Congress and National Security in the Post-Cold War Era
Dov S. Zakheim
The Nixon Center, Washington, DC
1998
Table of Contents
Introduction
Congressional Neglect: A Bum Rap?
Study Outline
I. The Congress and Defense Budgets
Changing Program Content
Defense Budgets and the Republican Congress
II. Bosnia
The Congressional Dilemma: How to Support the Troops Yet Oppose the President?
III. NATO Enlargement
Who Would Join NATO?
Russia
The Issue of Costs
A Classic Bipartisan Effort—And a Warning Signal
For the Future
IV. The Chemical Weapons Convention
Congressional Opposition to the CWC
Implementing Legislation—And the Gilman Amendment
The Limits of Presidential Leadership
V. The Arsenal Ship
Was the Congress At Fault?
VI. The B-2 Bomber
The B-2 As Strategic Bomber
The B-2 in the Republican Congress
Did the Republican Congress Make a Difference to the B-2?
VII. Sanctions As a Congressional Instrument
VIII. Concluding Observations
Executive Summary
There has been a widespread tendency among many analysts, journalists and even some Members of Congress to lament the decline of Congressional interest in international affairs, particularly since Republicans took control of both Houses in 1994. Such critics often cite the widely reported assertion that nearly a third of Members of Congress do not even own passports. In fact, just as that assertion has not been verified, so has the more general criticism of the Congress been off the mark, particularly with respect to the acquisition of weapons and the deployment of troops that constitutes the national defense subset of international security affairs. An examination of recent patterns in defense spending, the deployment of forces overseas, the provision of advice and consent to treaties, and the funding of major defense programs, even the imposition of sanctions relating to concerns about weapons proliferation, indicates that the Congress has tended to conform to the overall policy objectives of the Executive Branch, despite partisan differences over the nature of many of those policies.
Budgets
Although the Congress has exceeded the Administration’s requests and raised defense budget levels since Fiscal Year 1995, its changes, as indeed previous Congressional cuts in defense spending, have not amounted to ten percent of the total defense budget. Moreover, increases to the budget (termed the defense "top line") have not reversed the real decline in defense spending that began in the mid-1980s. Unless the Executive Branch itself chooses to add to overall spending by altering current federal budget limitations, it is unlikely that the Legislative Branch will act on its own to reverse defense spending trends currently projected for the early years of the next century.
Bosnia
One of the most contentious national defense issues in the 1990s has been the deployment of American land forces to Bosnia. The Congress initially pressed for the application of American air power in an effort to change the course of the Bosnian civil war. President Clinton’s decision to deploy 26,000 ground troops as part of the NATO Implementation Force to support the November 1995 Dayton Accords prompted fierce Congressional controversy. Nevertheless, the Executive Branch was consistently able to muster Congressional support for funding troop deployments to Bosnia, although the Congress was frustrated by the Administration’s obfuscation about the duration, size and even nomenclature of the deployment. Like its predecessors, the Republican-led Congress placed the highest priority on supporting both the forces in the field and their Commander-in-Chief, regardless of his party affiliation.
NATO Enlargement and the CWC
The Congress likewise followed the Executive Branch’s lead in ratifying two major treaties: NATO enlargement and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Strictly speaking, it was the Republican Congress, in their "Contract with America," that first took up the call to welcome former Warsaw Pact states into NATO. Yet, only when the Administration fully committed itself to enlargement, in the run-up to the 1996 Presidential election, did the Congress begin to consider seriously the implications of expanding the Alliance into Central Europe. By appointing a special liaison to the Congress, and working closely with the Republican leadership, most notably Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, as well as with ethnic Americans and other advocacy organizations, the Administration provided leadership that ensured the Senate’s overwhelming and bipartisan vote to bring the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland into the Alliance.
The Chemical Weapons Convention, originally a Reagan Administration initiative, languished for years while the Congress was under Democratic control. Moreover, many leading Republican Senators in the post-1994 Congress, especially Senator Helms, had serious misgivings about the treaty. Nevertheless, when the Clinton Administration committed itself to treaty ratification after the 1996 election, it reached out to the Republican leadership—in this case Majority Leader Trent Lott—for support and won the Senate’s advice and consent to the Convention.
Defense Programs
The Republican-led Congress has not substantially differed from its predecessors when addressing the details of specific defense programs. Moreover, the Executive Branch has provided the key to patterns of Congressional behavior. For example, the Congress was prepared to fund the Arsenal Ship, the initiative of Chief of Naval Operations Jeremy Boorda and leading members of his staff. The ship was viewed as a major element in the Pentagon’s "revolution in military affairs." With Admiral Boorda’s untimely passing, Navy enthusiasm for the program waned. The Congress, sensing the change in Navy attitudes, responded by under funding the program to the point where it was no longer viable.
The B-2 bomber likewise was an Executive Branch-led program, in this case an initiative of the Carter Administration. As the Cold War came to an end, Congress downsized the B-2 force in accordance with Executive Branch wishes. It did so despite bitter disputes over whether funding should be added to the B-2 program or whether the program should be terminated altogether. When the Air Force and the Administration finally decided on B-2 force levels at 21 aircraft, the Congress, despite deep misgivings from both supporters and opponents of an expanded program, ultimately upheld the Administration’s plan.
Sanctions
There is no denying that the Congress does not necessarily follow the Executive Branch’s lead on every national security issue. Yet even with respect to sanctions, where the Republican Congress is perceived to have stolen a march on the Democratic Administration, there has been considerably more bipartisanship, and indeed commonality, between the two branches of government than is widely recognized. Especially since the mid-1970s, the Executive Branch, sometimes acting alone, sometimes working through the United Nations Security Council, has imposed sanctions on more than 15 states across the globe. Congressionally mandated sanctions have been very much a bipartisan activity, particularly those relating to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. To a significant degree, Congressional readiness to initiate sanctions legislation is a function of legislators’ perception that the Administration is irresolute in matters of foreign and national security policy. To the extent that the Congress perceives that there exists in the Administration a policy vacuum, it will fill that vacuum itself.
Conclusions
The record of Congressional action on national security-related matters thus belies the assertion that somehow recent Congresses are more inward-looking, less knowledgeable, and more assertive than their predecessors. It is certainly true that the Congress continues to guard its prerogatives zealously. It is equally true that the Congress is no less responsive than in the past to the urgings of special interest groups on a host of national security issues. Nevertheless, when there has been assertive Administration leadership, coupled with a willingness to work closely with the Legislative Branch, the Congress has generally followed the President’s lead. This has occurred with respect to defense spending, treaties and even force deployments. It is primarily when such leadership has either been lacking or ambiguous, as with respect to support for new weapons systems or sanctions, that the Congress has been more assertive. Moreover, this pattern of Congressional behavior is neither new nor particularly partisan, as the cases of both the Arsenal Ship and sanctions legislation make clear.
In the realm of national security, the Congress will continue to be a difficult partner for any Administration. Members may not have as much military experience as their predecessors, nor have traveled as much, but their ability to legislate in the national security realm has never truly been a function of either. Ultimately, it is in the national interest that the Congress not be pliant; that is the essence of the separation of powers, which undergirds American strength and leadership around the world.
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