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“INSTABILITY IS THE ENEMY AND IT REQUIRES STRONG MILITARY FORCES” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H9709-H9711 on Oct. 29, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
INSTABILITY IS THE ENEMY AND IT REQUIRES STRONG MILITARY FORCES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Skelton] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, recently the aircraft carrier Nimitz sailed into the Persian Gulf ahead of its scheduled rotation. The purpose of the deployment was to warn Iran and Iraq against sending aircraft into the no-fly zone that the United Nations has mandated in southern Iraq since the end of the Persian Gulf War.
Two weeks earlier, Iran defied the ban and sent aircraft into Iraq to attack sites that anti-Iranian insurgent groups were using to stage raids. Iraq, in turn, was threatening to put up its own aircraft to defend its sovereignty against any further Iranian attacks. A strong word of U.S. caution, backed up by a show of military strength in the region, was necessary to keep Saddam Hussein in his box and to deter further Iranian adventurism.
Apparently, despite vocal protests from both sides, the mission has been accomplished since there have been no more egregious violations of the no-fly zone.
Mr. Speaker, such a use of U.S. military power to enforce stability in a tense part of the globe is not an isolated case. Just a year and a half ago the United States sent the Nimitz into the Taiwan Straits in response to China's threatening missile tests at the time of the Taiwanese election.
In recent months, the United States has carried on a large peacekeeping operation in Bosnia and a smaller mission in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; continued to guard against illegal arms shipments into the former Yugoslavia; sent forces to evacuate noncombatants from Zaire and Sierra Leone; supplied airlift for African peacekeeping troops in Liberia; sent forces to demine areas in Namibia; continued to provide humanitarian assistance to Kurdish evacuees from northern Iraq; and engaged in counternarcotics operations in South America.
Except for Bosnia, which appears destined to remain in the headlines for the foreseeable future, most of these operations get no more than an occasional article on the back page of the Washington Post. Many ongoing activities, perhaps equally important in bolstering international stability, do not even get that much attention unless something goes wrong, activities like support for mine clearing in Namibia, which was the mission of personnel who were tragically lost when their aircraft crashed on its return flight a few weeks ago.
Today, the U.S. military is carrying out scores of what have come to be called ``engagement missions,'' joint exercises with foreign military forces, humanitarian operations of various kinds, port visits by U.S. ships, officer exchanges, sharing of intelligence, and many, many other activities.
Collectively, all of these activities come at a high cost both in money and in the demands on the U.S. military personnel around the globe.
The benefits of these missions, however, are far greater than their costs. As my fellow Missourian Harry Truman once said, ``We must be prepared to pay the price for peace or surely we will pay the price of war.''
Today the price of peace is this: That the United States must continue to play the leading role in building and maintaining international stability. In order to fulfill that responsibility, the Nation must maintain substantial, well-trained, well-equipped military forces capable of engaging in military actions across the entire spectrum of missions from delivering humanitarian supplies, to showing the flag, to peace enforcement operations that may be as intense as a major theater war.
Unfortunately, I do not think that the need for the United States to play this role and to maintain sufficient military strength to do it is fully understood either in this Congress or among the public as a whole. Moreover, I do not think that either the Clinton administration or the Bush administration has done a particularly good job of explaining the missions of U.S. military forces in the post-Cold War world.
Today, I want to address one of the principal reasons for maintaining U.S. military strength, that global instability will present dire threats to American interests unless the United States actively addresses it.
Since the end of the Cold War, many people have questioned the need for the United States to maintain strong military forces and to preserve its military abroad. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, they say, where is the enemy? And why do we need to spend so much money on defense when no single powerful foe or group of foes can easily be identified?
My answer is that there is indeed an enemy and it may be more insidious than ever precisely because it is so difficult to perceive clearly. The enemy is instability and requires as much vigilance as any more conventional foe has ever required.
Mr. Speaker, let me begin by drawing a simple lesson from the recent events in the Persian Gulf and from my last year's stare-down with China. In the Persian Gulf, the rules are clear. Both Iran and Iraq know that a no-fly zone remains in place south of the 33rd parallel and that any military aircraft flying into the area may be shot down without warning.
In Asia, the formula for addressing the status of Taiwan that has been accepted by the United States and others for many years is to say that both the government of Beijing and the government of Taipei regard Taiwan as part of China and that the status of Taiwan will not be resolved by force. The rules with regard to Taiwan, therefore, are also clear. China has undertaken not to use force, and the United States has not supported Taiwan's independence.
Even though the rules are clear in the Persian Gulf and in Taiwan, however, recent events illustrate a simple point--that in international affairs, the rules are not self-enforcing. On the contrary, without constant, direct U.S. attention and leadership, the forces of disorder--always testing the limits--would eventually prevail. In the Persian Gulf, Iran and Iraq would soon drive the region into chaos and hope to benefit from the disruption of oil supplies to the rest of the world. In Asia, China would prefer to have a free hand to dominate the region, which is not a prescription for peace. Peace and stability are not the natural order of things. On the contrary, instability will always rise, like entropy in the realm of physics, unless energy is constantly applied to preserve order.
This lesson is an obvious one--and the use of the Nimitz to support U.S. security objectives is a clear and evident example of the importance of U.S. military power. But U.S. military power is also important in a host of other, less apparent ways.
Consider, for example, the implications of the recent U.S. agreement with Japan on defense cooperation. What is important about the agreement is not in the details--how Japan will provide support for U.S. military operations, whether Japan can opt out of supporting U.S. forces in certain cases, whether more should have been agreed on issues like missiles defense, and so on. What is most important is the fact of the agreement itself. The agreement reaffirms the fact that Japan sees its security relationship with the United States as the bulwark of a secure international order in Asia even after the Cold War has ended.
That the Clinton Administration was able to reach this agreement with Japan is, it seems to me, a triumph for American security of no small order. It came after several years of conflict with Japan over trade issues, during a time when China is beginning to flex muscles and is starting to build up its military capability, and in the face of grave doubts around the world that the United States would maintain its international leadership. Any or all of those factors could have led Japan to conclude that the security treaty with the United States was too weak a pillar on which to continue to rest its security policy. The agreement was the result of several years of effort on the part of senior officials in the Defense Department and in the Department of State, beginning with the so-called ``Nye report'' of 1995, named after former Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye, which forcefully reasserted the U.S. security interested in Asia and promised a continued, large and powerful U.S. military presence in the region.
I believe that the new U.S.-Japan security cooperation agreement is a cornerstone of stability in Asia precisely because it binds the United States and Japan together more closely. It means that Japan will not feel itself forced to develop an independent military capacity that would be threatening to others in the region. It means that North Korea will be discouraged from thinking that it can divide South Korea's allies. It means that China will have less reason to believe that it can use military strength to build a position of dominance of the in the Region. It means that for other nations in the region, the United States will remain, for the foreseeable future, the ally of choice in determining whom to support if tensions rise over any number of issues. As a result, a great deal has been accomplished to prevent instability in the region from growing.
All of this, it seems to me, has been achieved only because the United States made its commitment to the region so clear, both in the words of the Nye report and in the substance of the continued U.S. military presence in the region.
Contrast the positive Japanese view of its alliance with the United States with the attitude of France, another key ally. The French for many years have been of the view that the United States will eventually turn away from its active leadership in international security affairs and leave Europe to the Europeans. I believe that judgment is wrong, but it appears nonetheless to guide French foreign policy, and the result has often been troublesome. Most recently, for example, the French have backed away from their commitment to rejoin the NATO military command structure because they object to continued U.S. command of the NATO southern region. More distressing to me is that President Chirac has made recent trips to China and to Russia in which he has said that France's interests and the interests of other nations would be served by the evolution of a multipolar world in which France would maintain close bilateral ties with other coequal powers. This is, of course, a very thinly veiled criticism of a unipolar world presumably dominated by the United States.
Fortunately, other major U.S. allies in Europe understand that the United States is not a domineering, lone, superpower, but rather the bulwark of an international effort in which the realm of peace and prosperity can grow and the realm of conflict and impoverishment can be contained. Most importantly, other allies also believe that the United States will continue to play a leadership role in building and maintaining a new post-Cold War security system throughout Europe and will be active in the rest of the world as well. The key to preventing destabilizing conflicts in Europe and elsewhere is to maintain a system of alliances in which the United States is inextricably involved. And in order to maintain such alliances, the United States must continually show the allies that it is resolved to stay involved and to maintain its military capabilities.
In emphasizing the critically important role that U.S. military strength plays in promoting stability, I am not, of course, suggesting that the United States can or should try to respond to every conflict around the world. As every president in recent years has affirmed, we are not a global policeman. It is important, however, first, that we understand how instability even in remote parts of the world may threaten our security and, second, that we continue to devote sufficient resources to defense to continue our active leadership role.
For much of it history, the United States thought of itself as being insulated from conflicts abroad by our favored geographical position as a rich continental nation protected by wide oceans. The one permanent goal of U.S. policy was to ensure freedom of navigation. The twentieth century, however, has brought our relative isolation to an end. Ever since Pearl Harbor, Americans have understood that our security cannot be separated from the security and stability of key regions overseas.
In recent years, every major development in technology, communications, transportation, and even in culture has served to shrink the globe still further. Today, the security of America is affected, directly or indirectly, by all kinds of developments overseas. We understand, of course, that stability in Europe, East Asia, and the oil producing areas of the Middle East is critical to our security and our economic well-being. Many, many areas of the globe that we once considered of only remote interest, however, are becoming increasingly important as well.
North Africa is a case in point. With the World Trade Center bombing, terrorism fostered by religious extremism in North Africa came directly to the United States. Moreover, we have struggled for years with the threats posed by the Government of Libya and now by the extremists in charge in the Sudan as well. The same Islamic extremists as in Sudan murdered the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and continue to threaten President Hosni Mubarak and destabilize Egypt. The combination of poverty, explosive population growth, and ideological warfare that is plaguing the southern rim of the Mediterranean, therefore, is not something we can safely ignore. Instability in that part of the world will inevitably affect the prosperity and the safety of Americans unless its consequences are addressed. A secure and economically advanced North Africa would be a great boon to Europe and to the rest of the world, while a North Africa descending into chaos will threaten us all. What we can do to resolve the horrible civil war in Algeria may be limited. We are working with our allies to help broker peace, and we should continue to do so. Most importantly, we must continue to be engaged with Egypt and other critically important, friendly nations in the area to help bolster their security.
In an even more distant part of the world, Central Asia, U.S. interests are also more and more obviously at stake. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan have inherited some of the largest as yet unexploited reserves of gas and oil in the world. For these emerging nations, such resources may be a source of wealth that can spur economic growth and bring full integration into the world community. But such resources may also occasion internal conflict and incite external exploitation. Our principal goal is to ensure that the resources of the area are not dominated by a hostile power and that access is free and open. Thus, the United States clearly has an interest in promoting peace in the region, in strengthening the fragile governments of the area, and in building regional security. Much of the work to be done is diplomatic and economic in nature, but a military component is important as well. Military-to-military ties are potentially of immense value. Recently, the United States Central Command carried out a joint exercise with Kazakh armed forces that received a great deal of positive attention in the area. Most importantly, U.S. leadership is critical in building the institutional framework which will bind the emerging nations of the region to the prosperous, secure part of the world. All of these nations have participated in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the Partnership for Peace, and the strengthening Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The United States had the vision and the international stature to forge these new institutions, and only continued U.S. military engagement in such organizations can keep them vital.
Finally, U.S. interests are affected by developments in distant parts of the world because of the global nature of challenges ranging from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and weapons delivery systems, to terrorism, to information sabotage and warfare, to the narcotics trade and other international criminal activities. There are no simple technological fixes to any of these problems that will allow the United States the luxury of disengagement from potentially messy conflicts throughout the world. The main cause of proliferation lies in regional conflicts which lead both would-be aggressors and threatened victims to seek security by gaining access to advanced weapons. Terrorism is, in large part, an outgrowth of local conflicts and social disintegration. Threats to information security may come from many sources, including systematic efforts to disrupt western economies by rogue states or by small non-state groups. Narco-terrorism has undermined democracy in parts of Latin America. Colombia is close to collapse. If it goes, several nations may follow--for example, Venezuela, which provides the U.S. three million barrels of oil daily. International criminal activity is a threat of free economic activity in large parts of the world, and it may damage U.S. security by undermining economic stability in many newly emerging nations.
While none of these challenges can be decisively defeated by a swift military strike, U.S. economic, political, and military engagement throughout the world is essential to combat the most serious threats. I am concerned, however, that we may, over time, fail to maintain the level of engagement that is necessary. Two potential failures, in particular, worry me.
One is a failure of understanding. Too often the debate about U.S. military spending and about the role of U.S. military forces in the world seems to me to miss the key point. As I said earlier, many of my colleagues too easily dismiss concerns about the state of our armed forces simply by asking ``who is the enemy?'' Others oversimplify the debate by pointing out that the United States now spends vastly more on the military than various combinations of potential foes. Both of these arguments are entirely beside the point. Today, instability is the enemy, and it is a very dangerous and pernicious enemy. As a result, how much we need to spend on the military is not a function of how much or how little others spend. Our defense requirements are determined by the strategy we need to follow to cope with a world full of uncertainty and danger. We need sufficient forces, fully engaged around the world, to prevent conflict with arising where possible, to deter conflict if it appears about to break out, and to prevail if conflict does arise. If this costs more than North Korea or Libya spends on the military, it should not be surprising.
Another failure of understanding is to argue that the United States should no longer have to play as active a leadership role as it did during the Cold War. Many of my colleagues argue that the allies should be required to bear a larger part of the burden of ensuring international security, especially in responding to regional conflicts that require peacekeeping forces or a constant military presence. Some say that the United States should focus on preparing for large scale regional conflicts and should leave smaller scale operations to others. My view is precisely the opposite--that the United States may have to play a more active leadership role than ever now that threats to international security are more ambiguous. As I explained earlier in this speech, the reasons ought to be apparent--
only the United States has the ability to project power sufficient to deter threats to the peace in regions like the Persian Gulf or the Taiwan straits; only the promise of continued, active U.S. military engagement in key regions will gain cooperation from major allies and maintain the U.S. position as the ally of choice when conflicts arise; U.S. security interests are directly threatened by challenges even in distant parts of the globe, and only U.S. leadership can build the institutional framework needed to bring stability; and new global challenges across a wide spectrum threaten the United States in ways that require direct involvement.
Let me make one other point to those who are concerned about burdensharing. I agree that we should expect allies to contribute fully and fairly in maintaining international stability. But I also believe that only American leadership can ensure effective allied cooperation. In Bosnia, for example, the allies were willing to commit forces for several years, but without bringing about a peace settlement. Only when the United States became directly involved was a resolution achieved. Moreover, no other nation could design the architecture of a new regional security order as the United States has done in Europe and is working to do in Asia. In a way, there is a paradox to burdensharing--
if we want the allies to do more, then we probably have to do more too.
The final failure with which I am concerned is a failure to provide adequate resources. I began this speech by making note of the role the aircraft carrier Nimitz has played in deterring conflicts. Today, we are running on the very edge of sufficiency in the number of carriers we keep in the force. We no longer maintain a permanent carrier presence in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean--instead, we swing carriers periodically from one area to the other, and we surge into a region if circumstances require. At best, this is barely adequate. I am concerned that long-term budget pressures will erode the size of the Navy to a level that will not allow even the current amount of coverage. Even if we do not reduce the number of carriers, we are reducing the number of other ships in the Navy--within five years, we will be down to 300 ships, substantially below the level of about 330 that the Clinton Administration said was needed when it first came into office, and the currently planned pace of shipbuilding will support no more than a 200 ship fleet in the long run. Our military presence in Asia--a presence that gave Japan confidence enough to revitalize the alliance--will be in danger.
Moreover, throughout this statement, I have emphasized, time and again, the value of U.S. military engagement all around the world. But one outcome of the Pentagon's recent Quadrennial Defense Review--the
``QDR''--was to acknowledge the strain that the current high pace of military operations is placing on our troops, especially on those based abroad in Europe and elsewhere. As one way to reduce the strain, the QDR called for a limit on the number of ``engagement'' exercises that the regional military commanders had earlier been free to undertake. I am not arguing that this is the wrong thing to do--on the contrary, I strongly support the Defense Department's efforts to reduce the pressure on military personnel. But the need to limit such exercises points to the simple fact that the size of the force today is, at best, barely adequate to meet peacetime requirements while preparing for major regional conflicts. Defense budget constraints, I fear, will force further cuts in the size of the force in the future, with a devastating effect on our ability to cope with instability around the world.
Mr. Speaker, today the United States has an opportunity to promote a more peaceful, stable world than those of us who lived through the troubling middle years of the 20th Century would ever have thought possible. To do so, however, requires constant vigilance and permanent U.S. engagement abroad. The world will never be entirely at peace. With continued American leadership, however, the threats to peace can be contained, and the realm of peace and prosperity can grow. This requires that the citizens of the United States and the Members of this Congress understand that instability is the enemy and that sufficient resources are needed to combat it.
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