[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 114 (Wednesday, September 5, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H5391-H5393]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           MILITARY STRATEGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Johnson of Illinois). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2001, the Chair would 
recognize the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) for half the time 
remaining before midnight, or approximately 56 minutes.
  Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to address a crucial 
issue for the future of our Nation, the military strategy that will 
govern our armed services.
  In 1923, then-Major George C. Marshall was asked to give a speech on 
national defense. He briefly recounted the history of the Army's end-
strengths since the Revolutionary War and noted a consistent pattern. 
After every conflict the United States immediately and significantly 
decreased the size of the Army, only to have to increase it 
dramatically the next time a conflict broke out.
  U.S. leaders continued to act as if the absence of an immediate 
threat justified a dramatic decrease in the size of U.S. forces and the 
defense budget. The astonishing fact, Marshall said, is that we 
continue to follow a regular cycle in the doing and undoing of measures 
for national defense.
  Nearly 80 years later in the aftermath of the Cold War, we find 
ourselves caught in the same pattern. Our active duty military has 
shrunk from 2.1 million people in fiscal year 1989 to 1.4 million for 
the coming fiscal year, a decline of 34 percent.
  Some in the administration may argue that this decline is reasonable 
and that further forced cuts are justified because we do not face a 
global peer competitor, but neither did the United States in 1923. Yet 
less than 20 years later it found itself at the center of a massive 
global conflict.
  Mr. Speaker, this pattern must stop. Why must we as Members of 
Congress think about questions of national strategy? My first answer 
goes back to that 1923 Marshall speech that Congress and the 
administration must bring stability to the size of our force and the 
resources that support it, both in the current budget and in the out-
years. Stability ensures the United States can counter any threat to 
its interest, can fulfill its responsibility as the world's lone 
superpower, and can live up to the trust all those who serve in the 
military should have in their government.
  Second, the Constitution charges the Congress to raise and support 
armies, to provide and maintain a Navy, and to make rules for the 
Government and regulation of the land and naval forces. This is a 
sacred duty that transcends merely authorizing and appropriating annual 
funds for defense department and military services.
  Remember, it was Congress that crafted the Goldwater-Nichols 
legislation that strengthened the chain of command to U.S. benefit in 
conflicts like the Gulf War, and Congress had upgraded professional 
military education. We must now give thoughtful consideration to where 
our Nation is heading and what the proper role and size of our military 
is in this current world.
  Third, I have had the great fortune of serving on the Committee on 
Armed Services for over 2 decades. In that time I have participated in 
scores and scores of briefings and hearings and have conferred widely 
with active duty and retired military officers, defense experts, 
military historians and, most importantly, our troops. Through their 
wisdom and generosity, I have learned quite a bit; and I have come to 
some opinions about what our military should be doing for our country.
  It is an old speech-writing ploy to say that the United States stands 
at a unique moment in history, but in this case it happens to be true. 
There is no single overwhelming threat to the United States and its 
interests. There is no political-economic ideology to rival our 
democracy in capitalism, the United States the world's leading military 
and economic power. It has brought not only economic progress, but 
democracy and stability to many parts of the world.
  On balance, the United States has provided great benefits to the 
world through its leadership. We should feel a great sense of 
accomplishment at that. But this elevated position creates 
responsibilities. The United States must continue to lead; we must 
consciously fan the fire of our leadership to serve as a beacon for 
those friends and allies who would follow us. We must work with them as 
partners without arrogance, recognizing that together we can make the 
world a better and safer place.
  Leading in the 21st century means leading globally. The Asia-Pacific 
region is increasingly critical to our future security because of its 
population, growing economic strength, advancing military capabilities, 
and potential for conflict. Yet our leadership cannot focus on this 
region at the expense of others where U.S. interests remain strong, 
particularly Europe and the Persian Gulf.
  In addition to requiring global leadership, our world position makes 
us a tempting target for those who would attack us. We may face direct 
challenges, attacks on our homeland, our citizens and soldiers overseas 
and our military and commercial information systems. We may face 
indirect challenges as well as those who resent our leadership seek to 
increase the cost of our global position and seek to block access to 
the ports and battlefields of the future.
  We may face challenges to our allies and friends in conventional and 
unconventional forms that affect our own national interest. We may 
continue to face challenges associated with being a global leader as 
others ask us to contribute troops to keep the peace and stem violence.
  Given the breadth of these challenges, our national military strategy 
continues to matter, and the size and strength of our military matter 
as well. A good force structure with the wrong strategy is useless; so 
is a good strategy with the wrong forces.
  Getting the strategy right requires asking what the military must be 
able to do. In basic terms, we ask the military to prevent attacks on 
U.S. interests and to respond if prevention fails.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. Speaker, let us look at each in turn. I use prevention to mean 
two broad categories of activities that together protect U.S. 
interests, maintain U.S. world leadership, and minimize the likelihood 
that the military will have to fight.
  The first preventive element of our military strategy is the 
protection of the U.S. homeland as it is our most fundamental national 
interest. We know of a number of states and nonstate actors that may 
seek to counter U.S. conventional strength through attacks that may 
involve weapons of mass destruction.
  To counter these threats, the United States needs a comprehensive 
homeland security strategy, and I have called for this in legislation. 
To be sure, a limited missile defense system is part of such an effort, 
but the obsession of national missile defense by some as a ``Maginot 
line in the sky'' has become theological. Secretary Rumsfeld rightly 
points out that we cannot predict all of the threats that we will face, 
just as no one predicted Pearl Harbor or Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But 
yet his strategy lacks the flexibility to deal with a range of threats 
when it puts such significant emphasis and resources on a single threat 
to be countered with missile defense. Missile defense systems should be 
treated as a weapons system like any other, and it should be only one 
part of the U.S. approach to protecting its citizens.
  Homeland security must include continued support for nonproliferation 
programs, including cooperative threat reduction programs with states 
of the former Soviet Union. It must include great resources for 
intelligence and coordinated response mechanisms among a range of 
government agencies. Comprehensive homeland security, not merely the 
one element represented by missile defense, should be the focus of our 
efforts.
  Beyond physical attacks, the United States is now vulnerable to 
increasingly sophisticated information warfare capabilities targeted at 
our military communications or at critical domestic infrastructure. The 
diffusion of technology allows many states and nonstate actors to 
target the United States directly through cyberspace at a fraction of 
the cost of confronting us with conventional forces.
  Our own information operations war games, like 1997's Eligible 
Receiver, showed that even a small group of attackers could break into 
the power

[[Page H5392]]

grids of major American cities and disrupt military command and control 
systems. In such a scenario, our very technological superiority becomes 
a weakness with potentially devastating consequences for both 
infrastructure and the lives of our citizens and troops.
  In considering how to deal with information warfare, the United 
States must build robust offensive and defensive capabilities and 
ensure that the information and communications that enable combat 
operations is secure. To do this, the Department of Defense should 
focus on integrating information operations into broader operational 
planning and on updating information operations doctrine.
  The second preventive element of our strategy is shaping the global 
environment through active U.S. military engagement. The absence of 
this requirement in current administration rhetoric deeply troubles me. 
To speak of the importance of engagement is not simply a liberal effort 
to make the world a better place, it is one of the best means of 
maintaining alliance relationships, deterring adversaries, encouraging 
civilian control of military in foreign countries, and gathering vital 
intelligence throughout the world.
  If we want to reduce the number of contingencies to which the United 
States is asked to send troops, we must pursue engagement as a means of 
preventing such conflicts before they happen. This vital engagement 
function takes two forms.
  First, it requires presence, both through permanent basing and 
temporary deployments and ports of call. The changing global landscape 
may require basing in new locations. We should consider the use of an 
Indonesian island, greater presence in Guam, smaller deployments 
throughout Southeast Asia, and the shifting of more European forces to 
the southeast of that continent.
  We must also be creative in how we use bases, adopting more of a 
lily-pad approach to basing that will allow us to use forces without 
overly stressing local communities. Frogs do not live on lily pads, but 
they use them when needing to get where they want to go.
  Beyond presence, engagement must involve continued military-to-
military exchanges and international military education. This is our 
best means of affecting the senior leaders' leadership of other 
countries and of building expertise in their cultures and doctrines. 
These relationships should be the last thing we cut in times when we 
are trying to send a political message. Cutting contacts discourages 
the positive changes we are seeking to effect in many countries.
  In the end, our ability to shape the global environment to the 
benefit of our national security depends on a multifaceted approach, 
the linchpin of which is continued engagement and collaboration with 
other countries.
  If our strategy takes these preventive actions for the homeland and 
through global presence, it must then focus on required military 
capabilities if prevention fails. Without a credible, overwhelming 
warfighting capability, the United States cannot deter would-be 
aggressors and cannot maintain global leadership.
  There is no simple, elegant proposition for the warfighting element 
of the strategy to replace the two-major-theater-war construct, but let 
me offer a notional ``1-2-3'' approach.
  One, we must be able to fight and win decisively at low risk a major 
regional conflict. Two, we must be able to conduct serious military 
actions in at least two other regions simultaneously to deter those who 
would take advantage of our distraction in a major conflict.
  Three, at the same time, we must be able to undertake at least three 
small-scale contingencies throughout the world. Our recent history has 
shown that this level of demand is simply a reality. Therefore, we 
should plan for it and accept it as the price of global leadership.
  I have agonized, Mr. Speaker, over the risk of abandoning our two-
major-theater-war force-sizing approach. While I know we do not 
currently have the troops to support it, I still believe we must 
determine our strategy first and only then determine the size of our 
force.
  Our vital interests are spread throughout Europe, the Persian Gulf 
and East Asia, and therefore we must maintain the ability to undertake 
significant military action in any combination of these three regions. 
Many States continue to plow resources into conventional and 
particularly antiaccess capabilities. While it is true that Iraq's 
capabilities have been eroded by sanctions and North Korea's by 
economic stagnation, both countries maintain significant conventional 
strength. The Taiwan Straits remain a potential flashpoint.
  The U.S. military has not given sufficient consideration to how the 
United States might have to respond if a large-scale conflict broke out 
between nuclear-capable India and Pakistan. These are the presently 
foreseeable regions in which a major regional conflict seems most 
likely to occur.
  Now, I agree with Secretary Rumsfeld that the likelihood of any two 
of these happening at any given moment is remote. Yet the United States 
must continue to have a multitheater capability. We must have enough 
forces to deter an attack of opportunity if we are engaged in a major 
theater war. For these reasons, I believe any move to a one-MTW 
capability must be accompanied by the ability to undertake significant 
military actions in two other places as well. These would not be 
``holding'' actions, but a credible capability to deter adventurism and 
to protect crucial interests in those regions.
  The third element of the ``1-2-3'' approach to countering 
conventional threats to U.S. national interests is, the United States 
will continue to take part in small-scale contingencies in areas of 
lesser concern. At any given moment, there may be more or less than 
three such contingencies. The evidence of the last 10 years shows such 
a tempo is likely, particularly if you consider the continued 
deployments to keep peace in the Balkans and to maintain the no-fly 
zones in Iraq. Military planning should be able to contend with at 
least that number.
  Many voices have called for scaling our commitments back and limiting 
the duration of U.S. involvement. We in Congress will continue to ask 
tough questions about how we get involved and how to complete the 
mission, but being involved is the price of global leadership. We must 
acknowledge this fact and plan our forces accordingly.
  Finally, getting the strategy right means communicating that strategy 
effectively throughout the military services. Doing so means 
incorporating national strategic thinking into the outstanding 
professional military education system which already exists. Those in 
our intermediate and senior war colleges must understand how the 
tactics, operational art, and battlefield strategy they study fit 
within the broader national military strategy their civilian leaders 
devise.
  We have the world's best military education system; an effective 
military strategy must ensure that excellence continues. As William 
Francis Butler so aptly said, any nation that separates its fighting 
men from its scholars will have its fighting done by fools and its 
thinking done by cowards.
  When taken together, Mr. Speaker, these strategic elements are 
similar to those put forward by Secretary Rumsfeld. With the most 
notable exception of his downplaying of engagement activities, I 
believe he has gotten much of the strategy right.

  He has also rightly put attention on the need to transform a 
percentage of our forces and to invest in certain critical 
capabilities. The United States must be able to protect space-based 
communications and other systems. It must search for increasingly 
effective intelligence capabilities. It must procure sophisticated 
stand-off capabilities to ensure that we can deliver firepower when 
confronted with antiaccess strategy.
  Finally, the Department must further joint warfighting through 
approaches like standing joint task forces. The Secretary has already 
articulated these requirements effectively.
  What he gets wrong is his approach to the troops. Technology is 
critical, but in many cases it cannot substitute for boots on the 
ground. Cutting forces directly would be dead wrong. The alternative 
approach of forcing each of the services to make their own cuts is even 
worse. This approach would force each service to make cuts in a vacuum,

[[Page H5393]]

and would abrogate America's responsibility to match force structure to 
the strategy it prescribes.
  The stability then-Major George C. Marshall spoke of requires force 
structure consistency within an acceptable range for the health of our 
armed services. These services are only as good and effective as those 
they can entice to serve. Recruitment and retention efforts are damaged 
when end-strength numbers vary widely. Why should a young person commit 
to serving if he or she knows they may lose their jobs when the 
government next cuts the size of the military? Keeping faith with those 
who serve means maintaining a stable military base.
  In addition, Mr. Speaker, the strategy I have articulated here 
requires significant forces, in some cases more than we have today. The 
United States requires an Army, an Army of forces to fight a major 
theater war, to deter a second such conflict, to undertake peacekeeping 
operations, and to take part in engagement operations. If you consider 
that we used the equivalent of some 10 ground force divisions in the 
Gulf War, it is hard to see how we could fight one major conventional 
war while taking on any other missions with our current force. This and 
the reality of high current OPTEMPO rates argue for additional forces.
  At a minimum, we should secure an increase in the size of the active 
duty Army by 20,000 soldiers to an end strength of 500,000, while 
maintaining 10 active duty divisions. Just last month, Secretary White 
and General Shinseki testified before our committee that the Army could 
use 520,000 to meet the requirements of today's missions; 500,000 is 
the minimum force size needed to implement this strategy.
  In addition, we should support Army transformation efforts. The Army 
has given careful thought as to how it must face future challenges; 
these efforts deserve administration and congressional support.
  Our strategy will continue to put great demands on the Navy for 
presence, ensuring access to conflict areas, and to providing firepower 
to those fighting on the ground. In this service, a greater number of 
ships, along with a modest increase in end strength, is desperately 
needed.

                              {time}  2230

  The Navy currently has approximately 315 ships. Over time, given our 
current replacement shipbuilding rate, that figure would drop to 230. 
Such a decline is appalling for a global naval power with global 
requirements. The scope of our commitments argues for a 400-ship Navy. 
This should be our goal. At a minimum, however, we should build toward 
the Navy's articulated requirement of 360 ships. We must also devote 
resources to developing innovative ships capable of operating in the 
littoral--such as a Cebrowski-class of ``streetfighters''--as a 
complement to our fleet of capital ships. Such new platforms may well 
have great war-fighting value, provide presence on the cheap, and serve 
as a counterforce to others' anti-access capabilities.
  The Air Force is currently well-sized for the present strategy and 
will continue to play a vital role across the spectrum of conflict. The 
Aerospace Expeditionary Force concept is essential for allowing the Air 
Force to deal effectively with the tempo of current operations.
  While the Air Force does not require greater force structure, it will 
need additional capabilities. The Air Force will need to recapitalize 
its aging fleet. In addition, the distances involved in a strategy more 
oriented toward Asia must involve greater airlift and more long-range 
capabilities, like the B-2.
  Finally, the Marine Corps is well suited to both contingency 
operations and major theater war in the 21st century. In addition, they 
are developing urban warfare capabilities highly relevant to future 
conflicts. While Marine force structure is appropriate to their 
missions, they require a modest increase in end-strength to allow 
fuller manning of existing units and a relief to some OPTEMPO and 
PERSTEMPO demands. We must ensure that the Marine Corps continues to be 
able to provide the swift, forward action required by future 
challenges.
  Taken together, these changes result in a larger force. The 
administration is right to say that we currently have a mismatch 
between strategy and force structure, but the answer is not to explain 
away the requirements of our global role. The answer is to size a force 
appropriate to the roles we must play.
  Some might argue that we can accomplish these missions with fewer 
forces if we accept larger risks. This is a fool's economy. We must 
give the services the tools they need to fight and win decisively 
within low to moderate levels of risk. We must also lower risks to 
readiness by ensuring adequate forces for rotations. Mitigating these 
risks by modestly increasing the size of the force is the best way to 
provide the stability in U.S. forces that then-Major George C. Marshall 
sought in 1923. Only then will we be prepared to meet any challenge 
that will confront us.
  Budgetary concerns alone should not determine our national military 
strategy. However, we must acknowledge the difficulty of both 
modernizing our forces and ensuring they have the capabilities needed 
to fight on any 21st century battlefield, without cutting force 
structure. Alleviating these pressures will require effort on both 
sides. We in Congress must keep national strategy in mind when 
allocating defense resources. President Bush recently expressed his 
hope that ``Congress' priority is a strong national defense.'' I can 
tell you that for many of us, Democrat and Republican, this is the 
case.
  But for its part, the administration must make the priority of 
national defense as or more important than a tax cut. The military 
truly requires and deserves a greater budgetary top-line and a larger 
percentage of discretionary spending. The Department must follow 
through on the management reforms that Secretary Rumsfeld and the 
service secretaries have rightly highlighted to achieve cost savings.
  At the end of the day, my approach is nothing more than Harry Truman 
common sense. Implementing effective strategy requires inspired 
leadership by the President and Secretary of Defense. I say again, 
inspired leadership. I hope the current administration will provide it. 
Conversations about strategy tend to stay within policy elites. But at 
its most fundamental level, the impact of this strategy we make is felt 
by every member of the service. They must have confidence that their 
leaders will consistently fund defense at levels that allow them to do 
their jobs proudly and effectively. If we fail to do that, we undermine 
not only our strategy but all those Americans we should inspire to 
serve.

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