[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RETHINKING OUR DEFENSE BUDGET: ACHIEVING NATIONAL SECURITY THROUGH
SUSTAINABLE SPENDING
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 20, 2010
__________
Serial No. 111-152
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania DARRELL E. ISSA, California
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JOHN L. MICA, Florida
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
DIANE E. WATSON, California PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
JIM COOPER, Tennessee JIM JORDAN, Ohio
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of AARON SCHOCK, Illinois
Columbia BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island ANH ``JOSEPH'' CAO, Louisiana
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
PETER WELCH, Vermont
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
JACKIE SPEIER, California
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio
JUDY CHU, California
Ron Stroman, Staff Director
Michael McCarthy, Deputy Staff Director
Carla Hultberg, Chief Clerk
Larry Brady, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island DAN BURTON, Indiana
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JOHN L. MICA, Florida
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
PETER WELCH, Vermont LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
BILL FOSTER, Illinois PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio JIM JORDAN, Ohio
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
JUDY CHU, California
Andrew Wright, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on July 20, 2010.................................... 1
Statement of:
Conetta, Carl, co-director, Project on Defense Alternatives;
Benjamin Friedman, research fellow, CATO Institute; Todd
Harrison, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments; Gary Schmitt, Ph.D., resident scholar and
director, Advanced Strategic Studies, American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research; and Gordon Adams,
Ph.D., distinguished fellow, Stimson Center................ 8
Adams, Gordon............................................ 62
Conetta, Carl............................................ 8
Friedman, Benjamin....................................... 24
Harrison, Todd........................................... 40
Schmitt, Gary............................................ 52
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Adams, Gordon, Ph.D., distinguished fellow, Stimson Center,
prepared statement of...................................... 65
Conetta, Carl, co-director, Project on Defense Alternatives,
prepared statement of...................................... 11
Friedman, Benjamin, research fellow, CATO Institute, prepared
statement of............................................... 27
Harrison, Todd, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, prepared statement of............... 43
Schmitt, Gary, Ph.D., resident scholar and director, Advanced
Strategic Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research, prepared statement of..................... 54
Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Massachusetts, prepared statement of.............. 4
RETHINKING OUR DEFENSE BUDGET: ACHIEVING NATIONAL SECURITY THROUGH
SUSTAINABLE SPENDING
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2010
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tierney, Maloney, Lynch, Welch,
Foster, Driehaus, Quigley, Chu, Duncan, Jordan, Flake, and
Luetkemeyer.
Also present: Representatives Frank and Paul.
Staff present: Andy Wright, staff director; Talia Dubovi,
counsel; LaToya King, GAO detailee, Boris Maguire, clerk;
Victoria Din and Alexandra Mahler-Haug, interns; Adam Fromm,
minority chief clerk and Member liaison; Justin LoFranco,
minority press assistant and clerk; and Christopher Bright,
minority senior professional staff member.
Mr. Tierney. Good morning. A quorum being present, the
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, the
hearing entitled, ``Rethinking our Defense Budget: Achieving
National Security through Sustainable Spending,'' will come to
order.
I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and ranking
member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening
statements.
Without objection, so ordered.
I ask unanimous consent that Congressman Barney Frank and
Congressman Ron Paul be allowed to participate in this hearing
if they are able to attend. In accordance with committee rules,
they will only be allowed to question the witnesses after all
official members of the subcommittee have first had their turn.
Without objection, so ordered.
I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept
open for five business days so that all members of the
subcommittee will be allowed to submit a written statement for
the record.
Again, without objection, so ordered.
Once again, good morning, and we thank our witnesses for
being here this morning to assist us.
Today the subcommittee continues its oversight of spending
of the Department of Defense. Specifically, we will examine
recommendations from a number of defense experts for ways that
we can reduce defense spending while ensuring that our national
security interests are not compromised.
Over the last two Congresses, this subcommittee has devoted
significant time and resources to oversight of defense
spending. We have examined the defense acquisitions process,
and have worked to ensure that adequate planning and testing is
completed by multi-billion-dollar weapons systems were
purchased. We have investigated contracting in our overseas
military operations and discovered widespread waste, lack of
management, and blindness to broader security implications of
these problems.
We have looked closely at the Missile Defense Agency,
military aid programs, and strategic planning for new
technologies such as the unmanned aerial vehicles. We continue
to try to get a clear picture from the department of the actual
number of overseas military bases we have, as well as the
strategic rationale for each location. Time and again we see
opportunities for increased efficiency, less waste, and better
use of taxpayer money.
Just 2 weeks before President Obama was sworn into office
in January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office announced that
the fiscal year deficit was estimated at over $1 trillion. The
inauguration occurred with an anticipated estimated long-range
deficit of $11\1/2\ trillion. In February of this year,
President Obama established the bipartisan National Commission
on Fiscal Year Responsibility and Reform. This commission has
been tasked with finding ways to improve the long-term fiscal
outlook of the United States. It is critical that the
commission scrutinize all aspects of our budget, including the
defense budget, as it formulates its suggestions.
I hope, in fact, that members of the commission will pay
close attention to our discussion here today. In fact, I am
scheduled to meet with the commission's co-chairs tomorrow
afternoon, at which time I intend to urge them to do just that.
Today we will consider options for realigning our national
defense spending. We have with us a panel of experts from
diverse political viewpoints who will speak about ways that
they and others who worked with them on the related report
believe we can cut the defense budget while maintaining our
commitment to national security.
Two of our witnesses are members of the Sustainable Defense
Task Force, which has recently released a report with
recommendations that, if implemented, would reduce the
department budget by some $960 billion by the year 2020.
Neither I nor the individual members of this subcommittee are
bound to agree with each and every recommendation made by the
report or in the testimony today, yet most of the Members
would, I believe, welcome consideration of the topic and a
number of the individual suggestions that are proffered.
We look forward to the discussion of those recommendations,
as well as any additional suggestions from our panel.
To be absolutely clear, this discussion should not be
dismissed, as it may be by some, as an attempt to weaken the
Department of Defense or under-prioritize United States'
national security. As this subcommittee's track record
demonstrates, every member of this panel takes the security of
our country very seriously. Waste is waste, regardless of the
context, and inefficiencies only hurt our ability to respond
effectively to crises and promote our national security
interests. Sound national security in an austere budget
environment requires strategic choices and rational resource
allocation. Bigger is not always better, especially in matters
of national defense.
Budgets always involve hard choices, but in this case these
choices can be made and make our Nation stronger. It is through
that lens that we approach our conversation today. It is our
duty on this subcommittee and in Congress as a whole to make
certain that taxpayer money is spent responsibly.
As President Obama has said, ``We have an obligation to
future generations to address our long-term structural deficits
which threaten to hobble our economy and leave our children and
grandchildren with a mountain of debt.'' The critical
importance of our national security does not in any way exempt
the Defense Department from its obligations to spend money
wisely and efficiently.
[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. With that, I would like to recognize Mr. Flake
for his opening comments.
Mr. Flake. I thank the chairman and thank the witnesses for
coming in.
As the chairman noted, every member of this panel takes the
defense of our country seriously, but we also recognize that we
have a huge problem in terms of debt, deficit, and savings
cannot be simply gained in entitlement programs or other
discretionary programs; it has to be gained here, as well.
Since 2001, as was noted, nearly 65 percent of the increase
in discretionary spending has come from defense, and we need to
make sure that we are spending taxpayer money wisely. That is
the purpose of this hearing, and I hope we are enlightened by
what you have to say. Thank you for your preparation and thank
you for coming.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Flake.
So the subcommittee will now receive testimony from the
witness panel before us today. Before we start, I will
introduce all of you, and then we will begin, going from my
left to right.
Mr. Carl Conetta is the co-director of the Commonwealth
Institute's Project on Defense Alternatives [PDA]. Since co-
founding PDA in 1991, Mr. Conetta has authored and co-authored
over 30 PDA reports and has published widely outside the
Institute, including contributions to 10 edited volumes. Mr.
Conetta also recently served as a member of the Sustainable
Defense Task Force, and in this capacity contributed to the
Task Force Report entitled, ``Debt, Deficits, and Defense: A
Way Forward,'' which represents a series of recommendations to
reduce the budget of the Department of Defense by $960 billion.
Mr. Conetta has appeared extensively before Congress, the
executive branch, and other governmental and non-governmental
institutions, and has been interviewed by a range of major
media outlets. He has also served as a consultant for the
Council on Foreign Relations, the House Armed Services
Committee, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Before joining PDA, Mr. Conetta was a fellow at the Institute
for Defense and Disarmament Studies, served as an editor of the
South End Press, and taught for 2 years at the University of
Connecticut.
Mr. Benjamin Friedman is a research fellow in defense and
homeland security studies at the Cato Institute. He also served
recently with Mr. Conetta as a member of the Sustainable
Defense Task Force and contributed to the report. Mr.
Friedman's areas of expertise include counter-terrorism,
homeland security, and defense politics, with a focus on threat
perception. He is co-editor of a book on the U.S. military
innovations since the cold war, and his work has appeared in
Foreign Policy, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun,
thewashingtonpost.com, Defense News, and several other
newspapers and journals. Mr. Friedman holds a B.A. from
Dartmouth College, and is a Ph.D. candidate in political
science and an affiliate of the security studies program at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Todd Harrison is a senior fellow for Defense Budget Studies
at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He
joined the Center in 2009 from Booz Allen Hamilton, where he
supported clients across the Department of Defense, assessing
challenges to modernization initiatives and evaluating the
performance of acquisition programs. He previously worked in
the aerospace industry, developing advanced space systems and
technology, and served as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force
Reserves.
Since joining the Center, Mr. Harrison has authored a
number of publications, including the ``Analysis of the Fiscal
Year 2010 and Fiscal Year 2011 Defense Budget Request'' and the
``Impact of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the U.S.
Military's Plans, Programs, and Budgets.'' He holds a B.S. and
an M.S. in aeronauts and astronautics from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Dr. Gary Schmitt is a resident scholar and director of the
American Enterprise Institute's Program on Advanced Strategic
Studies. His work focuses on long-term strategic issues that he
believes affect America's security at home and its ability to
lead abroad. Dr. Schmitt previously served as the staff
director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as
the executive director of President Ronald Reagan's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board.
In addition, Dr. Schmitt has served as the executive
director at the project for the New American Century, as a
consultant to the Department of Defense, a fellow at the
Brookings Institution, and as a member of the research faculty
at the University of Virginia. Dr. Schmitt has co-authored and
edited several books and has published widely for scholarly
journals, volumes, and newspapers in the areas of national
security, foreign policy, and the American Presidency. He holds
a B.A. from the University of Dallas and earned his Ph.D. from
the University of Chicago.
Dr. Gordon Adams is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson
Center and a professor of U.S. foreign policy at American
University. Prior to that, he was the director of the Security
Policy Studies Program at the Elliott School of International
Affairs at George Washington University. He also previously
served as the deputy director of the International Institute
for Strategic Studies in London and as the Associate Director
for National Security and International Affairs at the Office
of Management and Budget as a senior White House budget
official for national security.
He has been an international affairs fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations and received the Department of Defense
Medal for Distinguished Public Service. Dr. Adams has published
books, monographs, and articles, and has testified numerous
times before Congress on Defense spending and national security
issues. He received his Ph.D. in political science from
Columbia University and graduated magna cum laude from Stanford
University.
Again, I want to thank all of you for making yourselves
available today and for sharing your substantial expertise.
It is the policy of this committee to swear you in before
you testify, so I ask you to please stand and raise your right
hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Tierney. The record will please reflect that all of the
witnesses answered in the affirmative.
I remind all of you that your full written testimony will
be submitted in the record and incorporated in it. We have
allocated 5 minutes for each of you to give us an opening
statement, synopsizing your comments, if you would. The red
light is the one to let you know that your time is up. About a
minute before then it will turn amber, giving you fair warning.
For the first 4 minutes you get a green light going.
We are happy to do that. We are anxious to get to the point
where we can have an exchange, so we invite your testimony,
starting with Mr. Conetta, please.
STATEMENTS OF CARL CONETTA, CO-DIRECTOR, PROJECT ON DEFENSE
ALTERNATIVES; BENJAMIN FRIEDMAN, RESEARCH FELLOW, CATO
INSTITUTE; TODD HARRISON, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC
AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS; GARY SCHMITT, PH.D., RESIDENT
SCHOLAR AND DIRECTOR, ADVANCED STRATEGIC STUDIES, AMERICAN
ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH; AND GORDON
ADAMS, PH.D., DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, STIMSON CENTER
STATEMENT OF CARL CONETTA
Mr. Conetta. Chairman Tierney, Congressman Flake, members
of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear here
today before you to discuss how we might put our security
posture on a sustainable basis.
You have the report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force
before you, I hope. I was one of the authors of that. We have
recently prepared a short, one-page summary. You might also
have that before you. There are a number of proposals outlined
there. I am not going to examine them in detail. Maybe we will
get into that during the question period. There is quite a bit
there that is controversial. The proposals need your scrutiny,
they need your criticism, and we can go into detail during the
question period.
What I would like to do is say something about the concerns
and the criteria that we used in developing those proposals.
We began our work with the recognition that today's
financial crisis and great recession have altered the context
in which all Federal policy must be assessed. For the
formulation of security policy, there are now three relevant
reference points: 11/9/1989, when the post-cold war era began;
9/11, when we were awakened to its full dangers; and 2007, when
the financial crisis commenced. The last of these affects our
security prospects in two ways: first, by weakening already
troubled states, diminishing their capacities, while also
adding to the store of human desperation and social and
economic dislocation worldwide. This is a favorable context for
the spread of extremist organizations.
Second, the crisis makes the future of our economic power
and influence less certain. It weakens our foundation.
Considering both the size and projected duration of our current
national debt, we now carry a burden greater than at any time
in living memory. Bringing it under control may require budget
cuts of $300 billion a year, possibly even more. At the same
time, interest payments on the debt will grow from 5 percent to
15 percent of the budget over the next decade. This pincer
movement will constrain our capacity to meet program needs, as
well as to meet emerging ones.
The challenge to the essentials of our national strength--
our economy, our infrastructure, most of all our people--is
real. As we now turn to adjust priorities and get our financial
house in order, what we need to keep foremost in our minds are
those essentials. They are the foundation on which our national
security establishment is built.
Looking back over the past 12 or so years, we can now say
that our allocation of resources was premised in part on
irrational exuberance, about available wealth, and about
available credit. This left us less attentive to the cost/
benefit balance when making investments.
In every endeavor, in every area of policy, there is a
point of diminishing return. Beyond this, the benefit of
investment declines and it becomes less assured. So how far do
we push beyond that point, that point of diminishing return?
That depends partly on how much wealth and credit we believe is
at our disposal. It is that part of the equation that we got
seriously wrong over the past 10 or 12 years, and it distorted
our choices.
A proper appreciation of scarcity would have led us to
different choices. Since 1998, U.S. defense spending has risen
by about 96 percent in real terms. This has no precedent in all
the years since the Korean War. The post-1998 defense boom is
nearly as great as those enacted by Presidents Kennedy,
Johnson, and Reagan combined, and only about half of the recent
increase is due to our recent wars and contingency operations.
Whether one looks at the total DOD budget or just that
portion not attributable to today's wars, U.S. defense spending
is now stabilizing at levels significantly above the cold war
peaks. Clearly, what has not occasioned this surge is a neck-
and-neck race with a pure competitor. There is none. But what
we have seen over the past 10 or 12 years--somewhat more,
actually--is a substantial expansion in the goals, roles, and
missions assigned to our armed forces.
Beginning at the end of the cold war, we pushed our armed
forces to prepare for and conduct more types of missions and
activities faster and more frequently across a broader expanse
of the earth than ever before, and we set out goals that
reached well beyond the traditional ones of simple defense and
deterrence. We added various forms of preventative action; not
only preventative war and regime change, but also greater
reliance on our military to shape the strategic environment and
transform entire nations.
In this light, it is not surprising that we have moved from
spending only two-thirds as much as our adversaries during the
cold war to spending more than twice as much today, and that
discounts our war spending. Had President Reagan sought an
advantage this great, he would have had to triple his budgets.
The spending balance reflects the fact that we enjoy
abundant overmatch in the conventional realm. And one criteria
that we employed in the report in coming up with our
recommendations was to trade down some of this over-match.
Another step we took was to roll back some of the soft uses
of our military power, so-called environment-shaping functions,
where costs are high and payoff is indeterminate. What we
focused on were the surge requirements for war in dealing with
the conventional realm.
A different picture emerges when we survey our recent
experience in large-scale counter-insurgency wars, Iraq, and
Afghanistan. Rather than over-match, what we see is mis-match.
The task force exempted war spending from its cut options. We
didn't examine the money that is spend on war; we cordoned that
off. And we pegged those spending cuts that we did propose,
while some would directly affect the wars, those that would, we
pegged to the wars winding down.
An example would be reductions in ground forces. Likewise,
we cordoned off capabilities directly relevant the counter-
terrorism, such as special operations forces and intelligence,
although the latter, given recent news, may deserve a second
look.
This doesn't imply that we support the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan or we oppose them. That wasn't our intention. We
wanted to look at the long-term budget. However, some of our
options do assume that in the long term we are not likely to
repeat those experiences again.
The fabulous cost, the slow progress, and the uncertain
outcome of recent efforts at regime change, armed nation
building, and large-scale counter-insurgency make them a poor
strategic choice. There are two parts to that conclusion: one,
that it is a choice that we have made, and, two, that it is a
bad one.
Those are some of the concerns, some of the criteria we
brought to bear in developing the options. We can discuss
others later.
I think really the most fundamental point we want to make
is that we need to look at this budget with new eyes, and our
principal concern cannot be about guns versus butter; our
principal concern has to be refurbishing and preserving
national strength. That has to be the criteria that we bring to
bear in all of our decisions from this point forward.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Conetta follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Conetta.
Mr. Friedman, if you would.
STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN FRIEDMAN
Mr. Friedman. I also want to thank the chairman and the
ranking member and the members of the committee for the
opportunity to testify. I am especially pleased to be here with
this distinguished panel, most of whom have been in this
business since I was a kid or younger.
I want to make two main points today. First, substantially
reducing military spending requires reducing the ambitions it
serves. Second, a more restrained defense strategy would not
only allow cost savings; it would actually improve our
security.
I am agnostic as to whether our current defense budget is
sustainable. I think many foolish things are sustainable, at
least for a while. What I do believe is that it would be unwise
to spend anything like the $549 billion that the administration
requested in the base budget, a non-war budget, for fiscal year
2011.
I think there is no good reason we should now spend more on
the non-war defense budget in real terms than we did in any
year during the cold war. So I advocate a more modest defense
strategy, one that I call restraint, because it starts with the
assumption that power tempts us to take part in foreign
troubles that we could and should avoid. Restraint means
resisting that temptation. It would husband American power
rather than dissipate it in pursuit of ideological and
unreachable goals.
Restraint does not require cuts in military force structure
and spending; it allows a less busy military could be a smaller
and cheaper one.
Now, an alternative approach to saving on defense is to
pursue the same ends more efficiently. Efforts to streamline
the Pentagon's operations through acquisition reform,
eliminating waste and duplication, or improving financial
management might save some money, but these reforms have
historically delivered few savings, probably because what seems
inefficient from a business standpoint, whether it is
maintaining essentially two Air Forces, keeping twice as many
shipyards open as we need, or building gold-plated weapons
systems is actually efficient in producing political goods,
whether it is the service's preferences for weapons or jobs.
So, rather than efficiency driving savings, I think spending
cuts ought to drive efficiency.
Market competition encourages private organizations to
streamline their operations, and, while no such pressure exists
in government, by cutting the top line and forcing the services
to compete for their budgets I think we can incentivize them to
find some efficiencies themselves.
That said, I think it would be a mistake to take up the
force structure reductions recommended in my written testimony
without their strategic rationale. I think that would badly
overburden the force, which would be unfair, without improving
security.
So, as I suggested, the real driver of excessive defense
spending is lack of prioritization, which is the essence of
strategy. We spend too much because we choose too little.
Unbalanced power and massive budgets have limited the need to
choose among priorities. We confuse the necessary with the
desirable, our sympathies with the requirements of our safety.
The truth is that the United States doesn't really have a
defense budget. I think that adjective is wrong. I think our
military force's size and composition now lack a meaningful
relationship to the requirements of protecting Americans.
For example, our security no longer requires that we defend
the European Union, which has a collective economy larger than
our own, from Russia or its own dissolution. I think peace
among European states is deep-seated. Russia, which now spends
less on its aging military than we spend on researching and
developing new weapons, alone, is not about to reclaim its
Soviet empire, let alone threaten western Europe.
South Korea, likewise, long ago grew wealthy enough and
then some to defend itself against the north. And neither do we
need to defend Japan from China. I think history suggests that
the likely result of withdrawing U.S. forces and commitments
from Japan will be slightly higher defense spending in Japan
and a stable balance of power in China, in large parts because
they are separated by a decent-sized body of water. Those
states don't have much to fight over today.
I also think there is little basis for the claim that you
often hear that global trade depends on U.S. military
deployments overseas. I think that theory is a little bit too
esoteric to discuss briefly here, but I will say that the
historical and theoretical case for it is thin. I think it
exaggerates the fragility of global markets and trade and the
economic impact that supply disruption in a particular region
would cause here in the United States.
Nor is it wise, I think, to spend heavily on defense today
to hedge against the rise of possible future challenges like
China. The smaller military that I recommend would maintain a
vast superiority over China and all other states for the
foreseeable future, particularly at sea and in the air, but the
best offense against an uncertain future is a prosperous
economy unburdened by excessive spending and debt, which can
finance a buildup of military capability if need be.
I will also say that counter-terrorism does not require
great military spending. The military assets best suited to
that are relatively cheap niche capabilities, UAVs,
intelligence collectors, and special operations forces. The
theory that we can only be safe by jihadists by occupying and
ordering the states where they operate has been tested and
proved prohibitively costly in blood and treasure. We have been
reminded there that we lack the power to organize the politics
of unruly foreign states, and evidence suggests, I think, that
trying to do so makes us more likely to be a target of
terrorism than prevent it. And so state building and
occupations, I think, are a business that we should avoid once
the current wars end, and that ought to drive down the size
required of our ground forces.
So, to conclude, defining security so broadly is actually
counter-productive. Our military posture and activism globally
drag us into other's conflicts, provoke animosity, and prompt
states to balance our power by arming, driving proliferation.
By capitalizing on our geopolitical fortune, we can safely
spend far less. By avoiding the occupation of failing states
and shedding commitments to defend healthy ones, we can plan
for fewer wards. By shedding missions we can cut force
structure, reducing the number of U.S. military personnel and
the weapons and vehicles we procure for them, particularly in
the ground forces, and reduce operational costs.
My written testimony specifies the cuts I recommend to that
end, and with that I will conclude and look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Friedman follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much.
Mr. Harrison.
STATEMENT OF TODD HARRISON
Mr. Harrison. I would like to thank the subcommittee for
the opportunity to share with you some of my thoughts on
rethinking the defense budget.
I have organized my remarks into five potential areas of
savings which address many of the options that are presented in
the report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
The first two areas, achieving greater efficiencies and
refocusing on the core business of defense, are changes that do
not affect the size, composition, or capabilities of the
military, and the savings in these areas are quite modest.
Three other areas of savings--reforming the military
personnel system, reforming the acquisition system, and
altering the force structure--have the potential to yield much
greater savings, but they involve more substantive changes in
the missions and capabilities supported by DOD.
The first area is achieving greater efficiencies. The
Pentagon has again renewed its efforts to reduce waste and
achieve greater efficiencies, with Secretary Gates' speech last
May directing the services to take an unsparing look at how
they operate. Undersecretary Carter has followed up with some
specific proposals. Many of these proposals are things that
have been tried in the past with various degrees of success.
And, while working to achieve greater efficiencies should
always be a goal of the department, efficiencies alone are not
likely to result in the magnitude of savings needed over the
coming decade. As Undersecretary Hale noted in a 2002 report on
promoting efficiency in DOD, keep trying but be realistic.
The second area of savings is refocusing on the core
business of defense. Many programs and activities that are
funded within the Defense budget stray far from DOD's core
mission: to deter war and to protect the security of our
country. The task force recommends combining the military
exchanges and commissaries to achieve savings. I will go one
step further and ask why should DOD be operating a chain of
retail stores at all? The exchanges and commissaries are an
artifact of a bygone era and could be closed or sold to a
private operator.
Another activity outside the core business of defense that
the task force did not address is the DOD-funded and-operated
primary and secondary school system within the United States. I
should note the that I am only talking about DOD's schools
within the United States, not the schools that DOD operates in
foreign countries around the world where military families
would likely not have access to an American style school
otherwise.
In the United States, though, education has primarily been
the responsibility of the States. DOD notes in its annual
report on these schools that the U.S. schools date back to the
time of a frontier Army post when, ``adequate public education
was not available in the local area.'' This is no longer the
case in the seven States where these schools are located, and
since K-12 education is not core to the business of defense,
DOD should transfer these schools, either to the States in
which they reside or to the Department of Education. The
resulting savings in the defense budget could total some $750
million annually.
The third area of savings I would like to address is
reforming the military personnel system. DOD is the single
largest employer in the United States. It accounts for 51
percent of Federal workers and employs more people than Wal-
Mart and the Post Office combined. Therefore, any changes to
military pay and benefits have a profound and lasting effect on
the Federal budget.
Since fiscal year 2000, total military personnel and health
care costs per active duty troop has risen 73 percent in real
terms. What is most concerning is that the cost structure
within the military compensation system has grown out of
balance. For the Department of Defense, 52 percent of total
compensation goes to non-cash and deferred benefits, compared
to an average of 29 percent in the private sector. And, just as
some private companies have been struggling to remain
competitive under the heavy burden of excessive labor costs,
so, too, will the Department of Defense struggle in the years
ahead to maintain its force structure if labor costs are not
brought back into balance.
The task force makes several good proposals in this area,
calling for changes to the way pay raises are calculated, and
raising the enrollment fees military retirees pay for TriCare.
What the task force doesn't address are problems with the
military retirement system. DOD currently uses a cliff vesting
retirement system, where benefits only become effective after
20 years of service. This system creates distorted incentives,
because it encourages personnel nearing the 20-year mark to
stay on duty, even if only for the purposes of attaining the
benefit, and after 20 years, when personnel are often in their
early 40's, the incentive sharply reverses, encouraging
personnel to retire early, since they can continue making 50
percent or more of their military pay while simultaneously
drawing full pay at a civilian job.
For ways to reform the military retirement system, I would
draw your attention to the 10th quadrennial review of military
compensation. One of the most attractive options this report
proposes is to transition from the current defined benefit plan
to a defined contribution plan, more like a 401(K), just as
many businesses and State governments have done.
The fourth area of savings is reforming the acquisition
system. I would divide acquisition reform into two areas:
reforming what DOD buys and reforming how DOD buys. Eleven of
the nineteen options in the task force's report fall into the
category of reforming what DOD buys. It is true that cutting
acquisition programs can yield some of the greatest savings,
but such decisions should not be based on budget
considerations, alone. They should consider which missions and
capabilities DOD no longer needs to support and what the effect
will be on the industrial base.
The task force does not address the issue of reforming how
DOD buys things; that is, the acquisition process, itself.
I would draw your attention to one issue, in particular,
and that is too many requirements being piled onto weapons
systems. Many different organizations within the department
have a role in the requirements process, ranging from the Joint
Requirements Oversight Council, the JROC, to the various
organizations within OSD that review and approve programs as
they pass through acquisition milestones. Yet, few of the
organizations that have the power to add, modify, or otherwise
influence requirements also have the responsibility to fund
progress. Creating a better organizational alignment between
those who set requirements and those who budget for programs
would reduce the incentive to add the kinds of exquisite
requirements that drive-up costs and stretch out schedules.
The fifth and final area of savings I would like to address
is altering the force structure. The task force recommends
several changes to the force structure, including reducing U.S.
troops in Asia and Europe by one-third and rolling back the
size of the Army and the Marine Corps to pre-2007 levels. If
the primary intent of these measures is simply to reduce
personnel costs, the department would be better served in the
long run by first tackling the underlying labor cost structure
and only then adjusting the size of the force as necessary.
Again, such decisions should not be based on budgetary factors,
alone. They should be informed by a realistic assessment of
future threat environment and a determination of where the
department is willing to take risk, a strategic approach.
In conclusion, I would like to note that, while a declining
defense budget would force the Department to make many
difficult decisions, it also presents an opportunity. It is an
opportunity to transform the military into a more efficient and
effective force.
Ironically, the rapid rise of the base defense budget over
the past decade may have prevented the department from
transforming because it allowed the services to continue
funding existing programs and not fully commit to
transformation, but the era of constrained resources that is
now upon us may finally force the services to make the
difficult choices that are necessary to create a more efficient
and effective military.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Harrison follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much.
Dr. Schmitt.
STATEMENT OF GARY SCHMITT
Dr. Schmitt. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Flake, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today. I notice that there are five of
us up here on the panel, and if this was a hand I suspect I am
going to be the sore thumb.
Mr. Tierney. It could have been otherwise.
Dr. Schmitt. I think the hammer is about ready to hit me.
Let me begin with the obvious: we do spend a lot on
defense. The task force report is absolutely right when it says
that nearly 65 percent of the increase in Federal discretionary
spending since 2001 has come from increase in the Pentagon's
budget, but I would say this is a bit misleading. First, we are
at war, after all. And even in that, as a percentage of the
GDP, these wars have been waged more cheaply than similar wars
such as Korea or Vietnam.
Second, from 2001 to 2010, the baseline defense budget grew
by $228 billion. This amounts to an annual real rate of growth
of just 4 percent. Growth, to be sure, but not the gusher
Secretary Gates spoke of in May at the Eisenhower Library. And
certainly the $228 billion pales in comparison with the nearly
$800 billion spent to stimulate, supposedly, the economy.
The report begins with a quote from my good friend, Kori
Schake, a former Bush national security official and a McCain
campaign advisor, ``Conservatives need to understand that
military power is fundamentally premised on the solvency of the
American Government and vibrancy of the U.S. economy.'' I
certainly don't disagree. But as she, herself, states in a
recent article in a recent Post, ``Advocates of a strong
national defense ought to be thinking seriously about
entitlement reform; that is, Social Security, Medicaid, and
Medicare.'' Referencing Congressman Ryan's Roadmap for America,
she goes on to say that the real threat to adequate defense
spending is the explosion in domestic programs. ``Defense
spending isn't addressed in the Road Map because it is not
material to the overall debt picture.''
From this perspective, the real problem is not defense
spending, but the fact that some 56 percent of Federal outlays
are tied to mandatory spending accounts, and will, if current
budget estimates hold true, expand at an even greater rate.
Defense, meanwhile, accounts for 18 percent of those outlays
and will shrink to just 15 percent in the near years.
Now, the task force report, Debts, Deficit, and Defense, is
right to think that if a trillion dollars could be cut from
defense it wouldn't make a difference. I agree. However, let's
remember that $300 billion has already been cut from defense in
the past 2 years, and to follow the report's recommendations
requires, in my opinion, taking some rather risky steps.
However, rather than go through the report's specific list
of recommendations, which I would be happy to talk about in
more detail in the question and answer session, let me make the
broad point that the force structure they outline is one that
runs against the basic force structure that has been agreed
upon by three successive administrations, two Democrat and one
Republican. It seems to me that we ought to think twice before
jettisoning a force structure that by any standard has
performed remarkably well, has done so at a very high tempo,
and has enjoyed bipartisan post-cold war support for more than
a decade and a half.
Now, having said that, there is no question that savings
can be had when it comes to defense. Todd here I think has laid
out a number of useful proposals. Health and personnel costs
have skyrocketed over the past decade and, while benefits for
those in an all-volunteer force must remain high, there is no
question that there are elements in the Pentagon's budget that
need closer scrutiny.
However, the real problem--and I realize just how difficult
an argument it is to make these days--is that we spend too
little on Defense. The key point here is that the procurement
holiday that marked much of the 1990's was a hole the Bush
administration never dug the Pentagon out of. Now the Obama
administration wants to hold defense spending flat or less in
the coming years, which, when combined with the rising
personnel costs and rising operations and maintenance costs,
has resulted in a significant shortage in resources, perhaps,
according to the Congressional Budget Office, on the order of
$30 billion to $40 billion a year, needed to recapitalize our
armed forces.
All of which brings me to my final point: the danger today
is that with the chronic under-funding of our core defense
capabilities, we will slip into a posture of strategic
retrenchment through inadvertence. In this respect, one of the
virtues of the report is that it does not hide the strategic
implications of its cuts, raising at the end a very different
vision for American grand strategy from what has been.
By my lights, it is a path I would prefer we not take. I do
not think we should let go of a strategy that has, among other
things, successfully prevented destructive wars between the
great powers, and helped shape an international order which,
for all its problems, remains relatively stable. No doubt it
has cost the American taxpayer a lot to maintain, but the
benefits we have gotten in return in terms of general peace,
expansion of democratic rule around the globe, and our own
prosperity I believe are benefits that are far greater.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Schmitt follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Dr. Schmitt.
Dr. Adams.
STATEMENT OF GORDON ADAMS
Dr. Adams. Thank you very much, Chairman Tierney,
Congressman Flake. I appreciate the opportunity to testify
here. One of the advantages, of course, of coming last is that
everybody has already said the things I was going to say, but,
of course, not everybody has said them, so I will try to be
brief.
I want to make three very simple points and introduce my
testimony for the record, as you indicated, Mr. Chairman.
Simple point No. 1 is the Defense Department is now facing
a planning crisis that it has not yet fully anticipated and is
not yet ready to cope with what is going to hit it. All
budgets, in fact all planning in the Federal Government, is
resource constrained, so we cannot sit here and say we totally
want the force that we want to have and we want it to do what
we want it to do independent of resources. It has always been
resource-constrained and this week, of course, Congress is
beginning the process of marking up appropriations for fiscal
year 2011, which is going to constrain, among other things,
defense from the administration's request.
But even that constraint doesn't begin to cope with the
tidal waves that are hitting the Department of Defense over the
next 2 or 3 years and over the next decade, which all of you in
Congress are going to have to deal with.
The tidal waves take two forms. Tidal wave No. 1, which has
been amply discussed here, is the tidal wave of deficits and
debt. At historically high shares of gross domestic product
and, frankly, with forecasts for debt and those deficits that
are still quite optimistic compared to what we may encounter as
Congress works through the fiscal agenda over the next few
years.
Second tidal wave hitting defense is that we are, in fact,
at some point not too distant future pulling back from Iraq,
pulling back from Afghanistan, which means that the public
willingness to tolerate extremely high and unprecedented high
levels of defense spending is going to weaken and go away. That
is the natural course of things.
Now, we have been to this movie before. We were at this
movie from 1985 to 1998. From 1985, when deficit reduction
began, through 1998, overall national defense outlays fell 20
percent in constant dollars. DOD budgets fell 36 percent in
constant dollars over that period of time.
What caused that change? Step one, a major attention of
Congress and the White House to deficits and debt reduction.
Step No. 2, the end of the cold war, where the major strategic
planning scenario that undergirded our defense budget
disappeared.
Combining those two things, starting with the first Bush
administration, those things went down, the force structure
shrank by a third, 50 percent cut in constant dollars in
procurement budgets, and lots of program kills, most of them
begun under the Bush administration. But that is what happens
as the cycle of defense changes and as the politics of the
globe change.
So we are heading for another one of those periods in our
history, and you in Congress are going to have to cope with it.
The department is not yet there.
Second point I want to make is the tried and true way of
achieving savings, some of which have been mentioned in
testimony so far, are inadequate to cope with this decline. In
fact, we have created pressures for upward growth in defense
budgets over the last decade, and strength has grown, not
shrunk, and strength determines a lot of where the budget is
going. Personnel costs have been growing faster than personnel
costs in the economy as a whole. The retirement costs for the
Department of Defense personnel have grown. Health care has
grown at a faster rate than Medicare costs have grown.
Overhead has grown, meaning the tail is now becoming larger
than the tooth. Operations and maintenance costs grow
inexorably at 2\1/2\ percent per year, and that seems to not
change regardless of party, administration, or era. And
acquisition reform, much-touted acquisition reform, currently
is really, frankly, a recycling of ideas we have dealt with
before. Acquisition reform keeps proving to be a mirage, and it
is a mirage, frankly, because in the acquisition system the
incentives are wrong.
It is not just a question of requirements. If services have
to buy in to get systems at an affordable budget, they will buy
in at a cheaper cost than they project the system to cost. If
contractors have to buy in in order to win a contract, they
will buy in at a cheaper cost than the system turns out to
cost. So the incentive structure makes acquisition reform an
uphill battle.
The third point I want to make, I think that Secretary
Gates, who is trying to protect 1 percent real growth in
defense budgets, is actually fighting a losing battle, and the
key to now constraining defense is going to be in mission
discipline. Sadly, the Quadrennial Defense Review did not
execute mission discipline. It simply layered missions on top
of each other without setting priorities and without
calculating the risks of the various missions and the risks
that we, as a Nation, are prepared to tolerate.
I can associate myself with many of the comments that have
been made about mission, but I think we are at a point in
American history where a serious baseline discussion of
strategy and mission is an essential part of how we approach
defense planning and defense forces.
The bottom line here has to do with looking seriously at
counter-terror missions and whether they should have been
fenced; looking at the counter-insurgency stabilization and
nation-building missions, we don't draw the wrong lessons from
Iraq and Afghanistan; looking carefully at how many nations in
the world we want to build partner capacity in; ensuring that
we maintain deterrence, alliance, support in conventional war
in what is one of the safest periods in our national security
history; and, finally, in looking seriously at re-balancing the
tool kit so we, in fact, do more strategic planning with
civilian agencies, we make governance stabilization and
reconstruction, civilian not military missions, and reinforce
our diplomacy.
Last point, I would urge the Congress to give serious
consideration to unifying the budget functions for defense and
foreign policy so we can make those kinds of tradeoffs.
So, in sum, defense budgets are resource constrained. The
current tools for dealing with those resource constraints are
inadequate. And, indeed, as was said earlier on this panel, I
think it was Mr. Friedman who said it, spending cuts will drive
efficiencies. We have seen that before. I predict we will see
it again.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Adams follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Tierney. Well thank you very much, Dr. Adams, and thank
all of you for your testimony, written and verbal here today.
We are going to go to our question period here, 5 minutes
per member, and I am going to start, but I think it is a great
jumping off point from Dr. Adams' comments, which were
reflected in some of the other testimony here. I don't know
that we really have a budget in the Department of Defense. It
seems to me we just spend whatever we think we want to spend.
I think the last comment about piling on mission on top of
mission just seems to be going, and if we have a weakness in
our civilian capacities, then we ask the military to take that
on. That is not to say they are not good at it, they are not
willing to do it, or they are not well intentioned, but it
sometimes seems out of line for what they really are proposed
to do and designed to do on that.
So let me ask this generally: if we were to concentrate
just on making the military that we have more efficient,
getting rid of some waste, fraud, and abuse, are we all pretty
much in agreement that would be a far less significant savings
than if we really took a look at the mission and took a look at
just how we structure it, what are the purposes of the mission
of the Department of Defense? Do we have any disagreement on
that? Dr. Schmitt, do you disagree with that?
Dr. Schmitt. No, absolutely not. I mean, I think the best
you can expect out of efficiency of any government organization
is probably 5 percent, and that is even hard to do.
Mr. Tierney. That is a big number. I mean, if we can get 5
percent we would be pretty happy.
Dr. Schmitt. Well, that is the golden apple. I wouldn't
count on it, either.
Mr. Tierney. We are trying. We have a lot of hearings and
design on that.
The other part is I would suspect that we have to worry
about efficiencies and a budget within the Department of
Defense, but as policymakers we ought to also look at what the
Department of Defense budget is within our overall budget on
that basis and take a look at it. I think a number of you have
testified that you think that there is a situation here where
what is spent in the military is material to the overall debt
picture, except, Dr. Schmitt, you quoted somebody in your
testimony saying that they didn't think that the defense
spending was material at all to the overall debt picture. Is
that a position you endorse?
Dr. Schmitt. No, not technically. I mean, look, it
obviously would help to cut defense spending, but I also think
that the cost for the kinds of cuts that have been proposed by
the task force will raise larger questions about the ultimate
cost to the country. So on the whole I would say the real
problem fiscally, yes, defense cuts would help fiscally, but
not substantially, and the real issue is the entitlement
programs.
Dr. Adams. Mr. Chairman, could I comment briefly?
Mr. Tierney. Yes, I would like someone to comment on that.
Dr. Adams. Defense has obviously played a role. The largest
single source of spending growth over the past decade in the
Federal Government has obviously been on the mandatory side. On
the discretionary side, the defense budget has absorbed
something like two-thirds of the overall increase in
discretionary spending. That has been driven in large part by
war costs, the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan. So there is no
question that it has contributed to our deficit.
Interestingly, national defense has an over 19 percent
share of all fiscal year 2010 Federal spending, which is the
same as Social Security, and it is 3 percent higher than of all
means tested entitlement programs combined. Now, that excludes
Social Security because that is not means tested, but if you
look at mean tested programs, defense is obviously--there is a
kind of a third to third to third piece here in terms of
overall spending.
Clearly, from the spending side of the equation, what
Congress faces and what I think anybody seriously addressing
deficit reduction or debt control faces is how do you put all
the pieces on the table at the same time.
Since 1985 to 1998, the period I mentioned earlier, what
clearly made deficit reduction possible, because people
disagree on where the cuts ought to come, was when that deficit
exercise, starting with Gramm-Rudman-Hollings in 1985, put all
pieces of first discretionary spending on the table and then,
with the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, put discretionary,
mandatory, and revenues on the table with both caps and pay-go.
Those two things in the 1990's combined with a healthy
economy, which we don't have right now, were enough to drive us
into surplus by the end of the decade. If we even made some
progress of that kind, it would be a good thing for the
economy. The problem that we have is that you can't get
agreement, I believe, here in Congress unless all those pieces
are on the table, and that is going to inevitably involve the
administration, as well.
So if you want to do it, you have to do it with everything
on the table.
Mr. Tierney. And I think that is indicative of this day, I
don't think there are a lot of competing hearings out there
necessarily, but I am struck by the lack of attention to this
particular subject. It is as if people don't want to deal with
it or don't want to go there on that.
Mr. Conetta, do you see some value in our national Social
Security and whether or not our seniors are secure in their
retirement, whether or not people have health care, whether or
not they have an opportunity for education, and whether or not
we, in fact, have job training and research and development,
things like that? How does that play into our national security
structure?
Mr. Conetta. There has been a lot of interesting work done,
analyses of our operations in war, of our success in war.
Stephen Biddle, an analyst with the Council on Foreign
Relations, has produced a number of reports looking at why we
won so well, for instance, in the first Persian Gulf War.
Often, the assumption is that we win because of our
technology, and what he demonstrates, I think pretty
convincingly, is that it is not that. We win because of a
combination of our technology, our training, our people, our
capacity to work as a team.
The point I am getting at here is that I think people are
the most important part of our armed forces. We have a
volunteer military, and we are able to fill it with quality
people. Why is that possible for us and not as possible for
other nations? I think part of the answer is that we, as a
Nation, pay attention to the health, the education, and the
welfare of our people, so certainly that is a contributor, a
factor in our ability to put together the military we do.
I think that is the type of thinking we need to approach
this. We need to approach it from that perspective. We need a
holistic approach, and to understand that many of the benefits
are indirect but they are real.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much.
Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. Thank you. Thank you all. That was very, very
enlightening.
Mr. Harrison, you mentioned that one of the problems we
have in cost is requirements keep getting piled on to weapons
systems. Can you explain a little further on that? How does
that raise cost, and what can we do to remedy that?
Mr. Harrison. Well, what happens on acquisition programs is
one of the services gets together and says we need some new
weapons system to fill a capability gap, and then it goes up
for review. The other services get their chance, their hack at
it. The combat commanders get to look at it. The more people
look at it, the more people touch it, they start adding more
and more requirements to it. Even once the system begins
development, people will look at it again and say, oh, well,
now that I understand it better I would like it to do X or Y or
Z, and you end up with a program that just keeps growing and
growing and growing.
Every requirement you add adds cost. And even once you have
added a requirement, if you try to take that requirement out it
may also add cost. So the discipline in acquisition system is
important, that people have to be willing to say, OK, here's
the weapons system we are going to build, here are the
capabilities that it really needs to have, and we are going to
take our hands off of it and let industry built it under the
contract that we have given them, and then we will take
delivery of it.
But too often we have these program offices that stay in
the loop, and all these other different bodies that review
requirements at every acquisition milestone, and it just keeps
opening up the door every time for people to add more to it,
and the costs just start to grow.
Mr. Flake. Thank you.
Mr. Friedman, you seem not very confident that we can
decrease defense spending by realigning the mission or
reevaluating our objectives, but rather we should impose
spending cuts and then let that define the mission. Is that
accurate, or----
Mr. Friedman. I am confident that having less ambitious
missions would cut spending. I am not confident that efficiency
gains would reap a lot of savings.
My view is that there are a lot of efficiency gains to be
had; the problem is that there is no free lunch politically. I
mean, the requirements process, these weapons get a lot of
requirements because the services have various constituencies
that want things from them. A destroyer does a lot of things,
and there are a lot of people in the Navy who want something
from a destroyer, and it is hard to deal with that. Similarly,
the commissaries, everybody knows that you can save a lot of
money on the commissaries, but the people going to the
commissaries really like the discounts that they are getting at
the commissaries. It is basically a benefit.
So I don't disagree that you can't save money on that; I
disagree that you can save money on that without political
pain.
Shipyards are another big one. I mean, we have too many
shipyards. You close some shipyards, you can cut overhead costs
on procurement of ships, but nobody wants to close a shipyard
because those are big employers.
So my point is just that it is very hard to do.
Mr. Flake. I am from Arizona. We can close a lot of
shipyards with no problem at all.
Mr. Conetta.
Mr. Conetta. The reform impulse during the 1990's was
fairly strong, at least on the political end, but it isn't how
we achieved savings during that period. The principal savings
were achieved first by reductions in structure because of the
end of the cold war, and then, because we were able to cascade
so much of the equipment that had been modernized during the
Reagan era into the Clinton era, so we in a sense got a free
ride.
The idea of or the impetus for increased efficiencies
during that period was to answer the question: how do we now
increase modernization spending again without losing the peace
dividend? How are we going to be able to do that? And so the
answer was we are going to find all these efficiencies in a
wide variety of ways. Many of them never really went forward.
They were going against a resistant medium. Some of them did,
and the most successful was the BRAC process, which,
incidentally, took a lot of the decisionmaking power out of the
Pentagon and out of the political process, and that helped a
great deal. But even there the net savings probably didn't
amount in the end to more than 3 or 4 percent of the total
budget.
Part of the problem here, as others have pointed out, is
that there is a resistant median, and what one really needs, I
think, is to be able to approach the topic from the perspective
that these cuts must occur, that the cuts are our premise, and
from that point forward you have to find out how to apply them.
That wasn't the case then, and eventually what happened was
we had to rebound the budget in order to feed modernization,
but it needs to be our premise in the future.
Mr. Flake. Thank you.
One more question. Dr. Schmitt, you mentioned that there
are areas of savings that we can find, I think you said in
personnel and what not, from the report that has been issued.
What other areas, other than personnel cost, overhead,
retirement, in terms of acquisition or wherever, where do you
see savings that can be had?
Dr. Schmitt. I think it is a real difficulty when they are
in the report talking about cutting force structure, because I
think force structure is the bone that is left after the
administration has really cut $300 billion already from future
programs. So we are getting close to we have to make a
decision. Do we really want to cut force structure? I go back
to my original point, which is that this is a force structure,
more or less that several administrations, Democratic and
Republican, have agreed on. So I think there is efficiencies.
Look, TriCare has to be adjusted. The health care benefits are
driving up O&M. So those are real issues. There are other
things that can be done.
I would look at, for example, there are overseas bases that
probably can be reduced in numbers, but I don't think it gets
you anywhere close to the kinds of savings that maybe we in
Congress would like, or Congress would like to fix the fiscal
problem that we face.
I just want to sort of go back to one thing that Gordon
said, which is he noted that 19 percent of Federal outlays go
to defense now. Well, 19 percent is basically what it was when
he was at OMB. Federal outlays for defense have not grown
inordinately, and the truth is the Obama administration will
take the defense outlays down to around 15 percent in a few
years. So if I had to step back from this, I would say that the
problem isn't defense, it is these other issues.
Mr. Flake. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Welch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Welch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you and the
ranking member, Mr. Frank and Mr. Paul, for their leadership on
this.
There are two issues as I hear your testimony. One is just
trying to cull the budget and look at where you can get
efficiencies, and that has been something that various
Congresses have attempted to do. You have identified some
places for savings, like perhaps the benefits. I think, Dr.
Adams, you indicated that a lot of the procurement reforms are
a rehash. But then the second area, which is probably more
promising for savings, is examining the force structure and the
mission. That is a debate Congress has not yet had.
It seems as though there has been an acceptance in
Congress, whether explicit or implicit, that one of the
responsibilities of our military is now, in fact, to take on
the challenge of nation building, and in order also to
accomplish that goal we outsource a very substantial component
of the effort. We have 100,000 troops or so in Afghanistan, and
100,000 contractors.
So I would like to just hear briefly from each of you as to
what precise elements of a policy could you recommend we focus
on that would achieve savings. There was discussion about
nation building. There was discussion about the question of
force structure.
I will start with you, Mr. Harrison.
Mr. Harrison. If you are looking for larger savings, I
think that you are correct that the place to achieve large
savings is in changing the type of weapons systems we buy and
altering our force structure, reducing the force structure in
certain areas.
Not to stray too far outside of my expertise as a budget
guy, but if you look at our threat environment around the
world, I think it is true that threats have diminished somewhat
in Europe, so maybe we could draw back some of our forces from
there. With Asia I am not so sure. I see good arguments on
either side of that, that threats might be rising or that they
might be balanced by some of our allies that are in that
region. But I think if you are going to make these cuts you
don't want to cut force structure or weapons systems just for
the purpose of achieving savings.
Mr. Welch. Dr. Schmitt, do you have any comments on that? I
only have 5 minutes.
Dr. Schmitt. I understand. I think you have raised the
right issue, which is that we were talking about the kinds of
decisions that have to be made if we really want to sort of cut
deficits and use the defense budget to really participate in
reducing the deficits. You are going to be talking about
cutting force structure in substantial ways, which is bound to
have--and I think one of the things about the report that is
most honest is that it calls for different kinds of a grand
strategy.
I personally wouldn't go that route. I think it is more
dangerous over the long term. But it is absolutely the question
that should be on the table, and I think, frankly, it is the
question that we haven't debated over the last several years.
So this hearing, in fact, is really useful in that regard,
because it raises the key issue.
Mr. Welch. Dr. Adams.
Dr. Adams. Yes. Thank you, Congressman, for asking that
question because I do think it is the essential question here.
There is no particular magic in a force structure number. Dr.
Schmitt has been referring to the fact that all these
administrations have agreed on a force structure number. Well,
the reality is circumstances change and force structure
requirements change as those circumstances change. So when the
cold war ended, we took a force that was 2.2 million down to
1.4 million over a period of 4 or 5 years because circumstances
had changed.
So the real question we have to ask ourselves is: have
circumstances changed? What is the lesson, if there is a
lesson, of Iraq and Afghanistan? What is the lesson of
terrorism? What is the mission of the military forces that
emerged from those lessons and the circumstances in the world?
Let me make just three points. One is overall the United
States faces right now today no existential threat, completely
different circumstance from the cold war. Right? We are, in
fact, living in a safer world.
Point No. 2, the volume, rate, and lethality of conflict
around the world has gone down over the past 20 years, not up.
As a consequence, the challenges that we face that might even
involve our forces are less than what they once were.
No. 3, if the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that the
U.S. military has an expanded function for fighting terrorists,
countering terrorist organizations, arming other countries,
training their security forces, fighting insurgencies--not sure
where they are, but fighting insurgencies on a global basis--
and nation building, that is the set of missions that need to
have a very, very hard scrub by the Congress of the United
States.
There is a cottage industry at DOD today, a cottage
industry supported right now by this administration that would
have that mission set for the department expand rather than
contract. That I think is the critical circumstance that
Congress needs to look at today in threat terms, in capability
terms, in mission terms, in seeking a much more standardized
and shrunk American military force.
Mr. Welch. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Welch.
Mr. Luetkemeyer.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was kind of struck with some of the discussion we just
had here. I think sometimes we can be penny wise and security
foolish if we forget about the purpose of the military, which
is our No. 1 duty as Congressmen, to protect and defend our
country and the Constitution.
So I am curious. Some of the cuts and things that you
suggested, Mr. Friedman, how is that going to impact our
ability to stage operations around the world if we close down
some bases in certain areas?
Mr. Friedman. Well, logistically certainly it is helpful if
you want to have a war in Europe to have bases in Europe. The
same goes for Asia. So we are not saying that there is no----
Mr. Luetkemeyer. With all due respect, I know that we have
a big hospital base in Germany right now that tends to a lot of
our men and women who come from Iraq and Afghanistan who are
injured. Are you saying we need to move that or do something
different?
Mr. Friedman. I wouldn't recommend closing that while we
are still sending wounded people from Iraq or after there. In
the future, after those wars are over, I think I would
recommend doing that, along with bringing all our bases from
Europe back, because I don't think there is much in Europe that
requires U.S. military forces.
My argument, going back to the last question, is not
necessarily that there are no threats left in these regions or
never will be. My argument is that there are other nations,
wealthy ones, in those regions that are perfectly capable of
defending themselves when those threats arise.
Sure, there is some risk associated with not having troops
in the places where I would like to not have troops, but there
is also a risk with having them there in terms of the cost that
comes through the force structure of having those missions, and
there is a risk associated with participating in a war that
maybe we could avoid.
So I think there is danger on both sides.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. How do you think that makes us vulnerable?
Mr. Friedman. Which part of it?
Mr. Luetkemeyer. What are the vulnerabilities if you cut
back on things like that?
Mr. Friedman. I'm sorry?
Mr. Luetkemeyer. How do you make us more vulnerable?
Mr. Friedman. How do I make us more----
Mr. Luetkemeyer. Yes. Don't you think you make us more
vulnerable by doing some of those things?
Mr. Friedman. I think having forces in places where we
don't necessarily need to be, because we don't need to
participate in a war there because a host country has the
capability to do it themselves makes us more vulnerable because
I would like to avoid fighting in wars that we could avoid.
Wars are dangerous and bad things. They are very costly. So
that is the sense in which I mean that. And I think they make
us more vulnerable because we have to maintain force structure
associated with those missions, which is very costly.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. I know that I am speaking of more than
just the bases, themselves. I am talking about all of the
military operations, all of the equipment that they have. I am
very familiar with a young man, for instance, who flies an F-16
that is 22 years old, broke down twice while he was in
Afghanistan and again on the way home. I certainly would not
want to curtail his ability to have a piece of equipment that
he is safe in and protect our men and women who are on the
ground with. I think that, again, we can be penny wise and
security foolish if we are not careful in how we do the
structure of the cuts you are talking about.
I am also curious. I saw, in listening to Secretary Clinton
last night, she had an interview and made the comment that
there was no intention of pulling out and continued to support
Afghanistan and Pakistani efforts. How do you see this playing
out, Dr. Schmitt?
Dr. Schmitt. I expect, if we are to be successful in
Afghanistan, that the reductions that are being talked about in
2011 will be very minimal and the likelihood of actually having
a substantial number of forces in Afghanistan for an extended
period are quite high.
The difficulty with counterinsurgencies is you simply need
boots on the ground. They succeed if you have enough boots on
the ground. Historically they succeed. If you don't have enough
boots on the ground, you won't succeed. But they do take time
and they do take resources, and then the question is: do you
want to put those resources in? And if you don't, then what are
the consequences for abandoning Afghanistan once again?
Mr. Luetkemeyer. Very quickly, how many of you have served
in the military? One. How many of you have members of the
family in the military right now? None.
Dr. Schmitt, just very quickly, do you think the concern
that we may have here or need to take into consideration, the
effect that it may have on our own economy if there is
instability in the world by not trolling activities around the
world that could impugn or impact us in a certain way?
Dr. Schmitt. Yes. One of the points I tried to make and
hopefully made in the statement, is that we have had a very
expensive global posture since the end of World War II. We have
had one since the end of the cold war. I think that has led to
general stability and prosperity around the world. It is very
costly, from the U.S. perspective, but on the whole it has
allowed us to grow economically and allowed our allies to grow
economically, and I think, in fact, in terms of the sort of
world order, the benefits outweigh the cost that we put into
it. There is no question that it is costly, but I think, again,
the benefits are much more there than not.
The second thing I would say is that we get used to that
order. We are used to traveling around the world without any
disruption. We are used to oil flowing from the Persian Gulf.
But remember the first Persian Gulf War? Just think what the
consequences of that if we did not have the sufficient troops
to push Saddham out of Kuwait.
These are things that we tend to assume are going to go on
in the absence of the security role that the United States
plays. I personally think that is a bad bet.
Mr. Luetkemeyer. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Lynch.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I also want to thank the witnesses for helping the
committee with its work.
Normally in the midst of two wars this is not the typical
time when we would grapple with reducing defense spending, but
I think the deficits and the financial situation requires us to
do so. We do have an opportunity now. In August our troop
deployment in Iraq will go from 165,000 down to 50,000, so
maybe it is an opportunity to re-balance and reassess some of
this.
After September 11th we saw a big shift from military
responsibilities and intelligence responsibilities going over
to the contractor side. As the chairman has said, a lot of us
on this committee have been over to Iraq. I have been over
there at least 12 times, Afghanistan and Pakistan probably
another 10 times. It is amazing the amount of responsibilities
that used to be core military or intelligence or State
Department functions that we have contracted out.
Now, the last couple of weeks we heard a report from
Secretary Gates, who said that when we hire a private
contractor to take over a responsibility that was formerly
performed by Government personnel, that we pay 25 percent more
to have that contractor do it. I think there is a real
opportunity for savings here, and I want to know, from your
standpoint, is this an area we are looking at where we are
paying that premium to have private contractors handle this?
I have heard it from everybody. I have heard it from
Treasury, I have heard it from USAID, I have heard it from the
military that these contractors are cleaning up and they are
making pretty hefty profits, and that is all at the cost of the
American taxpayer. We have to be smarter now and more
resourceful and more prudent with the way we are spending
money. Is this an area that we should be looking at, to reduce
those costs performed by contractors and have them, instead,
performed more efficiently and more cheaply by Government
personnel?
Dr. Adams. Mr. Congressman, could I tackle at least one cut
of that?
Mr. Lynch. Sure, that would be great.
Dr. Adams. I know others on the panel may want to, as well.
I think this contractor versus civil service versus uniform
is one of those areas where you might get certain kinds of
efficiencies, but you also pay certain kinds of costs. In other
words, the key issue for me really here remains mission. What
is it we are doing? And then who is responsible for doing it?
When I was at OMB, we did an awful lot of time working on
what they call Circular A-76 comparisons. Would it be cheaper
to contract it out? Would it be cheaper to do it in-house?
These are notoriously difficult calculations to make.
The short-term advantage of doing it with contractors is,
once the contract is done, the contractor can go away and you
don't assume responsibility for the contractor, so up front it
may cost you more dollar-for-dollar in the given year to do a
certain function with a contractor. Long-term, you are not
going to be invested in that contractor for life.
Mr. Lynch. And that is a great point, Dr. Adams, but we are
talking about core functions.
Dr. Adams. Absolutely.
Mr. Lynch. These functions are not going away.
Dr. Adams. No.
Mr. Lynch. So this is perpetual contracting. I am talking
about those functions, not something that is going to go away.
Dr. Adams. Absolutely. I am going straight there with you.
Mr. Lynch. OK.
Dr. Adams. This is just an analysis I am giving you right
now. On the do it on the government side, you can do it
probably more efficiently, although the cost comparisons tend
to be difficult because where you allocate wages and salaries,
when you do it on the government side of course you are
investing on somebody over a lifetime, which means it is not
just the direct costs up-front, it is the lifetime costs that
benefits the retirement pay and so on, so it makes these
comparisons very difficult to do.
The problem that I think we have gotten into is more
substantive than the issue of cost, and it is the question you
raise. We are now asking contractors to do things which ought
to be done under the inherently governmental function title by
public sector employees. if we do the sets of roles and
missions that we are doing currently, it is going to be
enormously expensive to acquire the government personnel to do
all of those, which is why the question of mission is tied to
the question of whether you do it by a contractor or in the
public sector. In other words, to have the right-sized force
you have two things you have to deal with. One is how much are
you asking people to do, and the second thing, which we haven't
talked about, is what is the relationship between your tooth
and your tail.
Historically, we have now something on the order of two-
thirds of the active duty military personnel actually involved
in tail not in tooth, and the ratio of combat forces to tail
has actually gotten worse over the past 50 years. It was closer
to 50/50 50 years ago. It is now about two-thirds/one-thirds
tail to tooth. So the other piece of managing this in the
government sector is not necessarily adding people, it is
redefining what people's jobs are and how much of a tail you
actually need as opposed to the tooth that you need up front.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Dr. Adams.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.
Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for calling this hearing. It has been a very interesting
and informative panel.
I don't have any questions. I just want to make a few
comments.
When you add up the regular military budget, the
supplemental, and emergency appropriations, the military
construction budget, the money that comes in at the end of the
year, anonymous bills, we are spending more on defense than all
the other countries in the world combined. As Mr. Conetta has
pointed out, a 96 percent increase just since 1998, about three
times the rate of inflation over that period.
Most people in the country, if you ask them, they will tell
you they are against massive foreign aid, but what they don't
realize is that we have turned the Department of Defense in the
last many years into the Department of Foreign Aid, because
most, or at least very much, of what the Defense Department
does is just pure nation building, which is another word for
foreign aid. We simply can't afford it.
I agree with Mr. Friedman that much of our interventionist
foreign policy that we followed over the last several years has
created great resentment around the world and has made
terrorism more likely instead of less likely.
When you sit and think about it and about what we have
gotten for over a trillion dollars now in Iraq and Afghanistan,
fighting against militaries or organizations like Al Qaeda, the
main anti-terrorism official in the U.N. said a few months ago
that Al Qaeda was now so small it was having trouble
maintaining credibility.
But we are fighting against organizations or militaries
with budgets of less than one-tenth of 1 percent of ours. And
these threats have been so greatly exaggerated. I voted for the
first Gulf War because I went to all those briefings and heard
all the generals and the people from the Defense Department and
the State Department tell how great the threat was and talk
about Saddam Hussein's elite troops. And then I saw those same
elite troops surrendering to CNN camera crews and empty tanks
and I realized then that the threat had been greatly
exaggerated, and it still has been over these last many years.
So what have we gotten for all this money? Last weekend we
had another suicide bomber in Iraq, 48 people killed. The
situation there is still just terrible.
Then I saw in the current issue of Newsweek Dr. Richard
Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he is
in favor--there has never been an intervention that he hasn't
favored, I suppose, but he wrote about Afghanistan. We are not
winning, it is not worth it. And he says in this article the
economic costs to the United States of sticking to the current
policy are on the order of $100 billion a year in economic
cost. The military price is also great, not just in lives and
material, but also in distraction from other potential
problems.
I was impressed with Mr. Harrison talking about the
personnel costs, because we have sent so many factories to
foreign countries, other countries over the last 30 years that
now for many young people in small towns and rural areas their
only way our or their greatest, the highest pay they can
receive is in the military, but we can't afford to keep
increasing the military pay and benefits like we have been,
especially when we are headed into a time when the entire
Federal budget is going to be taken up by Social Security and
Medicare and Medicaid and various pensions.
So I appreciate what most of these gentlemen are doing.
Most of the think tanks and others that favor increasing the
military budget at this point are supported by the Defense
contractors, and the Defense contractors hire all the retired
admirals and generals, and really what all this is about is
about money and power instead of any real threat to us. I am
just amazed that more conservative Republicans aren't awake. I
think some are awakening to this, because fiscal conservatives
should be the ones most horrified by what is going on here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. I appreciate it.
Ms. Chu.
Ms. Chu. Dr. Adams, you argue that U.S. involvement in Iraq
and Afghanistan have led to the abuse of the emergency
supplemental process, and actually funded defense spending that
is wholly unrelated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can
you explain how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have bloated
the non-war defense budget?
Dr. Adams. I am sorry. Could you say that again,
Congresswoman?
Ms. Chu. You have argued that----
Dr. Adams. I heard that, yes.
Ms. Chu. So can you explain how it has bloated the non-war
defense budget?
Dr. Adams. Yes. There are two principal ways in which the
supplementals and the war titles have been used over time in a
way that funds expenditures in the Department of Defense that
are not directly war related. One which is pretty visible is
putting into the supplemental budgets hardware, military
equipment, and procurement, that is unrelated to equipment
losses in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That has clearly been done. It was true of the
supplementals more than it has been true of the recent war
titles in the budgets, but every single war supplemental,
starting with the first one, has carried spending for equipment
that basically restocks inventories here at home or in
exercises for the military but is not replacing equipment lost
in Afghanistan or Iraq.
So one of the agreements that the new administration, the
Obama administration, when it came in, negotiated with the
Department of Defense was to restrict the uses of the
supplementals for purchasing equipment that ought to be in the
regular base equipment acquisition planning of the services.
There remains a gray area there, and the gray area is what is
called reconstitution, so I always urge the Congress to take a
very close look at what is called reset or reconstitution in
war titles and supplementals for equipment that really ought to
be funded through the base budget because it is in the long-
term plan for the services.
The other area that is more difficult to tease out is in
operations and maintenance, and about two-thirds of the
spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan falls in
operations and maintenance. This is the support for our troops
that are in the field. It is not their pay, but it is the
support services for the troops. Some of it is going to the
contractors we were talking about earlier.
The unique characteristic of operations and maintenance
funding in budgetary terms is its fungibility. That is to say,
money appropriated for operations and maintenance to the
departments and to the military services is essentially
fungible with any other money appropriated to operations and
maintenance, which means, from the services' point of view,
operations and maintenance funding, which is two-thirds of the
war, is funding that is also useful for their general
operations and maintenance and can easily be moved around
inside the service budget to fund operations and maintenance
requirements at home.
That area has not been sufficiently scrutinized by
Congress. It does constitute a significant addition of O&M
resources to the services.
Ms. Chu. You have also said that what we should learn from
Iraq and Afghanistan is that we do not need a military
capability of intervening globally in all conflicts and
disorder, and that we could prioritize missions that could
maintain or even enhance our national security at less cost
with smaller forces. Can you explain what kind of military
missions you have in mind, how it could work, considering the
threat of Al Qaeda?
Dr. Adams. Sure, and I know others on the panel may have
responses they want to give to that because they have talked
about the area of mission.
This is, I think, the fundamental issue. What is the role
and responsibility of the United States globally? What are the
challenges that we face? What is the role and mission of the
military in meeting those challenges? We don't often talk about
it that way, but defense forces are basically a support
function for our national security policy. They are not our
national security policy. They are a support function for it.
So the real question that I think we haven't addressed yet
but now need to urgently is: in the array of missions that we
have, which ones are most important to the security of the
United States, how much is the military role in carrying out
those missions? And how much force do we need to actually
execute those missions?
The most highly debatable area of mission right now today
is in this area of counter-insurgency, stabilization, nation-
building, counter-terrorism, and building partner capacity.
That whole envelope of missions is an area where defense
responsibilities have expanded enormously, and where the lesson
we seem to have drawn from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is
we now need to be prepared to do those missions on a global
basis.
There is no sustained analysis of that proposition. We have
excellent work on how to do counter-insurgency--80 percent of
it, by the way, is considered a civilian function in the
counter-insurgency manual--we have no analytical text that
tells us where, when, how, and why the United States is
responsible for those missions on a global basis and where we
are going to have to execute them.
So right now we have no analysis of that area of mission in
terms of policy and challenge that should tell us how many
forces we have, and I think that is highly questionable that
our national security is engaged every time there is a
terrorist attack, every country where there is an insurgent,
every country that has a fragile state, every country that has
a security sector.
Right now we have an open door on mission and an open door
on budgets without any analysis. If we turn that around and
take a hard, cold look at that area, I think we will discover
that we don't have as many areas where we need to conduct those
kinds of missions. We are not peculiarly well-suited in the
military to carry out governance reconstitution and so on, and
we don't have so many countries where we need to worry about
doing them.
Where that leads me is to say we can take a step back in
that area of mission and we can look seriously at our civilian
capacities in the government to execute those parts of those
missions that involve governance and economic development,
which is the long-term responsibility that we and many other
countries and international organizations have, but involve
substantially less commitment of military force, certainly not
on a global basis.
We then return to missions that others have talked about
here, which have more to do with the traditional functions of
the military--deterrence, allied reassurance, conventional
warfare--and a niche set of missions that may involve the
military part of counter-terrorism, humanitarian operations,
non-emergency evacuation operations, and the like where we can
tailor a force that I would suggest is considerably smaller
than the force that we have today. It would be more efficient
and more sculpted to do those kinds of missions.
So, in a very brief description, that is how I would
approach the question of missions.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Dr. Adams. Thank you, Ms. Chu.
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I didn't get to hear everyone's testimony. I assume Dr.
Schmitt is not, and frankly I wouldn't be either, but how many
of the rest of the panel are supportive of a freeze to defense
spending or a cut to freeze over an extended period of time,
which would in essence be a cut? Who on the panel supports that
step? We will go down the line: freeze or reduction? Doctor, do
you support that?
Mr. Harrison. For me it depends. It depends on what changes
we are making in the missions that we are willing for our
military to support and what risks we are willing to take.
Mr. Jordan. OK. I didn't want to speak for you, Dr.
Schmitt, but I assume that is where you are, just a blanket cap
or freeze.
Dr. Schmitt. No, I wouldn't support that.
Mr. Jordan. OK. Dr. Adams.
Dr. Adams. Definitely support.
Mr. Jordan. Yes or no?
Dr. Adams. Sorry, definitely support it.
Mr. Jordan. Definitely support it. Now, three and a half, I
guess, who supported the cap, would you support the same type
of approach to every other agency in the government--Department
of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Education, up and down
the line?
Mr. Friedman. It depends. We have to talk agency-by-agency.
I can't speak for every agency, so we have to go one at a time.
Mr. Jordan. OK.
Mr. Conetta. I think that, given our current circumstance,
we should start with the premise of proportionate cuts. We
should determine what types of deficit reduction. We need to
begin with proportionate cuts as a premise and go from there. I
don't think we end up with proportionate cuts. That becomes a
question of matching needs to budget.
Mr. Jordan. OK.
Mr. Harrison. I think the spending freeze on non-security-
related discretionary spending that is in the President's
budget this year, I think that is a good thing.
Mr. Jordan. OK. Dr. Schmitt, would you agree?
Dr. Schmitt. Freeze and/or cuts.
Dr. Adams. Definitely support it. I worked for 5 years in
the Clinton administration in OMB, and one of the most
effective tools for both the executive branch and the Congress
in dealing with deficit reductions was caps and pay-go. They
enforced an incredible discipline on every element of the
government.
Mr. Jordan. Let's cut to the chase then. I have introduced
the only balanced budget in Congress. Our budget does this.
Frankly, until you do that, you don't force Congressmen to do
the work we should have been doing all along: finding out which
programs work, which ones are stupid, which ones are redundant,
what makes sense, what doesn't make sense.
So it seems to me we should have some kind of cap, but I
wouldn't say on defense, I would say on the overall budget
because, frankly, as Mr. Luetkemeyer pointed out in his
questioning, defense is where we are supposed to spend taxpayer
dollars. It is everything else that is, according to Robert
Rector at Heritage Foundation, it is the 71 different means-
tested social welfare programs we have which, when you add
State dollars and tax dollars from the State and Federal
actually are more than national defense, so there is a whole
host of areas that we should be focused on.
How many on the panel would support an overall spending
limit, some percentage of GDP, would support that kind of
concept in our budgeting process? We will go down the line
again.
Mr. Conetta. Yes. You mean with regard to the entire
budget, or with regard to defense, a cap?
Mr. Jordan. I am talking overall budget. I mean, it is the
problem.
Mr. Conetta. I don't think it is wise to----
Mr. Jordan. We start with a $3 trillion deficit we have,
the $13 trillion national debt we have. It is the overall
budget, yes.
Mr. Conetta. Yes. I don't think we should ever go to
deciding that any portion of government spending or government
as a whole should be tied to any particular GDP figure. So no,
don't tie it to GDP.
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Friedman.
Mr. Conetta. You need to make a determination----
Mr. Jordan. I need to go quick. Mr. Friedman.
Mr. Friedman. Yes. I support that, not indefinitely but
sure, this year, next year, yes.
Mr. Jordan. OK.
Mr. Harrison. I would not support it for the overall budget
for the simple fact that we have some things in there like
Social Security benefits that have already been promised that
are growing. Net interest on the national debt is rapidly
growing in the budget. I think you have to look. Spending is
only one side of the equation. I think you have to also look at
the other side of the equation as revenues.
Mr. Jordan. And I am going to get to the other side in a
second if I get time.
Go ahead, Dr. Schmitt.
Dr. Schmitt. I would support it.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. Dr. Adams.
Dr. Adams. I support caps for discretionary spending, pay-
go for mandatory spending. I would not take any part of the
Federal budget, including defense, to a share of GDP.
Mr. Jordan. It seems to me the one thing we need, in
addition to doing this, putting limits and going through the
exercise of figuring out what works, what doesn't, and getting
spending under control, the one thing we really need more than
anything to deal with our budget situation is growth. So give
me your thoughts. You guys probably guess where I come from on
the growth side, but we need to have the right kind of tax
policy, the right kind of regulatory policy if we are going to
have economic growth.
You talk about the years where we actually balanced the
budget and started running surpluses. It is because we had
sustained and strong economic growth in this country and,
frankly, we are not having it now. I would argue the policies
that Congress and the administration have been pursuing are
making it difficult to get the kind of economic growth we need
to deal with our budget situation long-term. So your thoughts
on that quickly and then I will be done, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Conetta. Well, I think one thing for sure, looking
back, I mean, this is not my area of expertise, how to feed
productivity growth. But one thing we can say for sure is that
much of the growth that we thought we had in the mid- and late
1990's turned out to be a castle of sand, which we are now
paying for through our debt. So we obviously need a different
approach to how to feed and stimulate our economy than the one
that was present at that time. It wasn't just a government
question. It was a question of credit and wealth building in
the country, as a whole. It was built on speculation.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Conetta.
Mr. Frank, you are recognized.
Mr. Frank. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this
hearing. And I thank all the witnesses.
We need a thoughtful, non-rancorous discussion about the
appropriate mission, and I thank all the panelists for the
spirit in which we have it. That is the key issue: what should
we be doing? What is the policy we should be setting? And we
have not had that conversation, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman,
for providing this forum for this continuing conversation.
I do want to add just one thing. I know there was a
question raised about who served in the military. I think we
ought to be very clear. Let me volunteer that I did not serve
in the military. I wasn't wanted. I actually did try to line
myself in once, but they didn't need me at the time in 1960,
and then subsequently I guess there is no point in trying to go
where you are not wanted.
But the question of whether or not you served in the
military is very relevant to how we should conduct military
operations. It is not relevant to whether we should conduct
particular operations. That is what this is about. The mission
is not about how you fight a war. When we do put our people
into war, then I want to be guided by their judgments and I
want to give them all that we can. That is why war is very
expensive for us, because you don't send our young people into
war.
All of us here on this rostrum have had the terrible
experience of going to a funeral of a young man or woman killed
in these wars, and so that means you spend it. But whether or
not you get involved, no, that is not a matter of military
expertise. We honor the military's expertise when they get
engaged.
Second, I would say this. Dr. Schmitt, I was a little
surprised to hear you say that one of the big arguments for
this is that is the way it has always been, or for a long time,
that there has been a bipartisan consensus. Frankly, I had
thought of the American Enterprise Institute as being somewhat
more transformational in its approach. The notion that because
we had always done this in a bipartisan way as one argument for
continuing to do it I think is mistaken. It would certainly
argue against your suggestion that we seriously alter
entitlement policy. Social Security has an equally long
bipartisan history, and no one I know thinks that, frankly--I
mean, I think that is the kind of argument people throw in that
doesn't really motivate them, whether that is the way it has
always been.
But I would ask you, Dr. Schmitt, in terms of your view
that the military has been denied funding it should have
ideally gotten, what in the last 10 years or so would be
examples of where we were unable to accomplish a valid national
security goal because we lacked the military resources to do
it?
Dr. Schmitt. I think we have been able to accomplish those
goals, but it has been extremely close run. Let me give you an
example when it comes to, for example, the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Mr. Frank. All right. I appreciate it, but you suggested to
me that there was a shortfall.
Dr. Schmitt. There is.
Mr. Frank. Yes.
Dr. Schmitt. There is a shortfall, which others can talk to
here as well as I can. There is a shortfall in replacing,
recapitalizing the----
Mr. Frank. OK, but I asked you a specific question. We have
paid no price for that yet.
Dr. Schmitt. We have paid no price for that yet.
Mr. Frank. OK. I would say, in my view, I can find some
resources, the Iraqi situation. Frankly, I think it almost
doesn't honor fully the military goal. I am told we are going
to keep 50,000 troops in there, but they are not going to be
combat troops.
First of all, I think there is some fudging there, because
they do, I think shooting and being shot at, I don't know how
you define combat, but it does seem to me the people there are
doing that. Continuing to keep people there makes no sense to
me, but that is an example. If you leave the mission as it is,
then you can argue for more.
I also wanted to comment on another important point that
was made, Gordon Adams made, and others. Here I think some of
my liberal friends may be a little bit inconsistent in over-
emphasizing the extent to which you can reduce spending by
simply getting rid of fraud, waste, and abuse. There has never
been a budget item I have seen that said fraud, waste, and
abuse which you could zero out.
We talk about fat. Metaphors mislead us. Yes, there is fat
in every human enterprise, and especially in some public
enterprises, but it is not layered, it is marbled. You can't
just slice it off at the edges. It is deeply involved. That is
why I do believe that the most effective way to enforce
efficiency is to put limits on spending, not flat caps, but to
let people know there are limits, because imposing efficiency
from the outside is very difficult. Incentivizing efficiencies
from within is what happens.
I think one of our problems has been that the Pentagon has
in general and the national security has in general been less
subject to budgetary discipline, and because less subject to
budgetary discipline less efficient.
Just one last question, again for Dr. Schmitt. I think we
are over-extended. I would ask you to evaluate, because clearly
the missions you talk about, oil from the Persian Gulf, it
doesn't just come to the United States. In fact, we get more of
our oil, I think, from other places. Do you believe that our
wealthy western European allies are contributing sufficiently
to the common purposes that we have?
Dr. Schmitt. No.
Mr. Frank. What can we do to do that? I think here is the
problem. I agree with that. Well, no is a very good answer. Not
everybody has to hedge everything around here. But the point is
this: I think we are the enablers of that. There was a very
interesting article in the New York Times a month ago about how
the Europeans were able to afford more in some areas of their
budget because we carry them.
What would you think we should do if you agree that they
are not doing enough? Is there anything we can do to get them
to do more, because clearly if they did more couldn't we do
less?
Dr. Schmitt. Yes, we could do less, but I would add that
they are doing quite a bit. There are tens of thousands of
allied troops in Afghanistan that have----
Mr. Frank. Excuse me. How many NATO, non-American troops
are in Afghanistan?
Dr. Schmitt. Thirty-five thousand, forty thousand.
Mr. Frank. Compared to what of us?
Dr. Schmitt. Fifty thousand now, up to----
Mr. Frank. And in Iraq?
Dr. Schmitt. In Iraq, originally about a third of the
force----
Mr. Frank. Originally, but you said first that you don't
think they were doing enough.
Dr. Schmitt. Let me be clear: yes, the allies could do
more. I have my doubts that if we reduce our posture in the
world and reduce our own budget substantially, as the task
force suggests, that we will, in fact, get more from our
allies.
Mr. Frank. Let me ask you that, though, because I think
that, I mean, what do you know that they don't know? After all,
excuse me, I want to phrase this question. There is, you say, a
common purpose with our European allies. There are missions
that have to be accomplished, fighting terrorism. I wish you
could fight terrorism with nuclear submarines, because then we
would win, because we have more nuclear submarines than they
have. Unfortunately, I don't think that much of what we spend
helps us. I don't think the political part is a lack of
ordnance, a lack of weaponry.
But, given that they have the same interests we have, why,
if we did it with less, would they not do more? Would they say,
oh, well, Persian Gulf, can't get the ships out, tough? Why
would they not be incentivized if we stopped carrying them to
do some more?
Dr. Schmitt. There are free rider problems with the allies,
but it is not as severe as sometimes people say. I repeat that
if we cut back our forces, it is not as though, because of
their own budget, the way they have handled their own budgets,
toward which we are heading, they have less flexibility for
actually increasing defense.
Mr. Frank. Are they dumb? Would they endanger the shipping
lanes, the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Morocco or whatever
that I hear about? I mean, are they suicidal, the Europeans?
Why would they not want to defend themselves if we stopped, cut
back?
Dr. Schmitt. Secretary Gates made the point a few months
ago, talking about the NATO strategic review, and he said
unless the NATO partners begin to up the ante in terms of
defense spending the strategic review won't be worth the paper
that it is written on. I agree with that. I am just saying----
Mr. Frank. Would you add a threat that we would withdraw
somewhat from western Europe to let them do some more on their
own?
Dr. Schmitt. No. We have withdrawn from western Europe. The
amount of troops that we have there is fairly minimal. It is
there for logistics and for use because logistics is easier to
go from Europe to the Middle East than----
Mr. Frank. Let me ask you one last question. The 15,000
Marines on Okinawa, which, of course, destabilized the Japanese
Government by our insisting on them, I have assumed, and I
think we should have sea power and air power available with
regard to the People's Republic of China. Is there a
contemplation that we are going to use 15,000 Marines in any
kind of land war involving the People's Republic of China?
Dr. Schmitt. No, probably not, when it comes to the land
war with China, but the expectations, those troops are there to
be able to be deployed in Korea, possibly in a conflict in the
Taiwan Strait, and elsewhere.
Mr. Frank. Well, the Taiwan Strait is----
Dr. Schmitt. If I could----
Mr. Frank. Excuse me. A conflict in the Taiwan Strait would
be with whom?
Dr. Schmitt. With China and Taiwan.
Mr. Frank. OK. Seems to me the notion that we are going to
use Marines in any kind of combat with China is, I think they
are there for some kind of political reason to reassure the
Japanese, keep the Japanese from spending money, and I think 65
years after World War II ended it is time for the Japanese
military budget to become realistic.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Frank.
I want to thank you and Mr. Paul and the others who were
instrumental in having this organization do the report that
gave us such a good platform to have this discussion. I thank
all of you for participating.
I would allow everybody to ask another question or two if
they want on that, primarily so I can ask the one that I want
to on that. One of the beauties of being Chair, I guess.
Can any of you--and let's just go down the line--can any of
you tell me the number of bases that the United States has
overseas, and consequently the number of military personnel
that we have in those bases?
Mr. Conetta.
Mr. Conetta. I would say 873, but the number is probably
wrong. It is an old number. It has changed a lot because of
building in central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is a number
to start with. It is also important to recognize that much of
that number are really small installations. The number of major
bases is much smaller, though it is growing.
In terms of total numbers of people we have overseas,
active duty military is in the vicinity of 350,000 divided now
not quite equally. More are engaged in the CENTCOM area, Iraq
and Afghanistan. The rest are pretty much tied down in Asia and
Europe. And that is just the active component. I think it is
probably around 45,000 more reservists who are overseas
supporting them. So all told we have over 350,000 overseas.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Friedman.
Mr. Friedman. Well, I was going to please Congressman Frank
and just say no, I don't know the answer off the top of my
head.
Mr. Tierney. OK.
Mr. Friedman. He knows more than me.
Mr. Tierney. That is acceptable.
Mr. Tierney. Dr. Adams.
Dr. Adams. What Mr. Conetta said is about the right number.
Mr. Tierney. OK. I ask that question because we have been
working for about 8 months now with the Department of Defense
trying to get those answers and they don't have them, so it is
interesting that you can tell me the number of bases you think
and the number of personnel, because we have gone around and
around in charts and paths. We bring it up here and wind it,
paper the wall.
Mr. Conetta. I can only tell you a wrong number.
Mr. Tierney. It starts with what is the definition of a
base? It is the installation? All the installations, satellite?
The number of countries that they are in is astounding, and
some of those countries--I think we had an interesting time
finding what the heck is our national security interest in
having troops in a base in that particular location.
It is a conversation we want to have on this group, but it
is one that is very difficult to start until you get the facts
on that, and the facts are so difficult to get from the entity
that should have them. It should disturb us all on that. It
makes you wonder how they can budget and control for those
people on those bases and those materials that are in all those
places.
I think that is part of it. All this theory that we are
talking about is very interesting.
Dr. Schmitt, I was interested in the colloquy between you
and Mr. Frank, but part of it would be much better informed if
we really knew how many bases were overseas and where they
were. It would be fair to you and fair to Mr. Frank to actually
have a discussion and be able to point out, well, this one has
some significance and this one doesn't. But the fact that we
can't even begin to identify where all these people are and
then try to figure out what is their impact on our national
security interests and how do they play into it and are they
essential or not is sort of incredible on that.
Do any of you have any comments that you want to make as we
wrap this up, something that you want to leave us with that we
may not have covered and should have into or gone into in more
depth? We will go left to right if it is OK with you, Mr.
Friedman. Mr. Conetta.
Mr. Conetta. I wanted to underscore what I think is
probably the small amount but real amount of consensus that we
have discussed as a panel. I think we all agree that it is
worthwhile going after problems of waste and trying to improve
the efficiency of the Pentagon. I think we all agree that is
important. I think we also all agree that it is relatively
small peanuts, that if you are looking for big savings it
becomes a question of affecting missions and structures, though
we obviously don't all agree that would be a wise thing to do.
This pertains especially to Secretary Gates' efforts now to
achieve as much as $100 billion savings from reductions in
infrastructure and efficiency. It may cast some doubt on
whether that is possible. But I think we have identified the
notion that if you really want to have big savings, it is going
to have to be structured, though we don't all agree that is the
thing to do.
One step forward possibly for our thinking in that area is
this: we all know what the input is to our military machine. It
is dollars. But we seldom speak in terms of what the output is.
We sometimes say that the output is structure, which would mean
tactical units, or we might, as a proxy for that, say the
output is trained individuals. But actually that is not the
output in either case. The real output is military power. If we
pay attention to the change in our military power, which is not
a question of how many ships we have, how many people or planes
we have; it really is a more complicated equation than that.
I think we would conclude that, in fact, our military is
much more powerful today, although considerably smaller, than
it was during the end of the cold war. And that may help our
thinking about can we reduce and where can we reduce.
Mr. Friedman. Just two small points. Dr. Schmitt mentioned
a couple of times the $300 billion in cuts that came from
procurement programs that Secretary Gates canceled. That is
true, but those programs were mostly replaced with other
programs. So, while there was savings, they went right back
into other procurement for the most part, and in this year, the
procurement budget rose significantly. So it is not as if we
have been cutting the procurement budget. We have not.
And then, second, with regard to this question I never
served in the military, sure, I never served, but when I talk
to people from the military I get the sense that they kind of
like the idea of doing less and having achievable missions
rather than really difficult nation-building goals. I think
there is actually a large well of support within the military
for the kind of thing that I was talking about in my testimony.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. Mr. Harrison.
Mr. Harrison. I would just add that I did serve in the
military. I don't know that it qualifies me any more to speak
about these matters than the other gentlemen at this table.
But my final note, I would just caution that, as we are
going through this budget situation over the next several
years, we do run the risk of optimizing our force for the wrong
type of conflict. Right now Secretary Gates has put a lot of
emphasis on optimizing the force for counter-insurgency
warfare. We run the risk that 10 years from now, once we are
out of Iraq, Afghanistan, that the Nation is not likely to want
to get into a situation like that for a long time when you have
a military that is optimized for the wrong type of conflict.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. If I can just interrupt for 1
second, Mr. Harrison, I think you hit something on the head. I
get constantly asked the question about whether or not this
administration or the last administration or any of these
people that promote the counter-insurgency theory are intent on
doing that in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, the other areas, is that
their intention and goal. That is one of the things that we
have to look at. I think Dr. Adams mentioned that.
Dr. Schmitt.
Dr. Schmitt. Well, certainly you should look at it. I mean,
I actually think we have been fairly discreet in some cases. I
mean, we have not jumped into every conflict or every place of
instability. I think actually some of the military has done a
pretty good job of prioritizing where they have to be.
Just two points. One is, and this could be sort of read
different ways, but I think the report, when you actually look
at it, is probably more sanguine from my point of view about
after these wars, about the Middle East, and it is more
sanguine about the military balance in east Asia than I would
be comfortable with.
I think the trend lines in east Asia are not good. It is
something that we are going to have to deal with, and it is
going to be costly to deal with it, because the way to deal
with it, because it is the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, are
fairly significant and costly platforms.
Again, I think Todd is right. There is an emphasis on
today's wars. Maybe that is what has to be done. But there is
stuff coming down the road that is going to be difficult for us
to deal with.
The second thing is I would say that there is kind of an
expectation that Iraq and Afghanistan are these one-offs and
that we won't be doing that in the future. That may be the
case. Maybe we will decide that is the case. But I would just
say that both Democrat and Republican administrations have been
involved in wars in the Middle East now for 20 years, and so I
would say that if history tell us anything, the likely trend
line is that we are not going to be out of that area any time
soon.
Mr. Tierney. As in we never learn, I guess.
Dr. Adams.
Dr. Adams. Four points, I think.
One, I congratulate you on going down this road, because it
tries to marry up the problems that we have economically at
home and in terms of the Federal budget with how we approach
our national defense.
No. 2, as we go down that road, as you in Congress go down
that road, dealing with the reality that to get an agreement
everything has to be on the table is a good principle.
No. 3, efficiencies clearly are not enough, and I think you
have a fair amount of consensus on the panel in that regard
that efficiencies aren't going to get it, and Secretary Gates'
ambition right now probably falls short of what you are going
to have to deal with.
And, fourthly, I want to underline that the discussion that
we have on this issue, and it is understandable because it is
the subject of this particular hearing, all too often falls
into the box of saying what should the military be, what should
the military do, how should the military behave. We don't have
enough conversations about what are the purposes of American
statecraft and what is the role of the military in that broader
engagement globally in dealing with the broader set of
challenges.
I heard Dr. Schmitt say just a moment ago, and maybe he
misspoke, but to say the military does a pretty good job of
prioritizing where it should be. Well, it is not the military's
job to prioritize where it should be. It is the national
security policy apparatus, the White House, the Congress, the
civilian agencies, all of whom need to be engaged in that
decision, and ultimately it is the Congress and the President's
decision about where the military should be engaged or not
engaged.
I dig his principle, though. There are lots of areas where
we don't have a stake, and defining policies as we defined them
today puts us at risk of being in areas where we don't have a
stake. I wouldn't use Afghanistan and Iraq as the proxy here
for what else we may do. In both cases those were wars of
choice. Those were not necessary interventions; they were wars
of choice. We chose to go in and remove a regime in
Afghanistan. And you can support it or disagree with it, but it
was a choice. We chose to go in and depose a regime in Iraq.
And in both cases, we ended up inheriting responsibilities for
a whole array of functions that we have asked the military to
do. I think it is very debatable that we are going to go into
those kinds of situations again at any point in the near
future.
Mr. Tierney. I would hope so. I would hope it is debatable.
Interestingly enough, we had a conference not too long ago
about northern Africa, Algeria and Libya and Morocco and places
like that, and one of the general consensus--and these were
Members of the Senate and the House and both parties--the real
question at the end became what is our interest there. I don't
think we ask that question enough. What is our interest there,
and who else might have an interest that ought to be taking the
lead as opposed to us so that we don't have to do that
everywhere all the time.
Let me again just say how much I appreciate all of your
written testimony and your time spent here, your expertise
today. I think you have helped us embark on a conversation that
I hope continues. I think it is a valuable one for us to have.
I hope it bleeds into some of the other committees both here
and in the Senate on that and the American public. I think it
is important, so thank you very, very much.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]