Kyl Transcript: Senate Perspectives on Iran, Missile Defense and Nuclear Deterrence

041211 NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION AND NATIONAL DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION BREAKFAST FORUM WITH SENATOR JON KYL (R-AZ), ON “SENATE PERSPECTIVES ON IRAN, MISSILE DEFENSE AND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE.”

(For additional information on NDUF/NDIA forums contact Peter Huessy at huessyp@nduf.org)

[This is a rush, unofficial transcript provided by www.NationalSecurityReports.com]

MR. PETER HUESSY: Good morning. My name is Peter Huessy and I want to thank you on behalf of the National Defense University Foundation and the National Defense Industrial Association, your sponsors of this, the 30^th year of our Congressional seminars on arms control, defense policy, missile defense and nuclear deterrence and homeland security. We are honored to open our series this year, as we did last year, with Senator Jon Kyl.

Five terms in the House of Representatives, been in the United States Senate, elected in 1995. He is the Minority Whip in the United States Senate and a member of the Finance Committee and also a member of the Judiciary Committee. He is considered one of the best minds in the United States Senate on security policy, particularly with respect to missile defense and nuclear weapons.

And I remember shortly after the new START debate was finished, a couple pundits, friends of mine who will remain nameless, said that obviously we’re not going to hear from Senator Kyl again because the new START Treaty was approved. I think the evidence is that Senator Kyl is still here and when he speaks people listen. And on behalf of NDUF and NDIA, Senator Kyl, and our sponsors that are here today, I want to welcome you and thank you for your staff, Tim and Rob, for their work to come here and open our 30^th year of our series on nuclear deterrence and missile defense issues.

Would you give a warm welcome to our friend?

(Applause).

SEN. JON KYL: Thank you. Thank you all very much. It’s great to see you. Congratulations on 30 years. It doesn’t seem like it has been that long.

And yes, you’ll still have me to kick around for another year or so. In fact, god willing, I’ll be happy to come back again next year, still as a senator, Peter. After that, I may depend on some of you.

Peter mentioned START, and of course that’s where we should start. What’s after START? That’s the subject for my comments this morning.

Obviously, among other things, START was the opening round in the president’s march towards his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. And so I thought it’d be interesting to just survey what I think are perhaps three of the next steps that the administration intends to take, and some of my comments about those. I see immediately in front of us at least two items, and a third that could come along at any time.

First, changes to the United States’ nuclear doctrine, targeting guidance and concomitant further reductions in nuclear forces as a precursor to either unilateral or negotiated reductions, but quite possibly unilateral reductions. Second, CTBT ratification, who knows when the administration might bring that up? And third, constraints to missile defense through cooperation with Russia.

So let’s take the first one, changes to U.S. nuclear doctrine. I think that the United States government, the administration, intends to justify more reductions by defining down our targeting requirements; in effect, matching the test questions to the answers that they want. And this is clear, I think, from a speech that Tom Donilon gave not too long ago when we both spoke at Carnegie. He talked about making preparations for the next round of nuclear reductions.

And this is a quotation, “reviewing our strategic requirements and developing options for further reductions in our current nuclear stockpile.” And pointed out that, “to develop these options for further reductions we need to consider several factors, such as potential changes in targeting requirements and alert postures that are required for effective deterrence.” And we now have reports that the department of Defense may very soon initiate a 90-day sort of mini-NPR at the direction of the NSC.

According to Donilon, that review is intended to implement our disarmament policy on behalf of the administration. And not even by way of reducing Russian modernization efforts, necessarily anyway, the Associate Press reported, and I’m quoting now a senior administration official confirming that, “the United States is considering these cuts independent of negotiations with Russia.” So it could be, well, just the administration’s own actions.

Now there are several reasons why this modification in our targeting requirements at this time, I think, is a bad idea. First of all, the levels that are bandied about by people who write op-eds and – well, then-Senator Feingold when he was in the Senate, for example, I think are quite inadequate for our security requirements. I just wanted to quote one exchange between Senator Feingold and then-Stratcom Commander Kevin Chilton.

Feingold asked whether the START level of 1,550 nuclear warheads was more than is needed and whether 300 nuclear weapons would be more than sufficient. And General Chilton responded, “I do not agree that it is more than needed. I think the arsenal that we have is exactly what is needed today to provide the deterrent.” And I agree with General Chilton.

To go below what we have now would be a huge mistake unless, of course, you want to change the terms of reference – you want to modify our targeting requirements. And then, of course, theoretically you could justify going lower. But what is this new guidance then going to result in in terms of a new strategy for the United States? Clearly the world hasn’t changed. In fact, we have additional countries of interest which would presumably add potential targets to the current list.

Well I think what it results in is a move away from the United States’ traditional counterforce approach to deterrence, and more into what we used to call MAD. Our deterrence requirements have been very consistent since the Cold War in Democratic and Republican administrations. We deter potential adversaries, we assure our allies – remember there are 31 countries that rely on our nuclear deterrent – we dissuade would-be strategic competitors, and if needed we defeat an attacker while limiting damage to the United States.

And I thought it would be interesting to just compare the verbiage of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review which embodies these concepts, with the comment of the 2010 NPR of the Obama administration. Here’s our previous NPR, quote, “To hold at risk what opponents value, including their instruments of political control and military power, and to deny opponents their war aims. The types of targets to be held at risk for deterrence purposes include leadership and military capabilities, particularly WMD, military command facilities and other centers of control and infrastructure that support military forces. Obviously this is not a counter-city or assured destruction or, as I said, MAD approach to deterrence, but rather a strategic approach that takes into account the opponent’s objectives and war aims, as well as a calculation of what it might take to deter them under all various likely circumstances.

Now the 2010 NPR statement says this, that “U.S. nuclear forces must be capable of supporting strategic stability through an assured second-strike capability.” That’s a very different strategy. What is meant by a second strike capability? Did the authors envision a minimum deterrent capability along the lines of what Feingold posited of 300 weapons, for example?

Are they going to just try to justify – another level that has been proposed is 1,000. That was advocated by Madeleine Albright and Igor Ivanov on the editorial pages last week. That was 1,000. Have they considered the nuclear umbrella of the United States in the development of this strategy?

My view is that at a minimum this counter-city strategy is not only immoral but it lacks any sort of strategic context and is inconsistent with, as I said, the strategies of both Democratic and Republican administrations ever since the end of the Cold War. A deterrent force that’s too small or vulnerable to enemy attack, and which does not provide the president the full spectrum of options that he needs to have during a conflict or even a crisis, could lack credibility when it’s needed the most.

And you top this all off with the big white elephant in the room that the administration loves to ignore, because it’s really an ugly elephant, it’s hard to deal with, and that’s the current real threat which is coming from countries like Iran and North Korea and perhaps even Syria; the threat of nuclear terrorism, the threat that rogue states would acquire nuclear weapons. These are the really tough problems. And I suspect that one way the administration can ignore these problems, at least in its own mind, is that it will tackle some other aspect of nuclear deterrence and shunt attention away, in this case by re-defining deterrence and unilaterally reducing our nuclear weapons. It’s a lot easier to achieve a success and hang a skin on the wall, than to try to deal with the problems of North Korea and Iran. Well just to make it clear, if the administration does pursue this direction it will be strongly opposed by many of us, including in the Senate, and specifically by me.

The second subject may or may not be a follow-on to START, but at some point this administration would like it to be. I think it’s simply a calculation on their part of when the right time to try to accomplish the ratification of CTBT is. But it has made clear that it wants to pursue it. Donilon in his speech, for example, reiterated that. And the State department has released a series of what can I think very generously be called fact sheets concerning CTBT in the context of international monitoring, which has matured somewhat since the treaty was defeated back in 1999.

The National Academy of Sciences has done an assessment of the technical issues associated with the ability to detect and identify underground nuclear explosions. And it’ll come out one of these days. It’s been given to the administration but, of course, it hasn’t been given to the Congress, which I think demonstrates its lack of objectivity and their lack of neutrality. Also, if you look at the study panel, with few exceptions, it is loaded with people who are known treaty proponents.

So this is not an objective or neutral document, but it will be used by the administration in an effort to say that things have changed. Well, things have not changed. It’s been 12 years since the treaty was defeated 51 to 48. That’s a majority. Remember that it only takes 34 to defeat a treaty. But that treaty was defeated soundly.

And if you look at the arguments that proponents adduce in support, nothing really has changed. In fact, in some respects, I think things have gotten worse. The treaty hasn’t changed so you still have problems like, for example, the fact that it doesn’t even define what it prohibits, namely a nuclear test. Countries interpret its requirements differently. And obviously if the treaty were to go into effect countries, including the United States and some of our – some of the folks who are not quite on the same page with us, would continue to treat the terms of the treaty differently.

I don’t think that even with the new international monitoring systems it’s going to be possible to detect or especially prove a violation has occurred. Even with the additional new sites some tests, especially if cheating is involved, are not going to be detected. But even when cheating is not involved, in the case of the North Koreans for example when they announced in advance that they were going to do a test, this was in 2009, I think it was noteworthy that the United States, even with our additional technical capabilities, could not prove that the test that the Koreans said that they conducted had occurred.

And perhaps this is the lawyer in me, but if you look at the mechanisms of the treaty for following up on a detection – assuming that you did detect it and thought you could prove it – you then have to run a gauntlet of United Nations-like requirements that I think would be impossible to ever work if we’re to hold a country accountable. Under the terms of the treaty a state can’t be determined to have cheated unless 31 of 50 states on a separate body agreed to an order to inspect that state. And there’s not even a guarantee the U.S. serves in that body, by the way. But if you look at the various countries of the United Nations that currently sit on things like the Human Rights Council and so on, you just wonder how we would ever get authority to do that in a time that would be relevant to the determination or proof that cheating had occurred. It is not a structure that I think is conducive to workability.

And to me the biggest argument is that you just can’t predict the future. And I talked to the scientists, for example, and they’re pretty confident that if we fund the work that needs to be done we can continue to extend the life of the weapons that we have right now. But there are so many uncertainties, and uncertainties about what other parties might do.

We know, for example, that our Russian friends are very aggressively looking at alternative kinds of designs and to achieve specific kinds of military objectives. But we’re forbidden from doing that. And I think there’s a real sense that the country should never – a country that abides by the law and will abide by the law, should be very careful about committing itself to forever never again test – to conduct a nuclear test, given the fact that that genie is out of the bottle and everyone else has access to the technology. And if we decide that we’re going to forever preclude ourselves from testing, I think we have committed a huge error with respect to our future generations. We just don’t know what the future holds.

And put this against the backdrop of the purported benefits. I quote my friend, Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, who talks about the United States recovering our moral leadership on nonproliferation. Well I don’t think there’s any moral leadership that needs to be recovered. You know, we’ve had a moratorium now for 18 years, and I’ve not seen any evidence that that moratorium has changed anybody’s behavior. And I can’t imagine how just signing or ratifying the document is going to change the behavior of countries that haven’t been willing to sign on at this point.

So I don’t think any of the arguments that are raised justifies support for the treaty today. And I can assure you if the treaty were to be brought up for ratification that members of the United States Senate will – well I can’t assure you that they would defeat it. But I can assure you that a bunch of us are going to do everything we can to defeat it and I would not put its prospects as very good, put it that way.

Finally, let’s talk about missile defense. This is really headed in the wrong direction. The United States seems to, and this is the administration, seems to have decided that its primary goal in missile defense is to make sure the Russians are not offended. Their policy has been to curtail defense of the homeland, our U.S. strategic or homeland missile defense requirements in favor of regional missile defenses insofar as those do not offend the Russians.

Now of course regional defenses are necessary, but they are not sufficient, especially at the expense of defending our homeland. But because any force that we would deploy, that could theoretically be effective against a Russian missile, will offend the Russians, then this administration is bound and determined not to go forward with it. That’s very dangerous.

Obviously the administration believes this is important to its reset. I have not seen a lot of evidence that this reset has really benefitted the United States. but I guess we can argue that another time.

But if you just look at the funding, for example, the GMD funding reduced by $500 million in the first Obama budget. The spending between fiscal 2010 and 2013 reduced by $4 billion less than the last Bush budget. Now that’s the homeland defense – one of the components for our homeland defense. And this is a very odd time when the secretary of Defense has noted the capabilities of North Korea, for example, soon posing a threat to the United States with its ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, as well as Iran’s recent progress with its space launch systems, which of course would signify an intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

But in addition to our own unilateral cuts to key components of our missile defense program, we’ve been working with the NATO allies and with Russia to pursue what the administration calls cooperative efforts with the Russians. And I think these are a direct response to Russian pressure, which has always been part of the Russian mantra. And I’m not suggesting the Russians are doing anything that’s inappropriate to the considerations for their national defense or security.

But I do suggest that the United States needs to evaluate our own requirements. And that while cooperation with Russia is obviously very much to be desired in as many areas as we can make it happen, it would be a very large mistake to in effect make them a partner in our missile defense system. I don’t see, for one thing, how they would be an equal contributor to the process, but they could certainly be interested in some of the technology that would be provided if they gained access to it.

I also wonder whether this is maybe a fool’s errand in a way, because at least up to now the Russians have made it pretty clear that they want nothing less than a finger on the red button. Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov – I’m quoting here – he said, in practical terms, he was talking about what joint control meant. And Ivanov said, “In practical terms that means our office will sit, for example, in Brussels and agrees on a red button pushed to start enabling an anti- missile regardless of whether it comes from Poland, Russia or the UK.” So, I mean, on the assumption that we’re never going to agree to that, one wonders just how far this string can be pushed.

We’ve already altered our missile defense plans in Europe, as you know. We surprised some key allies in doing that. There are negotiations going on between Secretary Tauscher and her counterpart, Rybakov. By the way, these are being kept secret from Congress. We’ve asked several times to be briefed on what they are and we’re told that if something ever happens they’ll let us know. But in the meantime, they continue these negotiations. I don’t know how much material or anything else they’re sharing with the Russians, but it bothers me that they’re going to at some point the Senate for consent, if nothing else than to fund things, but they aren’t interested in our advice going into the discussions.

If you look at what happened and what was announced in Lisbon about the U.S.-NATO activity, there are also some red flags. I think, especially with respect to the phase three and four of the Phased Adaptive Approach. As you know, the administration moved away from the GBI system to this four phase Phased Adaptive Approach of a shorter range interceptor deployed in Europe, and the last phase of which is merely a concept. It’s not even something that’s been developed yet.

But in Portugal, there’s some very troubling questions based upon the briefings that were given with respect to the U.S. commitment to move forward with all phases, sufficiently that the Senate demanded as part of the START Treaty debate a confirmation or an affirmation of the administration’s intent to follow through with all four phases as it had said it would do as a substitute for GBI. And it took a while to get communication from the president that verified his commitment to do this. He’s put it in writing. I remain unconvinced that the administration is thoroughly committed to GBI as a backup system and to all four phases, if the Russians were to raise an objection to the way that phase three and four might be developed and deployed.

At the very least, I think this so-called cooperation with Russia could drive a wedge between us and our allies that could jeopardize deployment of SM-3 missiles, for example in Romania in 2015, Poland in 2018; as I say, to say nothing of the phase four 2B missile in 2020 when it’s scheduled to be available. And on a technical level, information sharing or a technology exchange with Russia, I think, would probably be problematic, as I alluded to before. Joint development activities could involve the exchange of technology, for example, on U.S. hit-to-kill technology, which would obviously not be in our interests. I’m not going to go any further into that, but I think you get the drift here.

In all three areas: the intention to move forward with a redefinition of what our targeting requirements are, thus to be able to unilaterally reduce the number of weapons we have; the potential for CTBT; and a diminution in the quality of our missile defense, especially as it relates to the homeland; I think the administration is making some serious errors. We know about this 90-day mini-NPR, as I said. Forty-one senators have written a letter to the administration warning about this, asking to be informed. We’ve gotten no response from the president on that.

We’ve gotten very little in the way of commitment by this administration to effectively deal with North Korea and Iran, which I submit are the real front-range threats that we have. And we’ve got a budget coming up and the appropriations bills that will follow the budget – it’s kind of doubtful that we’ll have a joint budget between the House and Senate because of the divided party control. But you’re going to have appropriations bills, hopefully. At least I think they’ll be coming out of the House. And the question is, where will defense spending generally be, and specifically where will missile defense be? These are all very important questions as we go forward, and especially as it relates to this idea of cooperating with the Russians on missile defense.

So I think we’ve got some huge challenges in front of us. And Peter, to your point about now that START is over that’s the end of it, I think START is just the start of it. And I hope that my comments today about at least three of the areas that we need to be focused on, will cause you to agree with that proposition.

Thank you, I’d be happy to take questions.

(Applause).

SEN. KYL: Sorry, Frank, I didn’t see you sitting there. Good morning.

MR. FRANK GAFFNEY: If I can ask the first question? First of all let me say thank you, Senator, for your long and distinguished service. There’s nobody who has probably contributed more, and I think Peter would agree, to these conversations and certainly the work of the Senate, than you have, in these two areas especially.

SEN. KYL: Thank you.

MR. GAFFNEY: You have talked a lot about issues that flow from something that you haven’t addressed. And I just wondered if you might directly speak to that, which is the president’s ambition to rid the world of nuclear weapons. CTBT, targeting cuts, diminishing missile defenses all seem to flow from that. Would you just describe how you feel, both personally and perhaps corporately, the Congress ought to be looking at this proposition?

SEN. KYL: Yes, indeed. I just alluded to it. The question is, how does all of this fit in with the president’s vision of a nuclear free world and his desire to pursue that goal during his time in office?

He announced the goal – well, at least he reiterated it in Prague in that speech. I don’t know, I think he had made comments about it before then. But clearly he and other administration spokesmen have not been shy about noting that that is their goal. And it’s clear from what Tom Donilon said that the administration’s effort to redesign the guidance requirements, targeting requirements, are part and parcel of the ability to bring the numbers down even further if they can.

To some extent, I think this is disingenuous on their part because during the START debate a lot was made of the support of the military for the levels that they had designed the START Treaty to get down to. And you had a lot of qualified general officers saying we could live with the levels that the administration identified in the START Treaty. The problem is that to go below that, then you actually have to change the rules of the game. You have to, as I said, change the test questions in order to get the answer that you want.

And so the first thing about why this is so dangerous is that instead of focusing on our defense requirements, we’re focused on this loopy vision of a world without nuclear weapons as driving our national security decisions today at a time when if there ever is a time for nuclear zero, I don’t think one can say that it exists today. And even the four statesmen, as they’re called, who have been writing about this for some time now, acknowledge freely that while this may be a vision worth pursuing in the long run, the world is not ready for it now. That was also confirmed by the Perry-Schlesinger Commission report when they said interesting subject to look at, but clearly conditions in the world would have to change dramatically for us to even conceive that it could be done.

So the idea that we are anywhere near ready to begin doing this, even if it were a good idea which it is not, is absurd. And yet here the administration is right on the heels of the START ratification moving forward with the next level.

You’re all familiar with the litany of arguments against going to zero. These are the essence of the talk that I made at Carnegie, and I’d be happy to give you copies of that speech if you’re interested. I think my staff may have a couple copies, Rob Soufer (sp) and Tim Morrison (sp) in the back there, if you would like to get a copy of it.

But the bottom line is that it’s not going to change bad guys behavior. And so when the good guys go down to zero or close to zero, we all know what happens. It encourages potential enemies to gain an advantage. It encourages people who are barely in the nuclear game to achieve parity with you because you’re now at such a low level that they can actually match you.

There are a variety of very practical reasons why it just doesn’t work, especially in this world today. But think about a world in which finally the lion and the lamb lie down together and everything is hunky-dory. What about tomorrow? Every conflict then becomes a hair-trigger, potential nuclear breakout kind of conflict. And it just doesn’t seem to me that any practical view of how the world works today, or could work in the future, would justify the notion that if we all simply give up our nuclear weapons we can live without fear.

Just go back to the last century. In just 20 years of the last century, how many millions of people were killed? There were no nuclear weapons before August 1945. But you had – some of you historians will know the numbers of millions of people who were killed in combat.

Once the weapon was used – or when it was used twice, the three major power of the world since then: China, Russia and the United States, have not fired a shot in anger against each other. It has a deterrent effect, and that cannot be denied. Now maybe it’d be nice to have something a little less onerous with the deterrent effect, but maybe that’s what it requires for true deterrence.

So the bottom line is before you get rid of that which has provided a great deal of deterrence in the world since August of 1945, you’d better know what you’re going to have to replace it with. I finished my speech at Carnegie with a quotation from Winston Churchill, who in his very last speech to Americans, said – I’m paraphrasing now, but he said before you ever get rid of the atomic weapon, he said you need to think very carefully and then think again about the wisdom of doing so. And I think he’s absolutely right.

So all of those arguments are fleshed out in that speech if anyone is interested in it. Most of you are pretty familiar with them. As I said, it is a loopy idea to think that the world is anywhere near ready for that. And that’s why it’s so dangerous, that the president is pursuing it with such aggressive action today.

And I would suggest in a way which is – I’ll not use the pejorative I’m thinking of, but which is very inappropriate, namely to change the rules of the game in order to get the answer that he wants. We’ll just make up a new set of targeting requirements and that we don’t need as many weapons. That’s not what the NPR was ever designed to be.

I’ve gone to preaching now, I’d better be careful here.

(Laughter).

MR. : Senator, thank you very much for being with us this morning. I think you laid out quite clearly your concerns about the administration’s shifting nuclear doctrine and targeting strategy. I’d like to ask you what you think the Senate should be doing, or what it is doing, to exercise oversight of nuclear policy? I’m thinking more broadly, a little bit, also oversight of the effort to reinvigorate the nuclear enterprise of the Air Force – a growth area for the Air Force – and recapitalizing the triad. Could you speak to that a bit?

SEN. KYL: Yeah, the question is what kind of oversight should the Senate be conducting in this issue generally, recapitalizing the triad for example? We talked about that a fair amount during the START debate. We talked about both the weapon facilities and the weapons themselves – nuclear weapons — as well as the triad.

And we got a fair degree of commitment from the administration at that time about its efforts to recapitalize the triad. What it’s plans are, are not adequate in my view as to its commitment to a new bomber, for example. It’s a pretty unclear commitment about whether it will be even nuclear capable, whether it will have nuclear cruise missile capability, unclear what its plans are relative to the ICBM force. But I think we extracted about as much clarity as we could at that time, and I think the treaty was a good opportunity to, in effect, conduct a different kind of oversight at that time.

But I think you’re quite right that both the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, but particularly Armed Services, should be really diving down into this. And one of the good things is that the House of Representatives has just as much of a role to play in ensuring that the funding for modernization, both of the triad as well as our weapons complex, goes forward. And it is in the hands of people who care deeply about this. I know, I’ve talked to them.

And I suspect that they will be conducting a little bit more oversight about this than will Carl Levi’s committee, for example. But Republicans on the Senate committees certainly can drive that up to some extent. And I have not backed off in my commitment to ensure that the modernization funding goes forward, as well as the robust planning for the concomitant to our deterrent, namely the triad.

MR. JOHN ISAACS: John Isaacs. Senator, you have been very vocal in terms of nuclear modernization. Another issue that has been before Congress is nonproliferation funding, which the House cut dramatically and the Senate came up with a higher number. And I guess they came to an agreement on Friday, but how do you feel about the nonproliferation programs?

SEN. KYL: Yeah, the three parts of the nuclear funding and the Energy and Water budget which really ought to be national security and understood as that, to some extent do go hand-in-hand. Obviously, you’re correct. I was focused on the modernization money. That was the subject of the 1251 report and I’m not going to try carry the administration’s entire budget, obviously. It was hard enough just to get the modernization money.

By the way, I don’t know the final numbers out of that CR, so I can’t confirm what you said. But if it’s true that the nonproliferation funding was down – and the third component, of course, is Navy nuclear and there’s no way to cut that. I mean, you’ve got to keep that funding going. I’m supportive of all three, and the administration ought to be supportive of all three. But, you know, the administration can do some lobbying too.

MR. : Senator, Frank raised the issue of going to no nuclear weapons, but I’d like you to speculate in the other direction. If we’re not effective in going after the North Korean and Iranian programs, how rapidly do you see other states going towards a nuclear weapons capability? And what is the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime?

SEN. KYL: Well, thank you for adding one of the other arguments that I didn’t make to the litany of reasons why it’s not a good idea. To the extent that both that group of countries that rely on our nuclear umbrella today by treaty or agreement, as well as some who don’t but could feel jeopardized by acquisition of such weapons by, for example, the Iranians, there’s obviously – they would be foolish not to look at the possibility of acquiring that capability themselves.

And it’s not as if they would all have to start from scratch. We know about the A.Q, Khan network. We know about the fact that – well, I’m not going to discuss what we know. But there has been funding for such projects from areas of the world that would certainly be areas of concern. We know that they have been looking at this possibility.

And so just stop and think about it for a moment. Today you’ve got a handful of countries with that capability. And do you want to get to a point where others feel that the only way to make themselves secure is to acquire that capability so that you have it all around the Gulf region, for example? I don’t think so. And that’s another very troubling reason why I think folks that believe in this zero nuclear better think twice before they are pursuing it so aggressively, at least at this time.

MR. : I wanted to ask you about the modernization funding, in particular for NNSA. I know you may not know the exact number, but it’s very close to the request. So I wanted to ask you for your comments on that. And also, it was quite a difficult battle to get that funding back up to that level. Does that make you concerned about in two or three years what it might take to ensure that the administration’s commitment to modernization sticks?

SEN. KYL: Yeah, the question was, how confident am I that the administration’s commitment to the full nuclear modernization funding will be pursued by the administration and achieved? And to be fair to the administration, let’s acknowledge an additional factor that’s come into play here. And that is a House of Representatives significantly influenced by the Tea Party and others who are very aggressively seeking to reduce funding. I mean, that’s a reality that House leadership has to deal with, even with respect to national security funding.

So I think on the one hand you have an administration that – I’m just going to say came to its conclusions somewhat reluctantly and under some degree of pressure, on the one hand. And then you have a House of Representatives, at least currently strongly influenced by a desire to further reduce federal spending, including in defense, and that makes for a challenge in getting the funding for this modernization program accomplished every year. But having said that, I just have nothing but accolades for the House leadership, specifically Speaker Boehner and his commitment to see that this was done.

And the others who have jurisdiction in the House of Representatives, notwithstanding the pressures, they saw to it that it was done properly. And after some amount of urging and telephone calls and the like, the administration seemed to be supportive primarily on the Senate side, with the result that we got it done, almost. I mean, it’s just a tad lower than it should have been. But both sides, I think, at the end of the day weighed in in a way that I have no complaint about.

The question is the future, and it’s going to continue to be a challenge for the two reasons that I identified. But I hope that the administration will continue to be strongly committed to this, as well as the Democratic Senators who were supportive of the START Treaty and made significant commitments about supporting modernization. And I hope that my House colleagues, and a couple on the Senate who are very highly motivated to reduce spending, appreciate the need to prioritize and to distinguish between programs.

Some programs need to be cut, some need to be eliminated, some need to stay the same and some need to be plussed-up. And that’s just the reality of life as we go on. So hopefully if we continue to work at it very, very hard, we’ll get the funding that’s set forth in the president’s budget. And by the way, the administration kept its part of the bargain on the 2012 budget. So I have no complaint about their willingness, at least at this point, to stick with the commitments that were made.

MR. HUESSY: Senator, let me ask you a question. You and Senator Lieberman and Congressman Berman recently sent, I believe, a letter to the administration over Iran policy, and particularly sanctions. Could you broaden this issue and look at how you feel about not only the sanctions but the whole issue of divestment, particularly in light of Iran being the primary state sponsor of terror in the world today?

SEN. KYL: The question is sanctions on Iran. This is probably one of the most frustrating things in my time in the Senate in recent years. We continue to pass legislation giving the president authority. Neither the previous administration nor certainly this administration is using all of the authority that’s been given to them. The announcements they make about companies that they’re going after generally involve companies that they have previously gone after, or at least not the primary targets. I’m not going to get real specific here.

But the bottom line is that we could be doing so much more with respect to individual companies and other countries in their investment into Iran. So I don’t know what else you do in legislating. You’ve got to force the administration to act, which as you know is very, very difficult. And that requires pressure from people on the outside as well as committed members of both the House and the Senate.

The fact is both Iran and North Korea are really hard problems. If they were easy the previous administration and this administration would have solved them. I don’t have all of the answers about North Korea and Iran.

But I think the fact that they are so hard has at least caused this administration to say well, let’s focus on something where we can really get a lot of good PR. We’ll do a bunch of treaties and talk about ridding the world of nuclear weapons and that will divert attention away from this really hard problem that we haven’t figured out how to solve. But eventually the chickens are going to come home to roost here. And at that point there are going to be some really tough decisions to make.

Just one other word about sanctions. Given what we’ve seen in North Africa and the Middle East, it seems to me — and of course this would have worked a lot better had we started doing it five or six years ago. I’m not sure it works as well today. But if our sanctions with respect to Iran are clearly conveyed to the people of Iran as intending to support their aspirations for more representation in their government, as opposed to simply making it easier for us to make a deal with a regime which many of them despise, then the economic dislocations and discomfort that that will visit on the people of Iran will be better understood.

And I think the people will be more inclined to suffer those consequences knowing that there’s a better day ahead for them if the sanctions result in the current regime changing its way of doing business or going out of business. If it’s simply a matter of we’re trying to impose sanctions that hurt the people of Iran so we can make a deal with their regime about nuclear weapons, they couldn’t care less about that. And they’re going to be resentful of what we’re doing.

And right now you’ve got a populace that is, I think, yearning for support from the West and from the United States specifically. And so it seems to me that the administration has foregone a wonderful opportunity here to engage in the kind of public diplomacy and various ways of communicating to the Iranian people that one of the purposes here is to assist them as well.

If we were to do that, who knows what the people of Iran might do. And I don’t have any hope that this administration would dive in and help them. And maybe that wouldn’t be helpful under the circumstances. It would all depend on how things evolve. But at least, it seems to me, that that’s the best chance we have of influencing the administration or changing the government in Iran so that the objectives that we have can also be satisfied. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if the objectives of a lot of the people in Iran who yearn for more freedom could be satisfied as well? That would be a great day’s work.

Well let me just ask all of you to sort of challenge you. As this series goes on you’re going to be addressed by a lot of different folks who, it seems to me, will want to talk about the three subjects that I raised here this morning. And I would be pleased to work with you about these matters in the ensuing months.

I think you should press the people who come to visit with you about that. And if you agree with me, perhaps we can work together in trying to influence the administration’s policy so that they will be a little bit more realistic. I always find it interesting that the great realists of our day have now become the starry-eyed idealists. And maybe it’s just a function of me getting old, I’m not so sure.

But in any event, god willing, I can be here one more time as a senator, Peter. I hope to be able to join you to do that. I thank all of you for your interest and appreciate your being here this morning.

(Applause).

MR. HUESSY: For those of you who would like to join us Thursday with Congressman Turner, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, please let Elma know. And then we’ll take a break for the Easter and religious holidays. We’ll be back here I think – I can’t remember exactly, but May 1 or 2. But let us know so we can get a schedule for you.

I want to thank you all for coming today. This is a great turnout for Senator Kyl and a great start to our series. Thank you all for your support, our sponsors.

Thank you all as guests, particularly the members of our embassy friends around the world. And I want to thank all of you who were here for the first time. Please let us know when you’re coming back, we’d welcome you as well.

And I’ll see you all Thursday. Thank you very much.