[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.

                          ____________________