Wolfowitz Says U.S. Will Move Beyond ABM Treaty

U.S. Department of Defense
Prepared Testimony on Ballistic Missile Defense
To the Senate Armed Services Committee 
By Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
Hart Senate Office Building
Thursday, July 12, 2001
Introduction
Chairman Levin, Senator Warner, members of the Committee, thank you
for this opportunity to testify on the Administration's 2002 budget
request for Ballistic Missile Defense.
Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: A rogue state with a
vastly inferior military, but armed with ballistic missiles and
weapons of mass destruction, commits an act of aggression against a
neighboring country. As President Bush sends U.S. forces into theater
to respond, the country's genocidal dictator threatens our allies and
deployed forces with ballistic missile attack.
Suddenly, almost without warning, missiles rain down on our troops,
and pound into the densely populated residential neighborhoods of
allied capitals. Panic breaks out. Sirens wail, as rescue crews in
protective gear race to search the rubble for bodies and rush the
injured to hospitals. Reporters, mumbling through their gas masks,
attempt to describe the destruction, as pictures of the carnage are
instantaneously broadcast across the world.
Mr. Chairman, the scene I have described is not science fiction. It is
not a future conflict scenario dreamed up by creative Pentagon
planners. It is a description of events that took place 10 years ago
-- during the Persian Gulf War.
I have a particularly vivid recollection of those events. When Saddam
Hussein was launching Scud missiles against Israel, I was sent there
with Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to help persuade
Israel not to get drawn further into the war, as Saddam Hussein was
seeking to do. We saw children walking to school carrying gas masks in
gaily decorated boxes - no doubt to try to distract them from the
possibility of facing mass destruction. They were awfully young to
have to think about the unthinkable. With those missiles, Saddam
Hussein terrorized a generation of Israeli children, and almost
succeeded in changing the entire strategic course of the Gulf War.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the first U.S. combat
casualties from a ballistic missile attack. In the waning days of
Desert Storm, a single Scud missile hit a U.S. military barracks in
Dhahran, killing 28 of our soldiers and wounding 99. Thirteen of those
killed came from a single small town in Pennsylvania called
Greensburg. For American forces, it was the single worst engagement of
the Gulf War. For 13 families in Greensburg, it was the single worst
day of their lives.
Today, 10 years later, it is appropriate to ask how much better able
are we to meet a threat that was already real and serious 10 years ago
-- and has become even more so today? The answer, sadly, is hardly any
better. Despite this tragic experience, here we are, a decade later,
still virtually not yet able to defend against ballistic missile
attacks, even from relatively primitive Scud ballistic missiles.
Today, our capacity to shoot down a Scud missile is not much improved
from 1991. We are still a year or two away from initial deployment of
the PAC-3 (third generation Patriot missile) - our answer to the
Scud, and an effective one - and many years from full deployment.
Today our forces in the Persian Gulf and Korea - and the civilian
populations they defend - have almost no means of protection against
North Korean ballistic missiles armed with both chemical and
conventional warheads. With no missile defenses, an attack by North
Korea could result in tens or even hundreds of thousands of
casualties.
To those who wonder why so many of the regimes hostile to the United
States - many of them desperately poor - are investing such enormous
sums of money to acquire ballistic missiles, I suggest this possible
answer: They know we don't have any defenses.
It cannot have escaped their notice that the only weapons that really
permitted Saddam Hussein to make American forces bleed during the Gulf
War - the only weapons that allowed him to take the war into the
territory of his adversaries and murder innocent women and children --
were ballistic missiles.
We underestimated the ballistic missile threat 10 years ago - and
today, a decade later, we are underestimating it still.
Mr. Chairman, the time has come to lift our heads from the sand and
deal with some unpleasant but indisputable facts: The short-range
missile threat to our friends, allies, and deployed forces arrived a
decade ago; the intermediate-range missile threat is now here; and the
long-range threat to American cities is just over the horizon - a
matter of years, not decades, away - and our people and territory are
defenseless.
Why? The answer has four letters: A-B-M-T.
For the past decade, our government has not taken seriously the
challenge of developing defenses against missiles. We have not
adequately funded it, we have not believed in it, and we have given
the ABM Treaty priority over it. That is not how America behaves when
we are serious about a problem. It is not how we put a man on the moon
in just 10 years. It is not how we developed the Polaris program or
intercontinental ballistic missiles in even less time.
The time to get serious is long past. Today, the number of countries
pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is growing. The
number of countries pursuing advanced conventional weapons is growing.
The number of countries pursuing ballistic missile technology is
growing. The number of missiles on the face of the earth is growing.
Consider these facts:
-- In 1972, when the ABM Treaty was signed, the number of countries
pursuing biological weapons was unknown; today there are at least 13.
-- In 1972, 10 countries had known chemical weapons programs; today
there are sixteen (four countries ended theirs, but 10 more jumped in
to replace them;)
-- In 1972, we knew of only five countries that had nuclear weapons
programs; today we know of 12;
-- In 1972, we knew of a total of nine countries that had ballistic
missiles; today we know of 28, and in just the last five years more
than 1,000 missiles of all ranges have been produced.
-- And those are only the cases that we know of. There are dangerous
capabilities being developed at this very moment that we do not know
about, and which we may not know about for years - perhaps only after
they are deployed.
For example, in 1998 North Korea surprised the world with its launch
of a Taepo Dong 1 missile over Japan, with a previously unknown third
stage. The intelligence community tells us this launch demonstrated a
North Korean capability to deliver a small payload to the United
States. North Korea is currently developing the Taepo Dong 2 missile,
which will be able to strike even deeper into U.S. territory and carry
an even larger weapons payload.
Other unfriendly regimes, like Iran, Syria, and Libya, are also
developing missiles of increasing range and sophistication. A number
of these countries are less than five years away from being able to
deploy such capabilities. And these regimes are collaborating with
each other, sharing technology and know-how.
The countries pursuing these capabilities are doing so because they
believe they will enhance their power and influence; because they
believe that if they can hold the American people at risk, they can
prevent us from projecting force to stop acts of aggression, and deter
us from defending our interests around the world.
If we do not build defenses against these weapons now, hostile powers
will soon have - or may already have - the ability to strike U.S.
and allied cities with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. They
will have the power to hold our people hostage to blackmail and
terror. They may secure, in their estimation, the capability to
prevent us from forming international coalitions to challenge their
acts of aggression and force us into a truly isolationist posture. And
they would not even have to use the weapons in their possession to
affect our behavior and achieve their ends.
But we cannot be sure they would not use these weapons in a crisis. If
Saddam Hussein had the ability to strike a Western capital with a
nuclear weapon, would he really be deterred by the prospect of a U.S.
nuclear strike that would kill millions of Iraqis? Is he that
concerned about his people? And would we really want our only option
in such a crisis to be destroying Baghdad and its people? A policy of
intentional vulnerability is not a strategy to deal with the dangers
of this new century.
While we have been debating the existence of the threat for nearly a
decade, other countries have been busily acquiring, developing and
proliferating missile technology. We can afford to debate the threat
no longer. We are in a race against time - and we are starting from
behind. Thanks in no small part to the constraints of the antiquated
ABM Treaty, we have wasted the better part of a decade. We cannot
afford to waste another one.
Development and Testing
President Bush has declared his intention to develop and deploy
defenses capable of protecting the American people, our friends,
allies and forces around the world from limited ballistic missile
attack. The 2002 amended budget requests $8.3 billion for missile
defense.
We intend to develop defenses, capable of defending against limited
missile attacks from a rogue state or from an accidental or
unauthorized launch. We intend to develop layered defenses, capable of
intercepting missiles of any range at every stage of flight - boost,
mid-course, and terminal.
We have designed a program to develop and deploy as soon as is
appropriate. Developing a proper layered defense will take time. It
requires more aggressive exploration of key technologies, particularly
those that have been constrained by the ABM Treaty. So we plan to
build incrementally, deploying capabilities as the technology is
proven ready, and then adding new capabilities over time as they
become mature.
We have designed the program so that, in an emergency, we might, if
appropriate, deploy test assets to defend against a rapidly emerging
threat. This has been done a number of times before with other
military capabilities, both in the Gulf War and in Kosovo. But barring
such an emergency, we need to consider the operational deployment of
test assets very carefully - because such deployments can be
disruptive, and can set back normal development programs.
However, we have not yet chosen a systems architecture to deploy. We
are not in a position to do so because so many promising technologies
were not pursued in the past. The program we inherited was designed
not for maximum effectiveness, but to remain within the constraints of
the ABM Treaty. As a result, development and testing programs for
defense against long-range threats were limited to ground-based
components - ignoring air, sea and space-based capabilities with
enormous potential.
In order to accelerate the program, we must first broaden the search
for effective technologies before we can move forward toward
deployment. We must dust off technologies that were shelved, consider
new ones, and bring them all into the development and testing process.
To do this, we have designed a flexible and strengthened research,
development, testing and evaluation program to examine the widest
possible range of promising technologies, of which there are many. We
will expand our program to add tests of technologies and basing modes,
including land, air, sea and space-based capabilities that had been
previously disregarded or inadequately explored.
Notwithstanding the delays of the past decade, the capability to
defend America is within our grasp. The technology of 2001 is not the
technology of 1981, or, for that matter, 1991 - the year we suffered
our first losses to ballistic missile attack by a rogue state.
Today, ballistic missile defense is no longer a problem of invention
-- it is a challenge of engineering. It is a challenge we are up to.
ABM Treaty
Our program is designed to develop the most capable possible defense
for our country, our allies and our deployed forces at the earliest
feasible time. That means it will at some point - and increasingly
over time - encounter the constraints imposed by the ABM Treaty. We
will not conduct tests solely for the purpose of exceeding the
constraints of treaty - but neither will we design our program to
avoid doing so.
However, this administration does not intend to violate the ABM
Treaty; we intend to move beyond it. We are working to do so on two
parallel tracks: First, we are pursuing the accelerated research,
development and testing program I have described. And second, we are
engaged in discussions with Russia on a new security framework that
reflects the fact that the Cold War is over and that the U.S. and
Russia are not enemies. We are moving forward on both of these tracks
simultaneously, and we feel the prospects for success in both cases
are promising.
We have begun a dialogue with Russia on how we can build a new
security relationship whose foundation does not rest on the prospect
of the mutual annihilation of our respective populations that was the
basis of the old U.S.-Soviet relations. That is not a healthy basis
for U.S.-Russian relations in the 21st Century.
On his recent visit to Europe, President Bush had a good discussion
with (Russian) President Putin, and (Defense) Secretary Rumsfeld had a
productive dialogue at NATO last month with Russian Defense Minister
Sergei Ivanov. Indeed, after their meeting, Minister Ivanov declared
his agreement with Secretary Rumsfeld that "there are not only more
threats facing us now in the 21st century, but they are multifaceted,
much more so than they were in the past."
Our discussions with Russia are ongoing, and we have no reason to
believe that they will fail. The question of whether we will violate
the ABM Treaty in 2002 presumes they will fail. But there is no reason
to assume we will fail; and if we succeed, the ABM Treaty will no
longer be an obstacle to protecting the American people, our allies
and deployed forces from ballistic missile attack.
We hope and expect to have reached an understanding with Russia by the
time our development program bumps up against the constraints of the
ABM Treaty. But President Bush has also made clear that a 30 year-old
treaty designed to preserve the nuclear balance of terror during the
Cold War must not be allowed to prevent us from taking steps to
protect our people, our forces and our allies. We would prefer a
cooperative outcome, and we are optimistic that such an outcome is
possible. But we must achieve release from the constraints of the ABM
Treaty.
If we all agree that a cooperative outcome is preferable, then it is
important that Congress demonstrate the same resolve as the President
to proceed with development of defenses to protect our people, our
friends and allies, and our forces around the world - defenses that
cannot, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be considered a
threat to Russia or its security.
If, conversely, we give Russia the mistaken impression that, by
insisting on adherence to the ABM Treaty, they can exercise a veto
over our development of missile defenses, the unintended consequence
could be to rule out a cooperative solution and leave the President no
choice but to walk away from the treaty unilaterally.
As I stated earlier, the current planned testing program is not
designed with the constraints of the ABM Treaty in mind; neither has
it been designed for the purpose of exceeding those constraints.
However, as the program develops and the various testing activities
mature, one or more aspects will inevitably bump up against treaty
restrictions and limitations. Such an event is likely to occur in
months rather than in years. It is not possible to know with certainty
whether it will occur in the coming year. This uncertainty is in part
the result of inevitable uncertainty of all research and development
programs. Many of the early issues will involve legal complexities,
which we will fully resolve through the treaty compliance review
group.
For example, the test bed currently scheduled to begin construction in
April 2002 is designed to permit the testing of a ground-based
mid-course capability under realistic operational conditions. There
will also be opportunities, while we are testing the Aegis mid-course
system, to test the ability of Aegis ship-based radars to track
long-range ballistic missiles. There will also be opportunities to
combine the data from radars used in mid-course tests with the radars
used to track short-range missiles. Will these tests exceed the limits
of the treaty? In each case, there will be those who argue on all
three sides of the coin. We have an established system for resolving
these difficult issues.
What I can tell you is this: by the time a planned development
activity encounters ABM Treaty constraints, we fully hope and intend
to have reached an understanding with Russia. We would expect to
identify such issues six months in advance. We will either have
reached an understanding with Russia, in which case the question would
be moot, or we would be left with two less than optimal choices: to
allow an obsolete treaty to prevent us from defending America, or to
withdraw from the treaty unilaterally, which we have every legal right
to do.
However, even in the latter circumstance, we should continue our
efforts to reach an understanding with Russia. But our goal is to
reach an understanding with Russia well before that time. Such an
understanding is in both countries' interests. The end of the Cold War
has fundamentally transformed our relationship. We ask for your
support as we continue to work towards a cooperative solution. And I
can assure you that the President will adhere to the requirements of
the treaty to conduct the proper notifications as we go forward.
New Deterrence Framework
We are optimistic about the prospects of reaching an understanding
with Russia, because reaching a new security framework is in both of
our nations' interests. The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union is
gone. Russia is not our enemy. We are no longer locked in a posture of
Cold War ideological antagonism. Yet the ABM Treaty codifies a Cold
War relationship that is no longer relevant to the 21st Century.
The missile defenses we deploy will be precisely that - defenses.
They will threaten no one. They will, however, deter those who would
threaten us with ballistic missile attack. We do not consider Russia
such a country. Americans do not lie awake at night worrying about a
massive Russian first strike, the way they worried about a Soviet
first strike during the Cold War.
Our missile defenses will be no threat to Russia. Their purpose will
be to protect against limited missile attacks from an increasing
number of possible sources - but not against the thousand of missiles
in Russia's arsenal.
Further, they will be just one part of the larger, 21st Century
deterrence framework we are working to build. During the Cold War, our
aim was to deter one adversary from using an arsenal of existing
weapons against us. In the 21st Century, our challenge is not only to
deter multiple potential adversaries from using existing weapons, but
to dissuade them from developing dangerous new capabilities in the
first place.
This requires a different approach to deterrence. Just as we intend to
build "layered defenses" to deal with missile threats at different
stages, we also need a strategy of "layered deterrence" in which we
develop a mix of capabilities - both offensive and defensive - which
can deter and dissuade a variety of emerging threats at different
stages.
Such a strategy would aim to dissuade countries from pursuing
dangerous capabilities in the first place, by developing and deploying
U.S. capabilities that reduce their incentives to compete; to
discourage them from investing further in existing dangerous
capabilities that have emerged, but are not yet a significant threat;
and to deter them from using dangerous capabilities once they have
emerged to threaten us all, with the threat of devastating response.
Just as America's overwhelming naval power discourages potential
adversaries from investing in building competing navies to threaten
freedom of the seas - because, in the end, they would spend a fortune
and not accomplish their strategic objectives - we should develop a
range of new capabilities that, by their very existence, dissuade and
discourage potential adversaries from investing in other hostile
capabilities.
Missile defense is one example. It has received significant attention
because it is new - but it is just one element of a new deterrence
framework that includes several mutually-reinforcing layers of to
deterrence, including diplomacy, arms control, counter-terrorism,
counter-proliferation and smaller but effective offensive nuclear
forces.
What The Program Is Not
We have discussed what the program is; we must also discuss what the
program is not.
-- It is not an effort to build an impenetrable shield around the
United States. This is not Star Wars. We have a much more limited
objective to deploy effective defenses against limited missile attack.
Indeed the change in the threat - from the thousands of missiles in
the Soviet arsenal to handfuls of limited missile attacks - makes
deployment of effective defenses more realistic than ever before.
-- It is not a threat to anyone, and will be a problem only for those
rogue states that wish to threaten our people, our allies or our
deployed forces, with ballistic missile attacks.
-- It will not undermine arms control or spark an arms race. If
anything, building effective defenses will reduce the value of
ballistic missiles, and thus remove incentives for their development
and proliferation. Since they will have virtually no effect on
Russia's capabilities, there is no incentive for Russia to spend
scarce resources to try to overcome them. And China is already engaged
in a rapid modernization of its missile capabilities, and will
continue this modernization whether or not we build missile defenses.
To the contrary, the Russians and the Chinese will be able to see that
we are reducing our offensive nuclear forces substantially and there
is no need for them to build up theirs. In this budget proposal alone,
with Peacekeeper, Trident, and B-1 reductions, we will be reducing
START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty)-countable warheads by over
1,000. We plan to reduce our nuclear forces no matter what Russia
decides to do, but we believe it is in their best interest to follow
the same path.
-- It is not a "scarecrow" defense. We intend to build and deploy
effective defenses at the earliest possible moment. Those defenses
will grow more and more effective over time, as we deploy an
increasingly sophisticated mix of capabilities that provide "layered
defenses" against all ranges of missiles at all stages of flight. The
more capable the better, but the defenses don't have to be perfect to
save lives and reduce casualties. As imperfect as the PAC-2 system was
during the Gulf War, there wasn't a single ally or commander who
didn't clamor for more.
Will our defenses be 100% effective? Mr. Chairman, no defense is 100%
effective. Notwithstanding the billions we spend on counter-terrorism,
we failed to stop terrorist attacks on the Khobar Towers, our
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or the World Trade Center. Yet I know
of no one who has suggested that we stop spending money on
counter-terrorism because we have no perfect defense. Moreover,
defenses won't need to be 100% effective to make a significant
contribution to deterrence.
-- It will not cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. The
money we propose to spend on missile defense is comparable to other
major defense development programs, and comparable to other elements
of our security strategy. We are proposing $8.3 billion for missile
defense in 2002. That is still a large amount, but the consequences of
the failure could be enormous.
-- It does not divert attention and resources from other, more
pressing threats. Some have argued that we should not spend money on
missile defense, because the real threat comes from terrorist using
suitcase bombs. That is like arguing that you should not lock your
front door because a burglar can break in through your window. Both
threats are real - but for the last decade, work on countering the
terrorist threat has proceeded aggressively, while work on ballistic
missile defense has been hamstrung by an obsolete theory. We are
correcting that.
As we move forward with accelerated testing and development, Mr.
Chairman, there will certainly be bumps along the way. We expect there
to be test failures. There is not a single major technological
development in human history that did not begin with a process of
trial and error and many of our most successful weapons developments
have been marked by testing failures:
-- The Corona satellite program, which produced the first overhead
reconnaissance satellites, suffered 11 straight test failures.
-- The Thor Able and Thor Agena launch programs failed four out of
five times.
-- The Atlas Agena launches failed 5 out of 8 times. 
-- The Scout launches failed 4 out of 6 times. 
-- The Vanguard program failed 11 of its first 14 tries. 
-- The Polaris failed in 66 out of 123 flights.
Mr. Chairman, from these failures came some of the most effective
capabilities ever fielded. Failure is how we learn. If a program never
suffers test failures, it means someone is not taking enough risks and
pushing the envelope. Intelligent risk taking is critical to any
advanced development program - and it will be critical to the
development of effective ballistic missile defenses.
Conclusion
Mr. Chairman, let me conclude where I began. This threat is not
fictional. It is not limited. It is not remote. And it is not going to
disappear if one or another troublesome regime disappears.
-- If there were a war in Korea tomorrow, our best intelligence
estimates are that North Korea missiles would wreak havoc on
population centers and our deployed forces in South Korea, even if
armed only with conventional weapons, and North Korea now poses a
significant threat to Japan as well.
-- And we know that it is a matter of time before Iran develops
nuclear weapons, and may soon have the capacity to strike Israel and
some NATO allies.
Think about what kind of hearings we would be having three or four
years from now if Iran demonstrates intermediate-range capability to
strike Israel or U.S. troops deployed in the Gulf - or if North Korea
demonstrates the capability to strike the U.S. with long-range nuclear
missiles. I, for one, don't want to have to come before this Committee
and explain why we ignored the coming threat, and didn't do everything
we could to meet it.
This is not a partisan issue. We do not now know whether the President
who first faces a crisis with a rogue state capable of striking Los
Angeles, Detroit or New York with nuclear, chemical or biological
weapons will be a Republican or a Democrat. But we do know that
individual will be an American. And that is how we too must proceed --
not as Republicans, or Democrats, but as Americans.
Let future generations who look back at this period not see partisan
bickering, but statesmen who rose above party to make sure America and
its allies and deployed forces were protected against this real
emerging threat.
Thank you very much.