Press Releases

Today, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, delivered remarks at the Air Force Association's Peter Huessey Congressional Breakfast Series, focusing on the serious and growing threat Russia poses to U.S. security and that of our allies.

The Chairman also used the opportunity to draw attention to a recent Washington Post article that reported fringe elements of the disarmament "echo chamber" are urging the President to abandon the bipartisan consensus on the nuclear modernization program and the nuclear policy framework. Rogers urged the President to reject this political advocacy in the final five months of his term and opt instead to follow the best advice of his senior civilian DOD and DOE and senior military commanders who have been vocal about the importance of staying the course on the current nuclear modernization plan.

Remarks, as prepared for delivery, can be found below.

"Each time I have spoken before you, I have laid out the key issues that have been consuming the subcommittee I am privileged to lead, the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, which has jurisdiction over missile defense, national security space, and the nuclear weapons programs of the Departments of Defense and Energy.

This year, I’m going to focus my remarks on just one of the areas in the subcommittee’s jurisdiction: the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

As we approach the end of President Obama’s second term, I believe we are at the precipice of perhaps the most dangerous era in global security affairs seen during the lifetimes of most in this room.

Across the world, we see unprecedented violence and instability.

We could talk about ISIS, we could talk about Libya, or we could talk about the increasingly nuclear-focused security context in South Asia between Pakistan and India.

We could talk about North Korea’s uncontested march towards its own force of multiple types of ICBMs capable of reaching the United States.

We could focus on the current Administration’s tragic deal with the terrorist-sponsoring, ballistic missile-testing, Bashar Assad-protecting regime in Iran—to say nothing of the rising Chinese dragon and its militarized man-made islands in the South China Sea.

But, I’m going to draw your attention to Vladimir Putin, and the new Cold War he is intentionally creating between his country and the United States and our allies. Mr. Putin is the only existential threat to the United States and our allies—that threat is undisputedly growing.

It is remarkable when you sit back and think about how far things have deteriorated since the “reset” button was pushed by Obama in 2009.

One product of this President’s policy towards Russia since 2009 was that, in early 2014, Vladimir Putin invaded the sovereign territory of Ukraine and annexed the peninsula of Crimea.

He then poured military units into Eastern Ukraine, where his separatist allies continue to fight each and every day. Though you will rarely find it on the newspapers in this country.

Just last week—again, without making the front page of a single newspaper in this country—we learned that this past March, Putin led military exercises that practiced the invasion of Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Norway and Denmark are, of course, NATO allies.

This followed on the heels of exercises months before where Putin’s forces practiced nuclear attacks on Denmark designed to decapitate that country’s leadership.

And, before that, the Russian military engaged in a series of nuclear force exercises, some led by Putin, involving simulated strikes on Poland and the Baltic states.

Sadly, such exercises are not new.

We have witnessed record numbers of Russian bomber exercises, and reckless behavior by Russian tactical aircraft, last seen during the darkest days of the Cold War.

Russian nuclear bombers have been engaged in increasingly dangerous forays into airspace adjacent to Alaska, California, the UK, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Japan.

It seems every week a U.S. ship operating in international waters by is harassed by Russian forces.
Flying attack approaches to within 30 feet of U.S. destroyers is asking for trouble, but shows a highly professional force acting with intent.

And speaking of harassment, we are witnessing Cold War-era levels of aggressive behavior targeted at U.S. diplomats by Russia across Europe.

Just last week we saw Russia leak a video of a Russian militiaman attacking a U.S. diplomat on U.S. territory as he sought refuges in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. They are taunting us; they don’t fear an American response.

It may be reassuring to some to consider these reckless acts, but, they are not.

These are highly scripted, very professional engagements by Russian forces under Vladimir Putin so that he can push us and probe us to look for weaknesses.

Unfortunately, he has found weakness.

Just look at Ukraine: Putin invades Crimea, seizes the territory, and continues to the present day to fund an insurgency against that country’s democratic government. And this administration has refused to provide that country’s military even modest capabilities like anti-tank weapons.

Or look at Russia’s treaty violations. The list of Russian violations is well-known:

• In 2014, the U.S. Government, after a multi-year delay, accused the Kremlin of violating the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty – and there is growing unclassified evidence that Russia may be engaged in more than one violation of this treaty;

• the Chemical Weapons Convention, with which Russia has never been in compliance;

• the Biological Weapons Convention, again, with which Russia has never been in compliance;

• the Treaty on Conventional Weapons in Europe and the Vienna Convention;

• the Treaty on Open Skies;

• and, this is not an exhaustive list.

Putin has been made to pay no price—none whatsoever—for any of these violations.

Just look at the Treaty on Open Skies:

• Russia has failed to honor its commitments,

• it has misued the treaty in ways that our military and intelligence leaders have stated pose a direct threat to U.S. security,

• the Pentagon has attempted to label Russia’s actions as 'violations' only to be rebuffed by the State Department; and

• just last week, the Obama Administration agreed to let Putin fly ever more sophisticated Open Skies sensors over the continental United States.

And on the INF treaty—despite promising both military and economic sanctions for Putin’s illegal military systems, and I emphasize it may not be just one violating system, the Administration has done nothing to respond.

It hasn’t even managed to convince key U.S. allies of Russia’s violations – again, not just one violation.

Putin sees this passivity and he’s emboldened by it.

And he sees other things too.

He knows that we know about his massive and sustained buildup of both his nuclear and conventional forces.

For example, in the nuclear arena alone Russia has developed:

• two new types of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs);

• two new types of submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs);

• a new class of ballistic missile submarines;

• a new long-range air launched cruise missile;

• a new sea-launched cruise missile, which he has shown off in Syria;

• at least two new types of ICBMs in development—including a heavy-ICBM follow-on to the highly destabilizing SS-18, which NATO called 'the SATAN' during the Cold War;

• a new strategic bomber;

• and, a new underwater, nuclear powered, nuclear-armed nuclear weapons designed for the express purpose of destroying the East Coast of the United States and inflicting environmental catastrophe.

And he maintains thousands upon thousands of non-strategic nuclear weapons that his doctrine plans to use in a conflict to de-escalate it, or so he hopes. Or as he puts it, 'escalate to win.'

He sees this, and then he sees press reports like the one on Monday of this week in the Washington Post that the disarmament “echo chamber” in the United States are seeking to upend the bipartisan consensus behind President Obama’s nuclear modernization program.

This nuclear modernization program is strongly advocated by all of the nation’s senior civilian leaders at the Department of Defense and Department of Energy. I’ve shared many quotes from those folks with you in previous speeches, so I won’t repeat them again.

But let me highlight this year that the current nuclear modernization program has been strongly recommended by the unified Joint Chiefs of Staff. Let me share a brief quote with you on that point, because it is remarkable:

'I just want to be clear. I don't have a part of the triad in a sense, but I can tell you that in my view, my professional military view, and I am a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the nuclear triad has kept the peace since nuclear weapons were introduced and has sustained the test of time. That is not unimportant. And that system has deteriorated, Congressman. And it needs to be revamped. It is not even an Army system. It needs to be overhauled and brought back up to its level of readiness.'

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the Chief of Staff of the Army, at a HASC hearing in March. That’s amazing coming from the Chief of a non-nuclear Service.

I called General Milley up afterwards to thank him for this strong show of support. He gets it, and knows how important this is.

And let’s remember this consensus on the need for nuclear modernization was hard-won and founded upon some painstaking policy spade-work over the past seven years.

If you were to look back seven years ago to the beginning of Obama Administration, very few would have predicted that we would arrive today at such sweeping agreement between the Administration and the Congress.

The genesis of it was there in 2009, with the report of the congressionally-mandated Strategic Posture Commission. This Commission did an admirable job of blazing the bipartisan trail for U.S. nuclear policy in the coming Administration.

And the Administration should be commended for turning to the key principles of the Commission’s report for structuring their own Nuclear Posture Review.

The consensus crystallized with Senate consideration and ratification of the New START Treaty. President Obama committed to modernizing all U.S. nuclear forces and requesting the money required to do so. President Obama’s commitment was clear in a February 2011 letter to the Senate:

'I intend to modernize or replace the triad of strategic nuclear delivery systems: a heavy bomber and air-launched cruise missile, an ICBM, and a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine and SLBM.'

In a letter to several senators during that same time period, President Obama was even more explicit about the strength of his commitment:

'I recognize that nuclear modernization requires investment for the long-term, in addition to this one-year budget increase. That is my commitment to the Congress – that my Administration will pursue these programs and capabilities for as long as I am President.'

In the years since then, my subcommittee has done its utmost to ensure the Obama Administration sticks to that commitment. And I am pleased to report that, by-and-large, they have.

We’ve seen civilian leaders in the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and senior military officers, say time and again that nuclear deterrence is their “highest priority mission.”

That agreement extends to Capitol Hill. We’ve seen senior leaders from both parties in Congress express their support for this mission and the nuclear modernization program in general. Earlier this year, my friend and Ranking Member, Jim Cooper, said this at one of our hearings:

“There is an astonishing national consensus in both parties, among most all people, that the triad is important; in fact, it is vital to our national security, and it is our duty to keep it safe, secure, and reliable. That includes all the life extension programs, upgrades, to keep that capability state of the art…. And I am just thankful that there is such a bipartisan consensus on these issues.”

And I suspect many of you all heard what Senator Donnelly said yesterday. This is what I mean by robust, bipartisan support.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the senior Democrats from the Strategic Forces Subcommittees it both the House and Senate. They track these issues as close as anyone on Capitol Hill. And they know why we need to carry out President Obama’s modernization program.

So the hope here is that President Obama ignores the small but well-funded and vocal nuclear disarmament echo chamber. It would be dangerous to totally upend the consensus we’ve worked so hard to build.

Making major changes to the nuclear modernization program and the nuclear policy framework on which it is founded would not only endanger U.S. national security, it would send a terrible signal to both our allies and our adversaries.

And if presidential commitments made to win approval of nuclear treaties can’t be trusted, then it endangers any future arms control or nonproliferation measures.

We need to stick to the plan. To upend a bipartisan consensus, founded on the best military advice of the nation’s senior uniformed leaders, with five months to go in an Administration would send a terrible signal to our adversaries and our allies."