Today, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, made the following remarks, as prepared for delivery, on the Subcommittee's hearing titled "Consequences and Context for Russia's violations of the INF Treaty."
"This Joint House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces/House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade hearing on the 'Consequences and Context for Russia's violations of the INF Treaty' is hereby called to order.
I note this is the third joint hearing of these two subcommittees on this subject since 2014.
I want to thank Chairman Poe and Ranking Member Keating, along with my Ranking Member, Mr Cooper, for the seriousness and bipartisanship with which we have focused on this very grave matter.
In fact, I'm not sure if it gets more bipartisan than for two Republican Majority subcommittees to convene a hearing with an entire panel of witnesses from the other party.
But this has not, and should not, be a partisan matter.
The violations of the INF treaty are a particularly acute symptom of a very dangerous disease: Russian revisionism and belligerence under the dictator Vladmir Putin.
I fear that our failure to confront Russia's violation of INF in a meaningful way to date, especially after we publicly acknowledged it almost three years ago, encouraged and encourages more lawlessness on arms control and, indeed, other areas of Russian adventurism.
But, we'll have a chance to more completely explore these subjects today.
We have a distinguished panel of witnesses; they are:
· The Honorable Frank Rose
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance.
· The Honorable Robert Scher
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities
· Mr. Jon Wolfsthal
Former Senior Director for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, National Security Council
Just this past Tuesday, in response to questions, the Commander of U.S. European Command, and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, stated, 'we have to respond to their violation of that treaty, one way or the other, we have to take steps we have to address it.'
He also stated regarding Russia's intention to return to compliance with the treaty that, 'I don't have any indication that they will at this time.'
So that's our task this morning: we have a new Administration and a critical inflection point in our relationship with Russia and the seminal arms control treaty of the nuclear era.
As a co-equal policy-making branch of the United States government, it is our role to help fashion a policy regarding how we deal with Russia's violation of this, and other, arms control treaties and agreements.
So, I hope when we are through here this morning we will have a clear view on a policy to work with the new Administration to implement."
