*EPF306 07/25/01
Text: Bolton Says U.S. Seeks New Strategic Framework with Russia
(U.S. wants to abandon Cold War adversarial framework) (2040)

The Bush administration is seeking to move away from the adversarial legacy of the Cold War toward a cooperative relationship with Russia and a new strategic framework not based on mutually assured destruction, says Under Secretary of State John Bolton.

Bolton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee July 24 that President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in their bilateral meeting following the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Genoa, "reached an understanding that the world has changed, and they would immediately begin intensive consultations on missile defenses and offensive systems."

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, along with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, will be leaving July 25 for Moscow to set up a schedule and agenda for the ministerial-level consultations that Bush and Putin agreed to in Genoa, he said.

A central issue in those consultations will be the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between the United States and the former Soviet Union, Bolton said. Bush has said he wants to move beyond that treaty so that the United States can develop a limited ballistic missile defense system designed to intercept incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles from nations antagonistic to the United States, the under secretary for arms control and international security affairs said.

"We need to accept that the treaty is fundamentally in conflict with the administration's approach to the development of missile defenses," Bolton said in a prepared statement to the committee. The second problem with the ABM Treaty, he said, is that "it is no longer appropriate to the future relationship we want with Russia."

The new strategic framework with Russia must be appropriate to national powers that are no longer enemies, he said.

"We need to escape from the inertia that has kept the concept of mutual assured destruction as the centerpiece of our strategic relationship with Russia," he said. "This focus is counterproductive and incompatible with the idea of developing a more cooperative, constructive relationship."

During a news media briefing at the Washington Foreign Press Center later in the day, Bolton said that the ABM Treaty is a comprehensive treaty that keeps the United States from developing or testing a national defense capability which the president wants.

Bolton told journalists that the proposed missile defense system is not aimed at blunting the missile capabilities of Russia or China, and is not intended to create instability in the world by causing other nations to aggressively pursue a nuclear weapons program.

Following is the prepared text of Bolton's remarks to the Senate committee:

(begin text)

Statement of John R. Bolton
Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
July 24, 2001

Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, it is my pleasure to appear before you today to discuss the Administration's missile defense plans and the ABM Treaty.

Today's hearing follows on the heels of the President's meeting with President Putin in Genoa. One of President Bush's primary objectives in that meeting was to take a further step in our efforts to persuade President Putin to join us in creating a new strategic framework for dealing with the security threats that we now face, while moving us toward a cooperative relationship with Russia and away from the adversarial legacy of the Cold War. This objective was accomplished. The Presidents reached an understanding that the world has changed, and they would immediately begin intensive consultations on missile defenses and offensive systems.

This interrelationship between offenses and defenses is not a new idea, but directly follows from what President Bush has been saying. His May 1 speech made clear his vision that a new strategic framework would embody a new concept of deterrence that included limited defenses and reduced reliance on offensive nuclear weapons. We are hopeful that the intensive consultations that have now been agreed to will lead quickly to agreement on a new strategic framework.

In the President's view, that framework needs to move beyond the ABM Treaty. For some time, we have been saying that there are two fundamental problems with this treaty.

First, the Treaty severely limits the kind of development and testing needed for the most effective missile defense systems to defend the American populace, our troops deployed abroad, and our Allies from the threats of rogue states and accidental launches. The Treaty, after all, was negotiated with the specific intention of severely limiting missile defenses and prohibiting homeland defense against long-range ballistic missiles. Consequently, we do not believe seeking line-in, line-out amendments of the Treaty to try to get the flexibility to conduct this or next year's test program is viable. Rather, we need to accept that the Treaty is fundamentally in conflict with the Administration's approach to the development of missile defenses. To develop the most effective missile defenses our approach must not prejudge the mix of technical solutions that will provide effective defenses for us and our allies. This is the approach described by the President in his May 1 speech and has been detailed in recent testimony by Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz and General Kadish before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.

The second fundamental problem with the ABM Treaty is that it is no longer appropriate to the future relationship we want with Russia. We need to define a new strategic framework more appropriate to great powers that are no longer enemies. The Cold War is over. We need to move away from the remnants of a relationship that was one of ideological conflict and hostility with the Soviet Union, where our relations were adversarial, and our main concern was to contain the imperial tendencies of communist ideology.

We need to escape from the inertia that has kept the concept of mutual assured destruction as the centerpiece of our strategic relationship with Russia. This focus is counterproductive and incompatible with the idea of developing a more cooperative, constructive relationship.

We are not talking about doing away with the realities of nuclear deterrence against new threats, but of recognizing the obvious fact that deterrence can be strengthened by a combination of offensive and defensive capabilities, and that our relationship with Russia should be increasingly defined not by deterrence but by cooperation. The defenses we seek to deploy would be limited in nature, able to intercept handfuls of missiles, not thousands. Our defenses would not be able to negate Russia's strategic missile capability, even at much lower Russian force levels. We are talking about supplementing retaliatory deterrence against small threats with effective defenses; and we are talking about accelerating the transformation of our security relationship with Russia into one in which Cold War calculations of retaliatory deterrence are increasingly irrelevant to the reality of cooperation and partnership.

Since the end of the Cold War we have made some modest changes to our force structure to lower overall numbers, reduce alert levels; and adjust our deterrence requirements, but the size and character of each side's nuclear forces are still not commensurate with the improvements that have taken place in the U.S.-Russian political relationship with the end of the Cold War. We are making progress. We are cooperating well with Russia in stemming the flow of drugs and terrorism from Afghanistan. As Minsk group co-chairs, the U.S. and Russia are actively involved with Azerbaijan and Armenia in finding a solution to the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh. We welcome Russia's cooperation and contributions on these and other issues; they are constructive, they tie Russia to the international community, and they have led to increased bilateral understanding between us.

We have, however, an even larger set of important relations that we should engage in with the Russians. We need to work, for example, toward broad economic cooperation, and we need better cooperation on security matters of common interest. The Russians also face problems if the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles technologies continue in countries potentially hostile to Russia. At the National Defense University, the President spoke of missile defense as one area of potential real opportunities for cooperation. A cooperative relationship should also be premised on openness, mutual confidence, and the removal of uncertainties. Greater transparency and confidence-building measures can help to address some of the current concerns, for example, over the nature and scope of U.S. missile defense programs.

Moreover, the President has made clear his desire to maintain the lowest possible number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national security needs, including our obligations to our allies. Our nuclear posture review continues with decisions expected later this year; and Presidents Bush and Putin jointly recognized the interrelationship of offensive forces and reductions with issues of defense.

Thus, the ideas I have discussed could all be elements of a new strategic framework with Russia, one that represents a clean break from the past, and especially the adversarial legacy of the Cold War of which the ABM Treaty is a part. What we don't want to do is become bogged down in negotiations that could extend indefinitely. Formal agreements of hundreds of pages that count every warhead and pound of throw-weight are characteristic of agreements negotiated by distrustful adversaries. That is not the kind of relationship we want with Russia.

Our discussions with Russia are ongoing. President Bush has now met twice with President Putin. Secretary Powell has had six meetings this year with Foreign Minister Ivanov and will meet with him again this week in Hanoi. Secretary Rumsfeld held productive talks with Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov at NATO last month. Condi [Condoleezza] Rice will be flying to Moscow tomorrow to set up the schedule and agenda for the intensive Ministerial-level consultations Presidents Bush and Putin agreed to in Genoa. We do not have a precise timetable, but we have made clear that the constraints of the ABM Treaty are a problem for us, and the President has stated that we are going to have to move forward. At the moment our goal is to set in motion high-level consultations to see whether we can quickly agree on the outlines of a new strategic framework.

Our extensive engagement with the Russians should make clear that we want to move forward cooperatively. We believe these discussions can be successful. The support of this Committee, and the Congress, for the President's FY' 2002 missile defense program and the need to move beyond the ABM Treaty to establish a new strategic framework would make an important contribution to our prospects for success.

As I noted, however, we need to move forward expeditiously. In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last Tuesday, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz stated that the Defense Department had established a process that will identify Treaty issues raised by the Administration's missile defense program at the earliest possible moment. Specifically, he stated that DOD's Compliance Review Group (CRG) has been directed to identify ABM Treaty issues within 10 working days of receiving the plans for new development or treaty events. We are sure that interagency involvement will help develop final Administration positions on these questions. Make no mistake, however, as Secretary Powell said in his confirmation hearing regarding moving forward with our missile defense programs "... the only way we can eventually move forward to that goal is to see the ABM Treaty modified or eliminated or changed in some fundamental way ..."

Our objective is to reach an understanding with Russia by the time our development program comes into conflict with the provisions of the ABM Treaty. I believe there is increasing evidence that Russia is ready to explore cooperative solutions and reach agreement on a new strategic framework. The Administration intends to do its utmost to reach this outcome. As the President said Sunday in Genoa, "I know we'll work to an accord -- to see if we can't reach an accord about both a new strategic framework for defensive weapons as well as the need to reduce offensive weapons in order to make the world more peaceful." I urge the understanding and support of this Committee in that effort.

Thank you.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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