[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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