[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 56 (Monday, April 29, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4359-S4361]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    THE US MILITARY AND A NEW CENTURY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this week the Senate Armed 
Services Committee is engaged in marking up the fiscal year 1997 
Defense authorization bill. All of us on the committee, as well as many 
of my colleagues who are not on the defense committee, are concerned 
about how we fund, structure, equip, maintain and train our military 
forces to meet the challenges which our country faces today and will 
face tomorrow as we defend and advance our national interests. I would 
like to speak for a few moments today about some of the difficult 
questions I believe we are facing as we confront the challenges which 
lie ahead for our military forces.
  The millennium is coming and beyond it a new century--a century 
which, if what we see occurring around us today offers any indication, 
will bring changes few of us can begin to imagine, no more than people 
at the end of the 19th century could have foretold what the 20th 
century would bring.
  We need only to look at the incredible leaps which have occurred in 
technology in the past decade and the ever-increasing frequency with 
which new technological wonders are being introduced to know that the 
21st Century will be a time of amazing change full of great opportunity 
and great risk for all of us.
  The past years have shown us not only that new technologies are 
becoming more readily available--whether it is faster, smaller and 
cheaper computers and computer chips, inexpensive and reliable global 
positioning systems, or communications which permit us to bring into 
our homes hundreds of different television channels from around the 
world, movies on demand, and global news which is real-time and all too 
real--but that changes will have to come about in the way we organize 
our daily lives and the very structure of businesses and institutions 
in response to that technology. Those enterprises which fail to adapt 
to new technology quickly find themselves behind their competitors and, 
in the private sector, are soon out of business.
  The same is true of national governments and military organizations--
those which are unable to recognize that rapid change is the one 
constant in our lives and cannot exploit that change, risk falling 
behind their potential competitors. History teaches that every 
significant new industrial or technological advance finds its way into 
warfare. Unlike business, however, the price of failure for our 
national security is not bankruptcy or disappointed shareholders; it 
could well be the loss of our freedom, our foreign markets and the safe 
and prosperous future which all of us seek for our children.
  Guaranteeing our security in the new century will require innovation. 
It will also require courage and wisdom as we incorporate technology 
and innovation into our defense structure.
  To help structure the very important debate which I believe we need 
to engage in across the country on national security, I would like to 
offer a few observations and pose a few questions
  First, as we look to the future, we ought to be asking a very basic 
question: What is it we want our military to be able to do? Not just in 
the sense of military capabilities--this is an important question we 
will get to shortly--rather, the broader question that underlies the 
other. What role do we want the United States to play in the next 
century and what will we need our military to be able to do in order 
for the US to play that role?

[[Page S4360]]

  I believe that America's values and interests in the 21st century 
will demand that we play at least as active a role in the world as we 
did in this century and especially during the cold war. We can already 
see signs of this in the optempo rates of all our Armed Forces in the 
years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We cannot shrink from playing 
our part as world leader, nor should we. To make a long story short, 
let me simply say that American leadership in world affairs increases 
the personal security and economic opportunities of the American 
people. This will be true in the next century as it is today.
  We have now and will continue to have vital national interests in the 
security and stability of Europe, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, East 
Asia and elsewhere, just as we have vital interests in maintaining our 
freedom of access to sea- and air-lanes of transportation and commerce. 
We must be able to defend these interests and values and to support 
those who share them with us. We must continue to pursue them in the 
century ahead, as we have in the past, in concert with strategic allies 
and coalition partners. We should, if at all possible, try to go about 
this work with our allies, particularly our NATO and Pacific partners, 
but even with partners, it is essential that the military force we 
begin to structure in the final years of this century will enable us to 
fulfill our role of internationalist leader in the next century.
  Second, we must consider and evaluate the sources of the challenges 
we are likely to face as we protect and advance our national interests 
in the international community of tomorrow. What kinds of regional 
hegemons are likely to develop in the years ahead and are any of them 
likely to graduate into a superpower status--either because they are 
smaller nations who obtain weapons of mass destruction or because they 
are larger nations who will have economic power coupled with weapons of 
mass destruction?

  In the near term, the likelihood of a superpower--or ``peer 
competitor'' which could directly threaten the United States--is low. 
It is precisely this lack of a near-term, superpower, peer competitor 
which provides us with breathing room, a window of opportunity, if you 
will, in which we can reassess our military structures and be willing 
to take some risks in order to ensure our Armed Forces are properly 
structured, sized and equipped in the longer-term. We can afford to 
step back and take a look at where we are and where we want to go and 
to take some risk today to prevent a much greater risk in the future if 
we fail to make this reassessment.
  Third, we must consider the form challenges to our interests are 
likely to take in the next century. Are conflicts likely to be of the 
cold war variety--either in the sense of needing to rely on our nuclear 
deterrent capability or requiring massive numbers of ground forces as 
would have been needed to fight a Soviet invasion of Western Europe--or 
will they be on the order and scale of Haiti, Somalia, or Bosnia. I 
believe that, in the near- and mid-term, they are more likely to be of 
the latter sort. As Gen. Charles Krulak, Commandant of the Marine Corps 
and someone who is thinking long and hard about ``the day after 
tomorrow,'' has said, the future is most likely not ``Son of Desert 
Storm;'' rather, it will be ``Stepchild of Somalia and Chechnya.''
  We cannot rule out the possibility of another Saddam Hussein rising 
in a region of strategic interest to the United States nor can we 
discount the potential for a resurgence of Russian nationalism or 
aggressiveness, or Chinese or Islamic nationalism or aggressiveness 
particularly if coupled with the ability to deliver weapons of mass 
destruction. We must do all we can to prepare for such a possibility 
using every tool available to a country of our stature--economic, 
diplomatic, and military. To use the terminology of Secretary of 
Defense Perry, we must maintain a hedging capability to counter such 
threats if they arise. But we also must be ready for smaller 
contingencies which I believe will be more likely and, unfortunately, 
more frequent.
  We also cannot ignore the unconventional challenges which we face 
today and which we will, without a doubt, face on a greater scale in 
the decades ahead. Here I mean the threat of terrorist actions beyond 
and within our borders and the ever-increasing dangers posed by the 
spread of relatively inexpensive weapons of mass destruction--
especially chemical and biological weapons. We must have forces and 
policies which allow us to respond to all of these challenges and to 
head them off whenever we can.
  Our strategic planners must think hard and innovatively about the way 
others--both states and non-state actors--will try to influence what we 
do in the future. In this regard, I recommend to you an article which 
appeared in the January 29th issue of the Weekly Standard by Col. 
Charles Dunlap, an Air Force lawyer and a provocative thinker and 
writer. In this article, entitled ``How We Lost the High-Tech War of 
2007,'' a fictional Holy Leader of some unstated group recaps the 
strategy used to defeat the United States by terror and exploiting the 
power of televised images of death and destruction. In a particularly 
unsettling passage, he says:

       Though we rarely defeated the Americans on the battlefield, 
     we were able to inflict such punishment that they were soon 
     pleading for peace at any price. With their economy in ruins, 
     their borders compromised, their people demoralized, and 
     civil unrest everywhere, they could not continue. We had 
     broken their will! They had no choice but to leave us with 
     the lands we conquered and the valuable resources they 
     contain.

  And finally, we are told: ``We taught the Americans that no computer 
wages war with the exquisite finality of a simple bayonet thrust.'' So, 
while we work to exploit the technology of the future, we cannot afford 
to become its prisoner.
  Fourth, we must confront the question of how to shape, size and equip 
our military forces in order for them to do what we want of them and to 
be able to confront--and defeat if need be --the wide range of 
challenges we will face. While all of the preceding questions are 
important, this question is the one toward which the other questions 
lead. It is, in fact, the reason why we must ask and answer the 
preceding questions.
  When the Clinton administration came to office in 1993, Secretary of 
Defense Aspin undertook the Bottom-Up Review ``to define the strategy, 
force structure, modernization programs, industrial base, and 
infrastructure needed to meet new dangers and seize new 
opportunities.'' The Bottom-Up Review was a useful transitional 
document, but I believe it is already inadequate to the present and 
certainly to the future because it does not appropriately answer the 
preceding questions. The reality of the strategic environment has 
already changed and the resources we have committed to our military 
have been limited. It is time for a new strategic review by the 
Department of Defense on behalf of the President, and, I believe we 
would benefit at this time in our history from the work of an 
independent, bipartisan commission.
  I hope that Congress will mandate before long both a new Bottom-Up 
Review and a National Bipartisan Commission. I am confident that 
dedicated and innovative thinkers both within the Administration and 
outside it will be able to put us on the right course for the next 
century. This must be done soon. I do not believe that we can afford--
either fiscally or strategically--to continue to tinker at the margins 
of our military forces or to procure just the same sorts of Cold War 
systems in ever diminishing quantities (and at an ever-increasing 
price).

  As we seek to answer the questions of how best to size, shape and 
equip our military forces, we must take a hard look at technology, 
defense organization and management, industrial base capabilities, and 
research and development capabilities where we have a competitive 
advantage over potential adversaries. Then, keeping in mind the 
warnings of thoughtful people like Charles Dunlap, we must exploit 
these advantages to structure and equip our forces appropriately. I 
would caution against thinking of ``defense innovation'' strictly in 
terms of developing new technologies. That is overly simplistic and 
potentially dangerous. Innovation must incorporate organization, 
strategy, and doctrine as well. If we are to succeed in the new 
century, we must be innovative in our thinking about what we procure 
and how we procure it, the way our forces are organized and sized, and 
the way they will respond to challenges which may be unlike most of 
what we have encountered so far in our history.

[[Page S4361]]

  It is conventional wisdom today to say that a technology-driven 
revolution in military affairs is here. The technological advances I 
spoke of earlier beckon us to find ways to integrate what will be 
commonplace tomorrow into the decisions we are making today on weapons 
systems, command and control systems, intelligence gathering 
capabilities, and the means of conducting and defeating information 
warfare.
  As a subset of this question, we must consider ``how do we get from 
here to there?'' What is our transition strategy? How do we ensure that 
we do not reverse course in our procurement strategies so precipitously 
that important defense industries find themselves gutted of their 
skilled work forces, critical research and development, or essential 
near-term production? How do we ensure that we do not make 
technologically-driven alterations in our force structure that diminish 
the effectiveness and morale of our troops?
  Government and industry need to form a new partnership in which both 
sides work together to ensure that we develop and buy the right 
products at the right price and in the right quantities to protect our 
national security without fiscally overburdening the Nation. We cannot 
afford the luxury of buying products which do not provide the 
capabilities we need for tomorrow. Nor can we afford to procure weapons 
systems which just provide more of the capabilities we already possess.
  Throughout all of this runs the very serious question of fiscal 
resources. The traditional question ``how much is enough?'' is no 
longer sufficient--if, in fact, it ever was. We cannot be concerned 
just with aggregate spending levels though much of the current and 
future debate will center on the ``right number'' for the defense 
budget for this fiscal year or during the Future Years Defense Plan, or 
FYDP. If we are to succeed in making the best use of limited defense 
dollars, we must also ask ``are we spending defense dollars wisely?''
  If we hope to be able to maintain the support of our people for 
spending to protect our national security, we must be able to 
demonstrate that we have broken the chains of tradition and 
parochialism within the Congress, the Executive branch and in the 
military services and are investing in a military force for the future 
not the past.
  The debate which many of us in the Congress have been and are engaged 
in must stay focused on the right questions. There is a danger that 
liberal Democrats, many of whom want to cut defense spending to 
increase social spending, will join Republican budget hawks, who want 
to cut defense spending to reduce the deficit, to form an odd-couple 
defense-cutting coalition.
  But neither group, as far as I can see, is asking the right questions 
before recommending that defense spending should be cut. And neither 
group acknowledges that we are spending a smaller percentage of our GDP 
on defense today than at any time since Pearl Harbor. Total defense 
expenditures may be able to be reduced in future years--although I am 
skeptical--but we won't know if this is the right decision until we 
answer the basic questions I have posed: what are the security 
challenges of the next century and what do we need to meet them?
  There are, in fact, a number of thoughtful studies underway today 
which are examining these questions. Each of them seems to start with 
the premise that our current force structure may well be most 
appropriate for the kinds of conflict which will occur least often in 
the future. We need to pursue this premise not as a means of hacking 
away at one service or another just for the sake of downsizing or as a 
means of capturing savings to procure one favored weapons system over 
another, but because technology may have the same potential to achieve 
personnel reductions in the military as it has in the private sector. 
Military success in the future will depend on how visionary and clear-
headed we are today and on how courageous we are prepared to be.
  Remember the familiar line from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance, 
``A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by 
little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'' We have the 
intellectual strength in this country today both in the Pentagon and 
outside to ensure we do not maintain a foolish consistency and that we 
break with the models and standards of the past if that is what is best 
for our Nation's security.
  Andy Marshall and Bill Owens have certainly laid the groundwork for 
such thinking within the Pentagon. Organizations such as the Center for 
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments have been active, creative and 
constructive in contributing to the debate with their analyses. The 
American Enterprise Institute, under the leadership of Dick Cheney and 
Richard Perle, and the Democratic Leadership Council, which I have the 
privilege of chairing, have completed studies or have work underway 
which have or will offer innovative and thought-provoking analyses and 
proposals. Taking these efforts in conjunction with my proposals for a 
new strategic review by the Department of Defense and an independent 
National Bipartisan Commission, I believe we can and will get it right, 
though the conclusions we come to may be painful for many to accept.
  We must be engaged in this difficult debate today if we are to have 
the best defense tomorrow and avoid maintaining the world's finest 
fighting force for wars we have already fought. We must also engage in 
it in order to rebuild the popular consensus which is essential for our 
national security in support of sufficient defense spending. If we 
involve more of our citizens in these discussions, Congress and the 
American people will be willing to provide the necessary resources, 
because they will understand that Sir John Slessor was right when he 
said:

       It is customary in democratic countries to deplore 
     expenditure on armaments as conflicting with the requirements 
     of the social services. There is a tendency to forget that 
     the most important social service that a government can do 
     for its people is to keep them alive and free.

  If we are, in fact, going to do our duty to keep the American people 
``alive and free,'' we must engage in this debate with all our energy, 
our intellect and our courage. We owe this to the people who have sent 
us to the Senate to serve them and we owe it to the future of our great 
country. I hope my remarks today will be seen as a contribution to this 
important debate and I look forward to engaging all of my colleagues in 
these important discussions. 

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