WEDNESDAY MARCH 9 1994 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION WlTNESSES 1vi 1 k j From the Nunn-Lugar collection of the National Security Archive 1 t• f 7 l ' 77 ' It · BON ASHTON B CARTER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE NUCLEAR SECURITY AND COUNTERPROLIFERATION DR HAROLD P SMITH ASSISTANT TO THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ATOMIC ENERGY 1 INTRODUCTION Mr MURTFLA The Committee will come to order The subject of this hearing is the Nuclear Disarmament of the Fonndr Soviet Union I want to welcome the Honorable Ashton B Cnrter Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Security and Cmmterproliferation and Dr Harold P Smith Assistant to the Secret 17 of Defense for Atomic Energy This is a prograni which obviously we are very interested in Over the years the Committee has been instrumental in seeing this is funded I don't know that you could spend the money that is talked about There has been a lot of talk on the House Floor and in the press about the money But we came up with the money I remember vividly coming up to start this program and putting restrictions on it in order to get it through the House of Representatives Those restrictions were that $400 million would go specifically for dismantling the nuclear weapons Mr McDade and I work d on th'is with Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens and restricted $100 million for transportation and airlift That was in the supplemental in 1992 Every year since then I understand we have provided $400 million with those same guidelines We would be interested in seeing bow successful it has lieen how the money is being spent and obviou_i _l_y whether you recommend that we continue the pro We shall place your statements in the record If you would briefly summarize we shall begin the questions MR CARTER Mr CARTER Thanks Mr Chairman I will begin if I may and let me begin by saying this is the first time I have appeared before you regarding this program and it is a pleasure to be here I am going to try to direct what I say Mr Chairman to the P Ointa you just raised namely is this program now two years into 1ta lifetime actually accomplishing on the ground what it was intended to accomplish Second is it being implemented effectively SUMMARY STATEMENT OF 81-786 0 - 94 - 17 511 • • And third do we know where we are going with this program in the future And I in my opening comments want to make just two points Mr Chairman both of which have a theme which is that this program is an unusual one for us in the Department of Defense I know it is an unusual one for you and this committee as well It is unusual in two respects First it is not often that history gives it to us to literally participate cooperate and assist the disarming of potential opponents and the elimination of weapons aimed at this country It is unusual in that regard It is also unusual in the way the program works And I would like to spend a little time describing the process by which it works because that explains why for example we have requested a great deal of authority from the Congress to enter into agreements with these parties and our contractual obligations are smaller than that amount I know that is a question that you have And the reason for that can be seen in referenee to the process Let me start with the first point the first sense in which it is unusual which is that it is unusual to have the opportunity to literally dismantle a military threat that we have spent trillions in the past to counter I thought I would give you a couple of examples of things going on ri ¥ ht now which are directly reducing the military threat to the United States and would not be happening were it not for this program so that you will see that even at this relatively early stage of the implementation of the program it is having real effects The first example I would like to give is what is going on today in Ukraine We had an opportunity to discuss that very briefly before the hearing began But just this week the first warheads left Ukraine for Russia The beginning of the process we have been aiming now for quite a long time the eventual denuclearization of the Ukraine Ukraine has agreed in the agreements signed by the President in January to completely eliminate all nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory and therefore from the point of view of our aecurity to remove the fossibility that there will be a new nuclear nation in the middle o Europe I was involved in those negotiations and there was absolutely no question in anyone's mind that our willingness to assist them in carrying out this undertaking was critical to their stepping up to this undertaking That is noted in the trilateral agreement Mr MURTHA Say that again because Mr McDade deserves a lot of credit for what we worked out I want him to hear what you said Mr CARTER I was speaking o the movement of nuclear warheads out of Ukraine which has just begun this week and which is a consequence of the agreement between Russia the United States and Ukraine to do that and I was saying that I was present at those negotiations and there was no question that our willingness to assist them in carrying out this task through this prograIIl was critically important to getting them to step_ up to actually doing it Also critically important to President Kravchuk's ability to persuade his parliament to go along From the Nunn-Lugar collection of the National Security Archive 512 513 You remember before the agreement many people thought they would not go along They did go along and that is because one of the things they wanted to be sure of before they stepped up to this job was that they would get some help in doing it From the Nunn-Lugar collection of the National Security Archive So-- Mr MCDADE Thanks for saying that Doctor because the Chairman and I sweated the program and worked hard to put the money in I am glad to hear it is working well I appreciate you taking the time to repeat what you had saicl Mr CARTER My pleasure I note the 60 warheads because they are il st the beginning of what will be almost 1 200 warheads leaving Ukraine and we will be assisting that entire process As these warheads are moved from their silos to the trains that will carry them back to Russia early in the process just to give you an example of real assistance at work the Ukrainians asked us Could we supply them with some vehicles and some fuel for those vehicles to make up the convoys moving the warheads from the missiles to the trains Dr Smith's organization was able within a very short time to provide that assistance and therefore we are in a mechanical way as well as a political way responsible in a very direct manner for this movement I will give one other example of this program at work and then I will tum to the second issue which is how the process works We expect next week that the directors of the International Science and Technology Center which was one of the early projects under this program that those directors will meet and give their first set of projects to former weapons scientists in Russia who previously worked on weapons and now will be working on peaceful civil projects in part inspired by this program That is another example where what is going on there is not elimination of weapons It is prevention of brain drain and giving people whose talents could otherwise be put to bad use getting them doing what they should be doing which is helping their country rebuild its civil economy So we are getting very direct benefits from this program A number of indirect benefits can be seen as well Because of this program the United States is a party to these things Otherwise we woula just be looking down from space at them We are there at the table on the ground so to speak So we are an active participant That is not an opportunity we would ever have if we weren't offering this kind of assistance Let me tum to the second resfect in which the t rogram is unusual which is the process And apologize it is a bttle bit boring but this is a program that is not sort c f a normal DOD program in PPBS terms And the process has three stages And this is a process that has been directed by you the originators of this program Chairman Murtha and your colleagues when you established this program for these purposes a couple of years ago The process works like this First we in the U S Government think of something_ useful that we could do to assist So we may say to ourselvest Well maybe they will dismantle warheads faster if we can help tnem move warheads more quickly to places where they will be dismantled At that point we come to you and notify you We think we would like to help out in this we think it fits the set of objectives you laid out for us a couple of years ago and we think it will cost so much money That is stage one Then we go to the potential partners in this venture namely the Ukrainians the Kazakhstanis the Belarussians or the Russians and we say Do we have a common purpose here do you want to do what we want to do We obviously want to see you dismantle things faster If you want to do that too we have got a deal and we will help you out At that point we negotiate an agreement with their government So we start with this phase where we notify you Then we nego• tiate an agreement And then we implement Then we go out and give to the American business community an RFP and we begin to award contracts So there are three steps in this process The reason I belabor this is that one of the things that you all have quite legitimately won• dered and challenged us about is why does it take so long to actually write contracts Two years ago you got this thing started We have all this authority And why is it that we have only contrac• tually obligated t little over $100 million And the answer to that resides in this process We have notified you that we have more than a billion well more than $1 billion worth of useful rojects in mind We waited almost two years before Ukraine an Kazakhstan signed the relevant agreements with us In the last year we have negotiated 25 such agreements But it wasn't until last December for example that the Ukrainians signed their agreements So we have been waiting on them Now that they have signed the agreements and the second phase is over we are ready to implement And last year we concluded these agreements We call that the year of negotiation We got all the agreements in place This year is going to be the year of implementation Now that we have these parties agreeing we are ready to begin implementing So it is the fact that the process we have established for this program where we notify you first and you have to give us the authority to do that first that occurs at the very front-end Then we have to negotiate That has been a very laborious process because these governments are new they are chaotic they have had a hard time kind of getting themselves together in this And then we are ready to implement So it is in the nature of the program over the last couple of years that we have this time lag between when you have given us authority and when we have been able to do anything I want to take a little time to explain why that was the case because I know that if this were not an unusual program but a usual program you would look at it and say There is something wrong here these people have all this authority but they haven't obligated it On that note I will close because that takes me to the third phase of implementation where my colleague Dr Smith really picks up and I think he can explain how this will be the year of im£ementation The biography and statement of Mr Carter follows From the Nunn-Lugar collection of the National Security Archive 514