[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 138 (Monday, September 30, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12034-S12035]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 Remarks of the Honorable James R. Schlesinger, United States Capitol 
Historical Society Dinner Honoring the 180th Anniversary of the Senate 
              Armed Services Committee, September 17, 1996

       I want to join Bud Brown in welcoming you to this evening's 
     festivities run by the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, 
     chartered by Congress with the uphill responsibilities of 
     preserving American history.
       Why are we here this evening? We are here this evening to 
     celebrate the 180th anniversary of the founding of the 
     predecessors of the Senate Armed Services Committee and to 
     honor the committee for its exemplary service to the nation. 
     Actually, the Senate Armed Services Committee is only 50 
     years old--created as a result of the Legislative 
     Reorganization Act of 1946, which Bud Brown's father was 
     instrumental in bringing about to create the Hoover 
     Commission.
       As all of you know, the Preamble to the Constitution--``We 
     the People''--Article I of the Constitution assigns to the 
     Congress the responsibility to raise and support armies and 
     to provide and maintain the Navy. In turn, that 
     responsibility is entrusted by both Houses to their Armed 
     Services Committees.
       As I said, this is the 50th Anniversary of this committee. 
     Its predecessors trace back to 1816, back even to the 
     Continental Congress itself which maintained such close daily 
     supervision over General Washington. That close daily 
     supervision is increasingly emulated by the current Congress.
       Founded in 1947, the Congress preceded the Pentagon in 
     achieving unification of the Armed Forces. Indeed the 
     chairman of the Armed Services Committee is senior to the 
     Secretary of Defense. In fact, the committee provides a 
     channel for communications. It is sometimes difficult to 
     communicate to one another. As you know, this difficulty in 
     communication is reflected in the fact that different 
     services do not use words in the same way. Take for example 
     that simple English verb--secure. It has different meanings 
     for each of the services. To the U.S. Navy, secure as in 
     ``secure a building'' simply means to turn out the lights and 
     lock the door. To the U.S. Army, secure means seize and hold. 
     To the U.S. Marine Corps, it means attack and destroy. And, 
     to the U.S. Air Force, secure means a three-year lease with 
     option to buy.
       Ladies and gentlemen, I shall pass over such sensitive 
     issues from the past as the committee hearing on General 
     Custer's actions at the Battle of Little Bighorn, the Civil 
     War (sometimes referred to as the Late Unpleasantness), Billy 
     Mitchell, or the firing of Douglas MacArthur. Those last 
     hearings, I believe, took place in this Senate Caucus Room.
       I turn to two subjects. The first--the characteristics of 
     the Committee. And secondly, its substantive activity.
       As you know, the existence of the Senate Armed Services 
     Committee more or less coincides with the Cold War. As a 
     consequence, the Armed Services Committee has attracted the 
     giants of the Senate. Richard Russell himself after whom this 
     building is named, was actually the second to chair the 
     Committee. John Stennis, who died last year, and who declared 
     in his 1947 race, ``I want to plow a straight furrow right 
     down to the end of my row.'' And that he did. Both Russell 
     and Stennis served as Chairmen of the Armed Services 
     Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee--a practice now 
     prohibited because it looks as if it is an inside operation.
       But there are other giants--Scoop Jackson, Barry Goldwater, 
     Leverett Saltonstall, John Tower, not to mention our co-host 
     of the evening--Strom Thurmond, the present chairman. You may 
     not believe this, but Strom and I both received our degrees 
     from the University of South Carolina on the very same day. 
     Sam Nunn--the ranking Democrat--has been an illustrious 
     chairman for so many years and my trusted friend for this 
     past quarter century. I have not mentioned some of the 35 
     members of the Committee I have known over the years.
       The second characteristic of the Committee is that it is 
     heavily Southern, as you may have known from the Chairman. My 
     calculation of the 50 years this Committee has been in 
     existence --42 have had Southern chairmen. The South, as you 
     know, is the only part of this country with a historic memory 
     of being subjected to military occupation. In the South, it 
     has been determined that fate would not come to this nation 
     as a whole. Georgia, South Carolina--I liked to believe that 
     the last and best service performed by the late great William 
     Sherman was to create the tradition of Southern dedication to 
     national security. I know many of you will appreciate that, 
     but our friend from Ohio won't.
       The third element in this Committee's history is its 
     bipartisan tradition. Strom Thurmond exemplifies that 
     tradition in an exceptional way. The first six years he was 
     on this Committee, he was a Democrat. The last 30 years he 
     has been a Republican. That bipartisan tradition may reflect 
     the affinity that Southern Democrats had for the Grand Old 
     Party.
       Senator Nunn, during the recent ceremony at the Pentagon, 
     thanking him for his service, in his invocation commented 
     that, in his experience, nothing is accomplished in Congress 
     unless it is on a bipartisan basis. During the period of 
     Republican dominance during the early 1980s, he was the 
     driving force in creating this more integrated Pentagon.
       My first connection with this Committee was with Scoop 
     Jackson. When I was still at the RAND Corporation, Scoop 
     Jackson asked me for an assessment of systems analysis as it 
     was practiced at the Pentagon under Secretary McNamara. Scoop 
     tended to be harder on Democratic Administrations than on 
     Republican Administrations.
       The fourth characteristic of this Committee is that it's 
     conservative. The Democrats score lower than other Democrats 
     on the ADA scale of liberalism. Republicans score lower on 
     that ADA scale than do other Republicans. And it's on that 
     conservatism that I had to rely, in those years that we 
     needed support, those happy days, Vietnam and the aftermath 
     of Vietnam.
       But this Committee is conservative in a different and 
     special sense. It recognizes that there are no free rides. 
     The Committee knows that international engagement is not 
     free--that one needs careful preparation. This Committee has 
     learned through this bitter experience. It needs a more than 
     adequate structure. It needs modernization, training and 
     above all readiness, so that the United States is not put 
     through the embarrassment it was put through at the start of 
     World War II.
       Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a public 
     tendency to treat American leadership in the world as just 
     another entitlement. It is not. American leadership requires 
     more than rhetoric; it requires continued effort and 
     sacrifice.
       The final characteristic of this Committee is that it is 
     the protector of the military services. It is historically 
     wary of Defense Secretaries who might neglect or abuse the 
     institutional requirements of the services.
       Let me turn for a few moments to the substantive activities 
     of this Committee.
       Foresight. We must go back to the 1930s, before the Senate 
     Armed Services Committee existed in its present form. There 
     was Carl Vinson--the Chairman of the Committee on Naval 
     Affairs. When the great uncle of Sam Nunn, who in the late 
     1930s managed to pass the Vinson-Trammell Act. The Act 
     authorized ship construction monies despite the ample federal 
     deficit. And as a result of the Act, the carriers that were 
     created included the Yorktown, which was launched in 1937; 
     the Enterprise in 1938; and the Hornet in 1941--all before 
     Pearl Harbor. Those are the three carriers that won the 
     battle of Midway. Without that legislation, we would have 
     lost the battle of Midway. The Japanese could have cruised 
     along the Pacific coast of the U.S. That would have made it 
     difficult for the U.S. to win that war.
       We mention this although today it is fashionable to object 
     to deficit spending in all of its forms. If we would have had 
     an annually balanced budget then, we might have lost World 
     War II. An annually balanced budget may be a high 
     priority, but it is not the first priority of this nation.
       When our conventional strength was eroding, during the 
     period when the President was negotiating the Salt II 
     agreement, this Committee, on a historical and bi-partisan 
     basis, asked the administration to increase defense 
     expenditures for conventional forces and to rebuild our 
     stockpiles of conventional ammunition, on the penalty of the 
     loss of support on a bipartisan basis for SALT II. That is 
     followed by the Reagan build-up and those actions paid 
     substantial dividends during the Gulf War. The inventories 
     were full, and we were ready. Fully mission capable rates for 
     the U.S. Air Force for all aircraft during that war was 90 
     percent. By contrast in World War II, the mission capable 
     rates were no higher than 50 percent for any length in 
     period, and in the Carter years, for the B-52s. The rate was 
     40 percent for fighter aircraft.
       The Senate Armed Services Committee has not always been 
     triumphant. In the 1950s, they repeatedly tried to force the 
     B-70 bomber on the Eisenhower Administration. The Committee 
     failed in its effort, but of course not every President is an 
     allied member in Europe, conqueror of Hitler, a 5-star 
     general and chief of staff of the Army. The Committee has 
     been more persuasive with other presidents. And I'm happy to 
     say that the B-52s are doing alright.
       Let me close with some additional observations. These are 
     comments about the present and the future. At the end of the 
     Cold War, there has been a massive shift of power within the 
     U.S. as Congress is reasserting its prerogatives--and a 
     resurgence of power toward the Congress. Constitutional 
     limits that were ignored are being restored. From the time at 
     Pearl Harbor until roughly the time of the Tet Offensive in 
     1967, the Congress regularly deferred to the President; that 
     pure deference is now over. Congress must resist the 
     temptation by any Congressional majority to embarrass the 
     President. There is danger these days that everything becomes 
     final for politics.
       Second, the U.S. is a rather odd country to serve as a 
     world leader. It is not as ruthless

[[Page S12035]]

     as some of the former imperial powers including France, as 
     well as Germany and Japan. The U.S. was ideally suited for 
     the task of the Cold War in which there was a long-term 
     military threat, unchanging year after year that the public 
     would focus on. Now there are numerous but petty threats--
     clashes of nationalism--clashes of ethnic origin. The rest of 
     the world does not understand the U.S. Constitution, does not 
     understand separation of powers and does not understand that 
     in this country to conduct foreign policy, we need to have a 
     consensus. We need to have public acquiescence in that 
     foreign policy. It makes the U.S. as the great ruling power 
     of the world somewhat different from anything in the past. 
     Leadership is not an entitlement; it must be earned each 
     year, each decade. And leadership can be costly. As long as 
     offense and expenditures are being maintained in this 
     country, other nations and other groups will be driven to 
     terrorism as the only way to strike at the United States. 
     Terrorism may be unpleasant, but it is less unpleasant than 
     war.
       Leadership implies choices--choices that we must avoid 
     being over committed. We have spread forces in recent years; 
     Saddam Hussein had noticed this recently. We have spread our 
     political capital even thinner. Why do I say that? One must 
     not overload the American public with international 
     obligations, for the public will no longer accept it. 
     Whatever we may say, whatever we may proclaim that we're not 
     going to be the world's policemen, too frequently we become 
     the world's policeman. As Sullivan proclaimed it, ``A 
     policeman's lot is not a happy one.''
       We accommodate dependents. And we cannot afford to 
     accumulate dependents. We develop public hatred for them. We 
     cannot come to any accommodations for them. We must shed 
     both. Being the world leader is difficult. We must retain a 
     technological edge. The American public is not eager to 
     sustain high casualties for what appear to be petty purposes. 
     And therefore, in order to hold casualties down it is 
     essential for us to maintain a technological edge. The 
     problem, though, is that we tend to reveal our technologies. 
     We reveal all, as we did during the Gulf War. We showcase our 
     technologies. Everybody now understands the global position 
     that existed. that is the price that must be paid when 
     American forces go to war. We can never rest from our past 
     accomplishments. Finally, ladies and gentlemen, once again, 
     as always, eternal vigilance remains the price of 
     freedom.

                          ____________________