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The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the regular order, the clerk will report the nomination.

The assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Strobe Talbott, of Ohio, to be Ambassador at Large and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State on the new Independent States.

Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, parliamentary inquiry. I understand there are 40 minutes equally divided, is that correct?

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona is correct, it is 40 minutes equally divided.

Mr. McCAIN. I would be glad in the interests of courtesy to allow my friend, the distinguished chairman, to go first if that is his wish--or I will go. It depends. Whichever he wants.

Mr. PELL. I thank the Senator very much indeed.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. PELL. Madam President, I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Arizona and I am pleased to support the nomination of Strobe Talbott to be Ambassador at Large and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State on the new Independent States. I welcome the President's decision to create this new position which will serve as the focal point for United States relations with the former Soviet Union, and I am confident in Mr. Talbott's ability to take on this rather daunting task.

Mr. Talbott would bring to this position a great deal of experience. As a journalist, he spent a significant amount of time visiting, studying, and writing about the former Soviet Union during a time when it was not always easy to decipher the cryptic signals coming out of Moscow. Despite the difficulties of reporting about Moscow, his writing and observations were generally on target. Although some may disagree with his conclusions and predictions, Mr. Talbott stands by his record, and believes, as do I, that it stands the test of time.

In addition to his fine qualifications, Mr. Talbott enjoys the full confidence and indeed, friendship of the President. I believe that will be an important factor in ensuring that our policy toward the new states is not only a top foreign policy priority, but that it is well coordinated among the many Departments and Agencies which have responsibility for elements of the relationship.

I yield the floor at this point.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, the most obviously important question facing American foreign policymakers today is the future course of our relations with Russia, and the newly Independent States of the former Soviet Empire. With the collapse of communism and the dissolution of that Empire, our policies toward Russia must be informed by our understanding of new geopolitical realities which emerged in the last 2 years.

This is not to say, however, that the judgments and principles upon which we premised our cold-war relations with the Soviet Union are no longer relevant to current considerations of United States policy toward the region. They are quite relevant, especially at this moment of great uncertainty in Russia when no one can predict with certainty whether that nation will evolve peacefully and democratically, collapse into chaos, or return to totalitarianism, be it Communist or fascist.

Our understanding of the vast complexities, historical foundations and perceptions which motivate the people and leaders of the former Soviet Union are absolutely critical to our efforts to help the principles of democracy flourish there. If we are to devote considerable resources to this important endeavor, we will need to quickly and accurately calculate the effect of our actions, and anticipate the political reactions and intentions of the real power brokers in the former Soviet Union, elected or otherwise.

At a minimum, administration nominees who, if confirmed, will help formulate our policies toward the former Soviet Union, should have exercised fairly sound judgment in not only their recent pronouncements on the subject, but also in their past analyses of Soviet leaders and policies, and United States policies intended to contain their cold-war threat to us. Any nominee whose judgment is found to be seriously wanting in either case, should not expect to enjoy the confidence of the Senate.

It is for this reason that I oppose the confirmation of Mr. Strobe Talbott, to be Ambassador at Large, and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for the newly Independent States.

My opposition to Mr. Talbott's confirmation is neither partisan nor personal. I take no pleasure in denying support to the President's choice for this critically important post. I am aware that Mr. Talbott is a close personal friend of the President's. And I am generally disposed to defer to the Commander in Chief's choice of personnel to implement his foreign policy. But if I find a nominee's judgment to be consistently in error on questions of such great importance to our national security--as I have found to be the case with Mr. Talbott--then I cannot in good conscience vote to confirm his appointment.

As virtually anyone with an interest in United States-Russian relations knows, Mr. Talbott is a prolific commentator on the subject. He has written extensively on his observations and experiences. He has offered numerous opinions on many aspects of our diplomatic and military strategies for Soviet containment. Over the years, I have become quite a consistent reader of Mr. Talbott's, and I have very often disagreed strongly with his analyses.

It is one thing to report mistaken observations and suggest flawed policy solutions. It is another thing altogether to make policy decisions based on similar faulty reasoning which could alter the power structures of a fragile government with far-reaching consequences for U.S. security. The policies of the United States toward the newly Independent States need to be devised with great foresight and executed with great resolve. Mr. Talbott showed little appreciation for either quality in his past observations of United States-Soviet relations.

In the early 1980's, Mr. Talbott wrote in great detail about balance of power contests between the United States and the Soviet Union, acknowledging the immense power of the Soviet Union, and noting its sustainable capability to inflict mass destruction on the United States and the world.

On those grounds, and others, Mr. Talbott was an outspoken critic of the Reagan and Bush administration's strategic defense initiative [SDI]. He strongly believed that the Soviet's would prove SDI to be a strategic blunder by building up their own strategic defenses, and by expanding their offensive arsenal to be sure of penetrating United States defenses. Such a course, Talbott argued, would prove ruinous to administration arms control initiatives. In the January 21, 1985, publication of Time magazine, he wrote:

If Reagan holds firm on Star Wars, he might as well abandon the pursuit of drastic reductions in existing Soviet weaponry.

Talbott had first sounded this constant theme in his writings 2 years earlier, on April 4, 1983.

If the U.S. tried to erect the sort of protective umbrella Reagan has in mind, the Soviet Union would suspect that the U.S. was seeking the capability of destroying the U.S.S.R. with impunity. To forestall that, the Soviets would no doubt accelerate their own already considerable research into defensive weapons, while simultaneously refining their offensive weapons in order to `beat' or `penetrate' whatever ABM system the U.S. devises. In that sense, the worst sin against strategic stability is a good defense--particularly the sort of `prevent defense' Reagan has in mind.

Mr. Talbott also dismissed theorists within the Reagan administration who argued that United States nuclear rearmament and a harder diplomatic line with the Soviet Union would ultimately compel the Kremlin toward moderation and reform. In the November 22, 1982 issue of Time magazine, he wrote:

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The Reagan administration's tough rhetoric, its attempt to consolidate anti-soviet alliances and its program of across-the-board rearmament have all been intended to impress on the Soviets that they have a choice. They can moderate their conduct--which, by implication, means choosing more moderate rulers--and thereby earn a respite from conflict abroad that may be their last chance to tend to their home front.

By my reckoning, Mr. President, the effect of Reagan-Bush Soviet policies has been remarkably close to the theory observed by Mr. Talbott in 1982. But, in that same essay, Talbott showed the disregard with which he would consistently hold Reagan-Bush policies over the last 12 years. `Even if there actually were such moderates lurking in the wings,' he wrote:

It is conceivable that vigorous, sometimes bellicose anti-Soviet policies on the part of U.S. authorities could vindicate and strengthen their hard-line rivals.

Insofar as the administration thinks that it will be doing the Soviet people a favor by increasing pressure on their new leadership to mend its ways `or else,' the U.S. may be defying both history and the very nature of the system it is trying to influence.

Virtually any technological advances in the U.S. arsenal were viewed suspiciously by Mr. Talbott. Like ADI, cruise missiles, used so effectively in the gulf war, he considered to be a waste of precious resources, and a threat to the success of arms control efforts. Again, I quote Mr. Talbott:

One of the burdens under which the administration's arms-control negotiators are laboring is an injunction not to trade away, or even accept, significant limitations on weapons systems where the U.S. has a technological lead. For example, microelectronics and precision guidance put the U.S. cruise missile program well ahead of the U.S.S.R.'s. As a result, cruise missiles have been declared virtually out of bounds for restrictions under START.

This faith in technology as the solution to the country's military problems may be both forgetful about the past and shortsighted about the future.

Mr. President, it is stating the obvious to note that President Reagan's vision was vastly more farsighted than Mr. Talbott's criticism.

Given Mr. Talbott's devotion to arms control initiatives, which he zealously sought to protect from the barbarians in the Reagan-Bush administration, one might have expected him to support negotiating positions which had for their object an ambitious outcome. An ambitious outcome was precisely the object of the zero-zero option of no intermediate nuclear weapons in Europe which the Reagan-Bush administration faithfully adhered to throughout the ultimately successful negotiations for an INF treaty.

But, true to form, Mr. Talbott contrived numerous reasons to challenge the efficacy of that position, and once it successfully bore fruit, Mr. Talbott questioned whether the successful outcome--the complete elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons in Europe--was the one `we should have asked for? And do we want it now?'

After the zero option was finally accepted by the Soviets as the basis for the INF treaty, Talbott credited Soviet persistence and Soviet ingenuity for the success. As any objective observer will tell you, the success of those negotiations is primarily attributable to three things: first, the deployment of Pershing II's in Europe; second, President Reagan's constant advocacy of the zero-zero option; and third, President Reagan's consistent rejection of Gorbachev's attempts to link INF to an SDI ban and a START Treaty. While Gorbachev deserves credit for finally acceding to the force of United States positions, it was hardly Soviet persistence that succeeded, it was American resolve. Had we waited for Soviet ingenuity to resolve the matter or had we taken counsel of Mr. Talbott's admonitions, we might very well still be arguing today about how to rid ourselves of an array of nuclear weapons in Europe.

Perhaps, my apprehensions about Mr. Talbott's appointment could have been somewhat mitigated if in recent times he had ever conceded his earlier mistakes in judgment, and given some signal that he understood the nature of those mistakes and taken steps to correct the faults in his reasoning. Unfortunately, to my knowkedge, Mr. Talbott has never conceded that his analyses were frequently in error. At the most, he has simply replaced arguments now proven to have been incorrect with new, but comparably specious arguments.

As the foundations of the Soviet empire were crumbling, Mr. Talbott abandoned his earlier reasoning that the Soviets could and would always respond adequately to United States challenges to the balance of power. But he continued to dismiss the increasingly compelling logic that Soviet efforts to keep pace with the West had, in effect, failed and ultimately destroyed the Soviet system. In January 1990, he argued that:

The Soviet system has gone into meltdown because of the inadequacies and defects at its core, not because of anything the outside world has done or not done or threatened to do.

In this same article, Talbott goes on to dismiss almost entirely the policy of containment, consistently applied over nearly half a century by nine Presidential administrations, Democrat and Republican alike.

For more than four decades, Western policy has been based on a grotesque exaggeration of what the U.S.S.R. could do if it wanted, therefore what it might do, therefore what the West must be prepared to do in response.

Talbott declined to admit that few observers of United States-Soviet relations more egregiously exaggerated `what the U.S.S.R. could do if it wanted' than Mr. Talbott. Nevertheless, after a professional lifetime of miscalculating Soviet means and intentions, Talbott now rejects the policy that has proven to have been a most successful exertion of free nations to resist the gravest threat to their security in history. `The doves in the Great Debate of the past 40 years were right all along,' says Talbott.

Yet, ironically, it is the hawks who are most loudly claiming victory, including moderate Republicans who are uncomfortable with that label and would rather be seen as conservatives.

It is a solipsistic delusion to think that the West could bring about the seismic events now seizing the U.S.S.R. and its `fraternal' neighbors. If the Soviet Union had ever been as strong as the threatmongers believed, it would not be undergoing its current upheavals.

In an eloquent emphasis of this point, Talbott attributes the Soviet Empire's collapse to the `nakedness of the red emperor before his enemies.' Of course, a few short years before Talbott offered this poignant observation, he was just as adamantly arguing that the Soviet Emperor was clothed in a suit of armor, with weapons at the ready, and prepared to fend off any challenge from the West far into the foreseeable future.

While his reasoning might have changed, his prescriptions did not. In April 1991, Talbott still argued against SDI and for strengthening the ban on testing and deployment of space based systems.

Since that article's publication, Soviet military leaders have admitted that SDI was a realistic and practical proposal--a strategic outcome that significantly altered the military strategy and negotiating position of the Soviet Union. Again, Talbott miscalculated the political and diplomatic consequences of U.S. military strategy. The mere threat of SDI added to the growing list of Soviet weaknesses from which they could not recover through arms escalation, which hastened the bankruptcy of the Soviet system that sped the dissolution of their empire.

The illogic of Mr. Talbott's evolution in thinking, while certainly imaginative and astonishing, is, nevertheless, the most conspicuous attempt at rewriting history that I have ever witnessed. Its purpose, I assume, is not to defend a point of view, but to protect the reputation of its author.

Madam President, as I noted earlier in my remarks, Mr. Talbott is a prolific writer. My lack of confidence in this nominee is solely attributable to the many opinions Mr. Talbott has expressed throughout the body of his work. I have read most of them, and it would require many more hours for me to cite all the examples of mistakes and inconsistencies upon which Mr. Talbott bases his reputation as a Soviet expert. Those that I have mentioned today are sufficient justification for me, and for the Senate, to oppose Mr. Talbott's confirmation.