PROCESS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE ICELAND

SUMMIT

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

DEFENSE POLICY PANEL OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES,

Washington, DC, Friday, November 21, 1986.

The panel met at 10:05 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Les Aspin (chairman of the panel) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LES ASPIN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WISCONSIN, CHAIRMAN, DEFENSE POLICY PANEL OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

The CHAIRMAN. I call the meeting to order. I have an opening statement that I would like to read, just to explain a little bit about what these hearings are all about.

Today we begin a series of about eight hearings looking into the Reykjavik summit-both the substance of the summit and the process through which it was handled.

One of the very important questions that we expect to be answered as a result of these hearings is what action the House in general and the House Democrats in particular will take on arms control at the start of the new year.

Many in this room will recall that last summer the House passed several watershed arms control measures. In October, we backed off in response to the President's request that his hands not be tied going into Reykjavik. His hands weren't tied-but did he bring anything home?

Let me make clear that I've always thought that the Congress should play a subordinate role to the President on arms controlafter all, only the Chief Executive can negotiate with the Soviets. But if the President can't bring home the bacon after 6 years in office, perhaps it is time for Congress to try its hand. And if the outgoing President is taking decisions on arms control that may make it harder for his successor to get somewhere, then it's time for the Congress to preserve the next President's options-whether that President be a Republican or a Democrat.

Ronald Reagan's foreign policy is on a roll. Unfortunately, it's all downhill. First, the Daniloff deal, then the Reykjavik confusion, now the planeload-for-people swap with Iran. The Reagan foreign policy is in some disarray. Congress would be abdicating its constitutional responsibilities if it just sought to blame Ronald Reagan but made no effort to right the ship of state.

As I mentioned, these hearings will focus on two aspects of Reykjavik-substance and process.

The substance includes such questions as these: What are the administration's arms control goals; what are the good points and bad points; what do we stand to gain or lose from the various positions Reagan has advocated? In particular, we need to know what policy we are now following since the announcement concluding Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's visit last weekend effectively canceled everything Ronald Reagan has been saying about arms control since Reykjavik.

The process aspect asks how well prepared we were for Reykjavik: Were critical new positions staffed out or pushed forward after review by only a small insider group, as with the Iran arms deal; were the Joint Chiefs of Staff consulted a little, a lot, or not at all; were our allies kept informed or left out in the cold; did the left hand-if this administration has one-know what the right hand was doing?

Those are the kinds of questions we want to ask as we try to sort out the mysteries of Reykjavik.

We will try to cover all the players in these hearings-giving ample opportunity not just to critics but to the administration to respond to its critics.

On Monday, we will hear from Ken Adelman of ACDA, and on Tuesday from Admiral Crowe of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The following week we will be hearing from Paul Nitze, Jim Schlesinger, a panel of former arms control negotiators and a panel of members of the Scowcroft Commission.

We kick off the hearings today with a representative from the Reagan administration who is very knowledgeable on arms control matters. In fact, some have said that our witness today is the only person in the administration who knows anything about arms control. The only question is, is he for it or against it?

The panel is happy to welcome Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. Richard, we are ready to hear some "Perles" of wisdom.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD PERLE, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

Mr. PERLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome this opportunity to appear before the committee to share with you the thinking of the administration on national security and arms control.

While I have no desire to open these remarks in a contentious manner, and understand and even appreciate the Wisconsin style of press release, I must take exception at the outset to the chairman's press release of November 19 announcing the initiation of the series of hearings in which my appearance here today is the first.

I believe, Mr. Chairman, that your opening statement closely tracked that press release.

In that release, Mr. Chairman, and in your opening statement this morning, you have said: "If Reagan can't bring home the bacon after 6 years in office, perhaps it is time for Congress to try its hand."

Now I must concede that the prospect of the Congress endeavoring to bring home the bacon in arms control, would be daunting

enough under any circumstances. An institution as adept as this one in the handling of pork could form up an awesome negotiating team for the purpose of securing the Nation's bacon. The trouble is that you are rather better at giving it away than bringing it home. And that skill, so essential in politics, is hardly what we need in the management of national security policy or the conduct of international negotiations.

I think you are unduly modest in suggesting that you have been waiting these 6 years before trying your hand. When it comes to arms control the hand of the Congress has been deep in the pockets of the administration for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately that hand has been turned to the drafting of gratuitous resolutions expressing the sense of Congress when what we have needed all along has been a helpful hand in funding the military programs that are the subject of the negotiations, and support for which is vital to their success.

While I don't wish to seem ungrateful, the help that you have given us as we have sought to negotiate with the Soviet Union reminds me of Mark Twain's observation that "To do good work is noble. To urge others to do good work is even more noble-and it isn't very hard."

In a more serious vein I must disagree with the implicit logic of your statement that the Congress should try its hand at arms control because the administration has not brought home the bacon. What you are really saying is that the test of an arms control policy is whether it produces agreements, not whether our approach to arms control has protected our national security. The sense that an arms control policy is a failure because it has not resulted in an agreement misses the essential point: It is that no agreement is to be preferred to an agreement inimical to our security interests. And, thus far at least, the Soviets have not been willing to conclude an agreement that is consistent with our national security and that of our allies.

We have put a number of proposals to them that we believe to be fair and equitable, serving the security interests of both sides. We have shown patience and flexibility in responding to their concerns. We hope that in time they will come to accept these proposals. But it is hardly an encouragement to the Soviet leaders to accept them, to suggest that the Congress may be readying itself to legislate new and different proposals that are more to the Soviets' liking. We have had enough of that already in the areas of antisatellite weapons, nuclear testing, the SALT II treaty, and the oncefashionable nuclear freeze.

Mr. Chairman, the recent summit meeting at Reykjavik, about which I shall report in some detail, has changed, perhaps permanently, the spectrum of arms control along which the positions of the United States and the Soviet Union are arrayed. No longer will treaties like SALT I and SALT II, which allowed for enormous increases in nuclear forces, be regarded as meaningful and effective expressions of the interest we all share in arms control.

The President has gone a long way toward achieving his objective of a new and far more demanding standard by which arms control should be judged: Deep reductions in strategic forces that result in greatly diminished levels of weapons and provide for

equal and verifiable ceilings. No longer will we seek agreement for its own sake or conclude treaties that ratify and legitimize the continuing growth of nuclear arsenals. And no longer should any President consider that it is impossible to make new and innovative proposals that would radically transform the nature of the strategic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union in the direction of a brighter future and a more stable peace.

It is true that the discussions at Reykjavik did not reach a conclusion. But much was accomplished there. Agreement was reached on deep reductions in offensive forces. And the President demonstrated considerable flexibility in attempting to negotiate an agreement affecting strategic defenses. The unfinished business begun in Iceland is now continuing in Geneva, where we have tabled proposals that represent a significant advance over the situation that prevailed before the Iceland meeting.

Much of the commentary that followed the meeting in Reykjavik has attributed the failure to conclude an agreement to the President's determination to protect the strategic defense initiative. And while it is true that the President was not prepared to conclude an agreement that would have forced the cancellation of this vital research program, it is quite wrong to believe that SDI was the only issue that could not be resolved in Reykjavik.

Equally important was the President's wise refusal to accept a Soviet proposal that would have forced the abandonment of America's nuclear deterrent and left our European allies hopelessly vulnerable to what would have become a Soviet near monopoly in short- and medium-range nuclear forces. Mr. Gorbachev continues to insist that we agree to the elimination of all strategic arms by 1996, a variation on his earlier proposal to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2000. Such an agreement would require that the United States dismantle its strategic nuclear deterrent and abandon its dual-capable aircraft in Europe and at sea.

It would, however, permit the Soviets to retain a vast arsenal of systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons at ranges that would include the whole of Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific. This we could not accept then, now or in the future. We have no alternative to nuclear deterrence in a world in which the Soviets possess nuclear weapons and could not be counted on to keep any agreement that provided for their abolition. We have no alternative to nuclear deterrence in Europe; and no conventional balance there, even one favorable to the Western democracies of the NATO alliance, would justify the denuclearization of Europe and the incalculable risk this would pose to us and our allies.

Mr. Gorbachev sought to create the impression that only SDI stood in the way of an agreement on offensive forces. But in the closing hours of the Iceland summit it became clear that he would not accept the President's proposal to eliminate all offensive ballistic missiles, a measure that would have enhanced greatly the stability of the strategic balance and freed our NATO allies from the shadow of Soviet missiles that looms across the Iron Curtain. Instead he insisted on the elimination of all strategic arms, a term the Soviets use to encompass the vital forces on which our security