On the recordDecember 19, 2010
the Risch amendment states a concern which is a legitimate concern. I think probably everybody would agree to that. This concern was there in the START I treaty and it was there in the Moscow Treaty just a few years ago, that we need to address the imbalance or the--the imbalance, I guess, is a good word--between the number of strategic nuclear weapons that exist on both sides and the nonstrategic weapons. But that was true during START I in 1991 when President Bush negotiated it. There was no effort to, in effect, kill the treaty with an amendment stating that concern, although it was a concern then. During the Moscow Treaty debate here in 2002, I believe Senator Biden again raised the same concern about this imbalance. It is a legitimate concern. But you don't kill a treaty because there are some legitimate concerns about issues. The Russians have a concern about our large number of warehoused warheads. We have a big inventory of warheads compared to them. They have a concern. We could state that as a fact, that the Russians have a concern about the number of warheads we have. But putting that into the treaty kills the treaty.
