[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 52 (Tuesday, April 24, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3825-S3826]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[[Page S3825]]
NATIONAL DEFENSE
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this morning as I read the Wall Street
Journal, I came across Mark Helprin's article called ``The Fire Next
Time.'' The thesis of Mr. Helprin is this:
The consensus that doing much to protect America is
preferable to doing too little has been destroyed. If the
President does not rebuild it, we will suffer the
consequences.
I commend this article to the Senate. I do not think it is totally
the President's responsibility. It certainly falls on many of us to
help the President and the Secretary of Defense and those in the
National Security Agency and the Vice President, all of them working on
what should be our defense policy, to find ways to rehabilitate our
national defense. Very clearly, we do not have the defense we need for
the future.
At one point in this article, Mr. Helprin says this:
God save the American soldier from those who believe that
his life can be protected and his mission accomplished on the
cheap. For what they perceive as an extravagance is always
less costly in lives and treasure than the long drawn-out
wars it deters altogether or shortens with quick victories.
I do hope all of us will think about how we can restore our national
prestige in terms of being the superpower of the world and having the
power to defend that position.
I ask unanimous consent this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Wall Street Journal, Apr. 24, 2001]
The Fire Next Time
(By Mark Helprin)
From Alexandria in July of 1941, Randolph Churchill
reported to his father as the British waited for Rommel to
attack upon Egypt. In the midst of a peril that famously
concentrated mind and spirit, he wrote, ``You can see
generals wandering around GHQ looking for bits of string.''
Apparently these generals were not, like their prime
minister, devoted to Napoleon's maxim, ``Frappez la masse, et
le reste vient par surcroit,'' which, vis-a-vis strategic or
other problems, bids one to concentrate upon the essence,
with assurance that all else will follow in train, even bits
of string.
Consensus Destroyed
Those with more than a superficial view of American
national security, who would defend and preserve it from the
fire next time, have by necessity divided their forces in
advocacy of its various elements, but they have neglected its
essence. For the cardinal issue of national security is not
China, is not Russia, is not weapons of mass destruction, or
missile defense, the revolution in military affairs,
terrorism, training, or readiness. It is, rather, that the
general consensus in regard to defense since Pearl Harbor--
that doing too much is more prudent than doing too little--
has been destroyed. The last time we devoted a lesser
proportion of our resources to defense, we were well
protected by the oceans, in the midst of a depression, and
without major international responsibilities, and even then
it was a dereliction of duty.
The destruction is so influential that traditional
supporters of high defense spending, bent to the will of
their detractors, shrink from argument, choosing rather to
negotiate among themselves so as to prepare painstakingly
crafted instruments of surrender.
A leader of defense reform, whose life mission is to defend
the United States, writes to me: ``Please do not quote me
under any circumstances by name. . . . Bush has no chance of
winning the argument that more money must be spent on
defense. Very few Americans feel that more money needs to be
spent on defense and they are right. The amount of money
being spent is already more than sufficient.''
More than sufficient to fight China? It is hard to think of
anything less appealing than war with China, but if we don't
want that we must be able to deter China, and to deter China
we must have the ability to fight China. More than sufficient
to deal with simultaneous invasions of Kuwait, South Korea,
and Taiwan? More than sufficient to stop even one incoming
ballistic missile? Not yet, not now, and, until we spend the
money, not ever.
For someone of the all-too-common opinion that a strong
defense is the cause of war, a favorite trick is to advance a
wholesale revision of strategy, so that he may accomplish his
depredations while looking like a reformer. This pattern is
followed instinctively by the French when they are in
alliance and by the left when it is trapped within the
democratic order. But to do so one need be neither French nor
on the left.
Neville Chamberlain, who was neither, starved the army and
navy on the theory that the revolution in military affairs of
his time made the only defense feasible that of a ``Fortress
Britain'' protected by the Royal Air Force--and then failed
in building up the air force. Bill Clinton, who is not
French, and who came into office calling for the
discontinuance of heavy echelons in favor of power
projection, simultaneously pressed for a severe reduction in
aircraft carriers, the sine qua non of power projection.
Later, he and his strategical toadies embraced the revolution
in military affairs not for its virtues but because even the
Clinton-ravished military ``may be unaffordable,'' and
``advanced technology offers much greater military
efficiency.''
This potential efficiency is largely unfamiliar to the
general public. For example, current miniaturized weapons may
seem elephantine after advances in extreme ultraviolet
lithography equip guidance and control systems with circuitry
not .25 microns but .007 microns wide, a 35-fold reduction
that will make possible the robotization of arms, from
terminally guided and target-identifying bullets to
autonomous tank killers that fly hundreds of miles, burrow
into the ground, and sleep like locusts until they are
awakened by the seismic signature of enemy armor.
Lead-magnesium-niobate transducers in broadband sonars are
likely to make the seas perfectly transparent, eliminating
for the first time the presumed invulnerability of submarine-
launched ballistic missiles, the anchor of strategic nuclear
stability.
The steady perfection of missile guidance has long made
nearly everything the left says about nuclear disarmament
disingenuous or uninformed, and the advent of metastable
explosives creates the prospect of a single B-1 bomber
carrying the non-nuclear weapons load of 450 B-17s, the
equivalent of 26,800 100-pound bombs. Someday, we will have
these things, or, if we abstain, our potential enemies will
have them and we will not.
To field them will be more expensive than fielding less
miraculous weapons, which cannot simply be abandoned lest an
enemy exploit the transition, and which will remain as
indispensable as the rifleman holding his ground, because the
nature of war is counter-miraculous. And yet, when the
revolution in military affairs is still mainly academic, we
have cut recklessly into the staple forces.
God save the American soldier from those who believe that
his life can be protected and his mission accomplished on the
cheap. For what they perceive as extravagance is always less
costly in lives and treasure than the long drawn-out wars it
deters altogether or shortens with quick victories. In the
name of their misplaced frugality we have transformed our
richly competitive process of acquiring weapons into the
single-supplier model of the command economies that we
defeated in the Cold War, largely with the superior weapons
that the idea of free and competitive markets allowed us to
produce.
Though initially more expensive, producing half a dozen
different combat aircraft and seeing which are best is better
than decreeing that one will do the job and praying that it
may. Among other things, strike aircraft have many different
roles, and relying upon just one would be the same sort of
economy as having Clark Gable play both Rhett Butler and
Scarlett O'Hara.
Having relinquished or abandoned many foreign bases, the
United States requires its warships to go quickly from place
to place so as to compensate for their inadequate number, and
has built them light using a lot of aluminum, which, because
it can burn in air at 3,000 degrees Celsius, is used in
incendiary bombs and blast furnaces. (Join the navy and see
the world. You won't need to bring a toaster.)
And aluminum or not, there are too few ships. During the
EP-3 incident various pinheads furthered the impression of an
American naval cordon off the Chinese coast. Though in 1944
the navy kept 17 major carriers in the central Pacific alone,
not long ago its assets were so attenuated by the destruction
of a few Yugos disguised as tanks that for three months there
was not in the vast western Pacific even a single American
aircraft carrier.
What remains of the order of battle is crippled by a lack
of the unglamorous, costly supports that are the first to go
when there isn't enough money. Consider the floating dry
dock. By putting ships back into action with minimal transit
time, floating dry docks are force preservers and
multipliers. In 1972, the United States had 94. Now it has
14. Though history is bitter and clear, this kind of mistake
persists.
Had the allies of World War II been prepared with a
sufficient number of so pedestrian a thing as landing craft,
the war might have been cheated of a year and a half and many
millions of lives. In 1940, the French army disposed of 530
artillery pieces, 830 antitank guns, and 235 (almost half) of
its best tanks, because in 1940 the French did not think much
of the Wehrmacht--until May.
How shall the United States avoid similar misjudgments? Who
shall stand against the common wisdom when it is wrong about
deterrence, wrong about the causes of war, wrong about the
state of the world, wrong about the ambitions of ascendant
nations, wrong about history, and wrong about human nature?
the prudent course
In the defense of the United States, doing too much is more
prudent than doing too little. Though many in Congress argue
this and argue it well, Congress will not follow one of its
own. Though the president's appointees also argue it well,
the public will wait only upon the president himself. Only he
can sway a timid Congress, clear the way for his appointees,
and move the country toward the restoration of its military
power.
[[Page S3826]]
The president himself must make the argument, or all else
is in vain. If he is unwilling to risk his political capital
and his presidency to undo the damage of the past eight
years, then in the fire next time his name will be linked
with that of his predecessor, and there it will stay forever.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the
order for the quorum call be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask consent I be given 10
minutes to address the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________