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STATEMENT by Ambassador Robert T. Grey, Jr.
Geneva, September 4, 2001
Mr. President, The United States delegation listened with great attention to the statement delivered on August 30 by the distinguished representative of the People's Republic of China. In that state-ment, Ambassador Hu attached great impor-tance to preserving, pro-tecting, and defend-ing the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems that representatives of the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signed in Moscow on May 26, 1972 - as if that treaty were holy writ. In contrast, the United States will not presume to analyze the various bilateral treaties that China concluded during the decade of the 1970s. Nor shall we offer China our advice on preserving, protecting, and defending any of those bilateral treaties it concluded two to three decades ago. In diplomacy, as in real life, factors that do not continue to evolve and grow are ultimately doomed to decline and die. The ABM Treaty, as it stands, really has become a relic. In terms of its real meaning, it be-spoke a balance of terror, a Cold War calculation that the physical security and ultimate fate of hundreds of millions of human beings had to be held hostage to the prospect of instant annihilation. That intense irony, that palpable contradiction, may have been necessary at the time. It is not necessary now, for it has been ten years since the Cold War ended. The United States and Russia need to work out a new security framework. President Bush and President Putin have launched this process, and we hope that our ongoing dialogue will be fruitful. Some people may find it comfortable to live in the past, but we Americans choose to embrace the future. For almost thirty years, offensive missiles were thought to be effectively irresistible. The total and exclusive reliance on "Mutual Assured Destruc-tion" was indeed MAD, as implied by the abbreviation we concocted then and still use now. We realize that the principle of nuclear deterrence will remain important for strategic stability for many years to come. There can be no doubt about that. But we need to move beyond MAD and continue to make substantial reduc-tions in the number of offensive weapons. Yesterday's doctrines will not bring us the tomorrow to which we and the other four nuc-lear-weapons states committed our-selves in Article VI of the Non-proliferation Treaty - a world free from nuclear weapons. Collective security The United States fully understands that missile de-fense has significant implications for China and for many other members of the international community. But we find it difficult to understand how defensive measures can be considered threatening. That is upside down and amounts to a contradiction. After all, defensive measures defend. It is offensive arms that threaten. Let us not forget: The United States is seeking to reduce the number of offensive nuclear weapons, not maintain them at present levels. To get a real grasp of these questions, certain paradoxes have to be understood and put in proper context. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter speaks of the inherent right of self-defense. But we have to be quite clear, for the UN Charter does not accord the right of self-defense. To the contrary, the Charter recognizes the right of self-defense, saying that this right is inherent and that nothing in the Charter shall impair it. The conclusion ought to be obvious, but I shall state it anyway: The United States and its Allies have an inherent right to adopt appropriate methods of defense. No one has the stand-ing to deny this, nor can anyone else take that right away. This inherent right of self-defense is closely associated with two fundamental principles that are enshrined in Articles 1 and 2 of the Charter. In brief, these two principles are the peace-ful settlement of disputes and the non-use of force. If a nation is unwilling to set aside the possible use of force, if that same nation wants to exert pressure by holding open the possi-bility that it may seek to resolve a dispute by force of arms, then it may indeed have concerns about possible measures of self-defense that others may be able to employ. But the solution to all this is not to try to curtail the right of others to defend themselves if need be. No, the solution is to agree once and for all that the dispute in question will be re-solved by peaceful means, and that other methods will not even be considered. Missile defense The United States has no illusion that our plans for missile defense would shield the United States, or our allies and friends, from all possible attacks involving ballistic missiles. We ful-ly understand that these plans would be ineffective in the event of an attack involv-ing large num-bers of missiles that are technically advanced. Nevertheless, the United States Govern-ment believes the various plans we are considering would be constructive and help-ful under certain circum-stances that we are especially concerned about. The emotional and political overtones of this debate that has gripped so many of our colleagues and counter-parts throughout the world tend to imply that missile defense is something pro-foundly new, something rather strange. Not so. Missile defense exists, has existed for many years. Those of us who watched hour upon hour of CNN broadcasts during the Gulf War re-mem-ber that Patriot missiles were shoot-ing down Scud missiles over Israel and Saudi Arabia. Not all the Patriots worked properly, which is to say that some of the Scuds got through and caused significant damage - yet another reason for further research. The military forces of many countries, including those of the United States, have long had the capacity to intercept and destroy short- and medium-range missiles in a battlefield en-vir-onment. Broader capabilities do not exist now, but we believe it will be possible to develop missile defense systems that would provide substantial protection to an entire region or theater. For example, we have taken note of the general concepts that Russia put forward concerning a missile defense system for the European region. I have repeatedly stated that U.S. plans for missile defense are not aimed at Russia, nor at China. No, the United States is pursuing these goals and objectives for other reasons that we have often explained. The United States would like to build affirmative and forward-looking relations with Russia and China on political, economic, and cultural levels. The issue of missile defense should not stand in the way, and in practice we do not believe it does. Continued deadlock The United States likewise does not believe that questions of mis-sile defense or the ABM Treaty provide a valid or even a plausible reason for obstructing negotiations on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Missile defense, as such, is not on the agenda of the Conference. Instead, political concerns about missile defense lead to proce-dural maneuvers related to potential work on outer space. This has happened here in Geneva even though questions related to outer space are broad, complex, and at a very preliminary stage in the deliberations of the international commun-ity. Proposals to negotiate a new outer space treaty cannot possibly bear fruit unless and until there is a convincing demonstration that collective security and mutual restraint in outer space can best be achieved by seeking to negotiate some new legal instru-ment. Such a con-clusion would not even be plausible unless and until there were convincing reasons to believe that possible prohibitions or restrictions to be embedded in some new treaty would actually prove effective in practice. That, in turn, would have to be based on the conviction that there would be reliable and efficient ways to verify compliance with new obligations. Mr. President, the United States continues to have profound doubts that discussion in an ad hoc com-mittee with an exploratory mandate really would lead to the conclusions I have just sum-marized. On the other hand, we are absolutely certain about one point: Such con-clu-sions cannot possibly be reached while the Conference on Disarmament remains dead-locked and inactive. In the context of active and ongoing negotiations on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, the United States is prepared to agree to an overall work program that calls for the establishment of an ad hoc committee on nuclear disarmament and another ad hoc committee that would conduct exploratory discussions on outer space issues. This net approach is the fundamental premise of the proposals that Brazilian Ambassador Amorim put forward on August 24, 2000 (CD/1624), while he was serving as President of the Conference. We deeply regret that China is one of a very small number of Member States that are not yet prepared to go forward on this basis. We once again urge these countries to reconsider, so the Conference on Disarmament can get back to work and can fulfill the well-justified expectations of the international community. Thank you, Mr. President.
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