[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3574-3577]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICA'S MILITARY STRENGTH

  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I speak for the first time from the Senate 
floor with a simple message: The world is growing ever more dangerous 
and our defense spending is wholly inadequate to confront the danger. 
To be exact:

       During the last four or five years the world has grown 
     gravely darker. . . . We have steadily disarmed, partly with 
     a sincere desire to give a lead to other countries, and 
     partly through the severe financial pressure of the time. But 
     a change must now be made. We must not continue longer on a 
     course in which we alone are growing weaker while every other 
     nation is growing stronger.

  I wish I could take credit for those eloquent and ominous words, but 
I cannot. Winston Churchill sounded that warning in 1933, as Adolph 
Hitler had taken power in Germany.
  Tragically, Great Britain and the West did not heed this warning when 
they might have strangled that monster in his crib.
  Rather than let the locusts continue to eat away at the common 
defense, the Axis Powers were stronger and the West weaker, 
conciliating with and appeasing them, hoping their appetite for 
conquest and death might be sated. As we all know, however, that 
appetite only grew until it launched the most terrible war in human 
history.
  Today, perhaps more tragically because we ought to benefit from those 
lessons of history, the United States is again engaged in something of 
a grand experiment of the kind we saw in the 1930s. As then, military 
strength is seen in many quarters as a cause of military adventurism. 
Strength and confidence in the defense of our interests, alliances, and 
liberties is not seen to deter aggression but to provoke it.
  Rather than confront our adversaries, our President apologizes for 
our supposed transgressions. The administration is harsh and unyielding 
to our friends, soothing and suffocating to our enemies. The President 
minimizes the threat we confront, in the face of territory seized, 
weapons of mass destruction used and proliferated, and innocents 
murdered.
  The concrete expression of this experiment is our collapsing defense 
budget. For years, we have systematically underfunded our military, 
marrying this philosophy of retreat with a misplaced understanding of 
our larger budgetary burdens. We have strained our fighting forces 
today to the breaking point, even as we have eaten away at our 
investments in future forces, creating our own ``locust years,'' as 
Churchill would have put it. Meanwhile, our long-term debt crisis looks 
hardly any better, even as we ask our troops to shoulder the burden of 
deficit reduction, rather than shoulder the arms necessary to keep the 
peace.
  The results of this experiment, it should come as no surprise, are 
little different from the results from the same experiment in the 
1930s. American weakness and leading from behind have produced nothing 
but a more dangerous world. When we take stock of that world and our 
position in it, there can be no doubt a change must now be made.
  An alarm should be sounding in our ears. Our enemies, sensing 
weakness and hence opportunity, have become steadily more aggressive. 
Our allies, uncertain of our commitment and capability, have begun to 
conclude that they must look out for themselves, even where it is 
unhelpful to stability and order. Our military, suffering from years of 
neglect, has seen its relative strength decline to historic levels.
  Let's start with the enemy who attacked us on September 11: radical 
Islamists. During his last campaign, the President was fond of saying 
Al Qaeda was ``on the run.'' In a fashion, I suppose this was true. Al 
Qaeda was and is running wild around the world, now in control of more 
territory than ever before. This global network of Islamic jihadists 
continues to plot attacks against America and the West. They sow the 
seeds of conflict in failed states and maintain active affiliates 
throughout Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Greater Middle East, and 
South Asia.
  Further, Al Qaeda in Iraq was let off the mat when the President 
disregarded its commanders' best military judgment and withdrew all 
troops from Iraq in 2011. Given a chance to regroup, it morphed into 
the Islamic State, which now controls much of Syria and Iraq. The 
Islamic State cuts the heads off of Americans, burns alive hostages 
from allied countries, executes Christians, and enslaves women and 
girls. The Islamic State aspires and actively plots to attack us here 
at home, whether by foreign plots or by recruiting a lone wolf in our 
midst.
  The President's suggestions, in other words, that the war on terror 
is over or ending, are far from true. Indeed, the Director of National 
Intelligence recently testified that ``when the final accounting is 
done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in 
the 45 years such data has

[[Page 3575]]

been compiled.'' Yet the President will not even speak our enemy's 
name.
  The threat of radical Islamic terrorism brings us to Iran, the 
world's worst state sponsor of terrorism. My objections to the ongoing 
nuclear negotiations are well known and need not be rehearsed at length 
here. I will simply note that the deal foreshadowed by the President, 
allowing Iran to have uranium enrichment capabilities and accepting an 
expiration date on any agreement--to quote Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu--``doesn't block Iran's path to the bomb; it paves Iran's 
path to the bomb.'' If you think, as I do, the Islamic State is 
dangerous, a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic is even more so.
  Recall, after all, what Iran already does without the bomb. Iran is 
an outlaw regime that has been killing Americans for 35 years, from 
Lebanon to Saudi Arabia, to Iraq. Unsurprisingly, Iran is only growing 
bolder and more aggressive as America retreats from the Middle East. 
Ayatollah Khamenei continues to call for Israel's elimination. Iranian-
backed Shiite militias now control much of Iraq, led by Qassem 
Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, a man with the blood of 
hundreds of American solders on his hands.
  Iran continues to prop up Bashar al-Assad's outlaw regime in Syria. 
Iranian-aligned Shiite militants recently seized Sana'a, the capital of 
Yemen. Hezbollah remains Iran's cat's paw in Lebanon. Put simply, Iran 
dominates or controls five capitals in its drive for regional hegemony. 
Moreover, Iran has rapidly increased the size and capability of its 
ballistic missile arsenal, recently launching a new satellite. Just 2 
weeks ago, Iran blew up a mock U.S. aircraft carrier in naval exercises 
and publicized it with great fanfare.
  Iran does all of these things without the bomb. Just imagine what it 
will do with the bomb. Imagine the United States further down the road 
of appeasement, largely defenseless against this tyranny.
  You do not have to imagine much, though; simply look to North Korea. 
Because of a naive and failed nuclear agreement, that outlaw state 
acquired nuclear weapons. Now America is largely handcuffed, watching 
as this rogue regime builds more bombs and missiles capable of striking 
the U.S. homeland and endangering our allies.
  But perhaps an even more obvious result of this experiment with 
retreat is the resurgence or Russia. The President aspired for a reset 
with Russia and made one-sided concessions such as withdrawing 
ballistic missile defenses from Poland and the Czech Republic. So 
Vladimir Putin saw these concessions as weakness and continues to 
violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The West refused 
to assist the new Ukranian President, so Putin invaded and stole 
Crimea. The Western response was modest sanctions. So Russian-supplied 
rebels shot a civilian airliner out of the sky in the heart of Europe. 
The President dithers in providing defensive weapons to Ukraine, so 
Putin reignites the war, takes Debaltseve, and stages outside Mariupol. 
When bombs and bullets were called for, blankets were rushed to the 
frontline.
  That is just in Ukraine. Putin is also testing NATO's resolve. Russia 
has tested a ballistic missile with multiple warheads, designed to 
threaten our European allies in direct violation of the INF treaty. 
Russian bombers recently flew over the English Channel, disrupting 
British civil aviation. Estonia asserts that Russia kidnapped an 
Estonian security officer on its Russian border. And Russia continues 
to intimidate and harass other NATO partners such as Sweden, Moldova, 
and Georgia.
  Finally, Russia's ability to continue its aggression will only grow 
because its defense spending has more than quadrupled over the last 15 
years. Moreover, the Russian military today is qualitatively better 
than the old Soviet military, despite its smaller size, as Admiral Bill 
Gortney, Commander of NORAD testified just last week.
  Some say that falling oil prices will restrain Putin. In fact, 
Russia's Finance Minister recently announced 10 percent across-the-
board budget cuts to all departments of their government--except 
defense. This should give us some insights into Putin's intentions and 
ambitions.
  Among major nation-state competitors, Russia's military buildup is 
exceeded only by China's. Over the same period of the last 15 years, 
China's military spending has increased by 600 percent. Moreover, the 
bulk of the spending is directed quite clearly against the United 
States as China pursues its anti-access and area denial strategy. This 
strategy is designed to keep American forces outside the so-called 
first island chain and give China regional hegemony from the Korean 
Peninsula to the Indonesian archipelago. Thus, China is on a spending 
spree for more submarines, aircraft carriers, antiship ballistic 
missiles, and other air and naval systems.
  The impact of China's rapid military expansion is clear. China has 
challenged Japan's control of the Senkaku Islands and purported to 
establish an exclusive air defense zone over the East China Sea. By 
expanding its activities in the Spratlys, China is precipitating a 
confrontation with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Taiwan. 
Further, China's repressive actions against protesters in Hong Kong 
only serve to undermine Taiwanese support of reunification, which 
itself could spark further Chinese aggression. All of this is to say 
nothing of China's cyber theft and economic espionage against American 
interests or its atrocious record on human rights.
  While America has retreated, not only have our enemies been on the 
march, our allies, anxious for years about American resolve, now worry 
increasingly about American capabilities. With the enemy on their 
borders, many have begun to conclude they have no choice but to take 
matters into their own hands, sometimes in ways unhelpful to our 
interests.
  Even our core NATO allies appear unsettled by our recent experiment 
with retreat. The French intervened in Mali to confront Islamic 
insurgents, but without adequate advance coordination, they quickly 
found themselves in need of emergency logistical support from our Air 
Force.
  Turkey just announced a new missile defense system that will not be 
interoperable with NATO systems. Greece has a new governing coalition 
that is hinting at greater cooperation with Russia.
  The picture is no better outside NATO. Japan has significantly 
increased its defense budget because of a rising China and may feel 
compelled to reinterpret its post-war constitutional ban on overseas 
``collective self-defense.'' Saudi Arabia just entered a nuclear pact 
with South Korea, likely a response to Iran's nuclear program. 
Similarly, the Persian Gulf States have increased defense spending by 
44 percent in the last 2 years. While we should encourage our partners 
to carry their share of the defense load, the Sunni states are building 
up their defenses, not to help us, but because they fear we won't help 
them against Iran.
  We should never take our allies for granted, but we also shouldn't 
take for granted the vast influence our security guarantees give us 
with our allies' behavior. Germany and Japan are not nuclear powers 
today because of our nuclear umbrella. Israel didn't retaliate against 
Hussein's Scud missile attacks in the gulf war, and thus we preserved 
the war coalition because we asked them for restraint and committed 
significant resources to hunting down Scud launchers. This kind of 
influence has been essential for American security throughout the 
postwar period, yet it has begun to wane as our allies doubt our 
commitment and our capabilities.
  Make no mistake, our military capabilities have declined. In recent 
years, we have dramatically underfunded our military to the detriment 
of our security. To fully understand the military aspect of our 
experiment with retreat, some historical perspective is needed.
  Defense spending reached its peak in 2008, when the base budget and 
wartime spending combined was $760 billion. Incredibly, the total 
defense budget plummeted by $200 billion in the last year.

[[Page 3576]]

  Today, defense spending is only 16 percent of all Federal spending, a 
historic low rivaled only by the post-Cold War period. To give some 
context, during the Cold War, defense spending regularly accounted for 
60 percent of Federal spending. But if we don't end the experiment of 
retreat, this President will leave office with a mere 12 percent of all 
Federal dollars spent on defense.
  The picture is no prettier when cast in the light of our economy. In 
the early Cold War, defense spending was approximately 9 percent of 
gross domestic product. Today, it sits at a paltry 3.5 percent. But our 
defense budget isn't just about numbers and arithmetic. It is about our 
ability to accomplish the mission of defending our country from all 
threats.
  The consequences of these cuts are real, concrete, and immediate. As 
former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta explained, these cuts to 
defense spending have put us on the path to the smallest Army since 
before World War II, the smallest Navy since World War, and the 
smallest Air Force ever. Let's look more closely at each service.
  Our Army has shrunk by nearly 100,000 troops. The Army has lost 13 
combat brigades, and only a third of the remaining brigades are fully 
ready to meet America's threats. Further, investments in modernization 
have fallen by 25 percent. If we continue on the current path, the Army 
will lose another 70,000 soldiers, and every modernization program 
designed to preserve the Army's technological advantage will be 
eviscerated.
  The Navy, meanwhile, has had to cancel five ship deployments and 
significantly delay the deployment of a carrier strike group. The 
Navy's mission requires it to keep three carrier strike groups and 
amphibious readiness groups prepared to respond to a major crisis 
within 30 years, but the Navy can only fulfill a third of its mission 
because of cuts to maintenance and training.
  Similarly, the Air Force is less than one-third of its size 25 years 
ago. Moreover, the Air Force depends upon modernization to preserve its 
technological edge, perhaps more than any other service, but current 
funding levels could require cancellation of airborne-refueling tankers 
and surveillance aircraft, set back fighter and nuclear weapons 
modernization, and shorten the life of tactical airlift and weapons 
recovery programs.
  Nor are these impacts just immediate; they will be felt long into the 
future. Key programs, once divested, will be difficult to restart. 
Manufacturing competencies will be lost, the skilled-labor pool will 
shrink, and the defense manufacturing base will atrophy. Today's 
weapons systems and equipment will begin to age and break down. Our 
troops won't be able to train, and their weapons and equipment won't be 
ready to fight. In short, we will have a hollow force incapable of 
defending our national security.
  What is to be done then? Our experiment with retreat must end. This 
Congress must again recognize that our national security is the first 
priority of this government. Our national security strategy must drive 
our military budget rather than the budget setting our strategy. The 
military budget must reflect the threats we face rather than the budget 
defining those threats.
  In the face of these threats and after years of improvident defense 
cuts, we must significantly increase our defense spending. After 
hundreds of billions of dollars of these cuts, the base defense budget 
next year is set to be only $498 billion. That is wholly inadequate. 
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter recently testified: ``I want to be 
clear about this--parts of our nation's defense strategy cannot be 
executed under sequestration.'' All four of the military service 
chiefs, in addition, have testified that these cuts put American lives 
at risk.
  The President has proposed a modest increase to $534 billion, which 
is better than nothing. Senators John McCain and Jack Reed have called 
for the full repeal of sequestration, which would raise the base 
defense budget to $577 billion. I applaud and thank these veterans of 
both the Senate and our military for this correct and clear-eyed 
recommendation.
  Yet I also want to highlight their support for the recommendation of 
the National Defense Panel, which estimated that base defense spending 
for fiscal year 2016 should be $611 billion at a minimum.
  The National Defense Panel was a bipartisan group of eminent national 
security experts convened by Congress to analyze the Quadrennial 
Defense Review. They unanimously concluded that then-Secretary of 
Defense Bob Gates' fiscal year 2012 budget was the proper starting 
point to analyze our current defense needs--for at least two reasons.
  First, Secretary Gates had already initiated significant defense cuts 
and reforms totaling $478 billion. It is hard to say, given those 
efforts, that his 2012 budget had left much fat in the Department of 
Defense.
  Second, Secretary Gates and the Department assembled and submitted 
this budget in late January 2010 and early 2011, or just months before 
the Budget Control Act with its draconian defense cuts became law. That 
budget, therefore, was the last time the Defense Department was able to 
submit a threat- and strategy-based budget, instead of the budget-based 
strategies we have seen over the last 4 years.
  This logic is compelling, even unassailable. Thus, I agree we should 
spend not merely $611 billion on the base defense budget next year but 
substantially more than that. After all, as we have seen earlier, and 
as the National Defense Panel has noted, the world has become much more 
dangerous since 2011. Islamic terrorism, Iranian aggression, Russian 
revisionism, and Chinese interventionism have all worsened--to say 
nothing of other challenges. The $611 billion is necessary, but it is 
not sufficient.
  What then should our defense budget be next year? I will readily 
admit we cannot be sure how much is needed above $611 billion. As the 
National Defense Panel explained, ``because of the highly constrained 
and unstable budget environment under which the Department has been 
working,'' the Quadrennial Review ``is not adequate as a comprehensive 
long-term planning document.'' Thus, the panel recommends that Congress 
``should ask the Department for such a plan, which should be developed 
without undue emphasis on current budgetary restraints.''
  I endorse this recommendation. In the meantime, though, even if we 
can't specify a precise dollar amount, we can identify the critical 
needs on which to spend the additional money.
  First, our military faces a readiness crisis from budget cuts and a 
decade of war. Our young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are the 
greatest weapons systems our country could ever have, but they need 
training--live-fire exercises, flight time, and so forth. Their 
weapons, equipment, and vehicles need maintenance and reset. If we 
faced a major crisis today, our troops would no doubt suffer more 
casualties and greater likelihood of mission failure. Of course, they 
know all of this, and morale suffers because of it.
  Second and related, our military is shrinking rapidly to historically 
small levels. This decline must be reversed. Our Navy probably needs 
350-plus ships, not a budget-dictated 260 ships. The Army needs to 
maintain its pre-9/11 end strength of 490,000 Active-Duty soldiers, as 
the Marine Corps needs 182,000 marines. The Air Force needs more 
aircraft of virtually every type--bomber, fighter, airlift, and 
surveillance. It is the deepest folly to reduce our military below its 
1990s size as the world has grown considerably more dangerous since 
that quiet decade.
  Third, we should increase research, development, and procurement 
funds to ensure our military retains its historic technological 
advantage, particularly as our adversaries gain more access to 
advanced, low-cost technologies. This should start with the essential 
tools of command and control: cyber space, space, and intelligence, 
surveillance, and reconnaissance. The Air Force needs to modernize its 
bomber and mobility aircraft, in particular. The Navy needs to continue 
to improve its surface-ship and especially its submarine capabilities.
  These critical priorities will no doubt be expensive, probably tens 
of billions

[[Page 3577]]

of dollars more than the $611 billion baseline suggested by the 
National Defense Panel. Because the massive cuts to our defense budget 
resulted in part from record deficits, the question arises, however: 
Can we afford all of this?
  The answer is yes--without question and without doubt, yes. The facts 
here, as we have seen, are indisputable. The defense budget has been 
slashed by hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 6 years. The 
defense budget is only 16 percent of all Federal spending, a historic 
low and heading much lower if we don't act. And using the broadest 
measure of affordability and national priorities, defense spending as a 
percentage of our economy, last year we spent only 3.5 percent of our 
national income on defense, which is approaching historic lows and may 
surpass them by 2019.
  Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that our military needs $700 
billion in the coming year, an immediate increase of $200 billion. To 
some, that may sound staggering and unrealistic, yet it would still be 
barely 4 percent of our economy--a full 1 percent lower than the 5 
percent from which President Reagan started his buildup. If we 
increased spending merely to that level--which both President Reagan 
and a Democratic House considered dangerously low--we would spend $885 
billion on defense next year.
  Furthermore, trying to balance the budget through defense cuts is 
both counterproductive and impossible. First, the threats we face will 
eventually catch up with us, as they did on September 11, and we will 
have no choice but to increase our defense budget. When we do, it will 
cost more to achieve the same end state of readiness and modernization 
than it would have without the intervening cuts. This was the lesson we 
learned in the 1980s after the severe cuts to defense in the 1970s.
  Second, we need a healthy, growing economy to generate the government 
revenue necessary to fund our military and balance the budget. In our 
globalized world, our domestic prosperity depends heavily on the world 
economy, which, of course, requires stability and order. Who provides 
that stability and order? The U.S. military.
  Finally, in the short term, ephemeral gains in deficit reduction from 
defense cuts merely mask the genuine driver of our long-term debt 
crisis: retirement and health care programs. The Budget Control Act 
ultimately failed to control these programs--a failure not only of 
promises made to our citizens but also because the deficit-reduction 
default became annual discretionary funding, particularly the defense 
budget. In the 4 years since, relative deficits have declined, 
alleviating the imperative to reform these programs yet doing nothing 
to solve their long-term insolvency and our debt crisis.
  A better question to ask is: Can we afford to continue our experiment 
in retreat? I suggest we cannot. Imagine a world in which we continue 
our current trajectory, where America remains in retreat and our 
military loses even more of its edge. What would such a world look 
like?
  It is not a pretty picture. Russia might soon possess the entire 
north shore of the Black Sea. An emboldened Putin, sensing Western 
weakness for what it is, could be tempted to replay his Ukrainian 
playbook in Estonia or Latvia, forcing NATO into war or obsolescence.
  China could escalate its island conflicts in the East and South China 
Seas. Without an adequate American response--or worse, with China 
denying American forces access to those seas--countries as diverse as 
South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines would feel compelled to 
conciliate or confront regional stability.
  While North Korea already possesses nuclear weapons, Iran appears to 
be on the path to a nuclear bomb, whether it breaks or upholds a 
potential nuclear agreement. Not only might Iran use its weapon, but 
its nuclear umbrella would also embolden its drive for regional 
hegemony. Moreover, Iran could provide its terrorist proxies with 
nuclear materials.
  And does anyone doubt that Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states will 
follow Iran down this path? Nuclear tripwires may soon ring the world's 
most volatile region, increasing the risk of nuclear war, as well as 
the possibility that Islamist insurgents might seize nuclear materials 
if they can topple the right government.
  Islamic terrorists, meanwhile, will continue to rampage throughout 
Syria and Iraq, aspiring always for more attacks in Europe and on 
American soil. Emboldened by America's retreat and by their own 
battlefield successes, they will continue to attract thousands of 
hateful fighters from around the world, all eager for the chance to 
kill Americans.
  All these are nightmare scenarios, but sadly not unrealistic ones. 
The alternative, however, is not war. No leader--whether a President, a 
general or platoon leader--wishes to put his troops in harm's way. War 
is an awful thing, and it takes an unimaginable toll on the men and 
women who fight it and their families.
  But the best way to avoid war is to be willing and prepared to fight 
a war in the first place. That is the alternative: military strength 
and moral confidence in the defense of America's national security. Our 
enemies and allies alike must know that aggressors will pay an 
unspeakable price for challenging the United States.
  The best way to impose that price is global military dominance. When 
it comes to war, narrow margins are not enough, for they are nothing 
more than an invitation to war. We must have such hegemonic strength 
that no sane adversary would ever imagine challenging the United 
States. ``Good enough'' is not and will never be good enough.
  We can look to a very recent historic example to prove this point. 
Just 25 years ago, a dominant American military ended the Cold War 
without firing a shot. If we return to the dominance of that era, 
aggressive despots such as Vladimir Putin, rising powers such as China, 
and state sponsors of terrorism such as Iran's Ayatollahs will think 
long and hard before crossing us. And while we may not deter terrorist 
groups such as the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah, we will kill 
their adherents more effectively, while also sending a needed lesson to 
their sympathizers: Join and you too will die.
  Bringing about this future by being prepared for war will no doubt 
take a lot of money. But what could be a higher priority than a safe 
and prosperous America, leading a stable and orderly world? What better 
use of precious taxpayer dollars? What more lessons from history do we 
need?
  I began with Churchill's prescient words from 1933. Alas, the West 
did not take his advice, did not rearm and prepare to deter Nazi 
Germany. The predictable result was the German remilitarization of the 
Rhineland and the long march to war. Now let me close with his 
regretful words from 1936:

       The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing 
     and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. 
     In its place we are entering a period of consequences.

  Churchill later called World War II the unnecessary war because it 
could have been stopped so easily with Western strength and confidence 
in the 1930s. I know many of you in this Chamber stand with me, and I 
humbly urge you all--Democrat and Republican alike--to join in 
rebuilding our common defense, so that we will not face our own 
unnecessary war, our own period of consequences.
  I will now yield the floor, but I will never yield in the defense of 
America's national security on any front or at any time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

                          ____________________