Mike Levin: “Senate bill 1635, the so-called Defend America Act, is really misnamed. It should more appropriately be called the…”

“Senate bill 1635, the so-called Defend America Act, is really misnamed. It should more appropriately be called the Reducing America's Security Act, because it would reduce our security by jeopardizing the massive reductions of former Soviet nuclear weapons that are scheduled to take place under START I and START II. Those reductions are not going to take place, we have been so informed, if we unilaterally commit to deploy a system which violates the agreement between ourselves and Russia, the ABM Treaty. That is the bottom line. Everybody can try to wriggle away from that and try to avoid that issue if they want, but we have an agreement with Russia. That agreement prohibits or precludes the kind of systems which the Senator from Mississippi just described. Sea-based ABM systems are not allowed under that agreement. We have been told if we commit to deploy systems which violate that agreement with Russia that they will not proceed to dismantle weapons under START I and they will not ratify START II. That is the issue which we face. Which course of action is more in our security interest: proceeding with huge reductions in Russian nuclear weapons or violating an agreement with Russia and keeping those weapons in place? It is not whether there is a potential threat. There is a potential threat. The question is whether or not we address that threat in a rational, reasonable way, which does not create greater dangers to ourselves.”