[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 101 (Thursday, July 28, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          WORLD WITHOUT POWER

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, Anthony Lewis had a column in the 
New York Times recently commenting on something I have talked about 
briefly on the floor of the Senate from time to time, that I have never 
seen another journalist write about.
  We have a reluctance to face up to the problems of risk-taking in the 
Armed Forces as we try to provide a more stable and secure world. It is 
an easy thing on which to duck politically.
  The reality is, you do not volunteer for the Chicago Police 
Department without recognizing that you are taking a risk. And if there 
is a fatality, as there occasionally is, no one says that since someone 
on the Chicago police force has been shot in dealing with a gang 
problem in one section of the city, we should take the police out of 
that section of the city. We recognize the essential role, as well as 
the dangerous role, that people on the Chicago police force assume.
  Those who volunteer for the Armed Forces of the United States play a 
somewhat similar role on the international scene.
  Anthony Lewis says: ``The United States is the one remaining 
superpower. If it cannot use force to prevent disasters, then the world 
is truly condemned to chaos.''
  I could not agree with him more.
  I missed reading the article that he refers to by Edward Luttwak, but 
I plan to read it.
  In the meantime, my colleagues should read the Anthony Lewis column 
if they have not.
  Mr. President, I ask to insert the column into the Record at this 
point.
  The column follows:

                          World Without Power

                           (By Anthony Lewis)

       Rwanda is many things: a human catastrophe, a testament to 
     the danger of ethnic hatred, a devastating symbol of man's 
     inhumanity to man. But beyond all that it is a sign of the 
     New World Disorder: a world in which no great power takes 
     responsibility for preventing a descent into chaos.
       When an organized group of militant Hutus began 
     slaughtering Rwanda's Tutsi minority in April, no outside 
     power was prepared to intervene. Pleas by the Secretary 
     General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, got no 
     response.
       In the end the human tragedy was so great that the United 
     States Government has felt compelled to mount an enormous 
     relief effort. It will cost many times what earlier 
     intervention might have, not to mention the cost in Rwanda 
     lives.
       There were reasons for the Clinton Administration's 
     disinclination to intervene in April or May. Rwanda is remote 
     from American military bases and outside traditional areas of 
     American interest. Separating the parties in so savage a 
     civil conflict would have been difficult.
       But there was plainly another element in the American 
     decision to stay out. That was the now ingrained reluctance 
     to use the armed forces of the United States in any situation 
     where they may suffer casualties.
       Edward N. Luttwak, a conservative analyst at the Center for 
     Strategic and International Studies in Washington, discusses 
     the new military shyness in the current issue of Foreign 
     Affairs. His article, brief and pungent, is essential reading 
     for both liberals and conservatives.
       In Somalia, Mr. Luttwak notes, the death of 18 professional 
     soldiers--who presumably went into the military knowing that 
     they might have to risk their lives--forced a total change in 
     U.S. policy. In Haiti, a handful of thugs on the docks 
     frightened off an American vessel; the impression of U.S. 
     weakness bedevils the Haitian problem to this day.
       What we are seeing, Mr. Luttwak argues, is a ``refusal to 
     tolerate combat casualties.'' And the phenomenon is not 
     confined to the United States or other democracies where 
     television images may drive public opinion. The old, 
     totalitarian Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan but then acted 
     with extraordinary timidity--for fear of public reaction 
     against casualties.
       The two recent cases where significant powers risked 
     sizable casualties were the Falklands war and the Persian 
     Gulf war. In the first, Margaret Thatcher's leadership took 
     Britain into a romanticized echo of empire. In the gulf there 
     were real interests, and President Bush effectively mobilized 
     opinion behind the war.
       But the gulf war story suggests that we are now willing to 
     risk casualties only for a large and dramatized cause. And 
     that, Mr. Luttwak says, ``rules out the most efficient use of 
     force--early and on a small scale to prevent escalation.'' He 
     might have been writing presciently, about Rwanda.
       What is the reason for the new sensitivity about possible 
     casualties? Mr. Luttwak's theory is that it reflects the 
     smaller size of families in the developed world. In earlier 
     centuries people had many children, some of whom were 
     expected to die young anyway, so death in battle was more 
     acceptable.
       That may be a psychological explanation. But there is a 
     more immediate political one in this country: Vietnam. We 
     fought a war that more and more Americans came to regard as a 
     mistake, costing thousands of lives even after we decided to 
     get out.
       Since Vietnam the Pentagon has been hypersensitive about 
     public opinion. Under Gen. Colin Powell as Chairman of the 
     Joint Chiefs, it adopted a doctrine that allows the use of 
     American forces in only extremely narrow circumstances. 
     Military leaders have become the biggest resisters in the use 
     of force.
       Those of us who came to oppose the Vietnam war naturally 
     applaud the cautiousness of military leaders. But like any 
     doctrine, this one can be overdone. Right now, for example, 
     Zairean officers are demanding payments to let relief planes 
     for Rwanda refugees land. The United States should use its 
     muscle without hesitation to stop such a practice by the 
     corrupt forces of President Mobutu Sese Seko.
       The United States is the one remaining superpower. If it 
     cannot use force to prevent disasters, then the world is 
     truly condemned to chaos. And Americans, Edward Luttwak 
     writes, will have to learn how to be blind--``to passively 
     ignore avoidable tragedies and horrific atrocities.''

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