Published Airpower Journal - Special Edition 1995
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The Congressional Defense Department

Competitive Strategy Making in the Post-Cold-War Era

Major Robert F. Hahn, III, USA

God help the American people if Congress starts legislating military strategy. --Sen Richard Russell

The 1994 elections generated renewed public interest in the overall organization and functioning of Congress. Prior to the elections, most Republicans-and many Democrats-had been advancing the general proposition that something was fundamentally wrong with the way the legislative branch had been doing business the past few decades. When Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years, they immediately promised that life on Capitol Hill during the 104th Congress would be much different than it had been under Democratic leadership. As we approach the end of the first 100 days of Republican rule, it appears that-at least in the House of Representatives-the new majority party has kept its promise. Both internal, organizational changes and new legislation have been proceeding at a pace not seen since the early 1970s. Although it is unlikely that Congress will keep up the current pace throughout the summer, the past few months have clearly demonstrated that the 104th Congress intends to be an activist one.

Defense policy is one area in which the new Congress intends to be active. In its "Contract with America," the Republican leadership vowed that it would take whatever steps are necessary to strengthen America's national security. Key Republicans in the House and Senate have already outlined their versions of what the contract calls a "National Security Restoration Act."1 Among their many provisions, these measures challenge the Clinton administration's commitment to defense spending in general and seek to place a number of restrictions on the use of US forces for UN peacekeeping operations. Other similar legislative efforts are sure to follow throughout the defense authorization and appropriation process.

The 104th Congress will clearly be an activist one, but can it be an effective one? As Senator Russell's comment suggests, Congress has rarely been thought of very highly in the defense policymaking arena. Modern critics of congressional involvement in the development of defense policy, especially in the military, have argued that there are numerous structural and political impediments to efficient policymaking by the legislative branch. Impediments most frequently cited include lack of expertise, excessive parochialism, fragmented committee structure, and partisan politics. According to its many detractors, Congress focuses most of its attention on micromanaging individual defense programs at the expense of issues associated with the broader context of American defense policy. Several individuals on Capitol Hill have expressed the view that they feel they are frequently treated as "the enemy" by members of the military services.2

Though emotionally appealing in an age when Congress still tends to receive lower publicapproval ratings than lawyers and insurance salesmen, micromanagement and parochialism no longer accurately describe the workings of the legislative branch in the defense policymaking arena.3 Over the past 20 years, Congress has developed a set of institutional structures and policymaking processes-a Congressional Defense Department (CDD)-with which it can now successfully accomplish many of the essential tasks long associated with the development of a coherent strategy and force structure. The Department of Defense (DOD) and the military services can no longer treat Congress as an environmental constraint on a defense policymaking process that takes place overwhelmingly in the executive branch. Since the end of the cold war, Congress has become-and will continue to be-an essential player in the development of our overall national security policy and the military strategy and force structure designed to support it. Members of the administration and the military services must now fundamentally change how they view the modern Congress. The current situation demands nothing less than a complete shift in paradigms and defense policymaking procedures if the nation is to successfully complete its transition to a national security strategy and force structure appropriate for the twenty-first century.

In this article, I briefly discuss the creation and functioning of CDD. I then highlight some examples of congressional activism in the early postcoldwar debates on defense policy. Finally, I examine the impact of recent developments-especially the election of the Republican majority-on the future of CDD and the future of defense policymaking in general.

Political Conflict and the Emergence of CDD

The defense policymaking process in Congress has changed significantly over the past 20 years. Many of the changes can be linked directly to the political conflicts that dominated the extended period of divided government from 1968-92. Institutional conflict between the legislative and executive branches of government, internal struggles between the Senate and the House for congressional dominance, partisan conflicts accentuated by divided government, ideological struggles within party organizations, and each member's desire for reelection all helped create CDD.

A very simple model is useful in understanding the changes in the structure and functioning of Congress's defense policymaking system that led to the development of CDD. Political conflict stimulated fundamental institutional changes that eventually led to alternative policy outputs. During the past 20 years, Congress evolved from an institution with an overwhelmingly programmatic focus to one that now effectively examines both individual programs and broader issues associated with the creation of military strategy and force structure.

Partisan, parochial, institutional, and ideological conflicts during the 1970s and 1980s produced four major institutional developments that have, in turn, made possible the transformation in Congress's role in the creation of military strategy and force structure:

1. improvements in the research capabilities of Congress,
2. changes in the organization and functioning of the armed services committees (ASC),
3. centralization of the overall budgeting process, and
4. reform of the defense policymaking process within the executive branch.

Taken together, these four institutional changes served as the four major building blocks-the pillars-upon which CDD was built. As we enter 1995, they remain the foundation upon which it rests.

Block 1: Analytical Tools for Defense Policymaking

Congress has always depended on a variety of sources for its information on defensepolicy issues. Throughout much of the cold war, DOD and the military services provided most of the data and analysis on defense strategy and force structures needed by members of Congress for their analysis of defense policies. However, tight presidential control of what was presented and how, tended to limit congressional evaluation of executivebranch activities. Further complicating matters, during the cold war era, there were few individuals or organizations outside the Pentagon with access to enough defense information to confidently evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of executivebranch proposals.

This situation began to change significantly in the 1960s and 1970s, and-by the 1980s-the growing capability and influence of congressional staffs had been well documented.4 The expansion of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the General Accounting Office (GAO), the creation of the Office of Technology Assessment and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the explosion of personal and committee staffs, and the rapid growth of nationalsecurity think tanks have all produced significant improvements in the analytical resources available to Congress. Both the development of these resources and a growing appreciation of their capabilities make it possible for Congress to challenge the executive branch's defensepolicy proposals on sound empirical grounds as well as on what has often been termed "political grounds." Just as the introduction of systems analysis and the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in the 1960s radically changed the way DOD and the military services conducted business, so did the development of enhanced analytical capabilities within Congress transform the way many people in the legislative branch now view and evaluate defense policy in general. By the end of the cold war, Congress had built an information network fully capable of challenging assumptions underlying the defense-related material that was crossing the Potomac (table 1).

Block 2: Reorganizing the Armed Services Committees

In addition to the expansion of congressional analytical research capabilities, the 1980s also produced several important organizational changes within the ASCs. These changes now provide the modern Congress with a more efficient means of assembling and evaluating defense policy in terms of strategy and structure than existed during the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout the 1980s, both the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) implemented several organizational changes that increased their ability to coordinate and integrate numerous aspects of defense policy that must be considered in order to create coherent, integrated, and largescale overall defense proposals. Although the impact of these changes seemed limited initially, it proved to be extremely important when Congress began analyzing defense policy issues following the end of the cold war.

Both SASC and HASC had been organized to deal with defense spending in light of appropriations accounts. Funds for military functions of DOD are allocated according to several major titles: military personnel; operations and maintenance; procurement; research, development, test and evaluation; military construction; family housing; revolving; and management funds. In 1981, when Sen John Tower (R.-Tex.) was elected chairman of SASC, he reorganized SASC's subcommittees from their traditional delineation along budgetary lines to those focusing on major strategic missions that the military must accomplish. When Sen Sam Nunn (D.-Ga.) became chairman of the committee in 1987, he continued the reorganization that Tower had begun. Table 2 compares the old organization of SASC subcommittees to the current organization, which resulted from the Tower and Nunn reorganizations.

Senator Tower also made a significant change in the internal organization and functioning of the SASC staff-a change that would have continuing ramifications. Prior to 1981, SASC was one of the few committees that retained the tradition of a nonpartisan staff. This policy was part of the effort by the committee to reinforce its longstanding-if somewhat artificial-position that "politics stops at the water's edge." When he assumed the chairmanship, Tower created separate staffs for the majority and minority contingents on the committee. This change provided the basis for hiring staff members who were more supportive of the Republican administration's spending priorities than might be the case in a deliberately nonpartisan staff. It was also arguably a hedge against a future when Senate Republicans would once again find themselves in the minority. Thus, during the early years of Republican control of SASC, partisan policy promotion and policy analysis also became complementary rather than competing activities.

When the Democrats regained control of the Senate in 1986, the increasing emphasis of SASC on defense policy continued. As early as 1985 and 1986, Senator Nunn-then the ranking minority member on SASC-had begun to emphasize the importance of congressional debates about the overall defense policy the nation was pursuing. After he became chairman in 1987, SASC began to hold annual "strategy" hearings prior to considering the specifics of the defense budget.5 These hearings helped Nunn dominate the early defense budget debates for fiscal year 1991 and strongly influenced the postcoldwar defense policy that emerged later in the year.

While SASC was in the process of trying to increase its strategymaking ability through reorganization and adjustments in its staff, similar changes were also taking place in HASC. Although it retained a subcommittee structure based on budget categories, HASC still sought to improve its ability to integrate spending and strategy. In 1975 Rep Les Aspin (D.-Wis.)-then a very junior member of HASC-severely criticized the committee's lack of a broad focus on policy.6 In 1985, as newly elected chairman of HASC, he created the Defense Policy Panel to integrate the activities of various subcommittees he oversaw and to change the committee's perspective. The purpose of the panel was "to examine some rather broad national defense policy and strategy issues [and] to get into some really rather fundamental questions about defense policy and defense strategy."7

Although the official jurisdiction of both ASCs has included responsibility for "common defense generally" ever since their creation in 1947, HASC-unlike SASC-had never seemed particularly interested in the broader issues associated with military strategy. While Aspin was chairman, the panel conducted a number of hearings each year that attempted to establish links among defense strategy, force structures, and defense budgets. As Aspin continually emphasized at meetings of the panel, HASC sought to resolve several basic questions during the waning days of the cold war:

What is our foreign policy, what kind of a defense establishment do we need to support that foreign policy and what are the components of that defense establishment. . . . What do we really need to spend on defense of our national security and what should be our priorities?8

In 1993 Aspin became secretary of defense for newly elected president Bill Clinton. Ron Dellums (D.-Calif.), the new HASC chairman for the 103d Congress, did away with the Defense Policy Panel but not with its approach to policy development. Dellums transferred the mission of the panel back to the full committee in an attempt to expand the policy focus of HASC even further. Since by 1992 the panel had grown to include almost the full committee, Dellums's change had little adverse impact on the ability of HASC to create defense policy. Justifying his decision during a discussion about HASC organization in January 1993, Dellums stated,

I choose not to pursue a policy panel but to pursue policy. I want to take it to the next step. I think that the full committee is indeed the policy group of the Armed Services Committee. That I would like to see the full committee's status elevated to a higher level than it has been in the past, and that we do indeed grapple with some of these significant policy matters.9

Block 3: Budget Procedures and Strategy Making

In the mid1980s, several additional developments fundamentally altered the political environment in which Congress operated. These events provided an opening for strong congressional challenges to executivebranch efforts to exert a measure of autonomy over the defense policymaking process. Dramatic changes in the international security environment that began to occur with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the seemingly uncontrollable nature of the budget deficit disrupted the process of budget "incrementalism" that had dominated defense policymaking in Congress during much of the cold war.

Significant changes in the overall budget process also contributed to the recentralization of defense policymaking. Passage of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) Deficit Reduction Act in 1985, the subsequent budget agreement between Congress and the president in 1987, and-most notably-changes resulting from adoption of the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act during debate over the federal budget of fiscal year 1991 significantly reduced the ability of either branch to increase spending on defense.

GRH capped overall spending levels and made the entire budget subject to the imposition of automatic budget cuts if the levels were exceeded. The agreement of fiscal year 1988-89 established separate spending levels for domestic, defense, and international aid programs but left sequestration procedures virtually unchanged. The agreement of fiscal year 1991 disaggregated the sequestration process so that overspending in any of the three categories would trigger sequestration only within the category that failed to meet target spending figures. According to one observer, the new procedures were designed to "force the authorizing committees to fashion revenueneutral bills."10 It also helped to increase the level of centralization of the budgeting process within the ASCs and thereby increase their control over the process.

In any case, competition for existing funds between Congress and the executive branch became more acute in 1990 than was the case under the original provisions of GRH. As cost overruns inevitably began to emerge, some defense programs needed to be cancelled so that others could continue to be funded, and some bases had to be closed so that others could remain open. The right to make these decisions-or, more accurately, the framework within which they would be made-ultimately emerged as a central focus of the strategy and forceposture debates between Congress and the executive branch during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The outcome of these early debates reflected the effort by Congress to expand its power over the policymaking process and to more closely link strategy proposals to their forcestructure and budgetary outcomes.

The nature of the defensebudget arena changed yet again in 1993 when the Clinton administration and the Democratic Congress joined forces to pass an entirely new budget package to replace the one agreed upon during the 1990 budget summit at Andrews Air Force Base (AFB), Maryland. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the concurrent resolution on the budget passed in Congress set new levels of spending for fiscal years 1994 through 1998. In general terms, the new budget agreements meant more money for domestic programs and less for defense. They also tore down the "walls" between domestic, defense, and international spending that had been established in the 1990 agreement. This allowed budget makers to transfer funds between budget categories, thus enabling both Congress and the administration to use the defense budget as the bill payer for domestic programs. This change has led Congress to take an even more aggressive look at the defense budget-and at defense policy more generally conceived-in search of ways to generate more efficient uses of increasingly limited defense dollars.

Block 4: Reforming the Processin the Executive Branch

Historically, the executive branch has come under frequent criticism for its inability to constrain service parochialism, its unwillingness to produce strategy and forceposture proposals that reflect resource constraints, and its refusal to acknowledge a role for Congress in fundamental decisions associated with defense policy. Previous efforts to correct these problems-most notably, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958-failed to adequately integrate the wide array of forces involved in the defense policymaking process and did little to solve problems associated with program and forcestructure development by the individual services.11

During the 1980s, Congress entered the realm of executivebranch restructuring in a much more deliberate fashion than during the previous years. In addition to its attempts to increase its own ability to develop military strategy and forceposture proposals, Congress sought to limit executive branch control over the process and to centralize the military component of the process. The most substantial change in terms of strategy and policy development concerned the role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Responding to recommendations contained in the president's Packard Commission Report, Congress developed and passed the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, which both enhanced the role of the regional commanders in chief (CINC) in the policymaking process and centralized control over the military services in the person of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS). Goldwater-Nichols significantly strengthened the power of the CJCS and tasked him to make critical decisions about the relative value of various service capabilities and strategies in the face of resource constraints. The provisions of Goldwater-Nichols also require the chairman to produce an annual report that outlines how various elements of the national military strategy fit together and to evaluate the extent to which available force structure and other resources limit the implementation of that strategy.12

Goldwater-Nichols benefited Congress in two ways. First, it provided Congress-particularly the ASCs-with an honest broker in the person of the CJCS, thereby enabling Congress to better evaluate opposing military viewpoints. In addition to the military strategy coming out of the White House, each military service has routinely attempted to advance its own variation of where and how the nation will most likely fight in the future. Rather than serving as supporting elements of the overall administration military strategy, service proposals generally compete with it.13 During the early postcoldwar years, Senator Nunn often accused the Republican administration of having too many strategies: "You have a Navy strategy, an Army strategy, an Air Force strategy, a Marine strategy."14 The continuing struggle over roles and missions tends to reinforce this perspective.

Goldwater-Nichols also provided Congress with a baseline document against which to measure the president's own budget. The administration must develop a regular comprehensive military assessment of the balance between existing military strategy and force structure. Though it is presented from the administration's point of view, the National Security Strategy Report presents a snapshot picture of the president's understanding of risks to the country's national interests as well as a discussion of how he intends to use the instruments of power to counter these risks. As stated in the legislation creating the National Security Strategy Report,

the report must stipulate (1) the nation's interests, goals, and objectives; (2) the defense capabilities needed to deter aggression and to achieve those ends; (3) the president's proposed shortterm and longterm uses of the political, economic, military, and other elements of U.S. national power; and (4) an evaluation of the nation's ability to carry out the stipulated strategy.15

The National Security Strategy Report, first issued in January 1987, serves as a way for Congress to better identify the forces necessary to accomplish any given mission and to increase or decrease the forces available for that mission as the international threat and its view of national priorities change. The report is one way Congress has sought to force the administration to articulate the overall strategy behind its defense budgets and forceposture proposals.16

Congress now also requires the secretary of defense and CJCS to prepare a National Military Strategy Report that even more specifically outlines strategic thinking within the Pentagon.17 This report also provides Congress with a benchmark document against which it can evaluate the administration's defensebudget request. Congress can then revisit each step of the policymaking process and determine the extent to which it agrees or disagrees with the assumptions, assessments, and decisions underlying the president's strategy, force structure, and defense budget.

Defense Policymaking in the PostColdWar Environment

We tend to think of the development of strategy, force structure, and the defense budget as a process that originates in the executive branch and is then validated by Congress. In most instances, however, the defense policymaking process has become a simultaneous activity rather than a sequential one. Frequently, congressional assessment of the threat environment-item one in the process of developing military strategy-has led Congress to pursue a defense policy radically different from the one promoted by the administration. When this occurs, the military strategy and force structure advocated by DOD and the administration actually play only a limited role in determining the defense budget that emerges from debates on Capitol Hill. Instead, Congress employs its own strategymaking resources and generates alternative defense policy and budget proposals.

Congress can mobilize its own organizations and processes to complete many of the tasks accomplished in the executive branch during interaction between the Joint Strategic Planning System (JSPS), the PPBS, the Joint Operation Planning and Execution System (JOPES), and the DOD Acquisition System. Although this is hardly a complete listing of players involved in the process, it suggests that the basic organizational structures and functions of the two branches of government are becoming increasingly similar in form and function (table 3).

Creation of CDD has given the legislative branch the institutional capabilities necessary to develop defensepolicy alternatives using essentially the same theoretical process employed by members of the executive branch, especially at the highest levels. Although the two processes share many of the same inputs from the military and other government agencies, there is often great dissimilarity between their outputs. This is especially true in times of rapid change and uncertainty, when Congress is developing its own strategy, force structure, and budget proposal regardless of the way the president is reading the data.

Building a PostColdWar Strategy and Force Structure

The closest situation to the one we have today in the defense policymaking process occurred in the 12 months prior to the Gulf War. During this period, there was great uncertainty about the nature of the threat, existing national security documents were rapidly becoming outofdate, the budget deficit was squeezing defense spending, and the president was facing a hostile Congress controlled by the opposition party. Because of these similarities, this period provides a clear look at how CDD may operate during the early days of the 104th Congress.

In 1990 Senator Nunn, then chairman of SASC, used resources available to CDD to discredit both the Bush administration's defense budget for fiscal year 1991 and the assumptions upon which it had been built. Operating in what quickly became a policy vacuum, Nunn advanced a strategy and forcestructure proposal radically different from the one the administration had worked on for the previous 18-month planning cycle.

From his position as chairman of SASC, Nunn conducted a number of strategy hearings "to understand and analyze some of the fundamental assumptions on which our national security policy, our military strategy, and ultimately our defense budgets are based."18 Following a series of eight hearings focusing on the Soviet threat, allied perceptions of the threat, and implications of changes in the Soviet Union for Western security, SASC began an extensive examination of existing US military strategy and force posture. With the exception of the secretary of defense's initial budget presentation before the committee on 1 February 1990, the six SASC militarystrategy hearings all preceded testimony by administration officials on the president's budget request for fiscal year 1991. The information obtained by members of the committee during these strategy hearings significantly increased their ability to challenge-on policy and strategy grounds-many programs proposed by the administration in the actual defense budget for fiscal year 1991.

Nunn eventually outlined his concept of what America's new military strategy and force structure should look like during a series of four speeches on the floor of the Senate in the spring of 1990. The "Five Blanks" speeches, given on 22 and 29 March and 19-20 April, dealt with what he considered to be unanswered questions in the administration's defense program. In his speeches, Nunn developed his vision of the postcoldwar world and his view of appropriate defensepolicy responses to changes in the international security environment. During these speeches, Nunn proposed the adoption of a strategy of "flexible readiness" that required only a small number of highpriority nuclear and strategically mobile conventional forces rather than the large forwarddeployed force structure characteristic of much of the cold war. The Nunn strategy also relied more heavily on the use of reserve forces in the event of a largescale conventional war in Europe than did the existing strategy. According to Nunn's proposal, US troops would serve as reinforcements to allied forces rather than as key elements in the forward defense of Europe-a role they had long played in NATO strategy.19

In his comments on the floor on 20 April, Nunn attempted to match specific forcestructure and program changes to each of the five major elements of the strategy that he had proposed on 19 April. Finally, he estimated budget savings that would accrue through each of his changes (table 4).

There were a number of attempts to challenge the specifics of Nunn's proposal throughout the committee markup stage and floor consideration of the SASC bill. Despite these efforts, the Senate essentially ratified Nunn's concepts when it approved the bill on 4 August. The defense appropriation bill would also support the major funding requests outlined in the authorization bill.

The House versions of the defense authorization and appropriations bills for fiscal year 1991 reflected many of the same concerns as those of the Senate. Like its Senate counterpart, the HASC Defense Policy Panel had begun a series of hearings on the changing nature of the Soviet threat as far back as September 1988. Testimony produced during these hearings, which ended on 25 April 1990, was combined with a number of other materials and was eventually consolidated into a single document entitled The Fading Threat: Soviet Conventional Military Power in Decline, released on 9 July 1990.20 In this document-the functional equivalent of an HASC "net threat assessment"-Chairman Les Aspin concluded that

1. The conventional threat to the U.S. and NATO is greatly diminished and cannot be revived.
2. The Soviet global conventional threat has also declined, although not as precipitously as in Europe. . . .
3. While the Soviet Union continues to modernize its strategic forces, the risk of nuclear war has receded.
4. Soviet military spending is clearly on the decline.21

Acting very much in line with SASC initiatives that called for cuts in overseas forces and expansion of the roles and missions of National Guard and reserve forces, HASC reduced the ceiling on European forces by 50,000 and prohibited reservecomponent forcestructure cuts proposed by the administration. The authorization and appropriations bills that passed the House were slightly more restrictive than those in the Senate. Still, the final bills that emerged from Congress and that were signed by the president in November strongly reflected the strategy and forcestructure approach developed and presented by Nunn earlier in the year.

The Nunn initiative dominated most of the debates on the defense budget for fiscal year 1991. Not until 2 August was the administration able to release its own updated defense policy-the Regional Defense Strategy and the Base Force. The administration strategy proposed the reorganization of military forces into four basic components according to region of employment and type of threat: Atlantic Force, Pacific Force, Contingency Force, and Strategic Force. The Atlantic Force would consist of mostly Army and Air Force units designed to deal with any resurgence of the Soviet threat to Central Europe and with any large scale conflict in the Persian Gulf. Although it would rely heavily on forwarddeployed active duty forces, it would also require the mobilization of large numbers of reserve forces in the event of a fullscale war. The Pacific Force would include mostly naval and tactical air units to protect South Korea and other US allies in Asia. The Contingency Force would consist mostly of strategically mobile forces designed to deal with third world conflicts. Finally, the Strategic Force would contain the US inventory of longrange nuclear weapons.22 The administration's Base Force outlined the number and types of military forces necessary to implement the strategy (table 5).

Much of the expected debate on the administration's proposal was interrupted by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990-the same day as President Bush's speech on the new strategy. The Gulf War quickly consumed the president, the military services, and the Congress, temporarily setting aside debate over the Base Force. The proposal was not formally proposed to Congress until six months later, during testimony before the SASC on the FY 1992 and FY 1993 defensebudget authorizations by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.23 The proposal described by Cheney converged into four key strategic concepts: strategic deterrence, forward presence, crisis response, and force reconstitution. Few of these concepts matched the ones Nunn had prescribed earlier, and the administration's new strategy met with little success.24 Throughout hearings on defense authorization for fiscal year 1992, Congress repeatedly harangued administration officials about the inadequacies of the Regional Defense Strategy. In both the FY 1992 and FY 1993 defense budgets, Congress held the line on forcestructure issues and prevented implementation of the Base Force. Despite what the National Security Strategy documents may have said, reality resided in the Nunn proposal-not in the Base Force.

In 1992 the main focus of congressional strategymaking efforts shifted from SASC to HASC. Chairman Les Aspin, still riding a wave of credibility based on his correct call in the Gulf War debates, picked up where Nunn had left off in 1990. During the defense authorization process for fiscal year 1993, Aspin used resources available to him in HASC to further attack Bush's strategy and create his own alternative force structure. Aspin's "Option C" force structure and the threat analysis used to produce it came to dominate the debate over what was now viewed as the post-Gulf War-rather than postcoldwar-threat environment.25

Following the defeat of the Republican administration in November 1992, the defense policymaking arena again changed dramatically. By January 1993, George Bush, the Regional Defense Strategy, and the Base Force were all effectively gone. Gen Colin Powell, the individual most closely linked to the Base Force, soon followed his old boss into retirement. Former HASC chairman Les Aspin carried his strategy and forcestructure plan-modified slightly and renamed the BottomUp Review-with him to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.26 Unsurprisingly, Aspin soon found his defense policymaking efforts soundly trashed by his old colleagues on the ASCs during the defense budget debates for fiscal year 1994. By the beginning of defense debates for fiscal year 1995, Aspin himself was forced into early retirement and was replaced by Assistant Secretary of Defense William Perry.

CDD and the Post-Cold-War Debates

Both Nunn and Aspin were able to use resources available to CDD to develop and promote strategy and forcestructure proposals that were significantly different from those advanced by the Bush administration. The latter seemed tied to its longrange planning cycle and was unable to respond to the rapidly changing international threat scenario and ever increasing budget constraints that became the focus of much of the defense debate. Although one may wish to applaud the Bush administration for its cautious approach, the strategy and force structure we are now pursuing look a great deal more like the Nunn and Aspin proposals than they do the Base Force.

Each of CDD's four building blocks played an important role in the development of congressional strategy proposals that were advanced during the postcoldwar budget debates. Congress relied heavily on its own internal technical expertise and analytical capabilities to challenge what it believed were faulty assumptions on the part of the executive branch. Subsequently, policy proposals that were developed in the strategymaking forums of HASC and SASC dominated congressional debate throughout the year. The budget crisis also helped to concentrate decisionmaking power in the defense committees, thereby further improving their ability to develop proposals that were politically sustainable on the floor. Finally, the requirement for the executive branch to produce a set of clear national security documents for Congress forced the administration to "play defense" throughout the entire debate. Congress was able to take advantage of this tactical situation and effectively counter the temporary political advantage the president gained by the outbreak of the Gulf War.

The Clinton Administration, the Republican Congress, and the Future of CDD

Only the election of Democrat Bill Clinton in November 1992 and the subsequent release of the administration's BottomUp Review by Secretary of Defense Aspin in October 1993 fundamentally altered the terms of the military strategy and forcestructure debate in the executive branch.27 According to the review, the US must be prepared to fight two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts. Unsurprisingly, the force structure presented in the review was itself largely a variation of the threatbased alternatives developed by then HASC chairman Aspin and his staff during defense budget debates for fiscal year 1993 in response to a Bush administration effort to generate a capabilitiesbased force structure.28

The Clinton administration now finds itself in much the same situation as did the Bush administration in 1990. Many defensepolicy initiatives generated by the administration have not fared well. The roles-andmissions report mandated by Congress and produced by outgoing CJCS Powell in February 1993 was poorly received on Capitol Hill, prompting Congress to call for a new study in the Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1994. The BottomUp Review of October 1993, which served as the basis for Clinton's national security strategy, interim national military strategy, and military force posture, has faced similar problems in credibility. It has also been strongly challenged by a number of influential think tanks such as the conservative Heritage Foundation and the Defense Budget Project.29 Many conservative Democrats and most Republicans remain wary of what they perceive as faulty threat assumptions linked to an already underfunded defense program. Even optimistic estimates put Clinton's Future Years Defense Program at $50 billion short of what is needed to sustain the force structure proposed in the BottomUp Review. Efforts to reduce this shortfall by additional personnel cuts or weaponsprogram cancellations have prompted even greater outcries than did the actual shortfall. Any supplemental defense appropriations will likely be paid for by cuts in domestic spending programs, an outcome sure to alienate many key Democratic supporters.

The Administration's Response

President Clinton has recognized that he is clearly on the verge of losing control of the defense policymaking process, just as George Bush did in 1990. To help prevent the type of outcome that President Bush experienced, the administration has recently released a series of closely interrelated documents designed to fill the emerging defensepolicy vacuum. These documents include a more hawkish version of the fall national security strategy, a new national military strategy, and an updated copy of DOD's Annual Report to the President and Congress.30

Taken together, the new Clinton administration documents are designed to shape the upcoming congressional defense debates and to prevent the emergence of major initiatives from within CDD. This is especially true in the case of the national military strategy, the first such document since former CJCS Colin Powell's strategy was released in 1992. And, while it is possible that the administration's proposals will deter congressional initiatives, it is perhaps just as likely that Congress will dismiss the whole package as yet another inadequate response to both the emerging international security environment and the domestic political environment.

Final Comments

The defense policymaking process is both more complex and more competitive than it was at the time Senator Russell lamented the possibility of Congress legislating strategy. In the past 20 years, Congress has clearly emerged as an equal partner to the executive branch in the defense policymaking arena. Indicative of this status, the defensebudget debate for fiscal year 1996 will be a struggle between two competing defense policymaking institutions engaged in partisan, ideological, and-at times-personal conflict. Each institution will be seeking to prove that its perspective on defense policy better reflects national interests, the current international security environment, the constraints of the budget deficit, the best interests of the military services, and the will of the American people. Like the administration, members of Congress care deeply about national security issues.

The purpose of this article was to suggest an alternative perspective on the role of Congress in the defense policymaking process. The current formulation of CDD is not a final model but a point of departure from which a substantial redesign of the defense policymaking process may ultimately be constructed. Although the National Security Commission is not the solution to current conflict between Congress and the president, it does recognize the need for closer cooperation and coordination between the branches of government during the formulation stage of any new national security strategy. The synergistic effect of simultaneously engaging both DOD and CDD toward a common end at this stage in the process would clearly produce a superior outcome to any that can be developed with each operating independently.

Short of amending the Constitution, however, a measure of competition will always exist between the legislative and executive branches of government-even during times of singleparty control. Therefore, the military has a major-if indirect-role to play in ensuring that the coordination and cooperation necessary for the development of good defense policy actually takes place. The challenge of mediating between the two competing defense policymaking institutions will increasingly fall upon the shoulders of the nation's military leaders. In many ways, the military can be perceived as the glue that holds these two branches of government together. To operate effectively in this new policymaking environment, the CJCS, the service chiefs, and the CINCs must constantly seek to balance the sometimes competing demands of remaining loyal to the commander in chief while at the same time serving as honest brokers to CDD. As professional military officers, they can do no less.&127;

Notes

1.S. 5, Peace Powers Act of 1995, 104th Cong., 1st sess., 4 January 1995; and H.R. 7, National Security Revitalization Act; NATO Revitalization and Expansion Act of 1995, 104th Cong., 1st sess., 11 January 1995.

2.A broad range of individuals from both parties and across the ideological spectrum expressed this feeling. During personal interviews, I was frequently surprised to hear this comment from members of Congress who had strong voting records in favor of defense spending.

3.To be entirely accurate, senators are actually considered more trustworthy than insurance salesmen. Their counterparts in the House are less ethical than insurance salesmen but slightly more honest than usedcar salesmen. Leslie McAneny and David W. Moore, "Annual Honesty & Ethics Poll: Congress and Media Sink in Public Esteem," The Gallup Poll Monthly, October 1994, 2.

4.See especially Harrison W. Fox, Jr., and Susan Webb Hammond, Congressional Staffs: The Invisible Force in American Lawmaking (New York: Free Press, 1977); and Michael J. Malbin, Unelected Representatives: Congressional Staff and the Future of Representative Government (New York: Basic Books, 1980).

5.Department of Defense, "White Paper on the Department of Defense and the Congress," 1990, 31.

6.Les Aspin, "The Defense Budget and Foreign Policy: The Role of Congress," in Arms, Defense Policy and Arms Control, ed. Franklin A. Long and George W. Rathjens (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 161.

7.House Committee on Armed Services, Defense Policy Panel, The MX Missile and the Strategic Defense InitiativežTheir Implications on Arms Control Negotiations, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1985, 1.

8.House Committee on Armed Services, Defense Policy Panel, What Have We Got for $1 Trillion? 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1985, 2.

9.House Committee on Armed Services, Committee Organization, 103d Cong., 1st sess., 27 January 1993, 30.

10.Lawrence J. Haas, "New Rules of the Game," National Journal, 1990, 2797.

11.Samuel P. Huntington, "Defense Organization and Military Strategy," The Public Interest 75 (Spring 1984): 23.

12.John G. Kester, "The 1986 Defense Reorganization: A Promising Start," in Bureaucratic Politics and National Security: Theory and Practice, ed. David C. Kozak and James M. Keagle (Boulder, Colo.: Rienner Publishers, 1988), 382-87.

13.Carl H. Builder, Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 57.

14.Lawrence J. Korb, "Spending without Strategy," International Security 12 (Summer 1987): 169.

15.Russell Murray, "Force Planning, Programming, and Budgeting," in Making Defense Reform Work, ed. James A. Blackwell, Jr., and Barry M. Blechman (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 1990), 195.

16.Ibid., 194.

17.See Gen Colin Powell, National Military Strategy of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992).

18.Senate Committee on Armed Services, Threat Assessment; Military Strategy; and Operational Requirements (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990), 1.

19.Soraya S. Nelson, "Nunn: Rewrite Strategy, Rely on Reserves," Army Times, 7 May 1990, 19.

20.House Committee on Armed Services, Defense Policy Panel, The Fading Threat: Soviet Conventional Military Power in Decline, 101st Cong., 2d sess., 1990, committee print 11. Among the documents included in this report were the statement by CIA director William Webster on the Joint Military Net Threat Assessment of 1990, prepared by the JCS; and a trip report describing the results of a visit by 13 members of HASC and 15 professional staff members of HASC in August 1989.

21.The Fading Threat, 18-19.

22.Michael R. Gordon, "Pentagon Drafts New Battle Plan," New York Times, 2 August 1990, sec. A.

23.Senate Committee on Armed Services, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993, 102d Cong., 1st sess., 21 February 1991, 8-40.

24.See Senate, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993: U.S. Military Strategy, Fiscal Years 1992-1993. Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, 102d Cong., 1st sess., 11 April 1991.

25.For a good summary of the development of Aspin's proposals, see Dennis S. Ippolito, Blunting the Sword: Budget Policy and the Future of Defense (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), 84-97.

26.See Department of Defense, Report on the BottomUp Review (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, October 1993).

27.Ibid.

28.These alternatives were developed in a series of papers written by Aspin prior to the authorization hearings for fiscal year 1993. The most influential of these were "National Security in the 1990s: Defining a New Basis for U.S. Military Forces," 6 January 1992; and "An Approach to Sizing American Conventional Forces for the PostSoviet Era: Four Illustrative Options," 25 February 1993. In these papers, Aspin directly challenged the legitimacy of the Bush administration's Base Force. He recommended a return to a threatbased force rather than the capabilitiesbased structure advocated by the administration.

29.See Andrew F. Krepinevich, The BottomUp Review: An Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Defense Budget Project, 1994).

30.President William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, February 1995; Gen John M. Shalikashvili, CJCS, National Military Strategy: A Strategy of Flexible and Selective Engagement, February 1995; and Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, Annual Report to the President and Congress, February 1995.

Contributor

Maj Robert F. Hahn II (BS, United States Military Academy; MBA, Oklahoma City University; MA and PhD, Cornell University) is a student at the US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has served teaching positions at the US Army Field Artillery School, Fort Sill, Oklahoma; the United States Military Academy; and Cornell University. This summer, Major Hahn will become an instructor at the US Army Command General Staff College.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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