[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 66 (Monday, May 19, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4672-S4676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, this evening I should like to take just a 
very few moments to report, along with my colleague from Connecticut, 
Senator Lieberman, on the recently released Quadrennial Defense Review. 
It was released today by the Secretary of Defense. It is the 
culmination of a very extensive process at the Department of Defense 
over the shape and makeup, the characterization and the implementation 
of our Armed Forces for the next several years.
  We are at a unique point in our history, particularly as it relates 
to defense issues. We have come through a period of time when our 
strategy was primarily based on the threat from another superpower--the 
Soviet Union--a nuclear threat that required an extraordinary 
commitment of resources, of manpower, of effort to try to contain and 
to try to nullify that threat. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, with 
the fall of the Soviet Union, with the realignment that has taken place 
with the United States emerging as the one superpower in the world, we 
may have the luxury of looking at our defense structure, of making 
decisions and beginning a process of fashioning our defense forces for 
the threats of the future and not the threats of the past.
  It is important to recognize, as Secretary Cohen has and as 
acknowledged in this Quadrennial Defense Review which was just released 
today, this is not a status quo situation. We have made extraordinary 
strides in terms of reshaping our forces from perhaps what was the peak 
of our defense effort in 1985, a very, very substantial decline in the 
number of active duty forces and the percentage of our budget and 
percentage of our gross national product that is devoted to defense. In 
the process, much of the framework that puts us in a position to make 
decisions in the future has at least been initiated, and the QDR, 
Quadrennial Defense Review, encompasses a lot of that thinking.
  Because so often in the Congress we receive the conclusion of the 
analysis of the Department of Defense after all the decisionmaking 
process has been conducted and after the options have been evaluated, 
we do not have those same resources here in the Congress to ask the 
appropriate questions and get the full view of where we think we ought 
to go with our national defense policy. So Senator Lieberman and I, 
along with others, in last year's authorization bill created a National 
Defense Panel consisting of outside experts in military affairs, who 
had a lifetime of experience, who could give us through this process a 
second look, a second opinion. I am pleased that they were able to have 
access to the process, the thinking process and the decisionmaking 
process that was undertaken in the Department of Defense on the QDR. 
They will now undertake a very thorough and very complete analysis of 
this QDR and report back to Congress. We have their preliminary report. 
They will report back to Congress no later than December 15 of this 
year giving us their view of current threats and future threats the 
United States might face, the strategy that we ought to employ to 
address those threats, as well as how we ought to implement that 
particular strategy and how we pay for it.
  So we are looking forward at a process, and I have described this 
process in some detail because I do not want Members to think that this 
is the final chapter in the book. This really is the initial chapter in 
the decisionmaking process that has to be undertaken by the Congress 
and the administration over the next several months, if not several 
years, as we look into the next century and try to define the national 
defense strategy and the force to implement that particular strategy.
  I will say this: I think the Secretary of Defense and the people who 
have undertaken this effort, the QDR, have done this in good faith. I 
think they have asked the tough questions. They have evaluated the 
various options. They will admit that this is an initial stage of the 
process and not the final chapter. They will indicate that there is 
more to come. There are more decisions to be made.
  But I also say to my colleagues, a lot of the burden 
and responsibility also falls on us. The Department of Defense has 
presented its viewpoint of where we are going in the future, but we are 
the ones who have to ultimately make the decision as to whether to 
ratify what they have said, modify what they have

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said, or reject what they have said and come up with our own 
alternatives. There are issues in the QDR Report to which a lot of 
Members, various Members, are going to say: ``wait a minute, that gets 
a little too close to home.'' We are talking about two more rounds of 
base closings. We have reduced our force structure more than a third 
since 1985, and yet we have reduced our infrastructure, our bases which 
support that force structure, by only approximately one-half of the 
amount that we reduced manpower. There is infrastructure that is 
excessive, and we are looking at a very difficult decision, in terms of 
how to go ahead and continue to advance the process of closing bases, 
of scaling back infrastructure, because every dollar spent on a 
facility or a support function that does not go to support our forces 
takes resources away from more pressing needs. To simply preserve 
excess infrastructure because it happens to be in a particular State or 
particular Member's district, or to preserve it because we were not 
able to come to a conclusion about closing it results in dollars 
staying in infrastructure that take away dollars from the very badly 
needed modernization of our forces, from research and technology, and 
from support for our active duty forces in terms of their readiness and 
deployment, et cetera.

  So we have to recognize that the decisions that will be made here, 
whether it is streamlining the Department of Defense, whether it is 
consolidating or streamlining various defense and support agencies, 
which is recommended here--I wish the QDR provided recommendations in 
more detail, but it is recommended here nonetheless--whether it is 
closing bases, and even decisions on modernization will be made in this 
Chamber, will be made by these Members, and they will not be easy 
decisions.
  We all recognize, I think, that one of the most important actions we 
can take, as this report says, is make decisions about modernizing our 
forces and investing in research and development of new technology. 
Whether this relates to platforms like tactical air for the Air Force 
and the Navy, ships for the Navy, land forces for the Army and Marines, 
or new technology to advance the way they do their business, all of 
that requires resources. And all of that will have to be done with 
offsets, because we pretty much have a static budget line. Without an 
external threat that we can foresee right now and without a major 
conflict, we are going to be at a pretty level funding appropriation 
for the next several years. If that is the case, then, if we want to 
retain the forces readiness, if we want to retain our current forces 
capability to deal with the threats as we see them, and if we want to 
restructure and modernize the force, we are going to have to provide 
them with the resources, and the only place we can get the resources is 
from existing expenditures.
  This report takes us some of the way down that road. I am a little 
disappointed in the QDR in that it did not more specifically outline 
how we can go about particularly restructuring the base closing 
procedure, how we can restructure some of the defense or support 
agencies, how we can restructure the Reserve and the National Guard to 
better complement our active duty; but also to define, in some sense, 
different roles for them in that process, how we could go forward in 
making the decisions on modernization, what the different options are, 
and so forth.
  I think there are several questions that Congress is going to have to 
address. I just mentioned modernization. Commitment to modernization, 
yes, but where do we put that money? What research? What new 
technologies? What new military platforms--ships, planes, et cetera--
should we select? And how many of those should we buy?
  These are critical decisions. It is not enough just to say we need to 
increase our modernization budget. It is where we put those dollars 
that will be critical to define the military of the future, and how we 
address these questions about the role of the Guard and Reserve and the 
reductions in defense infrastructure, which I mentioned earlier. I am 
disappointed we did not address the medical care issue in the QDR. 
Clearly, how we provide medical care for our active duty servicemembers 
and their family members, Reserve forces and others such is a major 
cost item in the defense budget. That needs to be addressed in the 
future.
  Missile defense, how we allocate funds to missile defense, the 
Secretary says we have a shortfall in research and development funds 
for a National Missile Defense System and we need to shift a 
substantial amount of money, up to $2 billion, into that particular 
account--where does that money come from? That is not identified.
  These are all issues which the Congress is going to have to grapple 
with in the next several months. Beyond that, we need to ensure that, 
in our thinking, we realize this is the beginning and not the end of 
the process. We need to look to outside sources like the National 
Defense Panel to give us guidance in terms of what the proper questions 
are: How we look at the scenarios in the future that will require a 
defense structure to address those challenges; how we devise the right 
kind of strategy to meet the threats; how we build in the flexibility--
because we do not know what all those threats are going to be--how we 
build in the flexibility to have our forces able to adapt to those 
threats of the future; how we avoid making critical mistakes in 
resource allocation that prohibit us from having that flexibility in 
the future; how we go about implementing all of this and how we come up 
with the resources to address it.
  So there are many, many questions still outstanding. It is an ongoing 
process. I look forward to working with my colleague, Senator Lieberman 
of Connecticut, as we explore this, as well as my other colleagues, 
both on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed 
Services Committee, as well as our colleagues here in the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my friend and colleague and, on matters of 
defense, my partner, Senator Coats from Indiana.
  Mr. President, I want to add a few words to those spoken by my 
colleague about the Quadrennial Defense Review, which was released by 
Secretary of Defense Cohen earlier today. It has been my pleasure to 
work with the Senator from Indiana, as well as with our colleagues on 
the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator McCain, Senator Robb, 
Senator Kempthorne, Senator Levin, and many others in a bipartisan 
effort that led to legislation requiring the Quadrennial Defense Review 
and the National Defense Panel.
  Our intent in sponsoring this legislation, was to drive the defense 
debate to a strategy-based assessment of our future military 
requirements and capabilities, not to do a budget-driven incremental 
massage of the status quo.
  We were motivated by two factors in calling for this over-the-horizon 
review of our defense needs. First, we did not want this to be just 
another annual report on what our defense needs are. Second, we wanted 
to force the Pentagon to look beyond the short range and to understand 
that many of us inside and outside of Congress believe that the 
decisions we are making today will affect our ability to protect our 
national security 10 to 20 years out.
  From my first review of the Quadrennial Defense Review I would say 
while the report issued today does not live up to the high expectations 
I had for it, it is a step forward in the process that Senator Coats 
has just described. If we want to make defense decisions effectively, 
we have to consider two dramatic changes that have occurred in our 
world, which are influencing our defense needs. One is the dramatic and 
ongoing change in the post-cold-war world; second is the extraordinary 
change in technology, the transition we have made from an industrial 
age to an information age, which inevitably will affect the way wars 
are fought.
  Even before it was released, the Quadrennial Defense Review achieved, 
I think, an important part of our goal by catalyzing a broad and 
vigorous debate within the Pentagon which engaged more people who 
considered more options than either of the previous two post-cold-war 
security assessments done in the Bush administration and then in the 
first year of the Clinton administration. The reviewing process began, 
also, to stimulate similar debate outside of the Pentagon and outside 
of Congress. I believe that all those involved in the Pentagon effort

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have done well by debating the controversial questions and in making 
recommendations they believed were essential, even though some of those 
did not, in my opinion, go far enough and were not bold enough, and 
even though some of them are recommendations that will be controversial 
here in Congress.
  I want to particularly draw attention to significant steps forward 
that are made in the QDR in three critical areas.
  First, I believe the QDR has developed a much more comprehensive view 
of our strategic future military environment than we had from the two 
previous studies; that is, the way in which the national security 
environment, will be affected by unconventional threats to our 
security, including, of course, terrorism and chemical and biological 
warfare, but also including the capacity of an enemy to strike at us in 
what the military calls an asymmetrical way, that is, to find our 
vulnerability, invest much less than we spend on our military, and then 
to strike at that vulnerability.
  Second, I think the QDR has taken some significant steps forward in 
beginning to deal with management improvements within the Pentagon and 
in confronting the need for some reductions in manpower and some 
reductions in acquisition of high-visibility procurement programs and 
in recommending, as Senator Coats has indicated, two additional rounds 
of BRAC, of the base closure process. To put it mildly, that will not 
be popular on Capitol Hill. And, yet, the more you look at the 
reductions that have already occurred in the size of our military 
forces and the extent to which we have reduced tooth but not reduced 
tail, it is hard to conclude that, in the interest of our national 
security, we do not need to further reduce military infrastructure.

  Third, although I would criticize the QDR for being more budget 
driven than strategy driven, the Pentagon has presented some 
conclusions about reducing forces that they assume can help bring the 
defense program more closely and realistically in line with the fiscal 
assumptions that they are operating under.
  Nevertheless, why do I say the report, as I looked at it this 
afternoon, does not live up to my own hopes for it? I find it to be too 
much of a status-quo document. While it is true we have reduced 
personnel and force structure significantly since the close of the cold 
war, the shape and focus of our military remains substantially what it 
was then. This report represents, as others have said, essentially a 
``salami-slicing'' approach. It is not a dramatic change, nor does it 
seem to point to future dramatic changes to deal with increased 
workload for our military forces to respond to the much more 
complicated geopolitical situation nor to changes in technology, which 
have created a revolution in military affairs.
  Mr. President, as I said a moment ago, the report was more budget 
driven than strategy driven. Perhaps that is understandable for the 
Pentagon has to live within the constraints we impose, but I must say, 
Senator Coats and I and the others did not introduce legislation which 
called for this Quadrennial Defense Review as a way to cut the defense 
budget. That might be a result, but a future-oriented review might just 
as logically lead to an increase in the defense budget, depending on 
what a strategic review of the world determines that our future defense 
needs will be. In fact, as you look at the more comprehensive strategic 
review of the future of the military environment that is in this QDR, 
it argues for additional capacity to that which the report continues to 
advocate: Which is the capacity to meet two major regional threats, a 
series of additional requirements, including terrorism, chemical and 
biological warfare, missile defense, and peacekeeping. Yet, I don't see 
the connection between what I think is the more accurately described 
complicated strategic future we have and the programs the report 
advocates to meet that future.
  The report is not strategy driven. It continues to require that the 
military be structured to deal with two major regional conflicts but 
its assessment of the strategic environment raises questions about 
whether that is an appropriate standard, particularly since one of 
those conflicts presumably would be on the Korean Peninsula against 
North Korea, a state that many question will constitute a threat to 
security very much longer. So, as we look 10 to 20 years out, will our 
major threat in Asia be on the Korean Peninsula, or will it come from 
another great power or midsize power that has gained nuclear capability 
and can disrupt the entire region?
  The report makes no recommendations for change to the organization of 
the current force and only minor changes to the size of that force. As 
I have indicated, some weapons-purchasing programs were reduced, but no 
major programs have been canceled. Perhaps even more important, from my 
own point of view, as we look forward, no new programs were recommended 
to deal with the extraordinary range of threats and responsibilities 
that are described in the strategic review part of the report. The 
explosion in technology could literally and totally change the way 
enemies will fight us and what weapons they will employ, while at the 
same time creating enormous opportunities for us, if we wisely and 
boldly use technology, to fundamentally improve our military capability 
to defend our interests perhaps in a much more cost-effective way.
  I also was disappointed that the report did not deal with the further 
implementation of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, which I think most 
observers would say has not fully achieved its goals for more 
jointness. The fact is, too much of what happens in the Pentagon and 
our military still happens in the stovepipes of the four services. We 
do not see enough cooperation across service lines--joint training, for 
instance--to either achieve the dollar savings or the increases in 
fighting effectiveness that many observers think will come from 
increased jointness.

  Mr. President, a final word. There is a brief reference to space and 
the role space may play in future warfare. Remember, we are talking 
about 10 to 20 years from now. It is hard to imagine as we see the 
world depend more and more on space-based satellites that our future 
enemies will not rely on a wide range of space-based capabilities to 
fight us. It seems to me this suggests a very, very urgent need for us 
to consider the implications of that for our future military 
preparedness, including very controversial questions, which I think we 
have to consider in the responsible exercise of our duties, whether we 
should proceed with what might be called the weaponization of space, 
and what we should do to develop capacity to defend against attacks on 
us from space.
  In summary, I feel strongly that we need to act more boldly and 
broadly now. We need to stop doing business as usual now so we can 
better respond to the challenges of the future, and that goes not just 
for those in the Pentagon, but also for those of us in Congress, 
because the decisions that we are making today will commit enormous 
national resources and determine the military forces we will have for 
decades.
  The fact is that the extraordinary victory we achieved in the gulf 
war was the result not only of the extraordinary military leadership we 
had and the extraordinary bravery and skill of our troops on the 
ground, in the air, on the water, but it also was the result of 
decisions and investments made in the seventies in military technology 
that came online and were available to be used in the early 1990's in 
the gulf war.
  We have to think, as we make the decisions we do committing hundreds 
of billions of dollars to defense programs, whether these are the 
programs we will need 10 and 20 years from now. The fact is, if we 
choose unwisely and a future opponent chooses more wisely, we may well 
be jeopardizing not only the lives of our soldiers, but also the lives 
of our children and our grandchildren. When we discover that, we will 
have precious little time and perhaps not the resources to fix our 
mistakes.
  So in those ways, I find the QDR to be lacking, but Senator Coats and 
our cosponsors anticipated this and believed it would be the first step 
in a dynamic process. I hope that is the way in which the QDR, will be 
seen--as a first step, an important one--in a series of steps to 
determine what our future military needs will be. It does, in fact, 
provide a sound base from which this critical discussion can proceed.
  I think Secretary Cohen himself has recognized this is only the 
beginning--

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it is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end--not only 
in what he specifically said, but in the fact that last week he 
announced the appointment of a task force which will now go the next 
step, particularly in considering reform of the Office of the Secretary 
of Defense.
  We all have high hopes for the independent National Defense Panel, 
that was created as part of our legislation, to go further and create 
clear alternatives and to begin to identify the critical unanswered 
questions that we are left with after reading the QDR. Then, as Senator 
Coats has said, it will be up to those of us in Congress and to those 
in the White House and the administration to absorb the recommendations 
of the QDR we received today; then of the National Defense Panel which 
will be presented to us in December; and then to push boldly against 
the status quo.
  Our responsibility may require us to make difficult decisions about 
the weapons we buy and where our forces will be based and how they will 
be structured so that tomorrow's American military will be ready to 
meet the security threats of the next century in the most cost-
effective and technologically dominant way.
  The point is this: Some people will say, ``QDR says it all, we're 
doing well, our security is clear. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'' 
Of course, we agree our security is strong today and it ain't broke 
today, but if we don't fix it, it will be broke 10 or 20 years from 
now, and we will not have fulfilled the fullest measure of our 
responsibility under the Constitution to provide for and protect the 
common defense.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. COATS. If the Senator will yield.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I certainly agree with my colleague--we 
worked on this together--that this QDR report doesn't meet all of our 
expectations. We wanted a more visionary document. We wanted some 
bolder challenges, at least a broader definition of what the future 
might look like and what options we would have to address it, because 
the point is that we are at such a critical decisionmaking point, in 
terms of allocation of resources, that we need that look into the 
future in order to try to make the decisions that will give us the 
flexibility and the resources to address those future threats.
  The real concern here is that we stay locked into, not necessarily a 
status quo proposal, but one that closely resembles the current state 
of affairs within the military, and that we will, on that basis, make 
decisions that will preclude us from having the resources to make 
different decisions in the future or to address different threats in 
the future. That, again, is the reason why we wanted a national defense 
panel, outside evaluators and experts, to give us some guidance on 
that.
  While that Panel's report will not be available to support us in this 
year's decisionmaking process for the fiscal 1998 budget, it will be 
available for us next year. So I hope we can keep that in mind when we 
are allocating these resources and making these decisions.
  Second, I say to my friend from Connecticut that, while many of our 
colleagues, and many individuals, will criticize this QDR as a status 
quo document, my guess is it will be extraordinarily difficult to 
convince them that they ought to adopt even half of the proposals of 
this status quo document because it will affect bases that are located 
in their State, it will affect defense contractors that manufacture 
defense products in their State, and so on.
  Each of us has our favorite service, I suppose, perhaps one we served 
in. We try to be objective in that, but, you know: ``I was a marine, 
and therefore, we're not taking one person away from the Marines,'' or, 
``I served in the Navy, and we can't take ships down.'' ``They build 
ships in my district; therefore, I can't support any changes in 
shipbuilding.'' And on and on and on it goes. We have that fight every 
year.
  So my guess is that, if we can implement half of what is here, it 
would be a pretty extraordinary step for Congress.
  Now, what is the point? The point is that we cannot just always blame 
the Department of Defense for not being bold enough, challenging 
enough, visionary enough when we ourselves are not willing to take some 
of those steps. So it is going to require several things: one, some 
good outside evaluation and expert help for us to even ask the right 
questions in order to arrive at the right decisions; and, second, some 
bold initiatives and some courage on our part in order to enact and 
effect some of these decisions.
  The Senator from Connecticut talked about a different kind of threat, 
driven by technology, that we are just now beginning to understand. We 
probably are not looking at the massed formation type of standoff, a 
mass army versus mass army threat that we have looked at in the past. 
We are looking at technology which can give our adversaries advantages 
that perhaps we have not even thought of and capability we have not 
even thought of; but yet also offer us great promise in terms of 
defense capabilities to counter those threats if we can anticipate them 
coming our way in the future.
  So there is a lot of work to do. I guess the caution here is that we 
allow ourselves to get outside the normal pattern of how we make 
decisions and how we appropriate funds for defense, to think beyond the 
next election cycle, to think into the next century, to be willing to 
take bold steps in either saying no or in saying yes to decisions that 
will have tremendous future implications for this Nation.
  What does that mean? That means that we have to have an open mind, we 
have to see this as a process and not as a fixed point for which 
decisions made today will necessarily be those decisions which will be 
implemented tomorrow. We have to retain that flexibility as we 
understand how to develop a national defense strategy for the future.
  It has been said that no major changes in military affairs in history 
have ever occurred except after a crushing defeat. We had a stunning 
victory in Operation Desert Storm. I think a lot of that was 
accomplished because of the lessons we learned in Vietnam, the changes 
that were consequently made. Yet, for us now to rest on that success 
and pretty much indicate that we are not willing to make major changes 
would condemn us to the lessons of history; we cannot simply strengthen 
and retain the capabilities of our last success, but we must fully 
understand and prepare for the potential of our next war. We want to 
avoid preparing for the past.
  That is going to take some bold thinking. That is going to take some 
stepping outside the box to take some challenging questions about 
current assumptions and the current status quo as we look out in the 
future. I think we have started that process.
  I want to commend my friend from Connecticut for all the effort that 
he has put into this and our other colleagues who have been involved in 
setting up our National Defense Panel and working with the Department 
of Defense, working with the new Secretary, who I think is committed 
and pledged to do this very thing.

  I thank the Senator for his time.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my friend from Indiana for his comments, which 
I agree with totally.
  Part of what we are saying--I echo him--is the world is changing so 
dramatically that we must make sure that our national security 
structure changes as well. There is not a company doing business in 
America today the way it did 5 or 10 years ago, let alone 30, 40, or 50 
years ago. What strikes me as so stunning is that the companies that 
are doing best today are looking ahead 3, 4, 5, 10 years forward to 
figure out how they are going to need to change to make sure they are 
still on top. There are limits to that comparison, but that is what we 
are trying to do with our national security structure.
  We are, in a sense, being the burrs under the saddle here because we 
are riding tall in the saddle right now as a country. We are very 
strong. But history tells us that unless you look forward and change 
with the times, particularly to begin to absorb the full measure of 
technological change in your military plans, then you are not going to 
be riding securely for very long.
  Just to echo a final point, a very important one, when we drafted 
this legislation, Senators Coats, McCain, Robb, Kempthorne, Levin, and 
others,

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and I had in mind that it was not just the Pentagon--as big and 
bureaucratic, although very effective, an institution as it is--that 
needed an outside push; it was Congress, it was us because we are as 
prone to ride along with the successful status quo and not take the 
painful looks out over the horizon, particularly if they affect us, as 
some of these changes may.
  So this is the first step. It is an ongoing process. I feel even more 
strongly that legislation was correct in calling for an independent 
panel, a national defense panel. And ultimately it will be up to the 
Armed Services Committees, the Appropriations Committees, and all the 
Members of both Houses to have the guts to make the tough decisions 
today that will guarantee that America is strong and secure tomorrow 
and a lot of tomorrows forward into the 21st century.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

                          ____________________