idea.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Spratt.

Mr. Franks from Arizona for five minutes.

Mr. FRANKS. I would just like to start out by saying to this panel

that I rarely have heard, since I have been in Congress, a more

brilliant and obviously knowledgeable group of leaders on such a

vital subject. It gives me hope, and I think that the chair is to be

commended for inviting people of such acumen to brief us. It is—

I am sure that part of it is—that one is always thrilled to hear

their own convictions fall from others’ lips, but the reality, I am

sure, is that there is a diverse point of view philosophically on the

panel, but the Nation is very blessed to have all of you with the

obvious background and commitment to freedom that you have.

With that said, Dr. Payne, I was particularly intrigued and compelled by your assertion that the American nuclear umbrella has

many effects on nuclear proliferation; number one, by preventing

other countries who are under that umbrella to feel they need to

develop systems of their own. And I guess being a little biased

here, relating to the nuclear missile defense systems of the Nation,

do you not think there may be some connection with our missile

defense capability also being able to deter certain countries from

developing systems of their own simply because they think that

they would be of little effect or lesser effect because of our missile

defense capabilities? And if you would expand on that.

Dr. PAYNE. I believe that there is at least the prospect that effective missile defenses can help dissuade countries from either going

into the missile business or expand their missile capabilities if they

anticipate that our defenses will be sufficiently effective to shut

down the value of those missiles. The last thing they are going to

want to do is launch a missile and have it disarmed by the United

States. It simply proves their impotence.

So I agree with you, and I believe that there is this chance for

dissuasion or dissuasive effect from our strategic capabilities.

With regard to the first part of the question, that is the relationship between our nuclear forces and extended nuclear deterrence

and non-proliferation, this strikes me as one of the most

unheralded values our nuclear arsenal can provide. If you look

most recently of the statements that have been coming out of Japanese officials, former Japanese officials, South Korean officials,

former South Korean officials, if you look at the discussion that has

come out of—from friends of ours in the Middle East, as they anticipate the possibility of uranium nuclear weapons, what you see

highlighted in every case is the value that they attribute to our exVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:14 Oct 01, 2008 Jkt 037955 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-73\199290.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
20

tended nuclear deterrence to help them in their security needs as

they look at the possibility of facing a nuclear foe.

And they value our essentially taking that nuclear deterrent role

so they can stay in their non-nuclear status. That strikes me as an

extremely important value for our nuclear weapons, and as we

think about the proposals to get out of the nuclear weapon business, we ought to think about that down side of doing that.

Mr. FRANKS. Thank you. I couldn’t agree with you more.

Related to the European site, is it not also possible that the

American credibility in proceeding with that site as planned also

has some intrinsic relationship to some of the things that you are

talking about?

Dr. PAYNE. I believe there is no doubt that the commitment that

it shows by the United States to our allies in Europe, particularly

those in central Europe, the newer members of NATO, is important. It is important to those members of NATO as a political signal, as a symbol of our commitment to their security, yes.

Mr. FRANKS. Dr. Perry, I think one of the strongest points made

today was yours related to weapons systems falling into the hands

of terrorists. Deterrence has no effect on them. Their intent is

clear. We need to rob them of that capability. It occurs to me if we

hadn’t lost secrets from the Los Alamos Lab many, many, many

decades ago, the Cold War itself could have been entirely avoided.

And with that in mind, what would you say would be the most

practical and critical consideration for this committee in preventing

this loss or this proliferation problem in getting some type of weapon system getting into the hands of a terrorist organization. What

are the things that we need to be looking at most closely?

Dr. PERRY. I think we are already doing adequately the protection of our nuclear weapons. We should also work with other countries like Russia to help them secure their nuclear arsenal. But we

have done that in the past, and we can still do that in the future.

But I think the greatest threat is fissile material falling into the

hands of terrorist, but I generally believe that the danger of a nuclear weapons falling in the hands of a terrorist is relatively low.

The high danger is that fissile material will fall into the hands of

a terrorist. And here the greatest danger is not the Defense Department fissile material, which is pretty well protected, but the

fissile material from nuclear reactors.

So I think the single most important thing we can do is get an

international program to deal with that problem. That involves

much better safeguarding material and it involves persuading people who have reactors which use highly enriched uranium to

change. It is an extensive program. It would require a lot of diplomacy including a lot of fund resources, but the payoff is quite high.

Mr. FRANKS. Dr. Drell, I think Dr. Perry puts it very succinctly.

The fissile material seems to be one of the most dangerous combinations out there with Iran moving in that direction pretty dramatically. I sometimes go back and forth wondering if Iran is the

most dangerous threat to us or if perhaps a coup in Pakistan where

they perhaps would immediately gain control of a dozen or so warheads would be more dangerous.

I want to be careful not to say anything too sensitive here. But

the fissile material, once that is gained, they don’t need to have

21

much more than a Boy Scout manual to create some kind of havoc.

And what would you suggest is the most dangerous area? I keep

trying to bring, as a committee, our focus on the most critical factor

there, but as far as being able to prevent this fissile material from

falling in the hands of terrorists, where do you think our greatest

focus should be? I know it has to be comprehensive, but do you see

any particular weak point that we should be considering?

Dr. DRELL. Well, on the diplomatic front, we are making an effort

to build an international order to get control for the enrichment of

uranium. You only need very low enrichment to power a reactor for

civil power, which is what countries want. But once you have that

technology, you are well on the way to being able to get high enrichment. The numbers are all unfavorable to us on that one.

That is why it is so important what the United States Government’s proposal is, what President Putin’s proposal is, what the

IAEA proposals are. There are different proposals but they are different in detail, not in goal, and that is to see to it that the technology for enrichment does not spread, and that is why we are

deeply concerned properly with what Iran is doing now as with the

gas centrifuges as it begins to enrich uranium.

So what are the things we have to do? In Iran, we either are

going to have to, by diplomatic means and engagement with our allies, convince them that that is something that would look very,

very badly about their getting the capability of enriching uranium

because with the enrichment and the weapons and missiles, there

is going to be a terrible shakeup in the Middle East and the nonproliferation regime is going to go down the tubes.

So I think that the most dangerous spot for me right now is what

is going on right there with Iran and with the turmoil in Pakistan

because you have the world’s most dangerous arm’s dealer A.Q.

Khan sitting up there in Pakistan, obviously a very terrible person,

doing things.

So how with intelligence, how with diplomacy, and eventually

after that, there will be some very tough political decisions of what

we are going to have to do when we feel the danger becomes beyond something we can bear.

I take momentarily, at least, great confidence—great hope that

we are beginning to resolve the problem with North Korea. I think,

finally, China has realized it is not in their interest to have North

Korea nuclear with what it will do to South Korea and to Japan

to perhaps Taiwan. And so I view their help and our very aggressive diplomacy there recapturing a lost, seemed like a lost cause,

having some effect right now. So I am hopeful there.

Let me take one minute to answer a previous remark.

I am a physicist, and I have to say your remark about the spies

of Los Alamos having something to do with the Soviet Union getting weapons quickly, I have to say respectfully, sir, I really disagree on that. The history will show that they had designed their

own weapon. In fact, the Russian scientists are very proud to tell

you that had they made their first test their design. It was more

efficient than our first creation of a bomb, to copy that one and

they could make it work.

So I think the scientific talent and the scientific knowledge needed to make a primitive atomic bomb, either uranium gun-type one,

22

which is Hiroshima, or the more sophisticated plutonium implosion

one, which is Nagasaki. I am sorry that that technology is getting

around the world. That is our danger now. It wasn’t so much in the

Cold War, but I don’t think one can say that it had that much to

do with the Soviet threat emerging when it did.

Mr. FRANKS. Thank you, gentlemen. I think your lives give those

in the future generation hope to live in a future environment.

Ms. TAUSCHER. I appreciate your accolades in the beginning, and

as chair, I take them to heart, but I do have to tell you that it is

our staff that does the fabulous job, led by Bob DeGrasse and Rudy

Barnes and Kari Bingen and my staff, that they are significantly

the reason why we have such a fabulous panel here today.

So I want to thank our staff, and I want to turn to Mr. Larsen

who has been waiting patiently for seven minutes.

Mr. LARSEN. So I get three?

Dr. Payne, I want to give you an opportunity to answer a question and because it has to do with something with the comment

you made with regards to Mr. Franks’ question about the prospect

of missile defense being a dissuasion. I am going to ask this in a

pretty loaded and pointed way. I thought I would be nice enough

to let you know that.

So what do you think is likely with the prospect of an Iranian

nuclear weapon and the prospect that missile defense will dissuade

an Iranian ballistic missile development?

Dr. PAYNE. There is not enough data to give you possibilities or

comparisons of those.

Mr. LARSEN. You did say there was a—you thought the prospect

of—there was a prospect of missile defense being a dissuasion.

Dr. PAYNE. I was relating that to the Iranian missile program,

not necessarily to the Iranian nuclear program.

Mr. LARSEN. And I am talking about an Iranian nuclear weapon.

So my point is, missile defense may have its values, but as we

are discussing this in terms of our future nuclear policy. I have

some questions, and perhaps this is one of these questions the

Commission, should we get it finally approved in a final bill, can

look into more clearly for us because I think there might be, at

least in my mind, a divergence of those two prospects, actually

there is a convergence of those prospects right now in my mind.

The prospects of both happening seem to be going fully headlong

regardless of what we are doing.

So I hope that is a question that we can look at.

A question as well for you—well, for Dr. Payne.

Again, the credibility of the nuclear deterrent in the Cold War,

I think, was based on a couple of things, and I want to get my history right, Dr. Drell, but not only that we had a nuclear deterrent

that would work but a nuclear deterrent that we would use. Sort

of two things.

So given today’s environment, say look at a Saudi Arabia or

Japan and a South Korea, what circumstances would we need to

keep it credible both in terms of that it works and that we would

use it if in fact those are still the two conditions that the countries

like Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea would like to stop themselves from becoming nuclear. And are those sufficient to keep

23

them non-nuclear in your view. Are those conditions sufficient

today to keep them non-nuclear?

Dr. PAYNE. We can go back a little bit to the Cold War history.

Because, in fact, what was supposed to provide adequate credibility

to our threat was indeed the capability but not necessarily the certainty of its use. The credibility of the threat was, in fact, supposed

to come from uncertainty of U.S. behavior—the fact that the U.S.

might do something outlandish, might actually behave irrationally,

the fog of war. The uncertainty associated with the U.S. nuclear arsenal was what was supposed to provide the credibility to the nuclear deterrent, particularly extended nuclear deterrence.

But in that regard, I go back because the question really isn’t for

extended deterrence and the assurance that you have talked about

with regard to allies. The question really isn’t the extent of which

we believe nuclear weapons are usable or not usable. That is an interesting question but it is a separate question.

The question is, do our allies take confidence in assurance in our

nuclear arsenal for the extension of deterrence to provide for their

security? And you will get many different answers to that question,

but it is the appropriate question to ask to our allies, to put to our

allies.

I had the opportunity to ask one of our senior officials from one

of our allied countries what was it that provided their country with

assurance with regard to our nuclear deterrent. This was not that

long ago, and his response to me was, ‘‘No one has ever asked me

that question before.’’ It seems to me that, getting exactly to your

question, sir, this would be something that the Commission, for example, could help with and that would be identifying what is it

about the nuclear arsenal that provides assurance to allies so that

they are happy to remain or at least content to remain non-nuclear.

Mr. LARSEN. That is an important question. Is it sufficient

enough because we don’t want them to become nuclear, but is

that—is that sufficient enough for them, the answer to the question, whatever that answer is, is that sufficient enough for them?

Dr. PAYNE. The sufficiency is going to be determined by the different countries in their different security environments. What

might be sufficient enough for Turkey might be a different question

than what is sufficient for Japan or South Korea because they face

very different contexts.

Mr. LARSEN. Dr. Drell, a question on the SORT Treaty, the Moscow Treaty and perhaps for Dr. Payne.

What circumstances will it take—when we get to 2012—to increase the likelihood of an extension of the treaty or a replacement

with lower numbers, and what circumstances would, forgive me for

saying it this way, would blow the whole thing up?

Dr. DRELL. When we get to 2012 and before we get there—the

SORT Treaty expires December 2009, and therefore unless we do

something before then, we have no existing mechanism to verify reductions or any further progress in arm’s control. That is why I

think the proposal of the Madam Chairman is so important to say

we have got to commit ourselves to saying are we interested in another extension or revision, if there need be one, so that we are in

a position to talk about lower numbers.

So that, in my mind, is the first thing.

24

The next step is how are our relations going with Russia. I mean,

we have to see when we get to 2012—the goal of the SORT Treaty—what the Russians are doing. I mean, they are having financial

problems. They do have smaller forces now than we do. There are

some articles saying we have a first strike capability against them.

I don’t believe that because I don’t believe weapons work 100 percent the way they are predicted all the time. So I am not worried

about that.

But we have to be convinced that the start made five years ago

in relation to these two countries excluding, for various reasons,

which have become somewhat rocky, is how they are going. I don’t

think Russia is a nuclear threat right now to the extent that I

worry about a first strike. But I think that unless we have settled

our relations with Russia and we are back on a cooperative course,

cooperating against the proliferation, meeting the regional problems, cooperating, I have to say in whatever we do by way of limited missile defense in Eastern Europe against what Iran or what

they may do, that would help for me to predict what may happen

then.

I am just hoping that joining together with them as they were

at Reykjavik in a common vision we could work toward would

mean that we both realize that—and Russian analysts, General

Dworman is one of them, the leading one, have said they don’t

need any more than a thousand weapons either on strategic alert.

But we are talking about 4 or 5,000 now, when you put our arsenals together.

So we have got some difficult verification issues to handle.

Namely, how do we count the reserve or responsive forces not deployed? That is a tougher job. We haven’t addressed that.

And so a verification regime, a political regime—it all goes together.

But I would hope that we would be able to, before 2012, realize

I haven’t heard a rational argument for 2,000 or 5,000 warheads,

and I hope the efforts of this committee and of the Congress as a

whole to have an update, a badly needed update, on our strategic

policy. Where do we want to go, what do we need?

Extended deterrence is important. But when we are not talking

about the Soviet Union, we are talking about other new countries,

I think extended deterrence has a lot more to do with our conventional forces and our diplomacy to discourage and dissuade a country from going nuclear.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Larsen.

Mr. Loebsack of Iowa for five minutes.

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just a couple of quick questions, I guess a comment, too, about

deterrence. Certainly we might want to look at Negal and figure

out why we didn’t succeed in that case.

But Dr. Payne, you mentioned, if I got this correctly, that you

think it is possible to deter terrorists and you mentioned deter and

coerce, those are not the same thing obviously, when you were talking about the historical examples.

How specifically would you suggest it is possible to deter terrorists, especially when many of us here probably and certainly out

on the general public think that terrorists, in particular, those who

25

are suicide bombers or whatever the case may be, I mean, it

doesn’t seem logical to think that we can deter them. How can we

do that?

Dr. PAYNE. Thank you.

There is no singular formula for deterring terrorists. The question is going to be are we going to understand the terrorist organizations to know exactly if they are susceptible to deterrence and if

so, how? The only thing I can suggest to you is that there are a

number of very recent historical examples where terrorists were

deterred and/or were coerced effectively.

For example, the Soviet Union was able to coerce Hezbollah in

1985 to get the return of three Soviets who had been kidnapped in

Lebanon. There has been a recent discussion in Russia with lots of

memoirs written about how this was done, and it was clearly a deterrence and coercive action purposely taken by the KGB to get

their citizens back who were being controlled and captured by

Hezbollah, and they worked through Iran, for example. That was

the indirect approach that they took. They worked indirectly

through Iran with coercive measures, and they worked directly on

the ground in Lebanon against Hezbollah, and they were successful.

So what I can provide you with is examples of how it has been

done in the past. What I can’t do is give you a single formula that

works with all terrorist organizations.

Mr. LOEBSACK. I think examples of how it might be done would

be helpful in that sense.

You also mentioned something that deterrence would probably

fail against Kim Jung Il and Ahmadinejad. Is that correct? Did you

say that deterrence would likely fail against those two?

Dr. PAYNE. No. What I said was as we look into the future given

the uncertainties of deterrence, I think we can be confident that deterrence will fail some time in the future as it has failed in the

past, whether it be specifically against North Korea or Iran is an

open question.

Mr. LOEBSACK. Can you think of what sort of examples or what

conditions under which deterrence might fail?

Dr. PAYNE. Again, there are an endless string of historic examples of why deterrence has failed in the past. We can categorize

these and in some cases they simply don’t believe the threat. There

was the audience that we would hope to deter may see the capabilities, but they do not believe the threat would be implemented for

some reason.

Other cases in which the audience that we would hope to deter

and others have hoped to deter, they see the capability, they actually believe the threat, but the action that we or others have asked

them not to take is of such an overriding imperative that they are

so cost-tolerant and so risk tolerant and that they are willing to go

ahead anyway.

In other cases, the leaders have seen the United States as essentially as a sloppy democracy that will not respond promptly or likely at all and therefore they have been willing to go ahead with severe provocations at us. They found out they were wrong, but they

weren’t deterred by our inherent capabilities. There are many historic examples of those types of processes taking place.

26

Mr. LOEBSACK. Those are my only questions.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Dr. Drell and Dr. Perry and Dr. Payne, I have

a homework assignment for you because I want to have—obviously

our votes are not as predicted, so we are going to continue and

hopefully if we get called, we will conclude the hearing.

But the idea of some kind of negotiation to have a follow-on

START Treaty. If you could, all three of you for the record, if you

don’t mind, respond to us at your leisure.

What kind of framework would that take. What kind of opportunity—this is not an oral question, Dr. Drell, this is a written

question for later because I want to go to Mr. Thornberry. But if

you could give us in writing in the future in the next week or so

what you think the framework of follow-on negotiations would be

for follow-on START. Do we need a bridge negotiation? There are

two new Administrations coming: One in Russia and one in the

United States. What do we do to get ourselves into those new Administrations, not find ourselves naked in 2009 without any parts

of it because I think the key that you mentioned, Dr. Drell, is that

the verifiability component of START enables other things like

SORT to actually have legs and have teeth.

Until you have those things, the rest of it is all very nice but

frankly, it doesn’t really matter.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 71.]

Dr. DRELL. You want a framework for a follow-on START?

Ms. TAUSCHER. Yes, thank you. And I am happy to turn to Mr.

Thornberry for some follow-on questions.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Let me approach a couple of narrow other subjects I don’t think we have talked on yet.

It has been argued that because we continue to have weapons designed for the Cold War, very large mega tonnage for each warhead, that our deterrent is not as credible as it might be otherwise

because nobody thinks that we would actually use these very enormous weapons designed for so hardened Soviet silos in other situations.

Briefly, do any of you all have comments on that?

Dr. DRELL. Briefly we don’t have the big multi mega-ton weapons.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Not as big as we once did.

Dr. DRELL. We have a whole range of weapons yields. What RRW

is doing is at the moment, for example, the first RW1 which decision was made is reproducing an existing weapon but designing it

so that purportedly it will be safer and more reliable. It doesn’t add

to the flexibility or anything at all.

So we have a whole range. Our arsenal goes from low yields to

high yields and obviously this is not the forum.

Mr. THORNBERRY. I am just trying to get this basic question, is

a range of yields a characteristic which makes sense for nuclear deterrent as we look ahead to these other scenarios beyond the Soviet

Union.

Dr. DRELL. The answer is yes, and we have it. Could have more,

but we have it, for that reason.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Add Madam Chair, the other I will maybe ask

my—another homework question because we have votes.

27

Dr. DRELL. We lose.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Well, the other issue that has been approached

to us, which I would be interested in your alls’ view, is that we can

reduce the numbers of weapons we have with the Reliable Replacement Warhead, that as we have weapons built largely in the 1970’s

and 1980’s age, and you know, get older and older, we have to keep

more of them because as they get older, we don’t know what may

happen to these machines that age.

So the argument is if we could make them anew, then we—without some of the low tolerances of previous weapon designs—that we

could be more assured and we could get by with few of them. And

your alls’ comments on that, I think the committee might also be

interested in.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 74.]

Dr. DRELL. Do you want comment now or——

Mr. THORNBERRY. I was going to offer you a homework assignment since we are going to have to go run off to vote. I am trying

to work with the chair in case Mr. Spratt had something else.

Mr. SPRATT. I think he can go ahead and submit it for the record.

Ms. TAUSCHER. You all have doctorates. Something tells me you

are good at homework.

Dr. DRELL. So is the instruction to answer it right now?

Ms. TAUSCHER. No. It is a homework session.

Because you have been so fabulous in sharing with us your expertise, I think Mr. Franks from Arizona shares all of our opinions.

Each of you is enormously talented, and this country is very

blessed and the American people are blessed by your expertise, and

this committee is certainly enriched by the fact that you are so

willing to come and share that expertise with us, and we would

hope that you will come back and certainly as time develops and

we get our commission up and running, if you could continue to advise us, we would really appreciate it, and thank you so much for

being here.

And the hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

JULY 18, 2007

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

JULY 18, 2007

(33)

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

JULY 18, 2007

(63)

64

65

66

67

68

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

RECORD

JULY 18, 2007

(71)

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. TAUSCHER

Ms. TAUSCHER. With substantial advances in conventional munitions, why should

the U.S. need or want to rely on nuclear weapons to hold at risk enemy targets?

Dr. PAYNE. With end of the Cold War, many thoughtful people understandably

ask why the United States should continue to maintain nuclear weapons. What role

do they serve? Couldn’t we defeat most plausible adversaries with our conventional

forces alone?

To address those questions requires that we examine the multiple roles served by

nuclear weapons. We need to look beyond the military characteristics of U.S. nuclear weapons and address the broader spectrum of national defense goals they

serve. These goals—deterrence, assurance, and dissuasion—reflect our core objectives of protecting the United States and allies, working to limit the proliferation

of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and steering potential

adversaries away from military challenges and competition.

There should be no desire to rely on nuclear weapons per se; there is, however,

a continuing need for nuclear weapons to support these overarching U.S. defense

goals of deterrence, assurance, and dissuasion. None of these roles for nuclear weapons follows from a ‘‘war-fighting’’ policy orientation, presumes the actual military

employment of nuclear weapons, or entails a requirement to do so. The value of nuclear weapons for deterrence, assurance and dissuasion resides in their continued

role as a withheld threat.

First, we can examine deterrence. The value of effective deterrence did not end

with the Cold War; it remains essential to national security and nuclear weapons

remain essential to effective deterrence. By helping to prevent war and the need to

use force, nuclear deterrence does not represent a disdainful ‘‘trap’’ as some commentators have claimed. They are an enormously valuable tool of deterrence that

should be given up only after careful consideration. As Winston Churchill observed,

‘‘Be careful above all things not to let go of the atomic weapon until you are sure

and more than sure that other means of reserving peace are in your hands!’’

Strategic nuclear weapons that can threaten an adversary’s valued targets from

afar are, and are likely to remain essential for holding particularly well-protected

targets at risk for deterrence purposes; these targets are, for all practical purposes,

invulnerable to non-nuclear threats and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable

future. The potential importance to effective deterrence of the U.S. capability to hold

these types of targets at risk from afar is suggested by the attention and resources

some adversaries devote to protecting and shielding them. Adversaries

unsurprisingly seek to protect what they value. And, as Secretary of Defense during

the Carter Administration, Dr. Harold Brown emphasized when in office, U.S. deterrence threats should be capable of holding at risk those assets particularly valued

by the adversary. In some important cases U.S. non-nuclear threats can not do so

and can promise little deterrent effect. The invasion of an adversary’s territory

places an opponent’s physical targets in the control of U.S. forces and renders many

or all of those targets vulnerable to U.S. non-nuclear threats. In the context of a

defeated opponent, however, the goal of deterring that opponent is unlikely to remain on the agenda, and invasion of an opponent’s territory often is not an appropriate option.

In addition, there is no doubt that some opponents who were not deterrable via

U.S. non-nuclear threats were in fact deterred by what they interpreted to be nuclear threats. This deterrent effect is a matter of adversary perceptions, not our

preferences: whatever we believe about the lethality of U.S. non-nuclear weapons

and what should be their deterrent effect, and whatever our hopes might be about

how adversaries should think and behave, the actual behavior of past adversaries

has shown beyond doubt that there can be a profound difference between the deterring effects of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons. In some cases, given the adversary’s views and the context, only nuclear deterrence works. To assert that nuclear

weapons now are unimportant is to suggest either that deterrence no longer is important, or that the future will be much more benign than the past and we will not

again confront such opponents armed with dangerous weapons. There is every reason to reject both propositions. U.S. policy with regard to nuclear weapons should

72

not be based on optimistic hopes that so contrast with the actual past behavior of

foes. Given past experience, the burden of proof is on those who now contend that

nuclear deterrence no longer is necessary to preserve the peace.

The question is not whether we ‘‘want’’ to rely on nuclear weapons for deterrence.

It is whether we are willing to accept the risk of deterrence failure that would be

introduced by our inability to threaten some of our adversaries’ highly-valued targets that are essentially impervious to non-nuclear weapons and/or our inability to

threaten nuclear escalation in response to a severe provocation. The risk of deterrence failure flowing from such inabilities can not be calculated with precision. Because multiple contemporary opponents possess nuclear and/or biological weapons,

the consequences of deterrence failure could be measured in thousands to millions

of U.S. and/or allied casualties. The risk of deterrence failure following from U.S.

abandonment of nuclear capabilities may be low or high depending on the opponent

and context. But even low-probability events deserve serious consideration if they

have potentially severe consequences. The move to reliance on non-nuclear weapons

to hold enemy targets at risk would carry the increased risk of deterrence failure,

and the probability may not be low.

Next, we can examine the role of nuclear weapons for the assurance of allies. Nuclear weapons are essential to the U.S. extended deterrent. This ‘‘nuclear umbrella’’

is central to the basic U.S. defense goal of assurance. This is not a trivial goal. The

assurance provided to allies by U.S. security commitments, particularly including

the U.S. nuclear umbrella, is key to the maintenance of U.S. alliance structures

globally. It is part of the basic security considerations of countries such as Japan,

South Korea and Turkey. The continuing role of U.S. nuclear weapons for this purpose may not be the preference of those in the United States who would prefer that

the U.S. umbrella be non-nuclear. But what does or does not assure allies is not

decided by U.S. commentators or U.S. political preferences, but by the allies themselves. The United States can decide if the assurance of allies is a worthy continuing

goal, but only our allies can decide whether they are sufficiently assured. In this

regard, available evidence points strongly to the fact that nuclear weapons remain

critical to the assurance of key allies. For example, the recent responses by Japan

and South Korea to the North Korean nuclear test of October 9, 2006 demonstrated

explicitly that U.S. nuclear weapons are viewed by allies as critical to their confidence in the U.S. extended deterrent. The discomfort felt by allies and friends in

the Middle East given the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons points in the same

direction.

We could decide that we would prefer to withdraw the nuclear umbrella and provide non-nuclear extended deterrence. But, with the nuclear proliferation of North

Korea and the apparent Iranian aspirations for nuclear weapons, the response of

key allies to the U.S. withdrawal of its nuclear extended deterrent coverage would

create new and potentially severe problems, i.e., nuclear proliferation by U.S.

friends and allies who would likely feel too vulnerable in the absence of U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. Japanese leaders have been explicit about the extreme

security value they attach to the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and that Japan would be

forced to reconsider its non-nuclear status in the absence of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent. Ironically, nuclear non-proliferation is tied closely to the U.S. preservation of its extended nuclear deterrent. This point is contrary to the typical contention that U.S. movement toward nuclear disarmament promotes nuclear non-proliferation. Precisely the reverse linkage may be more the reality: U.S. movement toward nuclear disarmament will unleash what some have called a ‘‘cascade’’ of nuclear proliferation among those countries which otherwise have felt themselves secure under the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent and therefore have chosen to remain

non-nuclear. We should be extremely careful before moving in a direction that carries the risk of unleashing this ‘‘cascade,’’ such as deciding that U.S. nuclear weapons are unnecessary for assurance and moving toward a non-nuclear force structure.

Next, we can consider the role of nuclear weapons for dissuasion. The goal of dissuasion involves discouraging opponents and potential opponents from militarily

challenging the United States. Dissuasion does not involve the use of force, but having the force structure necessary to discourage opponents from anticipating success

in competing militarily with the United States. A past example of dissuasion was

the Soviet decision to scale back its deployment of ballistic missile defense in the

1960s because the Soviet leadership understood that the U.S. strategic offensive potential could overwhelm Soviet defenses. The maintenance of U.S. nuclear capabilities and a viable nuclear infrastructure may be necessary to discourage opponents

from choosing to engage in a nuclear competition in arms.

For example, the elimination or steep reduction of U.S. ICBMs would lower the

bar considerably for an adversary who might, under such circumstances, consider

realistic the possibility of achieving a counterforce strike option against the United

73

States. Maintaining a set of diverse nuclear retaliatory capabilities serves to discourage the aspiration for any such option. Consequently, it may be critical for dissuasion purposes to maintain an adequate nuclear force structure, particularly because if the United States decides to give up deployed forces, it will certainly would

not be able to recover those capabilities easily, inexpensively or quickly. As the Chinese, by their own statements, move toward greater interest in counterforce nuclear

options, keeping the bar high for any possible success in that regard may be critical

to future stability. Moving to a very small number of U.S. nuclear retaliatory capabilities could encourage the Chinese in the wrong direction.

There are risks associated with retaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal; there also would be risks in not doing so. Nuclear weapons may be critical for

the deterrence of war and the dissuasion of military competition; and, they are critical to the assurance of allies who have indicated that they will considering moving

toward their own nuclear capabilities if they conclude that the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent no longer is reliable. Advocates of the elimination of U.S. nuclear

weapons tend to presume they know that adversaries will continue to be deterred

by U.S. non-nuclear weapons, that allies will continue to be assured by the same,

and that the U.S. ‘‘good example’’ of moving away from nuclear weapons would be

emulated. Again, the burden of proof should be on those who make such claims, particularly when considerable available evidence points to the contrary.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Is there a technical rationale for maintaining such a hedge? In

your estimation, how likely are weapons in the current stockpile to develop problems that would render them unreliable and/or unsafe?

Dr. DRELL. I do not see a technical rationale for retaining the large hedge of several thousand warheads, or more, that are currently in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The weapons in our current stockpile are confirmed to be safe and reliable by the

Stockpile Stewardship Program and we have seen no significant evidence of their

aging. With a Strong Stockpile Stewardship and Life Extension Program, that has

been highly successful for more than a decade, we can be confident that, should any

unforeseen or unanticipated problems arise, we will hear the warning bells. I believe

it is important that we maintain the infrastructure, including a limited pit production capacity, so that we will be able to respond in a timely way should unanticipated problems arise, either on technical or on strategic/political grounds. I would

like the United States to begin to move away from a large operationally deployed

force toward one that is primarily a responsive, or reserve, force.

Ms. TAUSCHER. If the U.S. were not to pursue the RRW program, do you have

any concerns about the reliability of the existing stockpile? Over what time frame

does your confidence extend?

Dr. DRELL. As long as our very successful Stockpile Stewardship and Life Extension Programs continue to be supported and executed to their current high professional standards, I have no serious concerns about the reliability of the existing

stockpile. One of the concerns prior to a year ago was the lifetime of plutonium in

the pits. As widely reported, that concern has been removed by findings by the

weapon labs, as reviewed by JASON. Conservatively stated, my confidence extends

well into the future, certainly beyond the next 20 years.

An RRW program performing research as currently configured at the phase 2a

level is a sensible component of the ongoing Stockpile Stewardship and Life Extension Programs. Before proceeding beyond the Livermore design effort for RW1, we

should determine whether or not the envisaged changes in warhead design to improve safety, long-term reliability, and use control can be achieved and certified for

operational deployment without requiring underground nuclear testing.

Ms. TAUSCHER. What do you think would be the framework for negotiations for

a follow-on to START (which expires in December, 2009)?

Dr. DRELL. Follow-on negotiations to START should address three important

goals:

1. Continuing to reduce substantially the size of nuclear forces, consistent with

U.S. national security.

2. Removing deployed nuclear forces from prompt launch procedures (‘‘hair-trigger alert’’) and thereby reduce the danger of use of a nuclear weapon due

to erroneous threat information, accident, or unauthorized action.

3. Ensuring that we have effective means to verify compliance with the commitments specified in the above two steps.

Goal 1:

In my written testimony for the July 18 hearings, which I submitted for the

record, I discussed issues arising when addressing this goal. Specifically, I suggested

near-term reductions to 500 operationally deployed strategic warheads plus a reVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:14 Oct 01, 2008 Jkt 037955 PO 00000 Frm 00077 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\110-73\199290.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
74

sponsive force of comparable size, en route to a total force exclusively of 500 responsive warheads.

This issue calls for a review of the role of nuclear weapons in the post-cold war

world, particularly to address how many deployed and reserve warheads and delivery systems are needed. Can we move to a force structure consisting exclusively of

responsive forces that can be activated as required during a time of rising tension?

Reductions would necessarily start with Russia and the U.S., who possess more

than 90% of all nuclear weapons. What rate of reduction is practical, recognizing

that to achieve significant reductions down to the force level proposed above, coordinated actions and negotiated agreements among all the nuclear powers will be required? What monitoring and verification tasks will need to be accomplished to support such reductions?

Goal 2:

The focus here is on what actions can be taken to increase warning time and reduce the number of operationally deployed nuclear weapons that have procedures

in place for a prompt launch. Possibilities that might be considered include changes

in missile hardware requiring pre-launch actions to enable an attack; separating

warheads from delivery systems; software changes in the command structure that

would require time to enable arming; or removing all nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and relying exclusively on long-range bombers for delivery systems. Such a

‘‘zero ballistic missile’’ option was considered during the Reagan administration.

Goal 3:

The monitoring and verification requirements to ensure compliance with provisions described in Goals 1 and 2 are considerable. They require verifying numerical

limits on warheads and launchers on both deployed and responsive (or reserve)

forces as well as building confidence in command procedures. The follow-on to

START should also incorporate cooperative measures that would strengthen the protection of all nuclear weapons against terrorists gaining access to them. These requirements are broader than those developed and implemented for the soon-to-expire START treaty.

Ms. TAUSCHER. Under terms of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT),

the U.S. is currently on a path toward a nuclear weapons arsenal of between 1,700

and 2,200 ‘‘operationally deployed’’ strategic weapons.

Do you see any risks to the U.S. moving lower than the SORT-specified range?

In your estimation, what is the proper range to aim for by the end of the next decade (2020)?

Dr. PERRY. [The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. What should be our objective in negotiating a follow-on to the

START treaty after it expires in December 2009?

Dr. PERRY. [The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. Since President George H.W. Bush’s announcement regarding

land-based and sea-based tactical nuclear weapons in 1991, neither the U.S. nor

Russia has moved to significantly reduce its stocks of such non-strategic weapons.

In your estimation, is there a remaining military utility for such weapons? Is

there a diplomatic utility for them?

Dr. PERRY. [The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. What steps would the U.S. need to take to assure NATO allies

that tactical nuclear weapons are not required for meaningful security assurance

from the U.S.?

Dr. PERRY. [The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. THORNBERRY

Mr. THORNBERRY. Do you believe the U.S. can maintain a smaller nuclear arsenal

if we proceed with replacing legacy weapons with newer, proven designs such as

those envisioned in the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) modernization program?

Dr. PAYNE. Officials from the Departments of Defense and Energy have stated

that one of the benefits of the RRW program would be a smaller total nuclear arsenal needed to support the planned nuclear force posture. The logic is compelling.

Currently, the U.S. maintains an inventory of non-deployed warheads as reliability

back-ups for aging legacy warheads. These older warheads were not designed with

the expectation that they would be maintained indefinitely without nuclear testing.

In contrast, RRWs are being designed with the goal of avoiding the need for nuclear

testing. If some or all of the legacy warheads are replaced by RRWs, there would

be less need for reliability back-up warheads. In addition, with the nuclear infraVerDate 22-MAR-2001 08:14 Oct 01, 2008 Jkt 037955 PO 00000 Frm 00078 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\110-73\199290.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
75

structure operational and producing RRW warheads, any questions over reliability

of deployed nuclear warheads would likely be resolved more quickly than with a

partially active, less capable nuclear infrastructure. The RRW program would result

in significant improvements in the ability of the infrastructure to fix identified problems. This would further reduce the dependence on non-deployed warheads and enable reductions in the overall nuclear stockpile.

Mr. THORNBERRY. In your opinion, is it in the best interest of U.S. national security to continue maintaining a variety of nuclear weapons with various yields and

uses in a post-Cold War era?

Dr. PAYNE. Yes. For the purposes of deterring enemies and assuring our allies it

is important to have nuclear weapons with variable yields. For example, having very

low-yield and precise weapons in our arsenal should help to limit the opportunities

for opponents to believe that they can discount U.S. deterrence threats because they

understand the priority we place on avoiding unintended casualties. The potential

for unintended civilian casualties can increase with higher-yield and/or imprecise

weapons; in the absence of low-yield, precise weapons, an opponent could attribute

little or no credibility to U.S. deterrent threats given our proper concern about civilian casualties. This reason for having a variety of weapons and yields has nothing

to do with a ‘‘warfighting’’ nuclear policy. It is to strengthen the deterrent effect of

our forces.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Do you believe the U.S. can maintain a smaller nuclear arsenal

if we proceed with replacing legacy weapons with newer, proven designs such as

those envisioned in the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) modernization program?

Dr. DRELL. I am on record as concluding that the U.S. can maintain a smaller

nuclear arsenal with the legacy weapons that we have. The answer to the question

of whether the RRW can help achieve this goal is yet to be established. Our existing

legacy stockpile is safe, reliable, and shows no significant signs of aging. The study

done earlier this year for the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences

(AAAS), chaired by Dr. Bruce Tarter, Emeritus Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, affirms this same conclusion. The question that remains to be answered is this: Can a new warhead be designed that meets the principal goals of

the RRW program to achieve enhanced safety, reliability, and use control, and that

can be certified for deployment, without requiring underground nuclear explosive

testing? I support research (Phase 2A as is currently being done) to see if it is possible to establish a scientific consensus confirming that this can be done. If the program confirms this possibility, and the costs are judged to be acceptable, even perhaps reducing the cost of maintaining the stockpile, then the answer to your question may be positive. I say ‘‘may be’’ because a decision to deploy new RRW warheads must carefully weigh its technical benefits against its potential impact on the

strategic goals of the United States. These include, in particular, maintaining the

cooperation of our allies and friends in enforcing a verifiable nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Mr. THORNBERRY. In your opinion, is it in the best interest of U.S. national security to continue maintaining a variety of nuclear weapons with various yields and

uses in a post-Cold War era?

Dr. DRELL. As long as it is in the U.S. strategic interest to have a nuclear arsenal,

it is best to continue maintaining a variety of nuclear weapons in order to avoid

common mode failures for the launch procedures, the delivery systems (bombers and

missiles), and the warheads. In the post-Cold War world, I consider the need for the

higher yield weapons to be greatly reduced relative to the lower yield ones.

Mr. THORNBERRY. Do you believe the U.S. can maintain a smaller nuclear arsenal

if we proceed with replacing legacy weapons with newer, proven designs such as

those envisioned in the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) modernization program?

Dr. PERRY. [The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]

Mr. THORNBERRY. In your opinion, is it in the best interest of U.S. national security to continue maintaining a variety of nuclear weapons with various yields and

uses in a post-Cold War era?

Dr. PERRY. [The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]

Æ