Congress and National Security

As I see it, national security covers two broad areas: the internal and the external. The external threat to our national security is the one with which most of you are better acquainted because you are a part of the military force charged with the responsibility to keep that threat in check. The Congress is deeply involved in both the internal and the external dimensions, and I want to spend a few minutes discussing each. But first I want to explain the internal organization of the Congress, which allows it to effectively administer and supervise its part in the overall responsibility for national security.

The beginning of wisdom for a military officer attempting to understand how Congress works on national security would be, I suspect, to recognize that efficiency is not the first priority. I often find that military officers look with bemused tolerance on the way Congress conducts its business. (We have had Defense Secretaries who viewed us with unbemused tolerance.) This is not surprising because, in a sense, the first purpose of our institution is the antithesis of yours. The military's first priority is always to be organized and trained in such a way as to perform efficiently in most violent and chaotic situation, that is, in war. The purpose of the Congress is to provide a forum where ideas are fully tested in debate and where all points of view are considered. The contribution of the legislative branch is the democratization of the governmental process. Whenever you infuse democracy into decision-making, you pay a price in lost efficiency; a committee is not as efficient as a dictator.

This is not to say that Congress cannot become more efficient in the way it conducts its business. In fact, it is now in the throes of a reorganization to do just that—particularly to ensure better control of the federal budget. But remember, as you view the Congress, it is not designed to be a streamlined decision-making organization, and attempts to reorganize it run the risk of limiting its capacity to represent the people's voice in the process of government.

I make this point at the beginning because I am going to say later on that I think Congress is going to have an increasing voice in national security policy-making in the future. If this happens, I hope you won't judge the wisdom of the Congressional decisions by the seemingly raucous and zigzag way we sometimes go about making them. But this isn't just a result of Congressmen and Senators' not knowing what they are talking about; it is a necessary concomitant of the basic nature of the institution. Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised—except for all the others."

We may even be coming to an appreciation of the fact the Congressional approach has a virtue that the Presidential decision-making lacks. In this regard, let me quote something from a delightful little book by George Reedy called The Twilight of the Presidency (1970). Mr. Reedy makes a point worth remembering about how even astute Presidents can blunder into bad political decisions.

In retrospect, it seems little short of amazing that President Kennedy would ever have embarked upon the ill-fated Bay of Pigs venture. It was poorly conceived, poorly planned, poorly executed, and undertaken with grossly inadequate knowledge. But anyone who has ever sat in on a White House council can easily deduce what happened without knowing any facts other than those which appeared in the public press. White House councils are not debating matches in which ideas emerge from the heated exchanges of participants. The council centers around the president himself, to whom everyone addresses his observations.

Air University Review takes pleasure in presenting to its readers the substance of an address given at the Air Command and Staff College on 20 September 1974 by The Honorable William L. Dickinson, Representative from the Second District of Alabama in the Congress of the United States.

The Editor

The first strong observations to attract the favor of the president become subconsciously the thoughts of everyone in the room. The focus of attention shifts from a testing of all concepts to a groping for means of overcoming the difficulties. A thesis which could not survive an undergraduate seminar in a liberal-arts college becomes accepted doctrine, and the only question is not whether it should be done but how it should be done. A forceful public airing of the Bay of Pigs plan would have endangered the whole project, of course. But it might have prevented disaster.

The men who wrote the Constitution were not all that much concerned with efficiency in conducting the people's business. They didn't think there would be all that much business to conduct. If there is one idea to which they uniformly subscribed, it was: the less government, the better. They were imbued with Montesquieu's ideas of the nature of man, and they believed that no one man could be trusted with an undue concentration of power. In the field of national security they envisioned that the President would be, in effect, chief executive officer responsible for carrying out the policy fashioned by Congress.

The founders gave the Chief Executive the traditional powers given to an executive but circumscribed his authority in areas that had been abused by kings and governors in the past: the authority to make treaties and appoint ministers was shared with the Senate; the power of veto was limited to legislation as a whole (the veto was really thought of as a Presidential defense against an aggressive legislature); and the power to make war was given to Congress.

It is clear that the writers of the Constitution considered the legislature as the place where policy would be made. Congress was given the power to collect taxes and duties, to "provide for the common defense and the general welfare," to "regulate commerce with foreign nations," to "declare war," to "raise and support armies," to "provide and maintain a navy," to "provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia."

In giving "executive power" to the President, the framers nowhere stated what that is. But he was given specific powers in conducting external affairs. He was made Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy and was given the power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors and other officials with the concurrence of the Senate.

Congress retains to this day more authority in domestic than in foreign affairs. A President can get us into war without prior action by Congress, but he can't build a highway or raise Social Security until Congress first gives the okay.

The founders, in other words, envisioned legislative government, and for much of the nineteenth century that is what we had. But what the founders did not foresee is the ability of an active President to make commitments that the legislature could not abrogate. The power of the President expanded, not by Constitutional amendment or acts of Congress but by Presidents' getting away with what they could. Often the Congress was left with no choice but to legitimize what the Commander in Chief had already done.

In the twentieth century a series of reforms designed to improve budgetary control contributed to a shift of power to the Executive Branch. The most notable was the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which set up the Budget Bureau (now the Office of Management and Budget) and provided the President a central agency for clearing all legislative proposals. That act has resulted in the President's becoming the chief legislative officer of the government and Congress's largely forfeiting its role as originator of legislation.

Coupled with this has been a great shift in power to the Presidency, particularly since the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. Congress, it must be said, acquiesced in the abrogation of much of its policy-making power.

In an essay entitled "Congress and National Security Policy," political scientist Holbert N. Carroll, writing in the early 1960s, summed it up this way: In these sectors [military policy and foreign policy] Congress generally acquiesces in Presidential dominance. Its mode of behavior, by necessity or choice, has become primarily that of monitoring the executive branch . . . . The increasing tendency to monitor, to establish political perimeters of tolerance and expectation, rather than to use power to intervene deeply in the shaping of the substance of policies, is perhaps the most striking development in Congressional behavior.

I bring all this up for two reasons: one is that it is helpful background in talking about the Congress's role in national security policy-making. But more important, I think we are entering a most exciting time in the life of the legislature. Recent events have reminded us of what too many of our citizens have forgotten: that the Congress is the branch that provides the democratization of government and that assures protection of people's rights and freedoms. I think what scared people most about Watergate—and rightly so—is the thought that it could happen here, that the Constitution could be subverted by willful men. And recent events should also remind us that if the genius of our system, the checks and balances of power, is to work, the Congress must play its full role. I think this realization will lead to the people's demanding more of the Congress.

There is a concomitant of this which also will surely contribute to Congress's playing a larger part in national security policy-making in the future. It is that events have taken the mystique out of the Presidency. The entry into and conduct of the Vietnam war, Watergate, credibility gaps of one kind or another—all have done much to dispell the idea that Presidents and their advisers are possessed of vast additional knowledge and special wisdom. Presidents of both parties have botched the job enough that members of Congress have lost their inferiority complex about opposing Presidential policies.

I think, therefore, that the Congress is facing its most interesting but most difficult challenge: the challenge to take back and exercise its share of the power it has surrendered over the past forty years. Whether it is willing to do that, and whether it can do so wisely, remains to be seen; but to do so will require much work and more political fortitude on the part of those of us in the legislature.

As I mentioned earlier, Congress has always played a more prominent part in domestic policy, where it has been on more familiar terrain. But in national security affairs Congress has taken a back seat, and it is here that the most significant changes are likely to occur. Some of us have a tendency to think of national security in terms of strictly military policy--the matters that are the province of the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees. I want to be clear, however, that I am thinking of national security in the broad sense, which involves many committees, as well as the whole range of our foreign policy, which involves the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committees.

I do want to say some things about how Congress is approaching military policies and which ones are likely to get added attention in the future. But first, there is one aspect of our international trade policy with a profound impact on our national security which I want to discuss in some detail both because it is often neglected in talks such as this and because it is an area where I feel Congress is ready to take the initiative to prevent the Executive Branch, from gravely weakening our security without realizing what it is doing.

The issue is just how far we are to go in assisting the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites to develop their military and industrial capability.

Since the May1972 summit conference in Moscow, at which the ABM Treaty and the Interim Agreement for the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms were signed, we have seen an alarming increase in the exportation to the Soviets of some of America's most advanced technological know-how. For instance, in October 1973, Control Data Corporation announced the signing of a ten-year agreement with the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers for Science and Technology to provide for technical "cooperation" in developing and manufacturing the most advanced computer equipment. The word "cooperation" meant that they would supply us with some of their advanced capabilities and we would supply them with some of ours. The truth of the matter is, our technology in this area is roughly five years ahead of theirs. There is little that the Soviets know that would be of any value to the American computer industry. Consequently, any benefit derived from such an agreement would accrue to the Soviet side and would only serve to help close that five-year gap. American sources in Moscow established the agreement's ultimate worth to the Soviets at about $500 million.

The Sperry Rand Corporation entered into a similar agreement with the Soviets in May of 1974 and is now discussing with the Soviets the possible construction of a large computer manufacturing complex in Moscow. Just recently a UNIVAC 1106 computer, the most advanced ever transferred to a Communist country, was delivered to Poland.

Obviously, such agreements could benefit the Soviets in a military way. And since the Soviet military machine is designed with the destruction of the United States in mind, I do not believe that such agreements are in our best interest.

(I believe the issue of national security is more important to the American people than the several million dollars that U.S. industry will derive from the sale of our best technology.)

Without computers, modern weapon systems could not be built, integrated, tested, deployed, kept combat-ready, or operated. In fact, computers form an integral part of the armament systems of missiles, aircraft, tanks, and submarines. Avionics are intrinsically computer-linked. So is missile accuracy. MIRVing missile heads is impossible without computers. As you know, the Soviets have just recently developed the capability to MIRV their long-range ballistic missiles. We expect to see MIRV warheads deployed by the Soviets in 1975.

With the advancement of dètente with the Soviet Union, we have witnessed a steady dismantling of our export controls. I believe that this trade constitutes a threat to American labor and industry, as well as to our security, in the long run.

But let us examine another question for just a moment: Does, indeed, a true détente exist between the United States and the Soviet Union? I don't believe so! The Soviets outspend us militarily, and have since 1970. They encouraged the Arabs to prolong the recent oil embargo against the West, as they encourage them to make war in the Middle East. We have lavished them with the American technology which they so desperately need and must have if they are ever to outstrip us militarily. But they have continued to go out of their way to prove that the Cold War is alive and well in Moscow. Détente must be a two-way street, but, so far as I can see, almost all of the benefits have been realized by the other side.

Now don't misunderstand me. I think détente is a good idea. It's a sensible alternative to perpetual tension between the two most powerful nations the world has ever known. But we've done our part, and it's now time for us to slow down and question what the Soviets are going to contribute to the cause of dètente.

Using American technology, the Soviets have been able to increase their productivity to the point where they are now producing more of some products than their own economy requires. One example is tractors, which have been introduced into the American market, selling for 20 to 50 percent less than comparable U.S.-made tractors. We cannot expect American industry and well-paid, organized American workers to compete with Soviet state-owned enterprise married to nonfree Soviet labor. And this is why I say that we must exercise strong export controls or else we threaten the very existence of American labor and industry as we know it. We still live in an economic world, and we must begin to view economics in the long run rather than in terms of immediate "Wall Street type" parameters.

There is no doubt in my mind that American technology in the computer field has advanced the Soviet military effort by several years. There is no doubt that American machinery to be used for the manufacture of trucks at the Kama River Truck Plant can also be used to produce trucks to transport troops and ammunition from behind the Iron Curtain in an attack on our allies in Western Europe. There is no doubt that a loan made by the Export-Import Bank to assist the Soviets in purchasing American goods has the ultimate effect of strengthening their economy, and 100 percent of the bank financing is provided by American banks while none is provided by the Soviets. There is no doubt that if Boeing or Lockheed proceeds to build a wide-bodied aircraft factory in the Soviet Union, those wide-bodied aircraft could be used for the transport of troops or for the mid-air refueling of Soviet bombers. I could go on and on, but I think the idea is clear.

Your question at this point would probably be, "What is the Congress doing about it?"

Many members of Congress are aware of and vitally concerned with problems in this area. But there is another strong and vocal group of members who are in favor of giving the Soviets practical everything we have.

For the most part, trade with Communist countries is regulated by the Export Administration Act, passed by Congress in 1969. That act gives the President broad powers to control trade. The authority for administration of the act has been delegated to the Secretary of Commerce. Under the provisions the act, a private company that desires to sell its products in foreign nations is required to apply to the Department of Commerce for a separate license to export each product. The Secretary of Commerce then notifies the Secretaries of State and Defense of the request for licensure and asks each to advise him as to whether or not the license should be granted. If, for example, the Secretary of Defense objects to the licensure of the product on grounds that it will be of military significance to the recipient, the Secretary of Commerce will consider the objection and will make the final decision. He can, and occasionally has, over-ruled the Secretary of Defense. Generally, when he does overrule the Secretary of Defense, his justification is that the product in question is "readily available elsewhere." In some cases it makes good sense that if the Soviets can get a particular product from England, France, Japan, or anyone of several other nations we may as well sell it to them, even if it benefits them in a military way. At least if we sell it to them, we know what they have. But the Soviets themselves have said that it is American technology in which they are interested. So it is not always as easy to control the exportation of technology as it might at first appear. But there are many members of Congress, in both the House and Senate who were not satisfied that the provision, of the Export Administration Act were adequate. Senator Henry Jackson of Washington succeeded in getting an amendment to the fiscal year 1975 Military Procurement Bill passed in June of this year. His amendment would allow the Secretary of Defense to recommend to the President that he disapprove any request for the export of any goods or " technology to any controlled country if he determines that the export of such goods or technology will significantly increase the military capability of such country . . . ."

And farther down in the amendment, it says that "the term 'controlled country' means the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic [East Germany]." Another section of the Jackson Amendment provides that whenever the President exercises his authority under subsection (H) hereof to modify or overrule a recommendation made by the Secretary of Defense pursuant to this section, the President shall submit to the Congress a statement indicating his decision. Either House of the Congress shall have a period of thirty (30) calendar days of continuous session after the date on which the statement is transmitted to the Congress to disapprove by majority vote the action of the President.

This means that either house of the Congress can reverse the President's decision and thereby assure that the judgment of the Secretary of Defense does prevail.

A conference committee of Senators and Congressmen was formed to iron out the differences between the military procurement bills passed by each house, so that an identical bill could be presented in both houses for final passage.

I strongly believed that the Jackson Amendment was sound and that the Secretary of Defense should have this power to stop the exportation to Communist countries of goods or technology that would aid their military effort against our country. But I was not one of the conferees, so I had to make my position on this subject known. I wanted the House conferees to adopt this amendment, which was already in the Senate version of the bill. I wrote a letter to the Chairman of our Armed Services Committee, Congressman Hebert, indicating just that and suggesting that Albania, Yugoslavia, Cuba, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and North Vietnam be added to the list of controlled countries.

What the conference did was even better than I had hoped for. They accepted the amendment and took my recommendation into consideration. But instead of listing the countries I had suggested, they added the phrase, "and such other countries as may be designated by the Secretary of Defense." The bill passed both houses with little opposition.

Here is an example of a law passed by Congress, with its implication clearly extending to national security, and the Congress's becoming dissatisfied with the way it was being administered and passing legislation to provide for Congressional participation in implementing the law. This is an excellent recent instance of how Congress was able to influence national security. Congress, in effect, took a veto power on Presidential decisions in the interest of national security. Now on the subject of military policy, a number of things need to be said in some important areas where Congress has taken the initiative and where it has not done too badly. Notable examples are the nuclear submarine program, the improvement of military pay, and the Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. If it were not for the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, the nuclear submarine would not have been developed nearly as early as it was—and Admiral Rickover would have been forced into retirement as a captain. And if it had not been for the Armed Services Committee, nuclear power for surface ships would have moved at an even slower pace than it has.

In the matter of military pay, it was Congress—largely through our Committee on Armed Services—which increased pay significantly beyond what the Executive Branch proposed in the mid-60s. We doubled the size of the 1965 pay bill and tied the military to the comparable automatic pay increases of the civil service in 1967. It was the Congress which provided the dramatic increases in pay and allowances in 1971, as a concomitant of the final extension of the draft, providing in one year the rate of increase the administration had proposed to take effect over a period of several years. Thus the fact that military pay today is generally competitive with private industry, for the first time in our history, is attributable more to the initiative of the Congress than of the Executive Branch.

In 1958, following the launch of Sputnik, the Congress, on the initiative of the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee, launched space committees in each house and forced legislation creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In some areas where Congress took the initiative, the jury is still out, most notably the War Powers Bill and the abolition of the draft.

The War Powers Bill, a product of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is an attempt by Congress to prevent the President from getting us into war without prior Congressional action—to take back the war-making power. As much as anything, it is a product of the Vietnam war. Whether Congress, in a crisis, could avoid giving its imprimatur to a President's action, thus mitigating the effect of the law, remains a question. I suspect that the Vietnam experience itself, rather than any law, will restrain future presidents. But the act does represent an important attempt by Congress to get back its prerogatives.

The Administration requested the all-volunteer armed forces and an end to the draft, but these accomplishments were really in response to Congressional initiative, which in turn was in response to public opinion. If there is any bill that can be said to be a product of popular mandate, it is the elimination of compulsory military service. It remains to be seen whether the volunteer army will work—and if it does, whether we can afford it.

In areas where Congress tried to force acceptance of specific programs, the record is mixed—but often because support in Congress was not unified. Congress has been very successful in forcing a minimum strength for the Reserve forces, for example; less successful in trying to force production of specific weapon systems.

The classic example is the continuing confrontation over the manned bomber. In 1963 our committee started out to direct the construction of the RS-70 and moved on a collision course with President Kennedy. He didn't want to be directed to build anything, but he didn't want a clash with Congress, either. In the end Chairman Vinson and President Kennedy took their famous "walk in the Rose Garden," the word "directed" was changed to "authorized," Secretary McNamara wrote a letter promising a new study, and everyone achieved a sort of peace with honor. In the House at the time there was much talk of a moral victory. At times, I suppose, there is a fine line between winning a moral victory and being seduced. The plane was never built, as our committee hoped, but it was not killed either, as the Defense Secretary desired; and today, ten years later, the battle over it still goes on, except that the opposition is now in Congress.

Another important point to be recognized is that Congress is getting more and more into the details of the defense business. It is attempting to playa larger role, not just in broad policy but in the selection of weapon systems and the determination of force levels.

Congressional decisions on force levels, numbers and types of strategic and tactical weapons, overseas deployments, spending levels, and so on, are expressed through the annual defense authorization and defense appropriation bills. They are the principal measures through which the Congress expresses itself on military policy. The authorization legislation, limited ten years ago to missiles, airplanes, and ships, has gradually been expanded to include authorization for active and reserve strength, all research and development, tracked combat vehicles, torpedoes and other weapons" and defense civilian manpower. This gradual expansion of the role played by the legislative committee is in itself evidence of the greater effort by Congress to deal with the defense business. And the expansion of the authorization requirement has generally been in response to problems found in the Defense establishment that had not been adequately dealt with—the M-16 scandal bringing about the regular review of "other weapons" procurement, the M-48 torpedo fiasco leading to the annual review of torpedo procurement, and so on.

These authorization and appropriation cycles mean a double review of the defense program, which often looks confusing and duplicative to military personnel; but it allows the Congress to get deeper into programs and is consistent with what I said in the beginning about the inherent inefficiency of a democratic body.

A few statistics from Congresses ten years apart will show that Congress is spending much more time on defense matters, is no longer taking the words of the military on faith, and is challenging its cognizant committees in floor consideration.

The Defense Department keeps statistics on the hours its officials, military and civilian, spend before Congressional committees in hearings and briefings. For 1963 ( lst session, 88th Congress) the total was 836 hours. For 1973 (1st session, 93d Congress) the total was 2284 hours.

To look at another example of level of effort, in 1963 our committee held 19 days of hearings on the authorization bill, had 835 pages of printed hearings, and issued a 32-page report. For 1973, the Committee had 42 meetings, 2917 pages of printed hearings, and a 115-page report.

In 1963 the authorization bill faced one floor amendment in the House and none in the Senate and passed unanimously in both houses. In 1973 there were 15 amendments offered in the House, 12 offered in the Senate (with eight adopted), and 59 votes against the bill on final passage in the House and 5 in the Senate.

In 1963 debate on the authorization bill in the Senate took 19 pages in the Congressional Record. In 1973, it took 303 pages.

I could quote numerous other statistical examples, but the point is clear that the services can no longer merely wave e flag and get Congressional approval or their requests. Congress is now very much in the act, and the services might as well learn to live with us. We are here to stay.

Without going into detail, let me mention a few areas where I think the Congress is going to be particularly concerned in the next few years.

I mentioned the volunteer army as still subject to question. It would be more correct to emphasize the high cost of personnel as the problem, because doing away with the volunteer army would not automatically lower personnel costs. In Congress we are very conscious of the fact that we spend 56 percent of our defense budget for personnel costs while the Soviets spend only about 30 percent for personnel. It doesn't take a mathematician to see where that could lead us after a number of years in the comparative amounts left, to spend on research and development and on new weapons.

The question of whether or not the Soviets have overtaken us militarily seems to be a continuing debate these days. Some say they have and some say they haven't. The fact is, in fiscal year 1975 we are spending less than $10 billion for military research and development while the Soviets are spending roughly three times that amount for the same purpose. If we continue to let the Soviets outspend us by three to one in military research and development, it will certainly be just a matter of time before they overtake us, if they have not already done so. The spending figures spell the inevitable. But I am confident the Congress will come to this realization before it is too late. And when they do, it will trigger strong pressure for the services to reduce personnel and to reduce long-range personnel costs. At that time, I will be concerned about possible attempts to reduce the strength of our armed forces below what I believe to be the minimum safety level.

In short, the overall responsibility for national security, both internal and external, is shared by the Congress with the Executive Branch. The Congress authorizes and funds those programs it considers necessary for the nation's defense, and the Executive Branch, through the military services, has the responsibility for implementing our national security policies. The internal and external aspects of national security are inseparable. Both Congress and the Executive Branch must realize this important fact and willingly share the inherent responsibilities if our nation is to remain strong.

Two other items of special concern on the personnel front are retirement costs and the number of senior officers. Retirement costs are rising at a rate that frightens members of Congress. There is also an enduring feeling in Congress that we have too many generals and colonels, particularly since we have as many or more than we had during World War II. I would be quite surprised if some reductions are not made in the next few years.

Finally, I believe that in the years ahead Congress is going to have to review extensively our worldwide commitments, for as of now they far outstrip our military capacity, if we support them seriously. Some of them have become inoperative, and, of course, we want everything pertaining to U.S. policy to be soundly based and respected in the eyes of the world.