[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 151 (Wednesday, October 21, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S12849]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL SECURITY PLANNING
Mr. WARNER. During the past two weeks, the Senate Armed Services
Committee has conducted hearings on the readiness of the armed forces.
Through testimony from the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the service secretaries, it has been
revealed that the military is trained and being asked to perform beyond
capacity. The readiness of the armed forces is clearly and unmistakably
suffering. For the past several years, this has been the concern of
many of the committee and in the Senate, myself included, and we have
made every argument during this precipitous decade-plus decrease in
defense budgeting to reduce the cuts, arguing that we've cut well
beyond the fat and the flesh, and have long been cutting into the bone.
This situation is now receiving the priority so long overdue.
Approximately $7 billion of the emergency spending supplemental
currently being debated is for immediate defense readiness funding
shortfalls. This is, however, only a stop gap measure, and must be the
first step in a long journey to ensure the military is properly
exercised and outfitted to defend U.S. national security interests.
If we are to responsibly correct this readiness shortcoming, then we
must look to the root cause or causes. I believe, as do several of my
colleagues on the armed services committee, and others in the Senate,
that the primary and foremost reason for the readiness shortfall is an
incongruity between the foreign policy goals of this administration,
the strategy, and the resources to achieve those goals.
While defense spending is at an historical low, the armed forces are
being exercised and deployed in ever increasing frequency and with less
and less direction. Earlier this year, for example, Admiral Conrad
Lautenbacher gave the remarkable statistic that since the demise of the
Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Navy-Marine Corps team
alone has been involved in 93 naval contingencies in 96 months. That is
an average of almost once a month that the Navy-Marine Corps team has
been involved in a contingency of importance to our national security.
As the Congress prepares to adjourn, we do so in a world laden with
instability, one which will demand U.S. leadership and engagement. In
Kosovo, refugees--numbering nearly a quarter of a million--are fleeing
from Kilosevic's forces. They are cowering in the mountains where the
harsh winter of the Balkan mountains will kill thousands more, or they
are flooding neighboring countries for relief--but finding those
countries ill-equipped to support them. I am confident NATO, under U.S.
leadership, will soon take action to end the strife action which will
require the deployment of a ground forces in Kosovo--with some U.S.
participants in view of having an American commander of NATO.
Israel remains the flashpoint in the Middle East, but others come and
go. Turkish troops are massing on the Syrian border, preparing to
defend a pre-World War II territory claim and retaliate to any Syrian
opposition in force. The Taliban, having secured a religious revolution
in Afghanistan, have engaged Iranian forces along their common border
in an escalating war between two sects of Islam.
While the Gulf War has been over for seven years, Iraq, in defiance
of the world community, continues to remain armed. Two months have
passed since Saddam Hussein prohibited officials from the United
Nations Special Commission on Iraq from conducting inspections.
Further, the testing of Vx gas by Iraq has been corroborated by
independent tests in France. Questions, credible ones, still arise over
their nuclear posture.
Worldwide, a proliferation of nuclear technology and the
proliferation of the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction is
unnevering. India and Pakistan now have the bomb, and unfortunately,
like so many other neighbors in the world community, they also have the
motive to use it against each other. The launch of the Taepo Dong 1 by
North Korea was a clear and unmistakable ``shot heard round the
world.'' Such an action by a militarized, secretive, isolated, country
in the throws of an overwhelming economic depression, by a people
increasingly in despair, is a harbinger of catastrophe.
This is but a brief summary--a few examples to illustrate where I see
continuing and emerging challenges to United States national security
interests. Clearly, the end of the Cold War was not peace, but a
transformation of the world's politico-military order with unsettled
ancient conflicts based on ethnic, religious or tribal differences and
interests against emerging. These threats require our continued
vigilance and must be our highest concerns.
It is in this context that former Secretary of Defense, Dr. James
Schlesinger, examines the current administrations ability to meet these
threats given current U.S. force structure and the resources accorded
to achieving foreign and defense goals. In his article, ``Raise the
Anchor or Lower the Ship, Defense Budgeting and Planning,'' published
in the Fall of 1998 edition of The National Interest, Dr. Schlesinger
articulates the dilemma with which we find ourselves in recouping the
peace dividend in an unstable world that demands U.S. presence and
leadership.
Dr. Schlesinger is far too modest to observe that his insights were
part of the foundation that led to the increase in military funding
that occurs in legislation to be adopted by Congress this week; I
encourage each of my colleagues to take a moment to review the article.
His forthright, candid discussion of the mismatch between the ends of
U.S. foreign and defense policy and the means with which to realize
those ends will be a prominent reference for the Senate Armed Services
Committee and this body as we deliberate this emergency defense
appropriations supplemental and future defense funding issues in the
coming congress.
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