NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY: THE EXERCISE OF MILITARY POWERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74B00415R000100100020-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 49
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 28, 2001
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: June 4, 1972
• Content Type: TRANS

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4435 WISCONSIN AVE. N.W.. WASHINGTON. 0. C. 20016. 244-3540
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM National Security Policy: The
Exercise of Military Powers
DATE June /4, 1972 10:00 PM
FULL TEXT
STATION WETA FM
NPR Network
Washington, D.C.
ANNOUNCER: From Washington, D. C., National Public
Radio presents another in a series of hearing symposiums on
National Security Policy and the Changing World Power Alignment.
These hearings are being conducted by the. House Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on National Security Policy in an attempt to determine
what factors have shaped foreign policy in the past and what
direction it will take in the future. The topic of this session
is "The Exercise of Military Power."
. Here now is the subcommittee chairman, Clement Zablocki
of Wisconsin.
CLEMENT J. ZABLOCKI: We resume discussions on the
subject of National Security Policy and the Changing World Power
Alignment. Building on the broad strategic considerations which
we attempted to outline last week, our specific concern today
is the exercise of military power as that complex and often
highly emotionally charged issue relates to a future viable
and successful national security policy for the United States.
Simply and directly put, our objective is to understand
how breakdowns in diplomacy and negotiations between nations
lead to military conflict. Our hope is that by bettering understan-
ding the nature and function of military power as an instrument
for the conduct of foreign policy, the very use of military
force can be prevented.. It should be stressed that we are not
limiting this discussion to nuclear holocaust between the great
powers, a danger which our earlier witnesses agreed has receded.
Rather, we hope to include in our deliberations the use of military
force by small countries, the so-called wars by proxy, which
may very likely increase in the future. One of the points which
must be emphasized here is that we obviously cannot completely
avoid reference to Vietnam. However, I trust you will agree
that the future can better be served.with sane and rational
policies achieved if we look primarily to the future and not
become involved in a war of our own, a war of recrimination
over Vietnam.
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Therefore, while we must look back as a means of understan-
ding our mistake, our view today is, first and foremost, to
the future.
Here today to help us in that task are six distinguished
gentlemen whose background and experience well qualify them
to speak on this subject. They are Paul Warnke, former Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; General
Lyman Lemnitzer, Retired, former Army Chief of Staff and Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Professor Amitai Etzioni of Columbia
University and Director of the Center for Policy Research.
And the panel discussants are: Mr. Leslie Gelb, Brookings Institution;
Mr. Herbert Scoville, Jr., director of the Arms Control Association;
and Professor Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University, Department
of Government.
General Gavin was invited also to be a participant,
and he has filed a statement which will be made a part of the
record of these hearings, entitled "The Role of National Power,"
by James M. Gavin.
Mr. Warnke, if you will begin. And before each of
the presentations, I will give to the stenographer a biography
of each. And in order to save time, I will not read the biographies
but have them included in the permanent record.
Mr. Paul Warnke.
PAUL WARNKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Twill with your permission, sir, summarize my statement.
I understand that the full statement will appear in the record.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: We appreciate that very
much, sir. It will.
WARNKE: We've been asked, Mr. Chairman, to discuss
the role of military power as a tool for obtaining international
objectives, including national security objectives. As my statement
points out, I feel that military power is a blunt and inept
instrument for the conduct of foreign policy. The purpose of
military power today must be to defend against military attack.
It has some residual value, I would suppose, in protecting American
lives in brush fire situations. I feel, however, that any general
feeling that military power can be of use in achieving either
a stable world or a favorable international environment for
the United States or for preserving peace, or for the exercise
of political influence is badly to overstate the uses of military
power in a nuclear age.
Accordingly, I suppose that we ought to consider its
fallacies and abandon three of the factors that have been used
in the past in designing, deploying, sometimes using military
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power. We ought, first of all, to renounce the concept that
somehow the United States has a worldwide peace-keeping role.
Secondly, I think we ought to recognize that American military
power is not of use and will only lead to trouble and the risk
of the eventual nuclear holocaust if we endeavor to use it to
prevent countries from going communist or switching to an anti-
Western viewpoint because of internal developments.
The third fallacy I've suggested is that we overvalue,
I think grossly, the political implications of military hardware
when that military hardware is without any genuine military
need.
I'd like to discuss, briefly, each of these three.
I recognize that with regard to the first, the espousal
of a concept of the United States as the world's peace keeper,
that this has, in fact, been abandoned in many of the phrasings
of the Nixon Doctrine; that President Nixon has characterized
his doctrine as being one of a lower American profile; and the
rejection of any responsibility as the world's policeman.
But at the same time, there are, I feel, disquieting
references to a general American peace-keeping role. For instance,
as I've stated in my paper, on May 8th, 1970 in a press conference,
the President referred to America's peace-keeping role in the
Asian world. I think our experience in Southeast Asia has demonstra-
ted that, in that role, we are very badly miscast.
In addition to that, at the Air Force Academy in June
of 1969, President Nixon referred to the fact that America has
a vital national interest in world stability. I would agree
that we have a vital national interest in world stability.
But I don't believe that that stability can be preserved by
the application of American fire power.
So I think that the time has come for the United States
to recognize that we should refrain from use of our military
power in other people's quarrels in local or even regional conflict.
I believe that the one thing that we can be certain of is that
any heavy-handed intervention by American fire power and troops
is just going to make a bad situation worse. Accordingly, I
think we can all be grateful that despite the tragedy in the
subcontinent of the past year, at least it did not reach the
stage where outside military power was used, either by the Soviet
Union or by the United States. That certainly would have been
no favor to the desperate people of the area. And it would
have just meant a superpower confrontation and the risk of all-
out war.
I believe that, regrettably, there are going to be
instances of local conflict. There are going to be instances
in which countries won't let one another alone. There are going
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to be border conflicts. There are going to be instances in
which racial or ethnic hostility gives rise to actual warfare,
to killing. But I suggest that these are not situations of
major concern to our security interests. And they are not situations
in which our use of our military power will either promote our
own national security or promote world peace and stability.
In such situations of local conflict, our general posture should
be one of resort to diplomatic representations, attempts at
mediation; certainly economic assistance; measures that might
tend to eliminate the serious frictions that give rise to the
local conflict.
I would hope that over a period of years the United
Nations could genuinely play a peace-keeping role. But I don't
believe that the world is going to put up with a situation in
which any one nation arrogates unto itself that peace-keeping
function. They're going to regard it as having the ingredients
of an imperium rather than the ingredients of peace.
I suggested that the second myth about the use of
American military power is that somehow it can be used generally
to contain communism. I would separate out, Mr. Chairman, the
concept of protecting us against Soviet power from the concept
of trying to protect the world against communism. I don't believe
that ideas can effectively be fought by military courts. I
believe instead that that sort of competition has to exist at
the political level, and that competing ideologies ought to
wage their battle in economic terms, in terms of what the respective
systems can. do for their own people and what they can do for
the world.
Accordingly, I think again the time has come to abandon
the concept of containment of communism by military force.
We can't, of course, relax our vigilance against the threat
of Soviet expansion. We can't be sure yet of what Soviet intentions
are. All we can be sure of is their capabilities, and their
capabilities remain immense.
But I believe that we can recognize, and should recognize,
that the United States has no effective role to play in. counterin-
surgency and that we should not cast ourselves ever again in
the unpopular and unrewarding role of shoring up unpopular foreign
governments that are faced with internal dissatisfaction and
rebellion. If a government cannot be safe from its own people,
than United States' intervention is not going to remedy that
situation. And I don't believe that we should go to war to
impose an unpopular government on any foreign people.
To me, as I've suggested in my paper, that is the
mirror image of the Brezhnev Doctrine. The Brezhnev Doctrine
is a claim that Soviet power may be used to preserve the doctrinal
purity of sister socialist states. I find it a thoroughly abhorrent
doctrine, and I don't think that we should follow it, even though
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we feel that our doctrine, that our system, that that which
we would seek to spread throughout the world is infinitely preferable
to the communist system.
Again, I think that there are many hopeful signs in
the foreign policy that is evolving. But here again there are
still nostalgic, and I find disturbingly nostalgic, references
to our role in preserving the stability of existing governments.
One such occurred very shortly after the announcement of the
Nixon Doctrine in Guam in 1969 when President Nixon went to
Thailand and said there that America would be proud to stand
with the Thai government against those who threaten it from
abroad or from within.
I prefer, as I've suggested, to regard this as the
enthusiasm of a guest rather than a serious prediction of American
military intervention to preserve the status quo, either in
Thailand or in any place else.
Feeling as I do that counterinsurgency is not a worthy
or a useful exercise of American military power, I was glad
to see that in this year's statement of the Secretary of Defense
there has been abandoned a chart which has appeared in previous
years. That chart suggested that among the threats that American
military power must face were, first of all, political agitation
and, secondly, insurgency, then moving up to the areas of threatre
conventional conflict and to eventual nuclear conflict.
Our own Declaration of, Independence has affirmed the
right of a people to alter or to abolish its form of government.
Accordingly, no foreign government should look to us for protection
from internal change.
The third fallacy that I've suggested in my paper
is the extreme political value which sometimes is attributed
to possession of-military hardware in excess of any practical
need for military use. There are repeated references to the
political, as distinguished from the military, consequences
of our defense posture. In the statement this year by Admiral
Moorer, General Lemnitzer's successor, he referred to the fact
that the mere appearance of Soviet strategic superiority could
have a debilitating effect on our foreign policy and that it
could erode the confidence of our friends and allies, even though
the superiority would have no practical effect. I think that
a similar reaction is evident sometimes with respect to the
presence of Soviet ships, not only in the Mediterranean but
increasingly in the Indian Ocean. I believe that the show of
the Russian flag on the Indian Ocean certainly may increase
third country awareness of Soviet military power. But I question
whether it threatens America's national security.
Feeling as I do with respect to this third attribute,
I welcome the SALT Iagreement awhich was concluded last week by
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of the fact that the Soviet Union gains nothing from its sixteen
hundred ICBM's that we don't have and have an abundance with
our one thousand [sic]. I think also that that recognizes that
the numerical edge in submarine launched ballistic missiles
is of no military significance as long as we possess the ability
to destroy the Soviet Union in the event of a first strike.
To me the big asset of the SALT agreement is the recogni-
tion and acceptance of the concept of mutual assured destruction;
the fact that the deterrent is the certainty on the part of
the attacking country that they will be destroyed in retaliation.
Now with the restrictions on antiballistic missile
systems, both sides have had to recognize their total vulnerability
to a retaliatory strike. And as long as that restriction exists,
then the accumulation of more and more nuclear warheads, more
and more missiles, more and more bombers is really just an indication
of the -- of the myth to which Winston Churchill referred, that
unfortunately with regard to nuclear weapons some people like
to see the rubble bounce. All that these weapons would do would
be to bounce the rubble in the event of a nuclear exchange..
I think that,we ought to recognize that military posturing
is no longer of any appeal in the Third World, that the day?
of gunboat diplomacy died with the empires, that developing
nations now have far more serious concerns than evaluating the
relative cosmetic appeal of meaningless military might. We
should, therefore, be content and confident if in our defense
program we buy only what we need to protect our national security
interests. And I believe that those national security interests
are readily identifiable. The only country that can threaten
us militarily at the present time is the Soviet Union. They
are deterred effectively from any use of their strategic nuclear
forces. I would agree with General Lemnitzer that we should
continue to maintain a strong posture in Europe. I think that
time has shown that this is a prudent investment and that with
a strong NATO, bolstered -- and I think inescapably bolstered
by a substantial American military presence, we have a situation
of which the Soviet Union cannot be tempted to engage in military
adventurism and even the limited use of conventional force.
We have, and we should retain, the conventional capability to
deter and, if necessary, to defeat any such attempt by the Soviets.
I think as long as we have that capability that it will never
be tested.
Apart from Europe, I believe that our major security
concern must be that Japan's industrial strength and the infinite
capacity of its people do not fall into hostile hands. Again,
this is something that can be done with a far more modest level
of military expenditure than we have at the present time. I've
suggested that the Soviet Union constitutes the only present
military threat. Even in prospect, China is not a formidable
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military power, unless you get engaged ina land war in Asia.
Certainly,our air and naval strength is sufficient against the
virtually nonexistent amphibious capability of China. And certainly
the moves that have been made in the past year to rectify and
improve the relations between China and the United States should
serve as further assurance against any senseless shift in Chinese
policy towards overt aggression.
I believe that we have learned a lot in the last decade
about the limited uses of American military power. I think
the time has come for us to translate this hardly won knowledge
into effective arms control agreements and effective reductions
in our own military budget. I don't believe that a realistic
recognition of the severe limits on military power should be
equated with a policy of neo-isolationism. The two are not
equivalent or even comparable. We can continue to wish the
world well without feeling that we have to act as its sheriff.
We can continue to participate in world affairs through diplomacy,
through political negotiations, through the United Nations.
And we can find, I think, that if we recognize realistically
the limits on our military force, we will find that we are a
greater world power and a more effective and more constructive
world force.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Our next witness will be
Mr. Amitai Etzioni. Excuse me. I'm taking it out of order.
General Lemnitzer, if you'll proceed, sir, please.
GENERAL LYMAN LEMNITZER (Ret.): Mr. Chairman, members
of the subcommittee, ladies and gentlemen. In response to the
subcommittee's request that we explore the role of military
power, I'm going to address my remarks and summarize the paper
which I submitted to three questions; namely, how is military
power exercised as a deterrent or a threat. The Nixon Doctrine:
what does it imply in terms of future entanglements abroad.
And, third, what are the alternatives to single nation power.
As a starting point, let me remind you that we and
expect to remain a world power, the leader of the Western world.
Our interests are not confined to United States' territory and
the surrounding territorial waters. Further, our security cannot
be preserved from within a fortress America. Certainly under
the Nixon Doctrine, it is the announced policy of the United
States to reduce the military forces deployed in many overseas
areas and to expect our allies...
(Tape turned.)
...To a degree, our strategic nuclear forces can contribute
to a solution of the problem by the deterrence which they provide
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through the potential for responding to an initial nuclear attack
upon us. Let me emphasize, however, that strategic nuclear
forces are valuable only in connection with all-out general
war. The capability for massive nuclear retaliation has clearly
proved itself unable to prevent lesser conflicts such as Korea
in the early 1950's and in Vietnam.
While I believe that we may be able to curtail to
a degree some of the military resources we devote to our (technical
difficulties).., our dealings with other nations, which some
people take as evidence of a basic change in our outlook and
objectives, as well as our manner. But some very important
factors remain unchanged. Unchanged. One is the Soviet determination
to continue toward their long-range objective of communist world
domination. Soviet leaders may no longer pound their shoes
on the desks at the United Nations. But we have the case of
the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia to demonstrate that
the Soviets are just as prompt as ever to react forcibly and
with ruthless efficiency to any development that they consider
might force a relaxation of the degree of control they exercise
over their satellites. It's the tanks and bayonets of the Soviet
Army that extract extract the degree of subservience required
from their satellites to advance Soviet state policy.
Accordingly, the only real change is, as I have said,
merely a change in style. Underneath the polish, the steel
of Soviet determination is as cold and hard as ever.
The other fact that remains unchanged is the importance
of the security of Western Europe to the security of the United
States. President Nixon's foreign policy report states, and
I quote: "The peace of Europe is crucial to the peace of the
world. This truth, a lesson learned at terrible cost twice
before in the Twentieth Century, is the central principle of
United States foreign policy. For the foreseeable future, Europe
must be the cornerstone of structuring a durable peace." Unquote.
In brief, we cannot afford to contemplate a Western
Europe dominated by the Soviet Union. But consider from the
European point of view the fact that the Soviet Union and the
Warsaw Pact satellites still have about five million men under
arms, the great bulk of which are stationed west of the Urals
facing NATO's Allied Command Europe. These are far larger forces
than are required solely for the purpose of defense. Consider
the rapidly expanding strength of the Soviet Navy in the Mediterra-
nean and the other oceans of the world. Consider the record
of the Soviet Union for resorting to naked military force to
advance Soviet state policy behind the Iron Curtain; Czechoslovakia
being the most recent example.
And if you choose to think of Czechoslovakia as being
an internal communist bloc matter, relate it to countries outside
of the Soviet orbit. Consider the Soviet role in exploiting
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tensions and seeking opportunities to advance their goals in
Egypt, Algeria, Hanoi, Cuba and, most recently, in the subcontinent
of Asia -- India and the Indian Ocean. The Soviets have shown
a capacity to use their strength not only directly, but in the
form of blackmail. I submit that if it were not for NATO, Western
Europe would be openly vulnerable to threats of blackmail.
Even together, Western European nations do not have the capacity
by themselves to offset the military threat which the Soviets
could bring to bear against them. Putting it another way, we
cannot afford to leave this vital element of our security to
other nations, even though they are our friends and allies when
their strength alone is inadequate to the task.
In February of 1969, President Nixon pointed out,
and I quote again: "NATO can be credited with the fact that
while Europe has endured its share of crises in the past twenty
years, the ultimate crisis that would have provoked a nuclear
war has been prevented. Those nations that were free twenty
years ago are free today. Thus in its original purpose, NATO
has been a resounding success." Unquote.
Now, there are some Americans who hold that the only
thing which gives meaning to NATO is the American nuclear capability.
From this, they argue that there's no need for deployment to
Europe of balanced military forces in more than token strength.
My, answer is that Europe is the one overseas area which combines
three characteristics which are crucial to the United States.
One of these characteristics is, as I have previously said,
that the United States' interests involved are vital.
The second is that the danger of any conflict in Europe
developing into an all-out world war is greater than in any
other prospective combat arena. Consequently, deterring war
in Europe is of the utmost importance.
The third characteristic, stemming in part from the
second and in part from the limitations of massive nuclear retali-
ation by itself and the geographical realities which are involved,
is that space and time for effective resistance to attack in
Europe are severely limited. In brief, to prevent a war in
Europe, we, with our allies, must have the capability available
on the spot to raise serious doubts in the minds of the Soviets
that they could achieve even a limited military objective without
paying an unacceptable price. Strategic reserves in the United
States together with strategic air and sea lift are, of course,
very important. But in this case, they cannot substitute for
forces in position in Europe, fully manned, appropriately armed
and familiar with the ground over which they will be fighting.
In this country the question is frequently asked --
and it's a fair one -- why is it necessary for the United States
to continue having'military forces in Europe to defend nations
increasingly able to provide for their own defense? My answer
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is that they are not there only to defend European nations,
but to defend the United States as well. The best place to
defend the United States, Canada, Belgium and the other NATO
nations is along the present Iron Curtain, as long as the Warsaw
Pact nations insist on it being an Iron Curtain, which they
do. Such a presence is visible evidence to our allies of our
ability and readiness to meet limited as well as all-out attacks.
It is a visible evidence also that we still honor our commitments.
Without such a presence it would be less possible for our allies
and our potential enemy to have any genuine belief in the validity
of any merely nuclear guarantee which we might make.
With regard to the strength of our NATO deployments,
the fact is that we have already made substantial reductions
in the United States forces we maintain in Europe. During the
period that I was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, from 1963
to 1969, United States forces in Europe were reduced from four
hundred and eight thousand to two hundred and eighty-five thousand,
a reduction of a hundred and twenty-three thousand. In my opinion,
our present NATO forces in Europe are now at the minimum level
consistent with the assigned mission and the known enemy, and
the known capabilities of the potential enemy. Indeed, in some
areas they are already-below prudent levels.
Not only is there no military justification whatsoever
for reducing NATO forces, United States forces or those of our
allies, there are important political reasons as well for not
doing so. In June of 1968, the NATO foreign ministers after
our meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the interests of lessening
tension in Europe and in reducing the danger of war in Europe,
declared firmly their readiness to explore the mutual balanced
reduction of forces and practical steps for arms control. And
they called on the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellites
to join in a search for progress toward those ends. Until May,
1971 the offer was ignored and was still lying on the table
when Leonid Brezhnev at the time of the proposed Senate amendment
to reduce our forces by fifty percent, seeing the possibility
of exploiting the situation, indicated his support for the reduction,
which is known by the letters MBFR.
Since then, however, the Soviet Union has indicated
no interest in getting these talks underway. Thus the game
goes on, with the Soviets smugly sitting back awaiting the next
effort by legislative means to force a unilateral and substantial
reduction of United States forces in Europe while they maintain,
untouched, their massive military capability which is far greater
than that required for defense.
In 1969, the Soviets, as they have on several previous
occasions, proposed a so-called European security conference.
This was, in my opinion, a transparent attempt to get the United
States and Canada out of Europe. Another obvious purpose and
primary purpose of their proposal is to obtain the agreement
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of the West to accept, agree, recognize and legitimatize their
hegemony; that is, their dominance over the satellites in the
years ahead.
I and many NATO political and military officials firmly
believe that until there is an agreement by the Warsaw Pact
and NATO in response to NATO's urgent offer for a mutual balanced
force reduction, with provision for a positive and reliable
cheat-proof verification on both sides, any further reduction
of forces in Europe by the United States or any of our NATO
allies would be the wrong action at the wrong time.
I do not mean to suggest any blind opposition to a
political agreement or military arrangement for the reduction
of forces aimed at lessening tensions. No military man who
has experienced the pain and destruction of war firsthand would
oppose a true detente in Europe.
In conclusion then, I feel strongly that the successful
record of the NATO alliance to date is much too important and
impressive to justify any actions being taken that would jeopardize
its continued success in the future. The NATO alliance, communist
propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, was at its inception,
and is today, a solely collective -- defensive collective?security
arrangement. It threatens no one.
After twenty-three years of NATO, what have. been the
results? The simple facts are that NATO, Europe has experienced
twenty-three years o.f.peace. There have been fifty-one wars
in the world since World War II -- in Korea, Vietnam, the Asian
subcontinent, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, but not
in a NATO area. During a twenty-three year period, not one
square inch of NATO territory has been lost to communist aggression.
Also during that period, there has been more stability in Western
Europe than that continent has experienced in more than a century.
I submit that this happy condition did not come about
by accident. It has been achieved by twenty-three years of
NATO effort and defensive vigilance. NATO stands today as the
one proven successful means of halting communist aggression
without resort to war. Twice before in this century, in World
Wars.I and II, Americans have had to fight in Europe when peace
and order broke down. Today we stand there with our NATO allies
as part of a strong alliance team that has successfully prevented
aggression against NATO for twenty-three years. The United
States' military contribution to the allianace -- land, sea
and air -- is of critical importance and cannot and should not
be lightly set aside or reduced. These forces, as NATO as a
whole, are there solely for defensive purposes, and they threaten
no one.
In previous wars fought by alliances in this century,
the need for a military structure in being:,. such as that that
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has been built up in NATO, was amply demonstrated. However,
its construction in previous wars had to be improvised after
a war had begun. This was accomplished barely in time to avert
disaster, but in all cases at a tragically unnecessary cost
in lives, property and other resources. But in a great North
Atlantic alliance, NATO, we already have, for the first time
in history, the organizational structure with commanders and
staff functioning with up-to-date operational defense plans.
We have national military units completely familiar with their
defensive missions and located where they can carry out those
missions on short notice. To dismantle or weaken such a proven,
effective structure, with the fate of Czechoslovakia before
us as to the stark lesson as to the nature of our possible adversaries
would, in my opinion, be to repay success with great risk and
folly.
That is why our forces, together with those of our
allies, should remain in Europe in at least their present strength
until the Soviet Union and the members. of the Warsaw Pact reveal
their real intentions with regard to a mutual reduction of forces
which they profess so strongly to support.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Thank you, General Lemnitzer.
Professor Amitai Etzioni, if you'll proceed, sir.
PROFESSOR AMITAI ETZIONI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to discuss with you today something which
I've chosen to call the politician's temptation. It's not the
usual sort of thing that we think of when we talk about temptations,
but nevertheless such temptation is both ever present and immensely
important.
What I'm referring to is a politician's temptation
to use military power in the foreign policy arena. What I hope
to suggest to you today is that cooler heads, and particularly
cooling institutions like the Congress, must prevail if the
United States is to resist, as it must, the impulse of -- the
impulsive use of military force. Like other temptations, military
power is seductive. Military action is immediate; it is concrete;
it is dramatic. In an age of television and communication satellites,
a military response communicates a foreign policy posture instantaneously
in all too living color. What's more the application of military
force has certain immediate psychological payoffs. A bold military
action speaks directly to the troubled psyche of a confused
and frustrated nation. More than any other instrument of foreign
policy, the military is inextricably bound- up with the nation's
self-image: spirits are raised, new hopes are given that a
nation united under one.flag mobilizes for war, obeys the orders
of the commander-in-chief. Indeed, no act, perhaps even the
sexual act itself, so potently flatters a nation's sense of
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its own masculinity.
*It is therefore not surprising that a politician and I use the term in a pejoratory sense to contrast it with
a version of true and wise leaders -- have [sic] come to the
signpost of the easy use of military power. We should not be
at all surprised to see politicians plunging recklessly ahead
ignoring long-term considerations and pandering instead to the
pressures for short-term dramatic, crowd pleasing acts.
Gentlemen, this is a very small planet and our bombs
are very large. There often is a bitter antagonism between
short-run gains and longer-run policy goals, and you must have
the vision to see beyond today's headlines to the problems of
tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. As a nation, the United
States must learn to be more tolerant of occasional short-term
losses if it is to achieve long-run successes.
I'm not suggesting that this is an easy task. However,
there are powerful historical forces at work which will help
to resist the pressure to seek foreign policy [word unintelligible].
Let me mention just a few.
There is a domestic priority in increasing concern
with reforming our own society rather than involving this nation
in the affairs of others. There is an ending of ideology, a
growing awareness that we are not always the good guys and they
are not always the bad guys. There is a dissipation of nationalism,
less joy in the use of force in our collective name, more concern
about the effects of military intervention, a fear that new
small steps will lead to more Vietnams, or worse. Military
heads have lost much of their domestic legitimacy and influence.
And hence while the present new action in Indochina may yield
a few percentage points upward jump in his popularity, the gain
is soon run out leaving a citizenry which is increasingly disenchanted
with warring'and resentful that promises implied in short [word
unintelligible] have not borne out fruit..
To state that the temptation to use military power
should be often and long resisted is not to suggest that the
exercise of might is never appropriate or right. As long as
there are superpowers armed with nuclear strike capacities,
a nation disarming itself will leave its future and fate at
the mercy of a feeble international conscience.
There's little doubt in my mind that the current no
war relations between the superpowers is maintained by the logical
mutual deterrent of one military power holding the other one
at bay. But this also means that any use of military power
could, by stepping on the escalator, carry us to ever higher
levels of conflict up to unbalancing the balance of terror and
wreaking its horrible content on all of us.
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than reduces the need for careful review of any international
force.
In the American form of government, the military is
supposed to be restrained by a Congress which alone has the
prerogative to declare wars and it can alone appropriate money
for these wars. This must now be interpreted to include all
acts of war short of declaration of war.
And there is another problem. Congress must often
act on information provided to it by the executive. The Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution is only the most recent and perhaps glaring
example of the dependence of the Congress on the executive for
crucial facts. But it's impossible for Congress to have its
own intelligence gathering network. It seems to me that Congress
ought to give more consideration to how to deal with the information
the executive does provide. Congress might well want to impose
severe penalties, perhaps even make it a new class of crime
or constitution offense, for government officials to knowingly
provide false information to the nation's legislators. And
the staff of congressional committees should be increased and
provided with more resources to be able to more effectively
probe the softness of data provided by the executive from statistical
body counts to claims about the success of bombing raids. Continued
use of empty quantification should be prevented. Aside from
misleading Congress, it makes the executive believe in its compul-
sions.
Turning from the general to the specific, it might
be useful at this point to continue to ask ourselves how the
United States became involved in Indochina and what lessons
we can learn from the tragedy of that war. After careful study
and thought, it seems to me that our involvement in Indochina
was the result of certain basic involving mechanisms, and that
many of these mechanisms are still with us.
Here are some examples. We supported and support
local elites which have little popularity, little local support,
flagging legitimacy and indiscernible effectiveness. We failed
to perceive that we cannot remove those factors which agitate
against those elites and ourselves, because we're unable to
commit sufficient resources to the problem. We really cannot
pay for the development of the economy of even a small nation,
let alone a sovereign state. We drastically overestimate our
capacity. to teach local elites the way to gain support, legitimacy
and effectiveness. We misunderstand the domestic forces at
home which have a way of leading from small paramilitary, subvisible
interventions abroad to ever bigger involvements. Take for
instance the role of CIA operations and military advisers --
intervention in persons rather than providing materiel or funds.
These frequently are insufficient, but also escalatory because
once Air America is in trouble, the CIA operations need additional
help, or if our advisers are killed, we find it difficult not
to send in ever larger forces.
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Therefore, it seems advisable to provide extra scrutiny
whenever American personnel is involved. To make it possible,
CIA operations should be separated from intelligence gathering;
a step desirable on other grounds as well. And no CIA operative
or military adviser should be sent to a country without Congress's
advice and consent. These acts should be defined as what they
are: acts of war.
And last and most important point, our involvement
in Indochina was based on a mistaken judgment as what the role
of the United States should be in local conflicts in general.
A review of the past decade shows that the odds are generally
quite high that military intervention by the United States is
often not necessary to prevent a country from losing its autonomy,
and interventions often have counterproductive results.
At one time or another, congressmen, commentators
and analysts of foreign policy openly declare that this or that
country was about to be lost to communism. This was stated
about Ghana under Nkrumah, about Egypt following the Aswan Dam
deal with the Soviet Union, about Syria under countless leftist
generals, about Guinea under Toure, Indonesia under Sukarno,
B.razil under Goulart, and many other countries. However, we
were restrained from military intervention in all these countries,
and they righted themselves.
I.n some instances we decided to step in. We landed
Marines in Lebanon in 1958 and the Dominican Republic in 1965.
But now it is widely agreed that at least these two of our interven-
tions were based on faulty information and miscalculations of
the risks involved in staying out. Most experts now agree that
those nations would have remained as free as they are now even
if we had not stayed -- even if we had stayed away.
At other times in other countries, U. S. intervention
did little to stop an ongoing force and, at worst, helped to
escalate the involvement of others. As I testify today, the
communist intervention in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam is immeasurably
greater than when the United States first entered the picture.
Of course, there are exceptions. It is possible that
Guatemala would have shared the fate of Cuba if the United States
had not become involved; that South Korea might well have fallen
into the hands of the Communist North; and Taiwan might have
possibly-been reunited with the Mainland. Of course, there
is a difficult human, moral and legal question whenever we can
completely refrain from intervening under any given set of circum-
stances. Nevertheless, one thing is beyond reasonable doubt.
To use military power too often, too quickly, at tremendous
cost often leads to results which are neither in line with our
goals or in the welfare of anyone involved or affected. Congress
could and should set up more effective screenings through which
the exercise of military power would have-to pass before it
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takes effect. Better we would act once too late than to [words
unintelligible] too often, too hard, unwisely.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Thank you, Professor Etzioni.
We'll now hear from the three participants. And if'
you do have prepared statements, they'll be a made a part of
the record at this point. I have one from Mr. Herbert Scoville.
And if the others -- Mr. Huntington, Mr. Gelb, if you have them,
we'll enter them. At the present time, we'll ask for you to
comment on the statements just made, add to them and ask questions,
and we will, as members of the subcommittee, as well, interject
our questions.
Mr. Scoville, would you want to begin to comment on
the testimony here thus far, or are your views in addition to
those made?
HERBERT SCOVILLE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think I might comment just briefly on the sorts
of questions raised by Mr. Warnke, and particularly emphasize
perhaps a few points that have come up as a result of the recent
agreements in Moscow limiting strategic weapons and how they
may affect our military. power situation.
First, I think we should recognize that having reached
an agreement to limit ABM's to the extent that they will not
provide protection to the populations of both the United States
and the U. S. S. R., we are accepting and legislating a condition
of mutual vulnerability and, as such, guaranteeing a situation
of mutual deterrence. Now while this situation has probably
existed in fact for many years, this is the first time that
I think both countries have recognized this in a legal form.
Now, I think it's important to realize what that really
means. It means that nuclear blackmail, as well as nuclear
attack, is essentially ruled out, unless we talk ourselves into
being blackmailed by nuclear weapons. A blackmail attempt has
no validity if both sides know that by following through on
the blackmail attempt they are committing national suicide.
And that is exactly what the situation is as a result of the
agreed ABM limitation at Moscow.
I think the real problem is that people don't like
to live under this kind of situation or recognize that they
live under it. And you find still today after the Moscow agreement
the prophets of doom decrying the agreement because the Soviets
will have one or two or ten or a hundred more missiles when,
as Mr. Warnke has pointed out, both sides already have enough
extra nuclear weapons to make the rubble bounce not once, but
several times-over.
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The problem is that these prophets of doom are doing
ourselves a real disservice. Because if we talk ourselves into
a position of weakness and if we allow our allies to think that
perhaps because of some weakness we are not going to be staunch
in their support, then this weakness may become a self-fulling
prophecy. And actually, we may even provide temptation, which
Professor Etzioni is worried about, to the other side to try
and benefit from this weakness which really doesn't exist.'
So what I'm really saying is that I think that the
real difficulty in the situation at the moment is not to allow
people to talk ourselves into a position of weakness which really
doesn't exist and can't-exist in a situation where we have a
guaranteed mutual deterrent situation.
Now the second point I'd like to make is that in light
of this agreement at Moscow to limit strategic weapons, what
should we be doing about our own military programs and our security
programs. I think most of you will remember that during the
past three or four years most of our new weapons programs have
been justified on the score that the Soviets might at some stage
in the game have a very large nationwide ABM, or, secondly,
that they might increase the numbers of their very large ICBM's,
the so-called SS-9's or so-called big holes, which they haven't
filled yet, or actually by building more submarines and continuing
to build submarines so that we would have to have more submarines
ourselves. These were the elements which were used as justification
for expanding our own strategic weapons programs.
Now as a result of the agreements at Moscow, a large-
scale ABM has been foreclosed on both sides. Secondly, the
numbers of large ICBM's has been frozen at existing levels,
and they cannot now increase to the five hundred or so which
was much feared a few years ago. And finally, the Soviets will
be frozen in the number of submarines they can have. Granted
that the agreement does not have any effect on qualitative improvements
nor, unfortunately, does it prevent shifting from one type of
force to another. In other words, you can transfer ICBM's to
submarines missiles, and so on. But nevertheless, these three
factors -- the three factors which, for the last three or four
years, have been used as excuses for building new weapons have
now been taken care of at SALT.
So I think it is incumbent on all of us, and particularly
for the administration working in consultation with the Congress --
and I think the Congress can provide a very useful function
in this -- to look at these weapons programs in light of the
new situation and decide really which ones need to be carried
forward for a real military purpose. If we restrict our military
programs to those which are needed for real security purposes
and do not go ahead with every weapons program just because
it is not banned specifically in the agreement in Moscow, then
the Moscow agreements can really amount to very important steps
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toward limiting our armaments, toward improving our security,
and for providing large amounts of money to be put into other
very critical social needs, which, in the long run, will probably
increase our national strength and our security far more than
the addition of more weapons.
Now, finally, I think that it is important to then
also look at where we can move in the arms control areas as
a result of this first phase in the strategic arms limitation
as a result of Moscow. Admittedly, this is a first stage.
There are many weaknesses and many things in the agreement which
are not foreclosed which we would like to see foreclosed. Primarily,
of course, these are the qualitative improvements in weapons
system. This is a very unfortunate loophole in the present
agreement, and we should move rapidly to try and close it.
And the best way to move rapidly in that direction is to exercise
restraint in the meantime and not, as I said a moment ago, build
every new weapon just because it's not specifically banned.
That is the surest way not to make any further progress.
And I think we should not just restrict ourselves
to closing the loopholes that existed in the agreement, but
we should move on to other areas. I agree very heartedly with
what General Lemnitzer said, that it is important to try and
achieve agreement with the Soviets to have mutual balanced force
reductions in Europe. I think the security of Europe will be
greatly increased if both sides can reduce their forces in Europe.
This is not only conventional forces; this is the nuclear forces
that are in Europe as well. And I think we've got to start
to make the step to reduce these forces, because then Europe
will be much more secure than it will be under the threat of
a nuclear conflagration. After all, a nuclear conflagration
doesn't save Europe; it only destroys it.
So I think there are lots of things we can do. I
would just like to emphasize that we must recognize that the
Moscow agreements have brought a new situation. We must act
as if it was a new situation and not follow what have been really
very blind alleys of our programs of the past few years.
Thank you.
Mr. Gelb.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Thank you, Mr. Scoville.
LESLIE GELB: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to make one comment and then put some
questions on the table for your three witnesses, if I may.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Surely.
GELB: The area in which I'd like to comment hasn't
been raiAporote&fd 8d'R@Ita SoOti l=:s(eIA.RDFI74g0'04*5FUb300vle@920i-4iportant
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to talk about. It is the manner in which defense expenditures
are justified and explained to the American people-. I believe
that this whole process of justifying the defense budget to
the Congress and the public needs to be revolutionized.
A common practice, as I think we all know, has been
to exaggerate and overdramatize. Threats are painted in imminence,
right around the corner, tomorrow. An adversary's new ship
or missile or tank is painted as a harbinger of doom, something
that will tip the military balance in a matter of weeks, if
not within the year.
People who have worked inside the administration know,
I believe, that these are exaggerations. We've seen just in
the past three years, Mr. Chairman, members of this administration,
as previous -- as was the case in previous administrations,
say one year that the Soviets are developing a system which
will be deployed in two years, which will threaten our nation's
safety. And in the next year, after prodding by the Congress
and by the press, they will admit that, well, maybe the system
isn't as powerful as they said two years ago and maybe it won't
be deployed two years hence, but seven or eight years hence.
Somehow the crush of political pressure in Washington
compels leaders in our government to say things that they know
to be an exaggeration. They think this is the only way to sell
defense expenditures to- the American people and Congress to exaggerate and overdramatize. But somehow you wouldn't have
the sport unless you bent over backwards to prove your case.
Now this isn't an idle speculation on my part. I
think if you look at the literature of memoirs of presidents
and people who've served in the executive branch that you will
see that they admit this. They do it for what they believe
to be the best interests of the country. I think they believe
the defense expenditures are required for our national security
and that, in order to get what is required, they need to oversell.
The slogans for overselling vary from time to time.
One year is we can't afford to let the Soviets get ahead. Another
year it's we can't be second best to Soviet power. More recently
it's been we need to build armaments as bargaining chips. Invariably,
we keep those bargaining chips after we build and deploy them.
I think the essential issue in defense expenditures
for the seventies and beyond is restoring the credibility of
those defense expenditures. Most of those expenditures are
required. I think they make sense. But by overselling and
overstating the case, one expands the credibility gap and places
in jeopardy defense expenditures that make sense. And I think
we've got to change this. And I think the Congress has to hold
the executive branch's feet to the fire in order to do it.
Let-me now raise some questions that I'd be interested
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REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Let me ask you a question...
GELB: Yes, sir.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: ...about the bargaining
chips. Would we indeed have had success in the SALT Talks if
we did not have the so-called bargaining chips on our side of
the table?
GELB: In my judgment, we would have the same agreement
without ever having deployed any of the missile site defenses.
And I think an alternative all along was to hold the funds in
escrow pending the SALT agreement. And if the agreement did
not prove to be negotiable, to consider then whether or not
to deploy the system. As it is, we've spent funds and begun
deployment on sites that will not be completed. And as it is,
we've ended up agreeing to keep two sites, neither of which
I think is necessary, and both of which could have been eliminated
had not we begun to move down the road of deployment.
The real negotiating factor -- this is the bargaining
chip we had -- was the potential to deploy these systems, not
the actualization of their deployment.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: But to what extent was the
problem of the Soviet Union with China, which outweighed even
the bargaining chips we had on our side of the table as far
as our military force?
You didn't seem to mention that.
GELB: I think that was probably a more important
factor to the Soviet Union than our Safeguard deployments.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Perhaps we ought to hear
Mr. Huntington. Then we'll go right into questions.
Mr. Huntington.
SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I submitted a statement for the record...
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: It will be a part of the
record of this...
HUNTINGTON: ..which I won't even attempt to summarize
here but will simply make a few references to it in the context
of making a few very brief comments on the remarks we've heard
here this morning.
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21
It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that the most fundamental
change which is taking place in world politics at the present
time concerns the United States. Between 1945 and 1965, there
was a great imbalance of power in world politics. World politics
was Washington centered, and its dominant feature was the political,
economic and military preeminence of the United States.
All this is clearly changing and changing drastically.
These changes I think are manifested in a variety of developments.
And the decline of support for a national role abroad among
our public is certainly the most important sign of this change
in the American role. The development by the Soviet Union of
its own military power,,both in the strategic field and in the
conventional field; hence the conventional capability and the
ability to project its military power overseas; in the emergence
of Europe, Japan and China as major independent actors on the
world scene, which makes this, in some sense, a pentagonal world;
and the development of a number of local regional powers in
the Third World who are able to play very important roles in
exerting their influence within their own region.
I think the decline of American hegemony in this sense
has been accompanied by the rise of what could be called local
hegemony --India in the subcontinent, Iran in the Persian Gulf,
Brazil in Latin America, the Union of South Africa in Africa.
These are some of the more obvious cases. All of this makes
the world very different than it was just a few years ago.
Now so far as the implications of this for American
security are concerned, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me there are
many fairly clear-cut and important implications, many of which
have been outlined by the speakers here this morning. I would
argue that the emergence of this more complex power alignment
has one important implication in that it means that for the
foreseeable future only the Soviet Union can pose a significant
threat to American security, and that what we have to be concerned
about really is that threat and not the threat of global communism.
It seems to me that the idea of a communist bloc acting in unison
with some goal of worldwide domination just does not accord
with the facts at the present time. And, consequently, our
military activity has to be directed primarily towards the Soviet
Union as the one significant potential threat to our security.
And we must take full accord of the fact that the communist
world is very far from being a monolith. And in this respect,
I think I would dissent from the interpretation of Soviet goals
which General Lemnitzer has put forward today.
It does not seem to me that it is useful and relevant
to think of Soviet policy as being directed to the goal of communist
world domination. Or perhaps I might say it is about as useful
and relevant as to think that U. S. policy is being directed
toward the goal of. world democracy.
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In this respect, I would thoroughly endorse the remarks
made bh Paul Warnke and by Amatai Etzioni on the limited interests
which the United States has in conflicts among nonmajor powers,
particularly conflicts which involve domestic or civil strife
within other states. In most countries, indeed in most of the
world, it seems to me governments can fall and boundaries change
with little damaging impact on U. S. security interests.
A second implication of this change for the maintenance
of American national security, it seems to me, is that diplomacy
will increase in importance in comparison to the role of military
force. In a bipolar world naturally military force has to be
the primary basic for security. In a pentagonal or multipower
world, diplomacy can play an equally important role. And I
think we have a very good example of this, Mr. Chairman, which
I've referred to in my statement in the difference in the Soviet
response to what seemed to me to be its two major defeats, diplomatic
defeats, during the past decade: the Cuban missile crisis,
on the one hand, and the rapprochement between the United States
and China, on the other.
Three, it appears to me that from a military viewpoint
the Third World is emerging as the principal locus of military
instability and potential military confrontation between the
Soviet Union and the United States. In the past, that competition
between the two superpowers was focused largely on Europe and
on strategic capability. Now in both these areas, there are
signs of a stabilization of relationships and a relaxation of
tensions. We have arms control agreements; we have the beginnings
of a detente in Europe and Ostpolitik, and movement towards
a conference on European security ties.
Now none of these changes, it seems to me, are true
concerning Soviet-American military relationships in the Third
World. And it is in that area which I would think the greatest
likelihood of some form of direct military confrontation with
the Soviet Union could take place in the future. One of the
striking phenomena of the past twenty-five years of Cold War
has been the fact that in no case has Soviet military intervention
in the politics of another society been provoked -- in no case
has that military intervention provoked American military counterintervent
and in no case has American intervention in the politics of
another society provoked Soviet military counteraction.
In the future, it seems to me if the Soviets deploy
their military forces abroad, as they assume, as it is quite
proper for them to assume, a more active role militarily about
the world, the possibility of some form of confrontation between
the two superpowers, in terms of conventional forces outside
of Western Europe, is much more likely to increase. I think
this is a new problem for us and one which should be considered
by the panel here today. Under what circumstances in the Third
World sh, M veScPidr el slei2tbft llz' unteri nter-
vention? What are the posslbi ities o reac ing om r of
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agreement with the Soviet Union for mutual renunciation of the
use of force and of intervention in Third World areas?
It seems to me that here is the general set of problems
which will have to move to the top of the arms control negotiations
at some point in the future.
And finally, I would argue in contradiction I think
to what I tend to see as some of the thrusts of both Mr. Scoville's
paper and the remarks of my friend, Paul Warnke. I would argue
that inevitably military force must be the handmaiden of politics.
There is a tendency I think for both -- in both of these papers
for the use of military force, the existence of military forces
to be justified solely on a military ground. Mr. Scoville says
that we must confine our weapons programs to those which serve
a real military purpose, and strategic nuclear power must not
be thought of as a political tool. Mr. Warnke says that a numerical
advantage in any part of the arms arsenal is without military
meaning; it should have no real political potential. This,
I take, is a statement of hope and aspiration on his part, but
it is, it seems to me, an aspiration which is doomed to be unrealized.
And I think we must beware of getting into the justification
of military forces in their own times. At the present time --
and I take it this is the main thrust of the rationale for this
position on the part of both Mr. Warnke and Mr. Scoville --
at the present time the argument that military forces, particularly
at the strategic level, should be thought of in purely military
terms, is an argument against expansion of those military forces,
because the argument for superiority in strategic forces now
stems not in terms of military arguments, but in terms of political
arguments. And I can understand the reason.for making that
sort of a case.
On the other hand, this is something, a relationship
which normally works the other way. And I think it is rather
dangerous for those who want to control our military forces
to put the justification of military forces solely in military
terms. And to quote Clausewitz, who Mr. Warnke and General
Gavin both quoted, Clausewitz said that war had its own grammar,
but not its own logic. And I think that is true of the existence
of military forces. And I would hope that in our differences
about the political purposes which military force are to serve,
we will debate those purposes and that we will not atempt to
escape from such a debate by putting the justification for the
existence of military forces and their deployment solely in
terms of-military purposes. All too often in the past, that
is what we have done in our discussions of defense policy in
this country, and it has led to some very unfortunate results.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Thank you, Mr. Huntington.
If I may just try to summarize, I see a common agreement
that the exercise of military power must be called upon when,
indeed, our national security is endangered. I see some differences,
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however, as to when and where and what is in our national security.
For example, Secretary Warnke said few instances are of special
concern to our national security, while General Lemnitzer said
it is in our national security to uphold treaty commitments.
I believe most all of you agree that military power does not
necessarily resolve some of our difficulties, that the military
strength of a country does not necessarily preserve peace except
in certain areas.
There seems to be strong agreement, of course, between
General Lemnitzer and Mr. Warnke that in Western Europe NATO
is very important and our commitment there must not be abrogated.
In the past, we have been accused that we had overlooked or
just set aside or paid no attention to other areas of the world
which then brought trouble. We had practically completely shown
no interest in Asia, for example, or in Latin America for decades.
We find ourselves with problems there.
I would want to, one, see if we could get some discussion
on what is truly in our national interest, what are the instances.
And is it not true -- or let me rephrase that question. Should
all powers perhaps review and abandon some of their commitments;
the United States on their part, the Soviet Union on theirs?
Because Mr. Gelb, I believe you had stated in an article that
I'd seen that the Soviet Union, for example, will continue its
military commitments to Hanoi, as much as we would not stop
our military commitments to Saigon. If we are, as a nation,
committed by treaties -- as General Lemnitzer says, these commitments
and treaties must be maintained-in our national security --
if the Soviet Union -- and I see there's again general agreement
that the only power that we now have to be concerned with is
the Soviet Union because of its massive military strength and
not really be concerned about the smaller nations. Yet if we
do, as the Soviet Union has, commitments to smaller nations,
will not the Soviet Union and the United States indeed be sucked
in as long as we have these commitments when there is a confrontation
or a problem by a smaller country with whom we do have, or the
Soviet Union has, a commitment?
Therefore, I wonder if we could just discuss this.
And this is a rather general statement and probably not an accurate
summary. But it does pose this question. Should we not perhaps
review our commitments, and whould not the Soviet Union, since
these are the two powers, although we are now in a multination
world power alignment? But since we do have our greatest threat
from the Soviet Union, these commitments we have and the Soviet
Union have must be reviewed if we're going to have, indeed,
a lessening of our armaments on the part of the two great powers.
And Mr. Etzioni on this. Professor, please.
PROFESSOR ETZIONI: I believe it's a very worthwhile
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question. It took me several hundred pages to express my view
on this in a book called "Winning Without War." But let me
just try to briefly summarize.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: I had your book in mind
when I raised the question.
PROFESSOR ETZIONI: Thank you, sir.
I think an analogy may help. We have in our economy
competition between very large corporations. But there is also
usually an arrangement that certain things are not allowed.
So, for instance, the car manufacturers do not engage in undermining
each other's prices to the point it would destroy each other.
They compete in quality of cars, the safety of cars, but they
usually don't engage in price warfare. When it happened in
gasoline, they very quickly, after limited escalations, curbed
themselves because a continuation of undercutting each other's
prices would destroy all the corporations involved.
Now when you talk about international commitments,
the choices are not limited to either withdrawing to America
and forgetting all our-allies and friends or third nations,
or our jumping in there with both feet each time.
So it becomes a question of what kind of commitments
are safe for competition. That very distinction already has
one very important conclusion. If you say let's compete, for
instance, with economic development aid, let's compete with
education, let's compete with ideas, as it's been said here
earlier today, that implies saying to the other guy, "Now, let's
see what you can do." That would be already quite a shift of
policy.
I visited, as a guest of the State Department, nineteen
countries. And in most of them, we use our best to prevent
the other side from entering economically, culturally or on
the educational level. So for instance, in Bolivia we put pressure
on the Bolivian government not to allow a Soviet airline, interna-
tional airline, to get landing rights there and such.
So I think one of the first things one must recognize
is we should welcome competition in nonmilitary means.
. Secondly, if we come to military means, I think it's
important to draw a sharp line between providing a country with
funds, as we've been doing for many years in Asia, in Latin
America, and all over the place, even with the indirect, direct
funds for military purpose, for defense budget, as we did on
a very large scale for Turkey and Pakistan, Korea and such.
So it's one matter providing hardware and arms to countries
and quite a different business to send in manpower.
And thePee have been several statements made here today,
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which I don't fully understand, which suggest there was no American
military involvement in Asia, you know. It's probably just
a question that I misunderstand the wording. I mean there are
American men fighting in Vietnam and no Soviet [word unintelligible].
So there is a certain asymmetry. And it is important to have
some steps there so we don't run up the escalator so easily.
I personally would favor a world in which nobody resorted
to arms at all. But as long as we have local brush fire situations -
and I think it's not practical to prevent the sides from projecting
themselves culturally, commercially or even with funds, and
possibly it's impractical, other than a mutual agreement, to
refrain from shipment of materials -- I think the most important,
the most dangerous step on the escalator comes once men are
sent in. That's the reason I suggested that the Congress would
consider requiring that whenever that happens it be reviewed --
it be reviewed by Congress...
So one way of protecting ourselves from premature
involvements on a higher level would be to draw the line that
way. The other way that has been suggested is by mutual agreement
to refrain from shipping arms, like to the Middle East.
I just want to close on one note which Mr. Gelb referred
to. He referred to exaggerations in reports to Congress. In
other areas of our life, we recognize -- for instance, when
we all file our income 'tax returns, we recognize the difference
between an error and fraud. Now if somebody makes an error,
he thinks, you know, the Soviet Union's system's going to be
ready, you know, in 1972, and it's going to be ready by 1974,
then maybe they're an honest error. We often have a hard time
telling our own systems when they're going to be ready. But
when there's clear and present evidence that people conspired
deliberately to misrepresent facts to Congress, and when this
is documented -- and I'm sure we shouldn't take the thing lightly --
but when it is documented, as it can be done occasionally, and
that goe's unpunished, the whole of the democratic process is
being endangered.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: General Lemnitzer.
GENERAL LEMNITZER: I think in referring to a possible
review of commitments, it's pretty difficult in some cases to
define what commitments really are. Take, for example, the
situation in the Middle East. I think the President, President
Nixon, exposed the heart of the problem when he said that the
problem in the Middle East is that there's no guarantee that
the hostilties which plague that nation will not expand, both
in intensity and in area.
He also pointed out that one of the great dangers
in the Middle East is that the great powers' interests in that
area -- and they do have economic, political and particularly
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oil interests -- are far greater than their control of the situation
in the Middle East. And for this reason, I feel it would be
pretty hard to write out what commitments are involved, specific
commitments on either side. If we go back to the establishment
of the state of Israel, there're many nations in the United
Nations that were involved in approving the establishment of
the state of Israel back in 1948. And wherein do their commitments
differ from those of the United States, as expressed?
I think one of the problems is that there're many
nations who voted for the establishment of the state of Israel
[who] are not very much present when they get into discussions
of the situation today.
Now another commitment which I have been involved
in personally in being the United Nations Commander in Korea
from '55 to '57 are commitments to the United Nations Command.
Korea is`very much a continuation of the Iron Curtain. The
Iron' Curtain definitely exists between North and South Korea.
And wherein do our commitments in Korea -- are they susceptible
to being cast aside or reduced? I feel that it's extremely
important that the United Nations Command in Korea be maintained
by the sixteen nations who were the original members of that
command. For my money, it is the most important element in
preventing resumption of hostilities in Korea today: the viability
of the United Nations Command. And the fact that there is a
United Nations Command there with a United Nations commander,
with representation of the United States forces is probably
the principal reason for the maintenance of the status quo in
Korea. There's no peace in Korea. When I was in command, I,
didn't even like the term armistice. I called it a state of
suspended war. And I feel that there is only a state of suspended
war in Korea today. There are constant efforts on the part
of the North Koreans to infiltrate and subvert, come across
the Demilitarized Zone. They run fast patrol boats down both
coasts putting in infiltration teams and so on.
But I cite these two examples as the difficulty of
evaluating and spelling out what are the natures of the United
States' commitment in Korea, vis-a-vis that of the Soviet Union,
for example, or in the Middle East, vis-a-vis that of the Soviet
Union. It's pretty hard to define.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Warnke has something
to add.
WARNKE: I think, Mr. Chairman, we have to distinguish,
or at least we should distinguish, between what we refer to
as our commitments and any so-called Soviet commitments. I
doubt if the Soviets feel genuinely committed to any country
other than the Soviet Union themselves. I don't think they've
undertaken the chain of worldwide obligations that the United
States has undertaken. ttAAnnedlJi~I suspect that the rulers in Hanoi t are q u iMpproveu A e l e a s e Zoo2/01 / 2 3 s C I A - R D P 7 4 B 0 0 4 5R0 010 100020-4 e S o v i e t
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Union has any obligation or commitment to them at all. I think
what they do is to utilize individual situations and determine
their involvement in those situations on the basis of their
own national interests. I think it's a pragmatic approach,
and I don't think they really feel terribly bound by treaties.
I think there's a very distinct difference between
the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union's relationship with those
countries and our relationship with NATO. In one instance,
as General Lemnitzer has said with regard to NATO, it is a collective
defense, security pact in which we have undertaken binding obliga-
tions. I think as far as the Warsaw Pact is concerned, probably
the countries other than the Soviet Union would be delighted
to see the pact dissolved. Because what it really constitutes
is a means of preserving the Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.
So I don't think we really have to think of a competing
set of commitments that poses a threat of superpower confrontation.
I think instead, Mr. Chairman, what we ought to do is not review
and eliminate our commitments, but interpret them sensibly.
And by and large, we do. I don't think, for example, that anybody
seriously felt that because of the Philippines Security Treaty
that we would have been obligated to go to the defense of the
Philippines if they'd gone to war with Malaysia over Sabah.
That would have been regarded as something that was totally
extrinsic to the purpose of the treaty.
We have only one absolute commitment, and that's to
the security and the survival of the United States. And all
of our treaty commitments are conditioned by the fact that they
state that we will respond in accordance with our constitutional
processes', which means, and here I would agree with Professor
Etzioni, that this should bring in the direct participation
of Congress.
Now, Professor Huntington has suggested that we are
living in a world which -- will live in a.world which is more
pentagonal. I think that probably is true. I think General
Lemnitzer and Dr. Gelb and I might feel fairly comfortable in
a world that was shaped like a pentagon. The real question
is what are our relationships within that world. And I think,
despite my friend, Professor Huntington, that one of the considerations
that ought to be uppermost in our minds is to downplay the purported
political significance of military power. I have not suggested
that military power has no political significance. But if we
have enough in the way of military power to defend against real
military threats, then we have, in my opinion, plenty to defend
and protect against political disadvantage. If there were no
military threats, the possession of military power would be
a political nullity. And I think that where our military power
is politically effective it's because it has military utility.
Obviously our troops in Europe have a political implication.
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concerned, as far as the acceptability of German military power
is concerned, and as far as the reliance of the other members
of NATO on our willingness to respond and, if necessary, to
escalate in nuclear fashion. So that does have political implications,
but it does so because it has military utility. Where something
is militarily meaningless, it will have no political utility
unless, as Dr. Scoville has pointed out, we manage to talk ourselves
into a political disadvantage.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Granting. Mr. Warnke, that
we do not have -- the Soviet Union does not have similar commitments
that the United States has. But let's look at our United States'
commitments. It's very interesting. On page ten of your prepared
statement, you refer to what you call the special cases of Israel
and Korea and you recommend continued political and military
support to Israel and what seems to me to be a contradiction --
the continued liquidation of support for South Korea, a nation
we have a commitment [to].
WARNKE: I don't believe, Mr. Chairman, that I suggested
that we liquidate our support for South Korea. What I suggest
is that we can continue to liquidate our military presence.
And on this, I find myself, unfortunately, in disagreement with
General Lemnitzer. I think that we have now cut down to something
in excess of forty thousand. We have built up an army in South
Korea which exceeds in numbers and, I believe, in military capability
the army of North Korea. We have a country which is something
like double the population of North Korea. We have the ability
to come to their defense with our air and naval power. I find
that an indefinite continuation of a ground presence in South
Korea...
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Undoubtedly, there is a
question...
WARNKE: ...isn't necessary and possibly a continuing
irritant.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Undoubtedly there's a question.
I see General Lemnitzer shaking his head as to what commitment
we have in Korea.
But what I'm troubled with is the policy that we will
take as far as an enlightened policy as to where our commitments
should be backed up with military and economic assistance --
and you point out Israel as one that we should continue. And
I'm merely being the devil's advocate in saying, if we are going
to continue the economic and military assistance to the government
of Israel when it appears, in fact, the Arab world is more relative
to our security, when General Lemnitzer pointed out the value,
the strategic value of the Arab oil resources, and when you
balance that off to a small nation of less than three million
persons many miles away and almost totally. lacking indigenous
natural resourl es -- Is gel - w8her does our stratecic or national
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security interests lie in this particular instance [sic]? I
would like to have again a development as what -- a definition
as to where our strategic interests are in order to use our
military power in the future.
WARNKE: Let me respond in two ways. First of all,
I don't suggest a different policy with respect to Israel than
I do with respect to Korea. To the best of my knowledge, we
have no American forces in Israel. I do not suggest that we
put them in there. What I suggest instead is we give serious
consideration to the gradual liquidation of our present American
military presence in South Korea.
In both instances, I would continue economic and military
assistance. I think that we undertook certain obligations in
Korea. I think we can discharge those obligations. We should
discharge them. But we can do so without the indefinite, perpetuation
of an American ground presence there.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: But are we not indeed getting
involved in other people's wars in the Middle East, using your
terminology?
WARNKE: There is no question about it, Chairman Zablocki,
which is why I cited it, I think in at least forthright admission
of the fact that there are breaches in the unassailable logic
of my position. I regard Israel as being one such instance.
And I think that the emotional ties and the political potency
that Israel represents in this country gives it a strategic
value which has nothing to do with the size of its population
or its resources. I think that if we were to stand aside and
let the Arabs overwhelm Israel because we didn't supply Israel
with military assistance, that our country would become far
less governable than it is at the present time. And the governability
of the country is an essential ingredient in our national security.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: This conversation only dramatizes
our real problem is when we try to get hold of what our future
policy should be. And I hope we could discuss this to a greater
extent.
Mr. Scoville had a*question.
SCOVILLE: I might go off the subject, so maybe we
should go ahead with this.
ETZIONI: I'd like to make a brief point on the Israeli
situation...
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Etzioni.
ETZIONI: I spent twenty-one years in Israel and served
in its armed forces before I became an American citizen, so
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31
I don't think you need to increase the commitment,
because the. notion that we should not get involved in other
people's wars can be consistently maintained by saying that
we should not send armed forces to the Middle East and that
if we could reach an agreement with the Soviet Union that they
would stop shipping arms to the Middle East, we would need not
to ship any arms to Israel either. The United States could
consistently, if the other superpowers would refrain from intervening
in the region, stop intervening in all sense of the term sending military supplies, not to mention men.
So the term "involving" has to be somewhat more carefully
separated: involving in what way under what conditions. I
don't think there was ever a statement made that we basically
move back to the mainland of the United States and never maintain
any relationships to any other place, never to become involved
in this confusion. What we should refrain from, first of all,
is.sending in manpower, which the Korean situation has suggested,
which is our quickest way of getting into trouble.
The second one is whenever.we can reach agreement
with the other side, we should always refrain from shipping
any arms...
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Then you would agree that
there is some value of military assistance to countries who
are in need of it when their boundaries are endangered or their
very existence is threatened?
ETZIONI: Yes...
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Then no one has replied
then -- or perhaps you ought to develop the third point, Mr.
Warnke, when you say that we overvalue the political importance
of military hardware.
Mr. Scoville.
SCOVILLE: It seems to me that one of the
problems
with military power is that military power has some
effectiveness
and some political effectiveness, I will agree with
President
Huntington, although I don't think I'd go as far
as
he does.
And I'd certainly like to see the downgrading of
the
development
of military power entirely for political reason
when
it makes
no military sense.
But it seems to me military power only has effectiveness
when it is not used. As soon as you start to actually apply
military power and get involved in the conflict, people really
find out how ineffective it is. To impose a political solution
by military power I don't think is possible in this day and
age. And I think Vietnam has just demonstrated that drastically.
The United States has considerable national -- international
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prestige, and everybody looked at U. S. military power as being
dominating and overriding until we actually tried to apply that
military power in Vietnam. And the Vietnam conflict just pricked
the bubble. And I don't think U. S. military power is considered
seriously by hardly anybody around the world today. I think
if you talk about the domino effect, we were all worried about
not going into Vietnam, that if we didn't go into Vietnam and.
exercise our military power, the domino effect would result
in the collapse of all of Southeast Asia and U. S. power would
no longer be considered credible.
I think by having gone into Vietnam and actually used
military power, we have shown that U. S. military power is not
that effective.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: But on the other hand, how
would you reply to those who said since we did enter Vietnam,
we indeed did not use the military power at hand to the degree
to resolve that problem, that we have been fighting in Vietnam,
so to speak, with one hand tied behind our backs? Now this
has been a criticism.
SCOVILLE: I-know it's been a criticism. All I can
say is that we put in five hundred thousand men -- what was
it? -- a hundred or two hundred billion dollars worth of military
supplies, the most modern weapons we had, except the nuclear
weapons. I would call that the application of military power.
Everytime we escalated the war in Vietnam, everybody said just
if we go a little bit farther, then they're going to give up.
I don't see any signs of that as we've increased the bombing
in the last few weeks. And I don't think there was any real
hope of it all during the Vietnam conflict.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: General Lemnitzer.
GENERAL LEr4NITZER: I simply can't agree with the
line that Dr. Scoville is taking here. Because the application
of military power to the wrong targets is not going to settle
anything. And I think our trouble in Vietnam today is when
we put in the five hundred thousand individuals, we didn't use
military power decisively and effectively. We had a great number
or restrictions where the power could be applied, how and when
and where. And I think that's one of the great errors.
. And I can't agree that the application of military
power doesn't settle things. It settled the attempt to overrun
South Korea by the communists. It settled that. And it settled
Hitler's effort to take over control of the world. It settled
that for once and for all.
So I say military power has a great importance and
usefulness in the world, and how it's applied and so forth is
another thing. In my speaking around the. country attempting
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33
I point out it wasn't the military who decided to go into Vietnam,
and it certainly wasn't the military who decided how the application
of military power should be applied in Vietnam.
RREPRESENTATIVE PAUL FINDLEY: Mr. Chairman.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Findley.
REPRESENTATIVE FINDLEY: As I've listened to all the
discussion today, I've been troubled by the attitude expressed
by several witnesses on nuclear weapons and also our relationship
with Western Europe. It's assumed that the two superpowers
have the ability to destroy each other. [Technical difficulties.]
...As if it were American territory. What then would be the
situation?
I'm not sure that our nuclear commitment has a credibility
today that it once had in Europe. I question that seriously.
But if our troops are removed from the continent, what really
would remain of U. S. commitment to Western Europe? And if
the credibility of that commitment were to diminish close to
zero, as I think it would, then would be the effect upon Central
Europe itself?
It's inconceivable to me that the Soviet Union would
be'comfortable with a West Germany which was not tied closely
to the United States. I think it would seek to expand its own
influence perhaps. I would doubt that it would even need to
use military intervention to accomplish that. But it would,
I'm sure, seek to make a whole continent of Finland-like states
in Europe.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Warnke.
REPRESENTATIVE FINDLEY: I'm glad to hear from Mr.
Warnke. In fact, I think he touches on that pretty directly.
He criticized the President for referring to America as the
peace-keeper in the Asian world. And then on page eight he
refers to those allies "whose independence is integral to our
own safety.
I guess my question to Mr. Warnke would be, is Western
Europe -- is the independence of Western Europe really integral
to our safety?
WARNKE: I think, Congressman Findley, that it is.
My answer would be an affirmative one in that instance, yes.
I think the fact that we've gone to war twice in the Twentieth
Century to defend Western Europe is an indication that that
has been our view in the past. I think it has to remain our
view. I think that they have too much in the way of industrial
and people potential for us to remain the.kind of country that
we are nd wart-t, tQ be if it were to fall into hostile hands.
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I think also, just as an indication of Soviet intentions,
a Soviet assault on Western Europe would be an indication that
we had miscalculated, that we were, in fact, in physical danger
of Soviet attack, just as was the case with respect to Hitler's
Germany. These are instances in which the hostility is so evident
because of a move against American allies that we have to recognize
that we ourselves are in physical danger.
And I agree, I think, with your analysis that the
American military presence in Europe is an essential part of
the plausibility of the American nuclear deterrent. I think
that there would be a very real question in the minds of the
Western Europeans; there'd be at least a niggling, hangnail
doubt in my own as to whether we would respond immediately with
a nuclear response to Soviet conventional aggression.
Now I think that the deterrent is a complex thing;
but it's a complex of conventional capability and nuclear capability.
If we have the ability to respond conventionally to a conventional
attack, then you're at war. And once you're at war, the Soviet
Union has to recognize the possibility of the escalator going
up. And the fact that'if we began to lose that war, if American
troops were endangered, if Western European soil were endangered,
we would inevitably, I think, after protracted or even any sort
of substantial conventional war, begin to go up the nuclear
ladder.
REPRESENTATIVE FINDLEY: In fact, Mr. Warnke, isn't
it pretty well established that the allied forces could not
sustain a broadscale convention war in Europe for even 'a short
period of time? The escalator would inevitably be pushed up.
WARNKE: Well, I think if we had no conventional capability
to withstand a Soviet conventional attack of any size, that
then the chances are we would be defeated promptly and we would
not have'the nuclear escalation. As to whether or not we have
that ability at the present time, I'm sort of in the position
where some of my friends say we have it in abundance and some
of my friends, like General Lemnitzer, are somewhat less certain.
I think that probably the truth is that we're not
sure, and neither is the Soviet Union, and that that degree
of uncertainty is perhaps -- it bolsters perhaps the deterrent.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Anybody else want to comment?
ETZIONI: Just briefly.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Etzioni.
ETZIONI: I didn't quite understand the part of the
question which implied that the particular size of forces in
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Europe will trigger. I would think that if fifteen hundred
American boys would be killed, you know, in Berlin, that that
would more'or less do that particular trick. So as far as credibi-
lity is concerned in the nuclear deterrent balance, I don't
see any advisable conventional force in Europe.
As to the conventional Soviet attack, I do not see
why we have to provide the Europeans with foot soldiers to protect
their land. And if they're unwilling or, as I'll come to in
a moment, they see no danger, then I don't think it's our duty
to provide them with foot soldiers.
And so I can see, especially under some kind of mutual
agreement, a thinning out, a further thinning out of American
foot soldiers there without in any significant way affecting
the deterrent question.
REPRESENTATIVE FINDLEY: You use the word "thinning
out."' Am I correct, sir?
ETZIONI: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE FINDLEY: In other words, not elimination.
You're not suggesting the total removal of ground troops, are
you?
ETZIONI: No., I think we could further reduce them
substantially, as long as there's what called a [words. unintelligi-
bl e] .
REPRESENTATIVE FINDLEY: Personally, I don't see any
magic in two hundred and eighty-five thousand or five divisions,
or any particular number, so long as they are rather substantial.
But what is important is how we get to, say, a lower
figure. If we are going to go to a lower figure, I think it'd
be tragic if we were to take that step in a manner that seems
to be the total phasing -- lead to the total phasing out of
our presence in Europe. If we would negotiate among our allies
and agree that, well, two divisions will really suffice for
the next five years, let's go to that. Then there would be
the note of permanence. The ongoing character of the institution
I think is vitally important.
. ETZIONI: And another thing one could get in such
a bargain is possibly a reduction of the Red divisions in the
satellites. And that would be in itself a desirable thing.
And I think the Soviet Union has considered that if we reduce --
not eliminate, but reduce the number of divisions in Western
Europe, they are willing to move some of their divisions from
Poland and Eastern Germany back across the Soviet borders.
And I think that's basically a desirable thing. And then they
move divisions back into those countries.: That cannh be eevstablished.
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REPRESENTATIVE FINDLEY: They did pretty well in Czechos-
lovakia, though, I might say.
ETZIONI: Yes. But, again, I'm not saying that we
should unilaterally remove ours. But if we could as part of
a European security conference, which we might be moving to
over the next year, reach an agreement between the Soviet Union
and the United States, [words unintelligible]. If we move some
of them out of Germany, I think that would be to everybody's
interest.
I think we're [words unintelligible] about Soviet
intentions. And I have to share your feeling that the Soviet
Union would love to dominate the world, if there would be no
risks involved. And, you know, I think we would. But that's
really not the issue. The issue is how many risks are they
willing to take. And with one exception, the Cuban missile
situation, for which Mr. Khrushchev paid rather dearly -- and
I think taught a lesson to future Soviet leaders -- I think
since Stalin the Soviet Union has followed an extremely conservative
foreign policy. The risks they're willing to take are very
limited now. The Hanoi situation in the last week -- they
displayed that.
So the vision of Soviet troops marching into Western
Europe, the way they marched into Czechoslovakia, I think has
nothing to show in the last twenty years.
Now, I'm not suggesting -- and I don't think anybody
who's sensible can suggest that therefore we should dismantle
our nuclear force and send all American boys home. But if we
talk about reducing our forces to a much lower level and if
we talk about talking to our allies in Europe, you know, our
allies in Europe say,. in effect -- they show actually in their
budgets -- they're not going to cough up more funds, because
they don't take the threat that seriously.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Huntington...
HUNTINGTON: My comment was really going to go back
to an earlier subject, Mr. Chairman.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Then we'll hold.
General Lemnitzer wanted to comment at this point.
GENERAL LEMNITZER: I do not agree with the idea of
thinning out American forces in Europe. I think we've got in
this country to realize we're not talking about U. S. forces
alone; we're talking about a team. On a football team, you
can't thin out the team by taking out a tackle or an end or
a quarterback. This strength of NATO's forces in Europe doesn't
come off the top of someone's head. It's, carefully studied
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out, and it's related to the mission. And the mission in NATO
is very simple: (a) to deter; that is, to prevent an attack
on NATO's territory and people, and, (b), if detente should
fail, to defend the NATO area as far forward as possible. Deterrence
and defense -- that's all there is to it.
Now in order to maintain a credible military posture
in Europe, you've got to have a balanced force -- land, sea
and air. And we do have it now. And the reason that I make
such a strong pitch toward not reducing our forces any more
than they are now is because I believe they are absolutely the
minimum consistent with that mission and the size of the forces
across the Iron Curtain, which are massive in size.
Now we don't try in NATO to match the Soviet Union
or the Warsaw Pact tank for tank, man for man, plane for plane.
But we do want a credible military posture, which we have at
the present time -- our conventional coupled with our technical
nuclear capability -- and the fact and the hope that we can
induce the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces from East Germany.
The hundred and twenty-three thousand Americans that I mentioned
in my statement didn't. induce the Soviet Union to reduce one
.man from East Germany. They still have twenty some of their
finest divisions in East Germany. And as a matter of fact,
for the first time since the end of the war, or since the establishment
of NATO, NATO's forces were confronted with Soviet divisions
only in East Germany. And it wasn't until August of 1968 when
the Soviets invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia that w.e now
are confronted with Soviet divisions from the Baltic to the
Swiss border.
The Soviets do not follow examples. And there are
many advocates of examples -- that if we withdraw so many forces,
the Soviets will withdraw. It has never worked; in my opinion,
never will.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Warnke.
WARNKE: I would say, Mr. Chairman, that military
power would play a very, very small role, if any, in bringing
about autonomy for Third World countries or preserving their
autonomy. I think that in most instances you're going to find
that other developments will determine the extent to which they
are autonomous and the extent to which they are successful.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: At this very point, Mr.
Warnke, if I might propose a scenario some day in the future
with China building, of course, its military power. It has
a confrontation almost with the Soviet Union now. But if it
decides to regain Outer Mongolia, what type of a situation do
you think military power will play in that type of a scenario
between the Soviet Union and China?
4t h
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sides will be effectively deterred from bringing about that
sort of a confrontation, because they'll be afraid of the consequences,
just as I think there will be no war in Europe because both
sides are afraid of the consequences. We were forced to forbear
with respect to Hungary and to Czechoslovakia because of that
deterrence. I think the Soviet Union is forced to forbear,
whatever their aspirations may be. I think the more serious
risk is that referred to by Professor Huntington, which is that
at some particular point in perhaps an area which is regarded
as more peripheral to our national interests, the Soviet Union
might be tempted at some point to intervene directly with military
forces. And that would pose a very difficult problem indeed
for the United States.
Now the best answer that I have to it is that the
Soviet Union probably will be deterred from direct military
intervention in an area in which their interest is perhaps to
them not clearly superior to that of ours. Where they are uncertain
as to whether we will value the interest as highly or more highly
than they do they would be afraid of a superpower confrontation
and all of the consequences that would come from that.
Now I think that this is perhaps more of a hypothetical
risk than it is a real one. But nonetheless, it's one that
seems to me that we have to keep in mind, both in determining
our foreign policy and in determining the kind of defensive
forces that we need. It is why I would not feel that we could
lightly discard any naval capability. We would have to have
some ability to respond in the event that the Soviets were to
take so rash an action as to put Soviet troops into a Third
World area.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Gelb.
GELB: One cannot help but notice, listening to the
remarks around the table, the difference between the thrust
of the argument now and the thrust of the argument people were
making, people like ourselves, five,,ten, fifteen years ago.
And I think our thinking has changed about United States' interests
in the world, about the efficacy of military force, about the
relationship between force and diplomacy.
We're talking about a world that-I think has obviously
changed in many, many respects. We're talking about much greater
risks of. superpower confrontation than ever before, primarily
because of the existence of nuclear weapons. But one thing
that I think has to be stressed is how quickly do you move to
adjust your military capabilities to your perception of this
changed world. How sure can you be that it really has changed
in a fundamental way?
My guess. is that it has changed fundamentally. But
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my judgment is that we have to move toward the accommodation
of our force posture with this new world somewhat more slowly
than many are suggesting. I mean timing is a crucial question
here. It's a crucial question in any decision to change our
force levels in Europe or in Korea. It's a crucial question
in how and when to go forward with new strategic weapons systems.
I think we have to make these changes, and we ought
to take it. It gives people a chance to adjust; it gives them
a chance to see if the change is not destabilizing and it doesn't
imperil their security. We can "taste" these things when we
see that they're creating domestic difficulty, and we ought
to. But when we talk about where we ought to move, we also
have to talk about how quickly to move there. It's integral
to the other question.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Well, Mr. Gelb, let us take
an instant case. There's no question that the Soviet Union
is building its presence and dominance in the subcontinent of
India. It has naval power now in the Mediterranean. It's entering
into the Indian Ocean. This has made China very, very nervous.
And I don't think the United States should use its military
power to counteract that in any way.
But what is the timing of other nations in that area
to be concerned with this, as commonly called, encirclement
of China by the Soviet Union?
GELB: Well, I note no great concern, as far as these
moves of the Soviet Union. It is true that they are operating
more ship days in the Mediterran can than they ever did before.
It's true that they're now sailing more often in Persian and
Indian waters. But I note no particular alarm on the part of
the Indian government-or the other governments of the Indian
subcontinent about this.
Moreover, the question for us is. what difference does
it really make. And here the issue is what could we do to prevent
it. If they're going to sail more often in these oceans, can
we stop them? Of course, we can't. Can we negate their influence
by building more ships and sailing more often in these oceans
ourselves? I don't think you can negate their influence simply
by the fact of doing that. Once a superpower makes its presence
felt, in a way it negates the military impact of the other.
Even were nations in the Indian subcontinent to worry
about this or China to worry about it, I think the issue for
us is again what difference does it make. And here I can't
see where it would have any important impact on our national
security.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Of course, the question
really that must be uppermost in our mind.[is] whether these
increased shipp'nc~ - increa ed ship ppin on the part of the
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Soviet Union and its presence in the area is for peaceful purposes
or not. What would you interpret it as?
GELB: Well, I'm sure it's to extend their influence,
to make their presence felt. But there's little we can do about
it. And I think there's little we should try to do about it,
because it's going to make the critical difference in the outcome
of any conflict in the subcontinent.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: In the presentations it
was stated that the United Nations should play a more important
role in future prevention of confrontation. Do you see any
role of the United Nations in this instance in perhaps just
discussing, either in the General Assembly or Security Council,
the increased presence and what danger -- of the Soviet Union
in that area and what danger it may pose?
GELB: Well, the nations of the area themselves have
not saw fit to raise this issue in the United Nations councils.
And I think we ought to follow their lead in this regard.
sign?
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: But do you see a danger
GELB: Of their increasing their number of ship days
in the area? No, I see it as an attempt to expand their influence,
but one that does not enjoin our own national interests.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Huntington was' going
to comment.
HUNTINGTON: Yes. It would seem to me, Mr. Chairman,
that we could take a relatively relaxed attitude toward the
Soviet deployment of their naval vessels in the Indian Ocean
area. It would appear to me, at any rate, that their activity
there has gone through phases, in a sense. And the first phase
up until this past year, it would appear that the main impact
of this was a part of strengthening Soviet relations with Indians.
And Soviet military assistance certainly played a very 'important
role in the buildup of the Indian military capacity and the
development of their ability to very quickly defeat Pakistan.
Since the end of that conflict, it would appear to
me that the Indians have been developing second thoughts about
how desirable a Soviet basic military presence is in the area.
India sees itself now as being a major regional power and playing
a dominant role there. And consequently, I would think the
best response from our point of view to Soviet naval activity
and other activity in the Indian Ocean area would be to restore
our somewhat shattered relations which India, which clearly
will be the major power on the local scene. And if we have
good relations with India, I think that is really all we need
to protect rQour own interests there.
RE: StNT E20 LZABOLOL~KICIA-~P7t4hat4ve y0point020. India
Appkt'
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41
requests military assistance, you would propose that the United
States give such assistance?
HUNTINGTON: I would be in favor of giving such assistance
only if it seemed clearly necessary in order to counteract the
role of the Soviet Union in the Indian Ocean area.
UNIDENTIFIED REPRESENTATIVE: On naval policy, the
U. S. has recently decided to base permanently naval personnel
on Greek soil. I've heard admirals question the wisdom of locating
so permanently so much of our navy in the Mediterranean. I'd
like to hear the view of the panel as to the wisdom of this
home-basing of naval forces in Greece. It has all kinds of
ramifications, I realize. But it is a specific question that
is now being considered very thoroughly in the executive branch.
And of course, the Congress does have a way to influence that
decision.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: General Lemr,itzer.
GENERAL LEMNITZER: At the time of the Arab-Israeli
war when the Soviets accelerated their presence in the Mediterranean
in support of their Arab allies, there were many comments that
were made that NATO was being outflanked. I took issue with
the description. I said NATO was being surrounded.
I don't think NATO can accept a Soviet naval superiority
in the Mediterranean. I simply don't believe that with three
important allies -- Greece, Turkey and Italy -- who depend upon
the Mediterranean for their trade with the outside world, for
their contact with the outside world, can accept a Soviet superiority.
Now, the question is what do we do about it. The
Sixth Fleet is a task force. It's an important task force,
and it's the principal NATO element in the Mediterranean. And
as a matter of fact, at the present time NATO does have overall
superiority in the Mediterranean with the Sixth Fleet, British,
French, Italian, Greek and Turkish vessels.
So there isn't a question of superiority there. The
problem that the Navy faces is here is a major part, a substantial
part of the United States naval forces located in an area.
And in order to reduce the problem of family separations and
problems of this kind, it was decided to attempt to home-port
the Sixth Fleet, since it occupies the eastern Mediterranean
most of the time, in an allied country, Greece. And I think
it was a proper proposal; and I think it was a sound proposal.
And we've had home-porting of naval vessels in Italy, and we've
had it in France in the past. And I don't see anything extraordinary
or out of order with home-porting U. S. naval forces that are
constantly in position in the eastern Mediterranean in an allied
country, a NATO country; namely, Greece.
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REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Dr. Scoville.
SCOVILLE: Well, General Lemnitzer already partially
answered the point I was going to raise. But that is the fear
that the Soviets are going to have naval superiority in the
Mediterranean -- it's just really not a legitimate fear in the
near future. The Soviet forces -- all the figures that I've
seen, unless there's an awful lot of classified information
that's not available, is that the NATO forces are overwhelmingly
dominant in the Mediterranean. Sure, the Russians have built
up their forces. But I've never heard of any question that
they're approaching superiority, and he just said that they
didn't.
Now, as far as basing the forces in Greece -- I mean
the families in Greece -- it seems to me that one has to look
at the political consequences of that particular action. And
maybe the families are a little bit nearer if they're in Greece,
but they're not that far away if they're in Italy. And it seems
to me that you could well base those families in Italy where
the political situation is not that extreme. And I just wonder
if we really looked at the political consequences. Or I guess
I really wonder whether we didn't base the families there for
political reasons rather than military reasons.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Secretary Warnke.
WARNKE: Well, I think General Lemnitzer has isolated
the real risk of the increased Soviet naval presence, and that's
that we'll do something else to match it. I think the real
problem that we're running into at the present time is that
superpowers don't have very many models to go by. There's never
more than one or two at any one time. And the problem as I
see it is that the Soviet Union feels now that, as a great power,
they have to demonstrate that by exercising the freedom of the
seas and by emulating, if you will, the United States and our
pervasive presence worldwide.
Now, this is very expensive. In some respects, it's
risky. It also involves, because of such things as having to
base dependents in Greece, a very heavy political price by the
apparent willingness to affiliate ourselves with an unpopular
or repressive government there.
Now it seems to me that there is something that can
be done. I don't think it can be done by the United Nations.
I think were the United Nations to consider the Soviet presence
in the Indian Ocean, that the Soviets would insist that they
also consider the American presence in the Mediterranean. And
it would be a question of both of us being told to go home.
But both of us, of course, would be able to exercise a veto
so that the caution would be really just precatory and of no
practical significance.
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But it seems to me, as Dr. Scoville has suggested,
that we can fruitfully explore the possibility of reaching accords
with the Soviet Union. We can do so particularly in instances
in which the national security of neither is at stake. The
national security of the Soviet Union does not depend upon its
naval presence in the Indian Ocean. And it seems to me that
in some of these instances, just as with respect to military
assistance, we can reach agreements that will do nothing to
impair the national security of either, but will free up budgetary
dollars or budgetary rubles which both countries can use to
their own internal benefit.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: General Lemnitzer.
GENERAL LEMNITZER: In view of the discussion here
this morning, I think it would be interesting to go back to
the situation that occurred after World War II at the time of
the signing of the United Nations Charter.
One of the major assumptions at the time of the signing
of the United Nations Charter in 1945 was that the major Western
allies would act in concert to keep the peace. And think what
a different world we would be in if that hope was realized.
But the hope was not realized. It was shattered and shattered
completely because of the efforts of the Soviet Union. I myself
was involved in working out the details of the American contribution
to a United Nations peace-keeping force. And with some difficulty
within the United States government, we worked out a contribution
of land, sea and air forces, as indeed did the British. I presume
the Soviets did the same.
But when it was put up to the United Nations Security
Council, the Soviets vetoed every proposal associated with that
.effort to establish a, world -- a United Nations peace-keeping
force. And I don't think there's any more chance of obtaining
a United Nations peace-keeping force today than there was after
World War II.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Gelb.
GELB: I'd like to try to bring together Mr. Findley's
question with Mr. Etzioni's answer. The question was about
home-porting in Greece. That's a question I don't think that
can be answered without reference to the larger question of
how many carrier task forces the United States ought to maintain.
Right now we have sixteen. Unless a new one is built -- and
a new one would cost one billion dollars to build, without aircraft,
without supporting ships -- that number will, by the early 1980's,
go down to about twelve.
And I think this all ties back to what Mr. Etzioni --
the question Mr. Etzioni raised: how do you decide what's enough?
Do we need sixteen, or twelve, or six or one? To operate a
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carrier task force each year costs somewhere between five hundred
million and seven hundred million dollars. We don't know quite
where between. But that's a lot of money. Is the weapon system
worth it?
In the past, in my opinion, there has been a tendency
in the Congress to say, well, if the executive branch says we
need sixteen, or says we need twelve, it must he so. But I
think the truth of the matter is that the executive branch makes
these judgments with the same kind of guess work, with the same
kind of rough estimates that the Congress does. There's nothing
particularly esoteric in coming to this decision.
My point is simply this. I think there needs'to be
greater scrutiny on the part of everyone to demand justification
of force levels by the executive branch to see really what they're
based on. A colleague of mine at Brookings and myself have
just completed a paper about U. S. force structure in the Mediterra-
nean. And what we found is that one could argue a number of
different ways on whether we need two carriers in the Mediterranean
or one would suffice. But I think these same questions can
and should be put to the executive branch, because there is
no magic -- there is no magic number.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: General Lemnitzer.
GENERAL LEt1NITZER: At the beginning of the conference,
I rather got the idea that from several statements that were
made that government witnesses appearing before congressional
committees, particularly in the budget area, are very much inclined
to deliberately distort, to exaggerate, and give slanted views.
And I take issue with this point of view. It relates somewhat
to the statement that was just made by Mr. Gelb.
Government witnesses appearing before congressional
committees are doing their assigned task. I appeared before
this committee nineteen consecutive years in defense of the
military aid program. I prefer to call it the mutual security
program. But it's a military aid program. One must remember
that these people are advocates of the position that they're
trying to represent, as a lawyer is an advocate of whoever he's
trying to defend. And the estimates of requirements, particularly
in the Defense Department, is [sic] based upon intelligence,
and intelligence, the craft of intelligence is not an exact
science.' And I believe that the witnesses that come before
congressional committees are doing their best to present their
best estimate of the requirements that are needed to carry out
their assigned mission. And those missions are given by the
political side of this government.
As was just pointed out, you can work up a number
of task forces of various kinds and dimensions in the Mediterranean.
There's a question of judgments involved here. And the judgments
based o nAg}irevemHaryndleasef20DYVdIZii:pAdIDRr7 ~P041 0tq 10M% 4 fact
that they are put forward by advocates of their particular departments.
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who are attempting to carry out their mission in the best way
they know how, does not necessarily mean that they are deliberately
distorting or exaggerating or giving the wrong kind of estimates
to the Congress. Because in the congressional committees themselves,
there isn't always agreement within the committee staffs on
the estimates that are required also.
So I'd hope that the sense of this meeting does not
imply that government witnesses appearing before the various
committees of Congress are doing anything but their best to
carry out those jobs that have been assigned to them.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: And I would expect, giving
the testimony and the facts as they are at the time they are
testifying, with the change as rapid as it is, what they say
one month earlier does not hold a month later.
Mr. Gelb.
GELB: Yes. I agree with what General Lemnitzer just
said. I think that people coming to the Congress as advocates
for the executive branch are doing their best as advocates,
and they're trying to make the case for what they believe is
the consensus judgment in the administration.
But in doing.so, in trying to make the best case,
I think it is often also the case that points get exaggerated.
Let's take the debate over the last ten years about strategic
nuclear forces. As you know, inside the executive branch there
are various levels of intelligence with respect to strategic
forces. And there is a thing called "the greater than expected
threat." That in effect means -- greater than expected threat --
that here is something that is very unlikely to happen in anything
approaching the near term. We, for example, talked about the
Chinese acquiring a nuclear missile capability fairly early
in the 1960's. But that statement, which was made publicly
to the Congress, was based on this greater than expected threat;
that is, something that was unlikely to happen in the sixties.
And yet when the presentation of the administration's case was
made, that fact was sort of eroded. In testimony it didn't
come out. And what did come out was the Chinese are about to
deploy serious nuclear capability. It was not also stated in
making the best case that they're unlikely to deploy in the
1960's or even in the early seventies.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Secretary Warnke.
WARNKE: Just supplementing what Dr. Gelb has had
to say and also General Lemnitzer has had to say, I would certainly
agree with General Lemnitzer that there should be no imputation
of dishonesty as far as executive witnesses are concerned.
I think perhaps instead they're using an inappropriate analogy.
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In many instances, the presentation is that of an advocate.
But as a lawyer myself, I don't feel that that kind of presentation
is the best way to get at the facts. In law, we've resorted
to an adversary proceeding in which you have two lawyers on
opposite sides arguing their case and, of course, trying to
demolish the other side's case.
A congressional hearing on the military assistance
program or on the defense budget is not an adversary proceeding,
and it should not be. Perhaps recently it's become more of
one. But even so, this is an instance in which Congress and
the executive are engaged in a genuinely cooperative endeavor.
And I feel that rather than having the executive witnesses behave
as advocates, we'd end up with far sounder defense programs
if this cooperative enterprise could be followed and if both
sides of the case could be presented, rather than just the exaggerated
case, or, as we refer to it, the worst case.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Etzioni.
ETZIONI: I'm intrigued by the fact that for the first
time I do sense a measure of disagreement. I really would like
to take a different position on this issue.
I don't think it's useful to talk about all government
witnesses as if they're made of one cloth. I do believe that
it can be documented that in some instances the information
provided to Congress is not valid. And I believe that something
has to be done to protect the democratic process in cases where
this is demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt... But I believe
the protection of the democratic process requires some additional
thought about what should be done when that is documented beyond
doubt.
Second, I would like to reiterate what has already
been said, that the advocacy process is a way of discovering
truth not when there's a one-sided advocacy. [Words unintelligible]
scientific proof, which is advocated neutrally, or in the truth
which comes out of the class between adversary sides. When
there's a one-sided advocacy, this is not a condition for finding
out the facts...
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Dr. Scoville.
SCOVILLE: To follow up on that, as you know, there
is a bill before the Senate -- and I think there's a parallel
bill in the House -- to modify the National Security Act to
try and insure that the Congress gets a completely non-advocacy
type of presentation on the intelligence on the Soviet threat.
I personally support that move very much, because I, too, agree
that what the Congress needs is an unbiased presentation of
what the intelligence is. And while I don't claim to impugn
the motives of many people who come in and advocate various
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present, I do think that in many cases they have been overzealous
in their advocacy and have more too often -- and I too can document
this very clearly -- far too often taken an interpretation of
the evidence that was available and stretched it to the one
percent probability without making it clear to the Congress
that this is only a one percent probability. And so the Congress
does not get very often what is the most logical and most likely
explanation of the facts that are available.
And the most classic example of that has been in the
connection with MIRV where an interpretation of Soviet testing,
which was very unlikely, was put forth as the probable fact
and was used to justify' certain weapons programs.
Too often also they come in to the Congress when the
data.is only half-analyzed and take a very initial analysis
of the data, which happens to support a given weapons program,
and this is the impression that gets spread far and wide. And
the facts take a long time to catch up with the initial explanation.
And I think there is a real need for improvement in
the congressional -- the way the Congress gets its intelligence
information. And I don't believe it should get it from advocates.
It should get it from a group of people who have no specific
program itself.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Huntington.
HUNTINGTON: I'd like to put in a word or two on behalf
of advocacy, advocacy on both sides of major issues, because
it seems to me that it is very unlikely, except in rare circumstances,
that on any issue of foreign policy or military policy which
is of any significance that Congress will be able to get a totally
unbiased presentation of the facts relevant to that issue.
It seems to me it's built into the nature of our government
that representatives from the executive branch have to become
advocates for the tradition which has been developed within
their agency and within the executive branch as a whole. It
would seem to me that the proper response to this is for Congress
to develop the capability from private sources or from institutions
and research services which are directly responsible to Congress
to question the presentations of the executive branch.
Certainly one of the most thoroughly explored issues
of military policy in recent years was the issue of the ABM
three years ago. And that took place directly in a situation
of advocacy and counter-advocacy in which the administration
was arguing one position and some very well informed and well
supported people on the opposite side, largely from outside
the government, were advocating other positions. And it seems
to me it is precisely that sort of confrontation of positions
which it is in the'interest of Congress to make possible. And
it's then up to the Congress to be able to make the choice between
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the opposing positions.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Gelb.
GELB: I'd like to take issue with Professor Huntington
To me, his position rests on a confusion between advocacy
and support. Of course, the executive branch comes to a decision
with what it thinks makes sense, what's desirable, and its witnesses
are going to have to support that position before the Congress.
The one thing. that can be done is to present to the
Congress the alternatives which the executive branch looked
at and the reasoning as to why it reached the position which
it is supporting to the Congress. Now we all know that the
executive branch looks at alternatives. And yet in its testimony
over the years, and even now, there's very little discussion
as to what other positions were considered in arriving at the
position they seek to justify.
I think it would be a useful change in the format
of executive testimony-to Congress were executive branch witnesses
required to present such alternatives.
REPRESENTATIVE ZABLOCKI: Mr. Gelb, we come directly
with the problem [sic] of executive privilege of having'. witnesses
from the executive department who may have differed in their
presentation and their discussion prior to the executive making
the decision. I do want to say, however, that in the past,
if time permitted, congressional committees did get diverse
views, even from within the executive branch -- from the military,
from the State Department, and from CIA -- on some of the issues
that were discussed here on this matter. And then the Congress
could make its decision.
Our time is rapidly coming to a close. And I just
want to, if I may -- I'm not sure again that I'll be summarizing
the discussion today. But it appears that the exercise, of military
power and the changing world power alignment will be, in fact
and indeed, in some instances, on some level be [sic] utilized
by smaller nations and, at times -- we hope that it will not
happen -- but even by large military powers. The problem I
think is summed up to some degree in a paper presented,by Mr.
Huntington when he states: "In the future countries will seek
to achieve their interests in much the same way as they have
in the past. When it appears that the benefits of waging war
outweigh the costs, governments can be expected to pursue their
interests by military as well as other means.
"What one can hope for is that governments are sufficiently
informed, rational and stable so that they can appraise their
interests realistically, and so that they.will not be driven
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by domestic political pressures or ideological fantasies to
plunge their countries into military adventures from which they
cannot benefit and possibly no one can benefit."
I think the problem of the world in the future in
preventing, indeed deterring, war is we have a better understanding
between countries. This is, indeed, a great problem, and I
think it would be a subject for an entire morning of hearings.
I would want to close on this point unless there's
some divergence of views on my summation. And I want to certainly
thank you, Secretary Warnke, on behalf of the committee, and
General Lemnitzer, Mr. Etzioni, Dr. Scalapino [sic], Mr. Gelb
and Mr. Huntington for giving so generously of your time.
The committee will stand adjourned until next Wednesday,
June 7th when the committee will undertake the discussion of
the national security policy and the changing world power alignment
and the role the economics of national security play in that
area...
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