    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [May 31, 1995]
    [Pages 770-773]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview With the United States Air Force News in Colorado Springs
    May 31, 1995

        Q. Sir, thanks for letting us have the interview, first. Could you
    give me just your impressions after giving the speech at the Air Force
    Academy? What are your thoughts about our next generation of military
    leaders?
        The President. Well, I was terribly impressed with them. You know, I
    stood up there and shook hands with every one of those young people when
    they came across to get their diplomas. I talked to many of them, and I
    looked them all over pretty good, and I feel a lot better about my
    country. I think every American would feel an enormous sense of pride
    and confidence in our future if our people, if all of our people could
    have seen what I saw today.
        Q. Quality of life is a major concern in the military today.
    Military members spend a lot of time away from their families. Housing
    is a problem. Depending on who you talk to, you get different quotes of
    how far the military trails their civilian counterparts. What can you do
    to assure the military people that the military is a good career? What
    incentives can you offer?
        The President. Let's talk about the quality of life issues, apart
    from pay, just for a moment. One of the things that I have done since I
    have been President is to go back to Congress on a couple of occasions
    to try to get more funds to fund quality of life improvements, to
    improve the housing, to improve family supports like child care centers,
    to do the kinds of things that would make the military more attractive
    to stay in, and to make it more family-friendly, because you know a
    majority of our enlisted personnel now are married. And I think that's
    very important.
        I am, frankly, reassured that the new Congress, even though we're
    going to have to cut a lot of spending, has committed to maintain the
    defense budget that I have laid out and also continue to support my
    request for extra funds for quality of life improvements.
        I visit a large number of bases every year, and whenever I have
    time, I try to talk to not

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    only our uniformed personnel but some of the spouses, and when possible,
    even some of the children, about what the quality of life is like and
    how we're doing. So I can tell you that I think the Congress, and I know
    the President, we are committed to trying to address these issues and
    improve them. In the years when the drawdown was so quick, from '87
    forward, I think some of the quality of life issues did suffer, the
    quality of housing and some of the other supports. But we're going to
    have an opportunity to try to address that, and I'm committed to doing
    it.
        Q. You touched on the increased OPS tempo, and we will get to the
    pay, but is the drawdown over? I mean, can we say that the drawdown is--
    --
        The President. Yes, it's leveling out. And the other thing I wanted
    to say about the quality of life is that so many people are being asked
    to do so many more missions away from home and more different things.
    That is inevitable; that's part of the changing nature of our security
    mission in the world. But we are looking at using more reserves, more
    guardsmen to help us.
        I just got back from Haiti not very long ago, and I was quite
    encouraged by the success of the reservists and the guardsmen in Haiti,
    how happy they seemed to be to be there and how it helps to alleviate
    overly stringing out our full-time personnel. So that's another thing
    we're going to look at.
        We've got a real problem with AWACS teams with that, as you probably
    know. And we're going to look at that as well as the possibility of
    using some reservists in fulfilling our AWACS missions.
        Q. The drawdown, are we at----
        The President. The drawdown, we're about done. We're leveling out
    now. And we're going to be able to--we're going to have to manage it
    very carefully from here on out, because we are committed still to
    maintaining throughout this century a level of force in Europe somewhere
    around 75,000 to 100,000. We have obligations in Korea which we
    certainly can't shrink from now, particularly as we're trying to work
    through this difficult issue of the North Korean nuclear capacity. And
    we're also heavily committed in other parts of Asia in ways that I think
    would be a mistake to walk away from.
        And then, of course, a lot of our forces that are based here in the
    United States are being used all around the world in different ways. We
    have obligations in the Atlantic and in the Adriatic related to Bosnia
    and NATO generally, and we have to be available to do the kinds of
    things that we had to do in Haiti, the kind of things we did in Rwanda.
        So I believe we're just about leveled out. And I think it's
    important that we not go too low. We don't want to repeat the mistake
    that we've made after every single conflict in the 20th century. We went
    down too fast. We did it after World War I; we did it after World War
    II; we did it after Korea; we did it after Vietnam. And we went down too
    far.
        I think that the length of the cold war has given--and the
    experiences, the bitter experience of trying to rebuild after Vietnam
    has given our current crop of military leaders and our political
    leadership a little better historic memory. And I think there's a real
    sense of pride that the United States clearly has the finest military in
    the world, the most well-motivated, the most--the best trained, the best
    equipped, and in many ways the most talented. And I don't think anybody
    wants to do anything to undermine that. So--and I think all of us who
    know anything about it know that we have stretched you about as thin as
    we can.
        Q. How do you attract the kind of people that it takes to maintain
    that best equipped, best Air Force, especially with the gap in the pay?
        The President. Well, I think the--I think--first of all, let's talk
    about the pay. We now have the funds from Congress to now resume pay
    increases and to keep it up at whatever the legal level is. And if
    Congress chooses to raise the legal level--that is, they choose to let
    us do a little more percentage-wise per year--we'll even be able to keep
    up with that as long as it's not too much. But now we at least know we
    can fund pay increases every year up to the legally authorized limit,
    which is a good thing.
        And I think what--most people that join the military know they'll
    never get rich, but they want to know that they're not going to be
    impoverished, and they want to have a predictable income. So my goal
    here is to have a predictable income that goes up on a regular basis so
    that if you join or if you reenlist, you'll know what the 5-year trend
    is going to be, for example.
        In addition to that, I think it's important to maintain the
    educational benefits, both the

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    Montgomery GI bill benefits and to emphasize what I think a lot of
    people get out of the military, which is that they can do exciting and
    interesting things and they're almost continually being educated and
    trained. I mean, if every major company worked on developing the
    capacity of its people the way our armed services do, we would be even
    more powerful economically than we are.
        So I think that--I think the mission is what really attracts people,
    and knowing that if they join the United States military forces, they'll
    be the absolute best in the world at what they do and they'll be doing
    something wonderful for their country.
        But I believe that maintaining the quality of life issues and
    keeping the training and readiness up and making sure that people have
    the chance to be continuously retrained for different things, those
    issues--based on what the service personnel I have visited with in
    Europe and Asia, in the Pacific, and all over the continental United
    States, based on what all those folks have told me, I would say those
    are the major issues.
        Q. Mission: what is the mission, do you see, in the future for the
    military? Are we going to be a security force for the world, or do you
    see it turning more to looking inside our own borders? Or is it going to
    be a happy medium of that?
        The President. Well, I think that we will do more and more things in
    cooperation with others, just by the nature of it. I think we will be
    working with the United Nations; we'll be working with NATO; we'll be
    working with the Partnership For Peace. I think we'll be called upon in
    small numbers to--just because our prestige means so much--to help do
    things. We had 10 personnel, I think only 10, that were involved in
    trying to help resolve the border conflict between Ecuador and Peru. But
    it made a huge difference that a small number of American military
    personnel were willing to be part of a bigger unit. And we felt
    comfortable that our people were not going to be put in harm's way by
    doing that.
        So I think we'll be doing a wide variety of things. But our
    fundamental mission will be, first and foremost, as long as there is a
    threat to the United States from nuclear powers, we will be arrayed so
    that we can protect against that threat. Secondly, we will be deployed
    so that we can protect our treaty alliances, the people to whom we have
    sworn mutual security commitments. And we have those obligations, and we
    will honor them. Thirdly, we will try to use our military resources so
    that we can reduce the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass
    destruction and the threat of terrorism to our people and the threat of
    disruptions in other countries which could affect our security. That's
    what we did in Haiti, for example, where we were able to restore
    democracy there. And then when we can perform a humanitarian mission
    with an acceptable limitation on the mission, an acceptable level of
    risk, and we have enough control over the circumstances that we have to
    be involved in, as we did in Rwanda, I think we still should be prepared
    to do that.
        I think that we did a lot of good in Somalia. We had the most
    painful experience that I've had personally as Commander in Chief there.
    But our people did a lot of good. They saved hundreds of thousands of
    lives. But because of the relationship between the United States and the
    United Nations, we were in an untenable position there for a period of
    months, and we paid a terrible price for it. But we learned from it. And
    in Rwanda, we went in under different circumstances and again saved
    countless thousands of lives, in ways that again helped the security of
    the United States because of what it did for our relationship to all the
    African countries.
        So there will be a lot of things we have to do. But we have these
    core security missions that I mentioned first and foremost that we must
    continue to maintain.
        Q. Finally, sir, you've basically got the attention of the entire
    Air Force. Is there anything you would like to pass along, add, that we
    didn't cover today?
        The President. I would like to say, first of all, a simple thank-you
    to the members of the Air Force for their service and for their
    dedication. I realize that these last few years have been very difficult
    for people who have been through them with downsizing. There's never
    been anything like it, as far as I know, in the public or the private
    sector, for a successful enterprise to come out on its feet the way our
    military has. And I'm very grateful, not only as President but as an
    American citizen.
        Secondly, I would like to say that I and my entire administration
    are committed to trying to improve the quality of life, to trying to
    keep the pay coming, to trying to make the cir-

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    cumstances as good as they possibly can be, that the future will be more
    exciting, more diverse, and therefore a little more strenuous in some
    ways than perhaps the past has been, but we will do our best to make the
    Air Force an attractive career for dedicated, committed American
    patriots. And as long as the people out there are doing their best, we
    owe it to all of them to do our best. And that's what I'm committed to
    doing.

    Note: The interview began at 2:25 p.m. in the Tea House at the U.S. Air
    Force Academy.