Congressional Letter to the President

Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

4 May 1995

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As you prepare for your upcoming trip to Moscow, we wish to register our concern over the
Administration’s latest attempt to resolve the issue of theater missile defenses and the ABM
Treaty and our strong opposition to any agreement that restricts the ability to defend our troops
abroad from ballistic missile attack.

Reports of draft communique language describing the ABM Treaty as the “cornerstone” of the
U.S.-Russian arms control relationship once again illustrate the difficulty the Administration is
having in coming to terms with post-Cold War realities. An agreement to ban deployment of
“regional defenses against the other’s ballistic missiles” suggests unacceptable geographical
limitations on U.S. TMD deployments and could open the door for Russia to oppose any U.S.
TMD deployments. In addition, the reported “non-circumvention” language could cause Russia
to challenge our international cooperative theater defense programs.

Moreover, the Administration’s negotiating position continues to support the multilateralization
of the Treaty, which would make future amendments more difficult. It also continues to place
velocity limits on TMD interceptors, which would hamstring our ability to provide the most
capable missile defenses to our forward deployed forces. We encourage you to inform President
Yeltsin that the United States is opposed to such limits.

The focus of any negotiations with the Russians should be on finding ways to move forward
cooperatively, not to limit U.S. capabilities. We encourage you to seek Russia’s agreement to
resume the discussions that began in 1992 on a “global protection system,” including early
warning data sharing, and related issues of mutual benefit. However, President Yeltsin must be
made to realize that we are ready to act cooperatively if we can, but unilaterally if we must when
it comes to missile defenses. The importance of this issue to U.S. security is simply too great to
extend Russia or any other nation a Veto.

Sincerely,

Floyd D. Spence
Chairman, Committee on National Security

Robert L. Livingston
Chairman, Committee on Appropriations

C.W. Bill Young
Chairman, Committee on National Security Committee on Appropriations