[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 26 (Thursday, February 29, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1446-S1447]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EUROPEAN ARMIES DOWNSIZE
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I read with great interest an article in
the Washington Times a few days ago. I ask unanimous consent to have it
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Times, Feb. 26, 1996]
European Armies Lose Size, Efficiency
conscription not working; all-volunteer too expensive
(By John Keegan)
London.--The state may not be withering away, as Karl Marx
predicted it would, but Europe's armies are.
Only seven years ago, Europe was awash with combat units.
Now they are so thin on the ground that governments can
scarcely meet their military commitments. And the situation
is getting worse.
The problem is conscription. Young Europeans do not want to
perform military service, even for as little as a year, now
the norm.
Paradoxically, the generals are not keen on conscription
either. As a result, the big armies, such as those of France
and Germany, are planning either to increase the proportion
of volunteers or to scrap conscription altogether.
France announced Thursday the most sweeping changes in its
military since it developed nuclear weapons nearly 40 years
ago, saying it will shrink its armed forces by one-third in
six years and eliminate the draft. The French want a force of
350,000 by 2002, all of it volunteer.
Smaller armies in Europe have taken similar steps. The
Netherlands will call up no new conscripts and release all
those in service by Aug. 30. Belgium stopped conscription in
1993. Austria, not part of NATO, is talking of substituting
an armed police for its army.
In the former Soviet bloc, the situation is confused at
best, chaotic at worst.
Russia's problem is that young men of military age do not
report for the call-up. In some military regions, the
proportion of those who do is as low as 10 percent, and they
tend to be unqualified--often dropouts who cannot find a
place in the new free-enterprise economy. That does much to
explain the poor performance of Russian units in Chechnya.
The Russian army has been humiliated by the collapse of the
Soviet empire, of which it was the guardian. Russian officers
resent the dimunition of national power as much as they are
frustrated by the drop in their units' ability to perform.
Inefficiency is so glaring that self-appointed volunteer
formations, often calling themselves ``Cossacks,'' are
springing up.
Military disgruntlement in circumstances of political
weakness always bodes ill. The need to put the former Soviet
armed forces on a proper footing is now urgent.
Poland, where the army is a revered national institution,
still operates a successful conscription system. Neighboring
states, such as Belarus and Ukraine, are laboring to decide
what sort of army they want. They look to the West for
advice.
The British Defense Ministry held a conference in London
last year to explain the options to them. The British model
of all-``regular''--that is, career or volunteer--forces is
much admired, but is too expensive for many. Conscription
staggers on but does not produce combat units worth the money
they cost.
The crisis in France and Germany is of a different order.
Conscription in France, since the French Revolution, has
always been given an ideological value. Military service, the
French believe, teaches the ``republican virtues'' of
equality and fraternity, besides patriotism and civic duty.
There have been ups and downs in the system: exemptions for
the well-educated, substitution for the rich. Since 1905,
however, all fit young Frenchmen have had to serve a year or
two in the ranks.
The logic is different from that held by Britons, who pine
for the days before 1961, when conscription was abolished.
They see it as a recipe for an end to inner-city hooliganism.
In France it has a higher motive. Military service makes
Frenchmen into citizens.
In Germany, conscription also acquired an ideological
justification in the post-Hitler years.
Under the kaiser, it was intended to produce the biggest
army in Europe, but also to make German youth respectful of
their betters and obedient to all authority. The imperial
officer corps took trouble to see that their authority was
obeyed. Regular officers remained a caste apart from
civilians, even under Hitler.
When postwar West Germany rearmed, its democratic
government harbored understandable fears of creating such an
office corps again. It saw in conscription a check against
military authoritarianism. Conscripts were guaranteed their
civil rights, military law was abolished, and conscientious
objection was made easy.
Too easy, it has proved.
More than half of the 300,000 annual conscripts now opt for
alternative, non-military service. There are simply not
enough men to keep units up to strength.
What makes things worse is that Chancellor Helmut Kohl,
with his passion for European integration, is pushing for
more inter-allied units, with Germans serving beside French,
Spanish and Belgian soldiers.
Spain retains conscription, though the short term of
service makes its army of little use. If French and Belgian
troops are to be regulars in the future, the difference in
quality between them and their German and Spanish comrades-
in-arms will become an embarrassment.
The solution may be to make all soldiers regulars, to go
for what Europeans increasingly call ``the British system.''
The problem is cost.
Regulars are at least twice as expensive as conscripts,
requiring either a bigger defense budget or smaller armed
forces. No one wants to spend more on defense, particularly
when social budgets are crippling national economies. It
seems inevitable, therefore, that armies must grow smaller
but become all-regular if they are to meet international
standards of efficiency.
The French appear to have accepted that logic.
President Jacques Chirac is about to be advised that France
should withdraw the 1st Armed Division, its main contribution
to the Franco-German Eurocorps, from Germany and disband
several of its regiments, together with many others in
metropolitan France. The army would be halved.
That may make good military sense, but it is likely to
cause a political storm. Democratic France, like Germany,
harbors suspicions of regular forces. They are thought to be
anti-popular and all too readily turned against elected
governments.
French history, like Germany's makes such fears realistic.
Napoleon III came to power through a military coup mounted
with long-service troops. Charles de Gaulle faced another
coup mounted by the Foreign Legion in Algeria. The Foreign
Legion has never been allowed to serve in mainland France
during peacetime because of fears about its loyalty.
In Germany, which already has some all-regular units, the
public is probably no more ready to face a transition to the
British system than is Mr. Kohl. The paradoxical outcome may
be to leave Germany with the least efficient of armies among
major European states.
German generals, who increasingly count on existing all-
regular units to fulfill their NATO commitments, will not be
pleased. They are likely to press for an end to conscription
but unlikely to get it.
The difficulties involved in a change from conscript to
regular forces are not easily understood in Britain, nor is
the political debate it causes. The British take their
system, together with the political stability of their armed
forces, for granted.
What is not perceived is that such stability is the product
of 300 years of unbroken constitutional government, during
which the officer corps has completely integrated with civil
society. There is, indeed, no ``officer corps'' in Britain,
where soldiering is seen as a profession akin to others.
In Germany and France, with their different traditions, it
may not take 300 years to change the relationship between
army and society, but it will still take some time. In the
former Soviet bloc, time may not be on the military
reformers' side.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, this article was written by John Keegan of
the London Daily Telegraph in which he stated the historical
perspective of how the principal European nations and Great Britain
have, through the years, raised their Armed Forces, and how the future
portends that they are going to depart from these time-honored methods,
and, as a consequence, the likelihood of their level of manpower could
significantly drop in the coming years.
I promptly sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense, the Honorable
William J. Perry, addressing my concerns.
The letter said:
Dear Mr. Secretary: I want to bring to your attention the
enclosed article, ``European Armies Lose Size, Efficiency,''
which appeared in the ``Washington Times'' on February 26.
According to this article, European nations--many of which
are Members of
[[Page S1447]]
NATO--are in the process of dramatically reducing the size of their
ground forces. Such developments could have adverse
consequences for the future of NATO, and require ever-
increasing U.S. military contributions to the Alliance to
compensate for European shortfalls. In such developments
continue, NATO's ability to fulfill its commitments under
Article 5 of the ``NATO Charter'' could be called into
question.
As Chairman of the AirLand Forces Subcommittee of the Armed
Services Committee--the Subcommittee with primary
jurisdiction over NATO and the European Command--I will need
information from the Department of Defense in order to assess
the impact on the United States of the issues raised in the
enclosed article. In particular, I am concerned about the
long-term plans for meeting our NATO commitments in light of
the reductions planned by our European allies; the need for
increased U.S. military contributions to the Alliance to
offset the European reductions; and the adequacy of current
U.S. force structure planning to meet our NATO commitments in
light of these changes.
During a time when NATO expansion is being actively
considered, by some, these issues must be thoroughly
examined. I ask that you provide your assessment as soon as
possible in order for my Subcommittee to incorporate this
information into its upcoming budget review and schedule of
hearings. I am hopeful your reply will be detailed, as I view
the representations in this article with deep concern.
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