SPEAKERS       CONTENTS       INSERTS    
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1999
  
[H.A.S.C. No. 106–20]

THE PHASE ONE REPORT OF THE UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD
OCTOBER 5, 1999

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

One Hundred Sixth Congress

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FLOYD D. SPENCE, South Carolina, Chairman

BOB STUMP, Arizona
DUNCAN HUNTER, California
JOHN R. KASICH, Ohio
HERBERT H. BATEMAN, Virginia
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
STEVE BUYER, Indiana
TILLIE K. FOWLER, Florida
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
JAMES TALENT, Missouri
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
HOWARD ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
J.C. WATTS, Jr., Oklahoma
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
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JIM RYUN, Kansas
BOB RILEY, Alabama
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
MARY BONO, California
JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
STEVEN KUYKENDALL, California
DONALD SHERWOOD, Pennsylvania

IKE SKELTON, Missouri
NORMAN SISISKY, Virginia
JOHN M. SPRATT, Jr., South Carolina
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
OWEN PICKETT, Virginia
LANE EVANS, Illinois
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
TOM ALLEN, Maine
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
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ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
JAMES H. MALONEY, Connecticut
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT BRADY, Pennsylvania
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
MIKE THOMPSON, California
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut

Andrew K. Ellis, Staff Director
David Trachtenberg, Professional Staff Member
Ashley Godwin, Staff Assistant

(ii)  

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

1999

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HEARING:

    Tuesday, October 5, 1999, The Phase One Report of the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century

APPENDIX:

    Tuesday, October 5, 1999

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1999

THE PHASE ONE REPORT OF THE UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

    Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services

    Spence, Hon. Floyd D., a Representative from South Carolina, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services

WITNESSES

    Hart, Hon. Gary, Co-Chair, U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century
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    Rudman, Hon. Warren B., Co-Chair, U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century

APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]

Hart, Hon. Gary and Hon. Warren Rudman

Spence, Hon. Floyd D.

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents Submitted can be viewed in the hard copy.]

New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Questions and Answers Submitted for the Record.]

THE PHASE ONE REPORT OF THE UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY

House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, October 5, 1999.
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    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:30 a.m. In room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Floyd D. Spence [chairman of the committee] Presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FLOYD D. SPENCE, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

    The CHAIRMAN. We will please be in order. The committee meets this morning to explore the future security environment that will shape the threats to American interests during the next century. There is an unfortunate tendency today to assume that the end of the Cold War has resulted in a more stable world and a more secure future for America. Although the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the ideological confrontation that divided East and West for mere decades has diminished, some of the traditional threats that this Nation confronted, other threats to our security and interests have emerged. In many respects the world is a more unstable and dangerous place today than it was 25 years ago.

    As we may hear from our witnesses shortly, the world may become even more unpredictable and dangerous 25 years from now. The nationalist impulses, the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, the potential for increased terrorist activity, and the rise of regional powers seeking to challenge America's preeminent military and economic position in the world will present our Nation with a host of new challenges. How effectively we meet these challenges depends in part on how well we can anticipate and prepare for them.

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    In seeking to adapt our military forces to the changing security environment, the Congress has repeatedly sought to encourage the Department of Defense to think innovatively about and anticipate the range of security threats that may confront us in the future and to deal with these threats effectively. For this reason, Congress mandated that the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century take a broader look at the security environment the United States will face in the next quarter century.

    The commission was authorized to look beyond purely military considerations and assess expected changes in regional policies, global economics, and the impact of greater and more rapid access worldwide to information and technology. The commission's initial report, which my colleagues have in front of you, reflect the results of phase 1 of the commission's work. It provides an assessment of many of the global trends and developments that will affect the United States security over the next 25 years. It is not intended to provide answers to the policy questions that flow from its assumptions, but it is intended to serve as a guide for the commission's next round of deliberations which will attempt to provide a policy road map for the future.

    In reviewing the commission's report which reflects the unanimous conclusion of its members, I have been struck by many of its findings. One finding in particular stands out as a strong reminder that our geographical position between two vast oceans is no longer a guarantee of sanctuary. The commission's first main theme is that, and I quote, ''America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not entirely protect us.''

    The implications of this conclusion are indeed troubling. Perhaps most troubling to me is the commission's contention that over the next 25 years as a result of proliferations of weapons of mass destruction, and I quote again, ''Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers.''
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    I will pause for emphasis.

    While the commissioners have not yet passed judgment on the appropriate strategies to guard against this future, it is no secret that I believe additional defense resources are essential. In my view, this includes developing new technologies to defend against growing threats where no effective defense exists today, missile defense, for example. If the United States wishes to remain relatively secure and a global power well into the next century, we cannot afford to remain complacent in the face of growing threats to our security. I look forward to working with the commission in the coming months as it builds upon this initial work to put forth policy recommendations and strategies to better allow our Nation to enter the 21st century more confident and secure.

    Our witnesses are no strangers to the national security debate. I would like to welcome them here today. They are former Senator Gary Hart, co-chairman of the commission; former Senator Warren Rudman, co-chairman of the commission; Mr. Norm Augustine, commission member and former CEO of Lockheed Martin; and Ambassador Andrew Young, commission member and former representative to the United Nations.

    Before turning to our witnesses, I would like to recognize Mr. Skelton, the committee's ranking Democrat for any opening remarks that he would like to make.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Spence can be found in the Appendix.]

STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
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    Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I congratulate you on calling this hearing. It is very important for us in the Congress to be involved in this effort. When my friend, General Chuck Boyd, mentioned this to me quite some time ago, my admonition to him was that the Congress needed to be fully informed on all of your work and all of the phases, all three of your phases which you will be discussing through the months ahead, because it is Congress that ultimately has the constitutional responsibility for the security and defense of our Nation. I compliment you on coming forward and working with us. It is good to see old friends at the table today and I welcome you.

    As I understand, there will be three phases of your work. Phase One, which you will discuss today, describes the world emerging in the first quarter of the next century. Phase Two is a design for national security strategy that is appropriate to that world that you described in phase one. The third is the necessary changes, the proposals for necessary changes to the national security structure of our Nation in order to implement that strategy effectively.

    It seems that in the history of our country we seldom have gotten it right. Even in more recent attempts to glue national security strategy together in QDRs or similar vehicles, we see we haven't gotten it quite right. I compliment you on the step-by-step approach that you are taking to attempt to describe the world emerging in this first quarter of the next century. It is a very fuzzy crystal ball in which you look. However, you can be guided by the past. History is a great deal of help. We have not gotten it right so many times that we have paid the price on the battlefield.

    I raised the question the other day with General Boyd as to parallels between the world which we find ourselves in today and the world which existed back in 1913. If any of you have any comments on that parallel, I would appreciate it.
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    Let me welcome you. We look forward to your testimony. It is very, very important what you do.

    The CHAIRMAN. I would like to call attention to the fact that we have some lax attendance this morning. We have a conference going on at the same time, so we will have other members coming in shortly.

    I would also like to welcome to the committee the executive director of the commission, General Charles Boyd, who is back in the back somewhere. He has been doing all kinds of work on this commission. Without objection, the prepared remarks of our witnesses will be inserted into the record. I would ask Senator Hart and Senator Rudman to proceed as you see fit.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. WARREN B. RUDMAN, CO-CHAIR, U.S. COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY

    Senator RUDMAN. Mr. Chairman and Mr. Skelton, first let me express the appreciation of the commission for your kind invitation to appear here today. We share the views expressed by the chairman and Mr. Skelton, that in order to be successful there should be close consultation with Members of Congress as we proceed. In the final analysis when this process is done, it will be up to the Congress and the new President to decide what course to take in shaping our national security.

    Mr. Chairman, I am going to deliver half of an opening statement, and, in the bipartisan nature of this commission, my colleague, Senator Hart, will deliver the other half. I will deal with the structure of what we have tried to do and Senator Hart will summarize where we are at this particular point. Then we will be pleased to answer your questions. I am delighted that Norm Augustine and Andy Young were able to make their time available to be here. This commission does take a substantial commitment of time of all of its members.
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    I also want to say at the outset that we are truly blessed to have General Chuck Boyd as our executive director. He is well-known to many of you. I must confess that I did not know General Boyd except to have met him on occasion until this particular commission. He has given the guidance, the leadership, and just an amazing knowledge of the subject.

    We are backed up by a wonderful staff who have devoted a great deal of time to it. We also have a large working group. If you look at the documentation you will recognize many names as being some of the great experts in national security from the various think tanks, universities, people who write on the subject. We truly get a large meld of information from a variety of places to help build consensus.

    We are going to discuss briefly with you in this opening statement what we are doing. As you know, we were chartered in 1997 under the Federal Advisory Commission Act with the sponsorship of the Congressional leadership, the White House, the Department of Defense, to be the most comprehensive reassessment of the structure and processes of the American national security system since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. I would say parenthetically that it was educational to me, never having read it before, to go back and read that act and think of the history that was made at the time and when it was written, which was roughly 2 years after the cessation of World War II.

    The 14 commissioners and the commission's staff have taken this mandate to heart. We have worked hard to make a difference because we firmly believe unanimously that if it is left to drift without a conscious and concerted effort and redesigned, the U.S. national security system will end up dangerously out of synch with both the dangers and opportunities that a changing word is now generating. I think to some extent that is what Mr. Skelton was alluding to in his opening statement about what we have seen over the past 50 years.
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    The commission's work is designed as an integrated three-phase effort. The first phase, which we completed on September 15 after nearly a year's labor and which we are here today to discuss, is descriptive in nature. It is aimed to discern the shape of the new world coming between now and the year 2025. And we summarize it in this booklet which you all have. I think it would be instructive and worthwhile for Members of Congress who are involved in this subject to look at the assumptions and the conclusions and see whether or not you agree with them. I can tell you that it is the essential foundation from where we will go from here. My sense is we will not find too much disagreement with these because these tend to be what most of us talk about as we look forward to the 21st century.

    The second phase is generally descriptive. During April of next year, which is not very far away, it calls for the development and elaboration of the U.S. national strategy appropriate for the world forecast in phase one. So in phase 1 we have the assumptions. In phase two we are going to set forth what that strategy ought to be in light of those assumptions.

    The third phase is more specifically prescriptive. I dare say, Mr. Chairman, it will be the most difficult of what we finally put down on paper. It is due to be handed to the next President of the United States in the winter of 2001 and, of course, to the Congress. Its task is to carefully analyze the U.S. national security system and propose changes to it as deemed necessary so that it may effectively implement the strategy proposed in phase two.

    We believe that this tripartite structure makes good sense. We believe that you have to start with the facts before engaging in strategic decisions and strategy building, and that you have to know what you want before you can properly organize yourself to get it. Establishing facts about the future, however, isn't easy. But we have strained to do the best that we could.
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    I must say that we work with a major advantage on our side. We have had the honor of working with a very impressive group of commissioners. For those who are not familiar, on the third page of this booklet you will see the list of people who serve on this commission. They are very widely and deeply experienced men and women. More importantly, they are an independent and fully bipartisan group that has nonetheless managed to come to a strong consensus over very difficult and sometimes controversial matters.

    All of the commissioners have been actively engaged in this effort from the start. Not only have we met often as a group, as recently as yesterday, but we and the commission's executive director have been in touch with each other on a weekly and often on a daily basis. Some commissioners have sat with staff members over drafts of sections of the phase one report literally for hours to make sure they were just right. And here I especially want to note the tireless efforts of someone known to all of you, and that is Jim Schlesinger, who labored long and hard with our staff to make sure that we truly represented what we believe because words are so subject to varying interpretation.

    If anything, we as a group have been working even harder in phase two and hardest of all on phase three. But that is not why we are here today. It would not be appropriate or honest for us to speculate about what we might say in our phase two or our phase three reports. That is because we have not yet done the work. We are willing and eager to discuss with you what we learned from our phase one effort.

    I now turn to my fellow co-chairman, Senator Gary Hart, to continue our opening statement.
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STATEMENT OF THE HON. GARY HART, CO-CHAIR, U.S. COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY

    Senator HART. Mr. Chairman, and Members of this Committee, our commission is acutely aware, as I know all of you are, that we are living in a decade that I think history will show to be one of the most dynamic in human history. We have seen the collapse simultaneously of two empires, one the Soviet empire and second the historic Russian empire. We have seen the disintegration of one of the great military power blocks in human history, that represented by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. And while all of this was going on we have seen two other revolutions: One revolution in international economics and trade, the emergence of the global market, and the instantaneous transferral of vast amounts of finance and wealth worldwide. Finally, on of top of all of that we have seen the technology revolution which is changing the life of this country and indeed virtually everyone in the world one way or the other. Put all of that together and it means that we are living, in the Oriental slogan, in interesting times.

    Taken all together, the technological and economic changes and political changes are putting novel pressures on the basic political building blocks of the world, namely nation states. Some of those nations are adapting well, but many are finding themselves suspended between the old habits, the habits of old ways, and the promise of new ones. In the balance, world politics has become simultaneously more hopeful since the collapse of communism, but also more fragile as new forces have been unleashed on the unwitting and unprepared.

    Our commission's conclusions about the world we see emerging are not particularly comforting. We would not describe them, however, as pessimistic. They simply are what they are. They are what we honestly see in the world's future in the next 25 years, about as far into the future as any human beings can look. We believe that the United States will remain a principal economic, political and cultural force in the world for at least the next quarter century, and we believe that the United States will be the preeminent global military power throughout this entire period. But we also believe that there will be much resentment of American power and culture. We are already witnessing that resentment in a variety of ways in a variety of parts of the world.
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    We believe that the development of asymmetrical strategies to assault our interests and those of our allies will cause us real problems despite our military superiority. We believe that some new technologies, benign as they may be for the most part, could have a dramatic leveling effect, allowing an increasing array of states and even small disaffected or fanatical groups to inflict enormous damage on unsuspecting civilian populations, including our own. I would take note of the fact that I am sure all of you are aware of that data that I saw recently, that 40 or 50 years ago the casualties among civilians in conflicts was about 15 percent of all casualties. Today it is about 90 percent.

    We believe as well that the unprecedented integration of the international economy, while on balance a highly promising development, also bears many uncertainties and will generate novel vulnerabilities for those who become dependent on this global economy and its underlying infrastructure. We believe that pressures on states, including some very large states, could lead to collapsing governments and disintegrating countries, in some cases bringing major regional crises in their wake. We are already seeing that in the Balkans and elsewhere. We believe therefore that crises abroad issuing mainly from the internal instability of states will continue to crowd the American foreign policy agenda.

    We believe also that developing effective ways to cope with these crises, along with allies and appropriate international agencies and organizations, will require a far more systematic effort than has been made so far.

    Let's say no more about this for now lest we get in, as my co-chairman said, the projected final two phases of our work.
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    Our commission has also concluded, Mr. Chairman, that although the essence of war will not change, several aspects of conflict and combat will. Space will become a more critical and competitive military environment. U.S. intelligence will face more challenging adversaries, and even excellent intelligence work on our part will not be able to prevent all surprises. Non-state actors will probably play a larger role in issues of war and peace than they have up to this time. We have also concluded that U.S. alliance structures are likely to become more fluid, that the forward basing that we have relied on for so many years may be more difficult to sustain, and that technological gaps may make it harder for us to cooperate effectively with allies and other partners in the field.

    Mr. Chairman, our phase one report deals with these and many other subjects. Importantly, it does so in an integrated fashion. With all of the parts we have attempted to relate to the whole.

    We are now pleased to welcome your questions, and I would encourage you to address those questions not only to Senator Rudman and myself, but also our distinguished colleagues, Ambassador Young and Mr. Augustine.

    Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank you for your attention.

    [The prepared statement of Senator Rudman and Senator Hart can be found in the Appendix.]

    The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Without getting into a question at this time, I would just like to say that I hope that in looking forward to your next phase, you will take into account the mistakes made by another commission, the famous QDR, recently, when instead of assessing the threats that we faced in the world in the future and recommending a strategy to defend against those threats, they assumed a certain budget that we had to work with and built the strategy and defenses to meet the budget rather than the threat. In other words, it was budget driven rather than threat driven. So I hope in your next phase you will consider those kinds of mistakes that they have made. You see what has happened, a lot of problems that we are facing today with our military is as a result of those recommendations that are still being implemented with the last QDR.
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    With that I will yield to Mr. Skelton for any questions that he might have.

    Mr. SKELTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can't help but think what a great advantage we on this side of the table have in merely asking questions rather than having to answer them because the answers to predicting the future and how we meet that unpredictable future is daunting.

    There is a 1950 book written by an Englishman named Creasy entitled Fifteen Decisive Battles. Senator Hart, it appears you are familiar with that. He talks about how those particular battles throughout history, recorded history up to 1850, shaped the world as it was when he wrote it. There are subsequent conflicts for that work to be extended to 1999. All conflicts do not change the course of history. Some do.

    My question to you is this, and any of you who wish to answer it, fine. There are potential powder kegs that may or may not be apparent. Those that are apparent might fall in the category of Sarajevo in 1914, Japan invading China, Pearl Harbor, North Korea coming into the South, Saddam Hussein going into Kuwait. None of these were predicted and yet they were based upon powder kegs that somebody could have or should have seen in that day and time. Are there such powder kegs that you have not mentioned in your formal work that you would like to discuss this morning?

    Senator RUDMAN. Mr. Skelton, I am really not sure that that is a question that we are really prepared to deal with this morning because we have made a number of broad assumptions. The more specific growth of those assumptions will reflect in phase two when we start saying what the strategy ought to be. One thing that I can tell you that we have talked about on the commission is that for the very historical outline you have just set before us, history is replete with intelligence activities that knew everything except one thing. That was what was in a leader's mind who had the resources to deploy. That, of course, most recently we saw in Kuwait.
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    I would say that our answer to your question will probably be reflected in what we point out the U.S. intelligence community faces in the next 25 years, particularly as more and more nations become more and more sophisticated at denial, deception, and concealment.

    Mr. AUGUSTINE. Mr. Skelton, I think your question is a very profound one and affects our work. We have thought about it a good deal.

    Mr. SKELTON. Could you put the microphone closer.

    Mr. AUGUSTINE. Yes. Can you hear me now, sir?

    I was saying that we have thought a good deal about the particular question that you raised. One conclusion that I—at least I come to is it is very difficult to predict what future conflicts that you will have to deal with. It is made even more complex by the fact that to build a good military force typically takes 10 or 20 years, so one has to predict very far into the future. I would submit to you that our Nation's record of that is very poor. In fact, one could argue that there has only been one war in our Nation's history that we really had prepared to deal with before the war began or shortly before it began.

    I have always been struck by Darwin's statement to the effect that it is not the strongest of the species that survive nor the most intelligent, but the species most adaptable to change. I believe that that needs to be a byword for our commission, how do we provide the flexibility and adaptability to deal with an unpredictable world. Certainly predictable within bounds, but when it comes to predicting a specific conflict, it is my belief that we need to rather try to draw up very broad capable forces and very flexible forces and to build on that.
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    Senator RUDMAN. Do you wish to respond to that at all?

    Ambassador YOUNG. That is okay, thanks.

    Senator HART. I would just add this. A careful reading of the background document, the underlying document to this report shows that we have thought about as many things as one can think about, population, environment, rogue states, nonstate actors, domestic terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, proliferation. Part of what we were about was to think of every bad thing that you could think of. We haven't covered the waterfront but we have come very close.

    Personally answering your question about powder kegs, unanticipated powder kegs, what would concern me the most is the disintegration of nation states and the chaos created by the tribalism that results from that. We have seen that in the Balkans and other parts of the world. That is so unpredictable as to where that might go and what, if any, military response we have to that.

    The second thing and I think the thing that troubles most of us and I know troubles many of you is the threat to the homeland. We have, as the chairman's opening statement noted, we have called attention to the fact that Americans could die for the first time on our soil since 1812 by hostile attack. That is quite a dramatic powder keg, if you will, and one that traditional military forces particularly configured for the Cold War have very little response capability to. I would urge—I think all of us would urge all of you to be thinking about what kind of national security structures we need to protect the homeland. That in my mind is the principal powder keg.
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    The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bateman.

    Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to our distinguished panel. We are delighted to have you with us today and to have the benefit of your collective wisdom that is reflected in the first phase of your study.

    One of the things that I think is most bothersome as we look at our near and longer-term security environment is the extent to which we either relate to or how we relate to two different scenarios as it pertains to the former Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation. We see in Chechnya and Kyrgystan and perhaps Moldovo, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia—heaven only knows how many places that were or are a part of the old Soviet empire or the Russian empire where the ethnic and religious tensions are causing disruption.

    Have you focused yet upon how the United States conducts itself, vis-a-vis these kinds of conflicts and whether or not we must studiously avoid being drawn into them, whether or not we should exercise such influence and diplomatic leverage as we have in order to promote the sanctity of the old at least Russian empire or whether or not we should be standing on the sidelines cheering at its dismemberment and fragmentation?

    Have you gotten into that very challenging arena?

    Senator RUDMAN. Yesterday we met for the entire day. I would bet that we spent half of that day discussing a point that is quite relevant to your question. We are faced with going from conclusions and assumptions about what the next 25 years will look like, and with that as a background, coming together as a commission in phase two and saying, here are America's national interests. Our discussion was which comes first in this case. We pretty well decided that we first have to declare what we believe the consensus is for the guidelines that they use for what are America's national interests. Once you decide that, then to lay out a strategy that we believe will fulfill reaching those interests, those objectives, and then finally in phase three, what kind of organization do you need for America's national security. Not just for proper defense, but we are talking about intelligence, state, and in some cases economic.
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    We hope to be able to lay that out, but I will tell you that it is a daunting task to decide what is in America's national interest. We could have a rip-roaring debate this morning amongst people of both parties, a good faith debate about Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and I could keep going on as to whether we should or shouldn't and why. You would get a lot of people saying it wasn't in America's national interest, others would say it was. The President, of course, as you know, has made a unique statement, as I recall, in the last three months about America's obligation in the world: ''where we can intervene,'' I think were his words, in terms of humanitarian issues and atrocities. That is what we are going to try to address because there is no discernible clear American policy since 1947. So we are going to try to answer your question, Mr. Bateman, to give you the outline, if you will, of what we think America's national interests are and if they are, what the strategy should be and then how you ought to carry out the strategy.

    That is the best that I can do. We spent hours on this yesterday.

    Senator HART. We have focused a great deal of attention on the collapse, as I said, of two empires simultaneously, the Soviet Union and the Russian empire. In some cases the collapse of the Russian empire is even more dangerous than the Soviet one in terms of the political effects of that.

    How to respond—I would say generically that the commission believes that in issues of political disintegration, a military response isn't the only one; that we have to think about how to coordinate diplomatic response, economic response, multilateral, that is to say not just bilateral, but collegial and collective coordinated responses. Then finally, if our direct security interests are involved, a military response. I think finally, looking into the next 25 years about that region that you have identified and others, there will be a higher priority put on anticipation and not reaction. I think from my point of view if we need to do anything as a nation in the next century, it is to be much more anticipatory and not reactive. If we fall behind the power curve in this changing world, we will be reacting all the time and more often than not, we will react badly.
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    Mr. AUGUSTINE. I would just address the portion of your question that had to do with the various alternatives for our response to the possible breakup further of what was the Soviet Union. One alternative you offered rhetorically, should we cheer that continued fragmentation. To me that part is clearly no, we should not. I think that leads to just very great instability that it would be difficult for the world to deal with.

    I think there is the underlying question that is probably the most difficult question that America will face in national security policy in the years ahead, and that would be whether Americans are going to be willing to watch on television great human suffering and to stand idly by on the one hand; on the other hand, are we going to be 911 America. I think neither option is viable. That is the great difficulty. There are so many opportunities for America to become involved that I am afraid the task is too great even for this great country. But those are issues that we will be dealing with in the phases that yet lie ahead, and I hope that you will give us an opportunity to report our findings to you at some point in the future.

    Ambassador. YOUNG. I think more and more we are aware that these problems are so broad and diverse that we should not assume that we can handle them alone. When Senator Hart says multilateral solutions, it is our assumption, I think, that we are going to have to find ways to have broader-based institutions thinking and working and anticipating these things so that it doesn't come down to military response by the United States of America.

    The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sisisky.

    Mr. SISISKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to you gentlemen. We appreciate very much what you are doing.
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    The chairman mentioned something I want to reiterate again that I think is extremely important. I have language here in the conference report that really ties into that, and that is strategy driven. You mentioned it two or three times, not budget driven. I will just quote one sentence out of the bill: ''A successful review, the conferees believe, should be driven first by the demands of strategy, not by any presupposition about the size of the defense budget.''

    I know that is easier said than done, but we would hope that you and the QDR, whatever it might be, would do that and then it is up to the Congress to decide. In other words, if you say we need 50,000 more troops, then that is our job to decide. That is why—and I will ask you again, we did away with the NDP because we thought that was a job that Congress should do in public and decide the issue.

    Having said that, is it possible to do that, do you think? I would be naive of what happens around here—.

    Senator RUDMAN. I think it is a three-step process. I kind of chuckled at Mr. Skelton's comments that it is easier to ask questions than to answer them. Now, having been on both sides of a number of various assignments, you are absolutely right. It is more difficult to answer those questions.

    But there is an answer to your question. Let me say that we, obviously—we are not going to be constrained—I am speaking as one of the co-chairmen. Obviously, I can be outvoted, but when we finally get into this I think that we ought to set forth, one, America's interests as we intend to do, what that strategy ought to be to meet that interest and what it would take to implement that strategy under a whole set of possibilities. I don't think that we can necessarily or should at all be looking at the budget. That is really not what we have been asked to do. My own sense always was when I sat where you are sitting now is, one, we ought to have a strategy. We ought to tell the Pentagon this is what we want and this is how much money we are going to give you. If they came back and said we can't do that, if you want us to discharge this strategy with this amount of money, then you are going to have to do A or B, change the strategy or change the budget.
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    To me it is an ongoing process. I think it can be done, but we are not going to be driven here, I don't believe. It would not be proper for us to do that because in the final analysis, once we produce what we produce, it would be up to the Executive, the Congress, to decide what they want to do and how they are going to fund it. We should not say, well, we think that the strategy at 100 percent is too expensive so we are going to lay out an 80 percent strategy. We can't do that and we are not going to do that.

    Mr. SISISKY. There was another part of your report that really caught my eye. I am sure that you have done a lot of study on this. It is No. 13, ''The United States will be called upon frequently to intervene militarily in a time of uncertain alliances and with the prospect of fewer deployed forward forces.''

    That is a real change in our strategy. I am not sure I agree with what you are saying. You are just raising the issues that it could be. But forward deployment is to our benefit. In a lot of instances a lot of people misunderstand. We get mixed up in burden sharing and things like that, but it is to our benefit. It seems to me that our foreign policy should admit that. Already, strangely enough in this world, we are seeing the Philippines wants us to be back there. Japan now, I understand things in Okinawa are at an all time high as far as relations between American troops, Marines, and the public. If you would explain that part—.

    Senator RUDMAN. I will do it briefly and then turn to Senator Hart. I do want to comment on that.

    The only people that have been more—the most interested group of people in this report, if I can judge by the phone calls I get, are the Japanese. All kinds of calls from Japanese journalists. A friend of mine in Japan tells me it is a matter of discussion by the Japanese government, that very point, No. 13.
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    If you go back and look at the base document, it is 150 pages long, you have it, and if you look at that base document I will tell you where that came from and then let Senator Hart expand on it. It came from our belief that over the next 25 years the changes politically, economically around the world will probably militate some countries to say, no, we don't want your forces here, like the Philippines. And we might say we don't have the budget to do that and to do all of the other things that we need for homeland defense and everything else. We think it is more likely than not that forward deployment will come under pressure in the next 25 years. That is what we said.

    Senator HART. Congressman, as to your original question, one of the most striking things that occurred when we held our organization meeting, I guess almost a year ago exactly this week or thereabouts, Secretary of Defense Cohen said to us, start with a blank slate. Start with a clean sheet of paper. Do not presume anything in terms of threats, but also of resources. Analyze what this country is going to face starting totally from scratch, and then we will come up with what we need to respond and with your help what we need to respond to it.

    So instead of stepping into a moving stream budgetarily or whatever, he said a very wise thing, and that is we want you to start with a totally new world. In a way, that is a blessing, but also a bit of a curse. I think the bottom line numbers will be for you to decide.

    Let me also say that I think we are struggling with something that in the post Cold War world is a bit new. That is that the most likely threat may not be the most dangerous threat. The most dangerous threat to this country is all out nuclear war that would devastate our society. The most likely threat may be a 19-year-old in a downtown office building in Denver with some chemicals or germs or a Kalashnikov rifle. The most likely threat doesn't lend itself to the easiest budgetary solution.
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    Ambassador YOUNG. If I might add to that, one of the things that we have been generally in agreement upon is that we will be dependent on oil as a primary energy source for the first 25 years, maybe 50 years of this century, that that oil is presently located in four states of the Middle East. That is where our security focus has been made.

    There is, however, on the African continental shelf another very generous supply of oil where we have no military engagement and too little diplomatic engagement. Our experience was with southern Africa, that we were able to make significant progress there without military involvement.

    I hate to think of what situations we would be in now if we had some of the insecurity in the Middle East, Asia, and if things had not gone so well in southern Africa. We had the possibility of the blood bath that people used to predict in the 1970's if it had occurred in the 1990's in southern Africa. It did not occur. There has been a relatively smooth transition to democracy. So we are also looking at diplomacy as a means of providing a forward line of national security that would prevent military intervention and cost less. At the same time I think there is an acute awareness that that continental shelf of West Africa is perhaps our most defensible oil supply on the planet, and that right now it might not be getting the attention that it might ought to get, either diplomatically, economically, or militarily.

    The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hefley.

    Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate what you all are doing. You know, for a group that has a reputation of being relatively intelligent, I'm amazed that you let yourselves get pulled into this daunting task because it is tough.
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    Senator RUDMAN. Maybe your assumption is incorrect.

    Mr. HEFLEY. Maybe we started off with the wrong assumption. I don't know.

    I don't want to beat a dead horse, but let me tell you, and some of you have sat where we sit and you probably experienced the same frustrations. When we ask the best experts that we possibly can find to give us the best information they possibly can so that we can make intelligent decisions here, and then we get something like the bottom up review which you already heard enough from the chairman and others about, which is a budget driven kind of thing, that is not what we wanted. We wanted the best information possible.

    So you encourage me by what you said already. Please don't come back with that kind of report because your time will be wasted and ours would be wasted if that is what you do. Gary, I wish you would use some other city other than Denver when you are making that illustration about the germs and chemicals. They make me more nervous.

    Also, did you in your considerations—you talk a good deal about the jealousy of other nations regarding our culture or our prosperity, or whatever, and the animosities out there and therefore that leading to problems in the continental United States perhaps that we haven't faced before. Did you review to any great extent the impact our involvement all over the world has on these kinds of animosities, the fact that we do go to Kosovo and Bosnia and everywhere? Does that lessen those animosities or does that increase those animosities? Do they think that we are a busybody that is sticking our nose in all over where it doesn't belong or do they think that we are a savior coming in to alleviate suffering and pain?
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    Did you get into that at all?

    Senator HART. The answer to your question is, yes. They think all of those things.

    Mr. HEFLEY. All of the above.

    Senator HART. General Boyd and I, I think Mr. Augustine was with us, we were in Cairo, guest of the U.S. Ambassador and we had a cultural evening, invited maybe 100 of the leaders of Egyptian society to hear us talk about what we are doing and for us to ask them questions.

    They beat our brains out. They had two messages: You are not paying enough attention to Egypt; you ought to be here more; you ought to be giving us more money. And second, we hate the way your commercial culture is destroying our traditional culture.

    I don't think anyone in the room understood what a conflicting message they were giving to us.

    We are, the United States is in various parts of the world in so many ways. In many of them we are there militarily; we are certainly everywhere in the world diplomatically, but more and more we are everywhere in the world economically and with that comes our popular culture, which many of these societies, old societies, really claim they don't want.

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    The point is they can't have an American presence without an American presence, and all of it seems to come together.

    So I think what the resentment that we focused on or we highlighted in this report and in our statement this morning was what we picked up in visiting a couple of dozen countries. Various members of this commission have traveled all over the world. We just didn't do our work here in Washington. We went out, we went into some highly improbable places to try and find out what was going on and there was a recurring theme. They are really resentful of our power.

    Keep in mind, a lot of our visits occurred during the Kosovo bombing so that was kind of a metaphor for oligoplastic American power in various parts of the world. What we were hearing was not just we don't like your bombing but we also don't like your McDonald's hamburgers.

    Mr. RUDMAN. You get a mixed message. I mean, you get the message, without naming countries, on the one hand, please help us with this, help bail us out on the one hand; on the other hand, don't meddle with what we are doing. What we are saying essentially is that this is not new.

    You know, the most powerful nation in the world is not necessarily loved by everybody, nor will it be in the future when that turns hostile. It is a whole different issue.

    Let me just say something, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Skelton, which I should have said in my opening. Members of this commission, at the request of essentially the leadership of this commission, have literally traveled all over the world. You know, all of these people do things in private life. Everybody is busy. We have essentially gone out because the leadership of this commission thought it was important that we talk to a whole variety of people in defense, foreign policy, all over the world. A lot of time has been put into this by a lot of members which I want to publicly thank them for.
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    Mr. AUGUSTINE. To your question, this, of course, is probably the first time in history there has been a full service superpower of the magnitude of America, and even more remarkable, I believe, is it is the first time there has ever been a full service superpower that wasn't seeking to add to its own land possessions. That's an extraordinary circumstance that one would hope the rest of the world would note.

    I would add, however, that in my own travels, not only those with the commission but as a business person who has traveled a fair amount in the last few years, and speaking with the business community as opposed to the diplomatic community, I have never seen so much resentment of America as I see around the world, and not just in a few locations as one sees today.

    There is this irony that Senator Hart points to. On the one hand, everywhere I travel, and I am sure you have this same experience, people look to America to lead, to be the world's leader. I am struck by the fact that in small communities, whether it is a problem with a local sewage system or whether a neighboring tribe, they wonder why America isn't there solving the problem. But at the same time, our intervention is very much resented, and certainly just our wealth is resented.

    My answer to your question would be, yes, the more we intercede, the more we seem to build resentment, but I am afraid that alone isn't an adequate reason to not continue to do those things that we think need to be done.

    Mr. HEFLEY. Ambassador Young.
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    Ambassador YOUNG. If I might add to Mr. Augustine, I have probably traveled to different parts of the world, and when we traveled we talked to different groups of people because my experience is almost exactly the opposite. Even in Kenya and Tanzania, shortly after the bombings, I was amazed that there was little or no American resentment.

    In China, of course, I went to China once with Nike and once with the churches, and people were glad to get those jobs. People were glad to see a concern by the American religious community for the human rights in China. I mean, things are going on simultaneously. If you look at America's nongovernmental contribution in the world, the kinds of things that go along with care, the Red Cross, the religious communities, there is an overwhelming—Habitat for Humanity, for instance, is welcome all over the world building houses. When we have a military activity, you get a mixed message. People wish you didn't do it the way you did it. They find all sorts of faults, but at the same time they still hope you are there to protect them if they need help.

    So we are getting all of the complexes of the world in the discussions and it makes it very hard for us to look to a strategy, but we are sort of in agreement that these are very interesting and exciting times, where the leadership of this country is, in some aspect, always desired and needed.

    Mr. HEFLEY. If I might just in conclusion, I hope you will look at that as you come to your conclusions on the next phase, and also look at what our role should be in places that we are ignoring. I think of the Sudan as an example of that. I am absolutely amazed, for instance, that the Black Caucus in Congress seems to pay little attention to the slavery that's occurring with northern Sudan, supported by Egypt, and we don't get involved because Egypt is an ally and it is a very sensitive situation. But whether or not there is resentment there as well and what we should do about it in places we don't get involved, where maybe we could have a hand, the idea that there is still slavery going on in the world today I think is just so appalling I don't know how we can sit on our hands.
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    Ambassador YOUNG. If I might speak to that, Congressman; that nothing agonizes me more, and I have been involved with that situation. I have talked to people, the Christians in the south, the Muslims in the north, the liberation movements there happen to be —the main one that is causing most of the trouble is led by a guy who got a Ph.D. At Iowa State University. We should have been able to deal with that but the Sudan is as large as the United States east of the Mississippi. It has only about 14 million people and nobody is in charge. It is almost like Somalia. We are not dealing with a nation state in any sense that we understand it so that it is—it is hard to get anybody to feel that they can be responsible for the kind of continued conflicts and exploitation that's going on of individuals. Unfortunately, it is mostly women.

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Would the gentleman yield just briefly, very briefly?

    Mr. HEFLEY. Yes.

    The CHAIRMAN. Who do you want to yield?

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Hefley, for a moment.

    The CHAIRMAN. He hasn't any time to yield right now.

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, could I be indulged for 30 seconds or so with Mr. Young because of the last comment about Sudan?
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    The CHAIRMAN. Do you want to wait your turn on the regular schedule?

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I don't want to pursue it too much further other than to emphasize a point just for 30 seconds.

    Okay. Whatever you want to do. I don't want to hurt anybody.

    The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Ortiz. I did not want to deprive anyone else of his opportunity. I am sure you don't, either.

    Mr. Ortiz.

    Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I, first of all, am happy to have these witnesses with us today. I would like to be more informed. Now, when you talked—you say you traveled to Egypt and I am assuming that you talked to world leaders all over the world. Do you think that you arrived at this consensus of this commission by their input that they gave to you?

    Senator. RUDMAN. Well, it all helped, of course. There were a number of things that finally ended up in the production of the summary that you have here. That was only part of it. Obviously, there were some things that were said that we agreed with and others that we did not agree with.
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    I would say that this came from really four sources. It came from the working group, and the list of that working group you have, as I referred to earlier. I don't know if you were here or not, Mr. Ortiz, but I referred to we had some really extraordinary people who are in the working group. Then we have got the commission. Then we have the staff. But in the final analysis, this was not, I want to point out, a staff-driven document. These were worked out by the members of the commission in a meeting in which we sat and essentially word-by-word worked out what you see before you in this final summary.

    So it came from a variety of sources, pretty much I would expect like your own deliberations, from talking to a whole variety of people to conclude what you really believe on a particular subject.

    Mr. ORTIZ. As we see so many trouble spots around the world, we see where China and Taiwan are having their differences and now China and Russia are beginning to talk to each other and then we see the Middle East. Now, where do you see, by the experience that you have had by talking to all of these people, that the United States will have to be involved next? Is it in the Middle East? Is it some place else? I mean, there are so many hot spots around the world and they expect the United States to get involved because we are a world leader. I am not trying to put you in a spot but there are so many hot spots all over the world that I think that this committee is just going to have to be prepared to see what kind of response they can give.

    Senator RUDMAN. There is no question that what you say is correct. I would say that we can't answer that this morning. I would point out that what we are trying to do is to lay out a matrix, if you will, in our three reports, particularly in the last one, that will make it more possible to deal in the 21st century with these crises as they arrive, unexpectedly, than there has been in the past; to recommend the kind of a force to deal with the kind of issues you are talking about, but certainly we are not prepared to talk about that today.
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    Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Buyer.

    Mr. BUYER. Thank you, gentlemen, not only for being here but more importantly for your work. I have enjoyed reading your product. It is thought-provoking. That is my compliment to you. It doesn't necessarily mean I agree with everything you have put down here, but you got me thinking.

    One area that I would like to—two areas I would like to discuss: The economic factor, the globalization that you have taken a look at. It is not new today that we would use the military to protect economic interests. It dates back thousands of years of why countries have gone to war or certain, even internal, conflicts arise. But as I read this, I could not help but sense the impact of world conglomerates and their impact around the world and upon nations and regions.

    As we in this era of merger mania are even permitting these conglomerates to get bigger and bigger in their dominance and manipulations upon Third World countries, I tried to read it and find it, how you took that into account in this economic globalization. I am interested in your views on that.

    The other is, when you move over on to page 57 there was a comment you made on that page, sort of an ''in summary,'' when you talked about the international system will be so fluid and complex that even to think intelligently about military issues will mean taking an integrated view of political, social, technological, and economic developments, and then you make a very profound statement: Only a broad definition of national security is appropriate.
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    Now, I look at that and I kind of shudder and shake because I have always believed that you need to be narrow in the definition of what are our national security interests, because you are asking America's sons and daughters, our most precious asset, to lay down their life to protect them.

    That is where we end up in these political debates, about, you know, placing Americans' lives in jeopardy based on what? Moral authority? So we get into those kinds of debates, and I was curious of who can defend that statement and why it was made. If you could address those two points, I would appreciate it.

    Senator. HART. Well, one commissioner's view on several of the parts of your question, we heard yesterday from former Congressman and former Ambassador Robert Ellsworth, who was instrumental in preparing a study issued in 1996, which was designed to stimulate a debate in the 1996 national elections that really didn't occur. I was intrigued by that group's ranking of interests. They used a chip, kind of a poker theory. They had blue chips, red chips, white chips. They ranked interests under those headings and rubrics to try to give some prioritization to what is a blue chip interest as opposed to a white or a red chip, and I think even had a phrase like translucent chip. So it got very complicated.

    We are right on the threshold of the question you have asked, how to define and how to prioritize this country's interests at a time when we don't face a single enemy or opponent.

    We did have the luxury, all of you know, if you want to call it that, of being able to focus for a half century on pretty much a common challenge, opponent, enemy, and that was communism, global communism. It kind of made our job and our life much, much easier. As a former member of a Congressional Armed Services Committee, it focused your attention.
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    What we are dealing here with, as our opening statement said and our reports say, is a totally new world of such diversity and such complexity that to redefine U.S. interests, even national security interests, in that environment is going to be an awesome task and one that we are undertaking in the next four to five months.

    On the issue of conglomerates, I would defer to Mr. Augustine on this, but American interests are not just political. They are not just diplomatic. They are also commercial and economic. Ambassador Young mentioned the oil issue, which is going to continue to loom large on our national horizon for at least the next quarter century. But when American companies go abroad, often to create jobs, as Andy said, to invest in foreign economies, they also, to a degree, carry the American flag with them. They are American employees. Part of traditional U.S. national security interests have been to protect U.S. citizens. So the more our companies invest abroad, put their personnel abroad, the more liable they are to be kidnapped, taken hostage, assassinated or whatever.

    I think this is a problem our country is going to have to face, how much are we prepared to deploy military might to protect those increasingly diversified private concerns?

    Mr. AUGUSTINE. Certainly, any time that one has an entity with very great power, without adequate checks and balances, one has the makings of a very negative situation. That is true certainly of conglomerates. It is also true of governments and of many other entities. My own experience with conglomerates has been that in the large, not necessarily totally but by far in the large conglomerates, I think, are producing a very stabilizing effect on the international scene.
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    I would cite a company on whose board I serve that is in the consumer products business and sells their products through probably 50 or 60 different nations. They have plants throughout the world. The leadership of the company comes from various different countries. They move their people frequently from one country to another. They take their families with them. They live in the economies. These companies, I think, do a great deal to build understanding among the nations in which they deal. They have major assets deployed around the world and so they have an interest in preserving stability. Certainly, the last thing they would like to see is conflict in a nation where they may have a major stake in the employees and factories, research labs. So I think that conglomerates, with proper controls, can be one of the greatest contributors toward producing stability in the years ahead.

    Senator RUDMAN. And I want to respond to your very narrow question as to your quote from the report in which we said we wanted to look at national security in the broadest possible way and your response was that you would rather, for the reasons you cited, look at it narrowly. Maybe that isn't clearly understood as to what we meant by that.

    Historically, when you talk about America's national security, I think most of us would have said, who came to this place, as I did, back around 1980, we were talking about the Pentagon, we were talking about, you know, threats against U.S. citizens, U.S. occupied areas, whatever; that we needed our forces there, freedom of seas and so forth. I don't think I would have told anyone that I was thinking of the Department of Treasury or the United States Department of Commerce. To some extent I would have thought of the State Department.

    What we are saying in these assumptions is that the threats that are economic could be as devastating as military threats to the national security of this country.
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    That is what we are talking about, looking at it broadly. We are not talking about looking at it broadly in terms of committing forces. That is not what we are saying. What we are saying, however, is that as someone pointed out on our commission the other day, and I think I have read it in other places, just imagine for a moment what a cyber attack on the banking system or the air traffic control system would do to this country's national security. That is a real threat to our security as Americans. I think that is what we mean, Congressman. We are not talking about committing U.S. forces willy-nilly for any kind of broadly construed threat.

    Mr. BUYER. Thank you, gentlemen.

    The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Taylor.

    Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank our panel for being here.

    Senator Rudman, in particular, I have always been impressed with your efforts to control spending, and even for all the hoopla this year I think anybody who has taken the time to read the numbers knows that we are not having a surplus, we are not borrowing any money except from the Social Security trust fund but we are still borrowing money.

    Mr. KASICH. Will the gentleman yield?

    No, I am just kidding.

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    Mr. TAYLOR. Having said that, I would certainly hope in your next report that you could be a bit more specific in what you see as areas of what we need to do better in the next century as far as spending our money.

    Especially, Senator Hart, you having been in the same boat, you know this is the time of year after we finish the bills we have to write the groups that did not get what they wanted, be it those 12,000 kids in the military who will remain on food stamps or the military retirees we have to tell one more year we haven't figured out a way to fully fund the promise of health care. So I have got to be curious as to whether or not you think we fund too many studies and commissions out of the Department of Defense budget, whether we fund too many studies and commissions?

    Senator RUDMAN. Are you asking whether I think we ought to be funding commission studies out of the budget? I am not sure I understand the question.

    Mr. TAYLOR. Out of the Department of Defense budget, in particular.

    Senator RUDMAN. Well, you know, where that came from hardly—was hardly our choice. This came out of the leadership of the House, and it was decided first to do it with a general appropriation. Then for reasons which I never fully understood it was funded out of DOD. As commissions go, this will be a rather low budget operation over the two years we are in business. But I don't think it makes a lot of difference where it comes from. It is the same pot. On the other hand, if it was going to be a huge expenditure I wouldn't want it to come out of DOD's budget because it could detract from other things.
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    Mr. TAYLOR. I guess my question, Senator, is that, again, I have always admired your somewhat jaundiced eye towards spending and since you are free to devote your time towards this one thing, looking at the future, I would certainly hope that you could turn your jaundiced eye towards some of those things that were just not getting enough money. I don't think we are getting enough back for what we spend, and that is the consultants, the studies, in many instances the monies that even are channeled towards the universities, some of who might be in my State, when you consider again that we are shrinking towards a 300-ship Navy, when you consider the kids on food stamps, when you consider et cetera, et cetera.

    Senator RUDMAN. I would like Senator Hart to respond to this also. Let me simply say to you that, you know, I couldn't agree with you more that there is a lot of money put in all of the bills that I have historically disagreed with, have said so, and you win some and you lose some. That, however, is really not what we are doing here. It is really kind of beyond what we have been asked to do.

    I think I could probably say right now that I could put a motion before this commission that read, do you all agree that DOD money should only be spent on truly defense items? And you would get unanimously a yes, but that wouldn't make a lot of difference as it came up here. So let me simply say that we are going to lay out strategy, we are going to lay out structure, but as far as giving Congress or anyone else a lecture on how the money ought to be spent, I think we will politely decline that invitation.

    Senator HART. Just before recognizing Ambassador Young, let me say that the one thing that characterizes the feeling of those of us on this commission is that we are not just another commission. I think the historic importance of what we are up to, not to diminish the work of NDPs and all kinds of other consultants and ad hoc groups that study these things, I think all of us feel that what we are doing here is—has precedent only 50 years ago in 1946 and 1947. This isn't just another snapshot look at defense in America. This is the first comprehensive look at this country's security since the end of the Cold War in the fashion that we are giving it.
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    I think Senator Rudman has pointed out, it is a pretty low budget operation. What you are getting in this commission is about—more than 300 person-years of experience in national security, all put together, all volunteered. That doesn't even count the expert help we are getting from others who are donating—some donating their time, some being paid in salary. So I think it would be a mistake for anyone to look at us as just another commission. What we are up to is pretty historic.

    Ambassador YOUNG. I simply wanted to point out, Congressman, that we are looking at the breadth of our spending and I was looking at Nigeria, that just ended a military rule, and I was trying to figure out why was it that this guy, when he came into power immediately let everybody out of jail and set up elections? And in looking back in his history, one of the few things that I could find that I could attribute this insight to was the fact that he had been trained at Fort Benning and at one of our command schools out in California, and that didn't cost very much, and it may be one of the reasons why we do not have to have any troops there protecting that oil; that we educated some generals a long time ago. So I think we are trying to put all of this into some sort of perspective.

    Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you.

    The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman from Jacksonville, Florida, Mrs. Fowler.

    Mrs. FOWLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank the commissioners for all the time that they are putting into this because I know it is time you are taking away from other pursuits and we appreciate your service on behalf of this country.
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    I want to get off on a little different track I think than has been taken so far because in addition to my being a member of the Armed Services Committee, I am also chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee that oversees emergency management issues for this country. We have been deeply concerned about what I perceive to be deficiencies in this country's ability to respond to a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear terrorist attack. We held a hearing on June 9 of this year, and I think it is fair to say that as a result we determined that the U.S. Government today remains largely unprepared to cope with such an attack. In my judgment, communities across this country lack the training and technical support to handle the consequences of such an attack. Moreover, one of the things that our subcommittee learned is that we have roughly 40 government agencies that are involved in preparing for these kinds of incidents and many of them have overlapping jurisdictions. So I am concerned that when we have this absence of clear lines of responsibility, this would in many cases lead to a very confused response with the possibility of increased casualties.

    In fiscal year 1999, the Federal Government spent almost $7 billion on these 40 agencies for the purpose of combatting terrorism. For fiscal year 2000, the President has requested $10 billion for unclassified programs combatting terrorism. The purpose of our hearing was to determine whether these funds were being spent effectively and efficiently.

    The answer we received was, no.

    Now, we determined that at least, and there is probably much more but at least $650 million, probably a lot more, is totally being spent on duplication and waste but a large part of this is because with these 40 agencies there is not a clear-cut national goal, there is no clearly defined plan for accomplishing crisis and consequence management.
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    In reading through your report, I noted that the conclusions you reached in phase one of your report is a prediction that, and I quote from your report, ''We will be vulnerable to an increasing range of threats against American forces and citizens overseas as well as at home, and that states, terrorists and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption and some will use them. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers''.

    I would like all of the members of this committee, and anyone else, to particularly read the last page, page eight, in this booklet, because it is exactly on these points as you walk us through it. So what I am concerned, what we are looking for, we determined in our subcommittee and we are struggling with this, that we need a single Federal authority that can define the specific end goals that have to be achieved and that will lay out the government priorities that are based on a threat, risk assessment and our current capabilities. Until we do that, we are going to continue to have this waste and confusion in these programs, and that this Congress, in consultation with our Nation's governors, because this affects them, we have got to define clearly the programmatic and operational relationship between the Federal Government, the States and our local communities, in preparing for and responding to terrorism events.

    I know that you haven't looked yet at specific strategies, that that is going to be phase two, but I would like to ask you whether based on your current knowledge of the situation, do you believe we are currently budgeting adequately? Are we coordinating adequately to address these threats? Do you have any good sense as to the time for where we ought to be focusing these efforts? And if you don't at this time I am hoping—I notice that phase two is due out by April. I am hoping that in that phase you will come forward with some recommendations in this area because I think it is imperative that this Congress, the 106th Congress, take action in this regard and it would be very helpful if we could have your recommendations in this area, too. I would appreciate any comments you might have on this.
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    Senator RUDMAN. Well, thank you very much.

    Let me just answer personally to one of your questions, because certainly the commission does not have an answer at this point. It is my personal opinion, from not only what I have done here but actually what I have done in several other things that I do, including chairmanship of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, that although we are starting to recognize that this country is woefully ill-prepared for major disruption or attack against our civilian population, our infrastructure, in a variety of ways, with either weapons of mass destruction or selected terrorist acts, that is what I believe. I think that is what most of you believe. I believe that is why the President and the Congress have taken steps to do something about that, and that is why we have put what we have put in our report.

    I can tell you this now, on behalf of the commission, phase two, when it recognized what are America's national interests, it is almost a given that the security of American citizens in their homes and in their cities certainly will be one. Assuming I am correct about that, and I think that is probably a pretty easy guess, then when you move to phase three, to the implementation strategy, that is where this commission will make specific recommendations about what must be done about that concern and that national interest.

    Mrs. FOWLER. What is your timing on our receiving phase three?

    Senator RUDMAN. Phase two in April. Phase three will be presented to the incoming administration of the year 2001.

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    Mrs. FOWLER. I worry we will have wasted billions of dollars by then, before we determine how to coordinate this.

    Senator RUDMAN. That, of course, is something you may be right but we can't do much about. You might talk to the chairman of the Budget Committee. Maybe he can do something about that.

    Mrs. FOWLER. Okay.

    The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Snyder.

    Mr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having this hearing today.

    This is my second term in Congress. I don't think we have spent far enough time, as I don't think we probably as Americans spend far enough time thinking about these issues that you all are helping guide us. I really appreciate the work that you have done.

    What I want to do is just ask several questions, maybe just to one of you at a time, and have you respond, just an opportunity to kind of amplify on the statements.

    In your preface, you talk about your three-step process: To look at the world, to design a strategy and then talk about the structure to implement that strategy. But maybe, Mr. Augustine, if you would amplify on that, it seems to me that what you call that world it is going to be a new world every year, every five years, every decade and that—is not the structure that we are going to need to adopt be one that will adapt to an ever-changing world that may require an evolving strategy?
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    Mr. AUGUSTINE. I think, without question, you are correct. I believe that the most we can hope to do is to lay out a basic compass heading that one will have to introduce corrections to as time goes on and as the world evolves, but the time constraints of building a military force, as I mentioned before, are so long that it is either good news or bad news but one can begin to lay out a trajectory that I think has meaning, and that is what we hope to do.

    Mr. SNYDER. Ambassador Young, maybe you could discuss this statement. In the section there, the report makes the comment that the United States must, I think it says, quote, work harder to prevent conflicts. The big issue this week, of course, is the foreign ops bill which in my opinion is underfunded and doesn't reflect a nation that wants to work hard and prevent conflicts. But that is our problem right now, not yours.

    Would you just amplify on that? How did you all come to a conclusion that we as a nation have not worked hard enough to prevent conflicts?

    Ambassador YOUNG. Well, I think it might be more accurate to say that we have worked hard on some conflicts, but I used as the illustration the other day East Timor. When I was at the U.N. in 1977, they used to come up there talking about East Timor all the time. Frankly, I had to get the map and find out where it was. There was no political interest in it. I didn't do anything about it. Nobody else did. Now it is a major crisis, and we could have flagged that in 1977, 1980 and done something about it diplomatically.

    I should say on the other side, though, that we were aware of the pressures and the tensions in southern Africa. We had a constituency for those, as we had a constituency for the Middle East. I think we responded very well diplomatically, and what we did worked and cost very little. But East Timor, we didn't know about.
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    Now, hopefully a well-funded, multilateral agency would have done that whether or not we as the United States of America were interested, and it shouldn't have been totally neglected until now. People are looking to us to do something. They have known about that for 25 years.

    Mr. SNYDER. I wanted to ask, too, maybe either Senator Hart or Senator Rudman, you come to the conclusions, I think it is on page four, that in 25 years you do not foresee there will be any, I think how you phrase it, you say although a global competitor to the United States is unlikely to arise over the next 25 years, I assume then that you all have spent a lot of time coming to the conclusion whether or not China at the end of this 25-year period will be a global competitor. You all have decided it will not. Would you all amplify on that, please?

    Senator RUDMAN. I don't think we have decided they won't be.

    Mr. SNYDER. You have decided China will not be our global competitor at the end of 25 years. Am I reading that correctly? I think so.

    Senator RUDMAN. Just tell me where you are reading because I want to just know what page you are on.

    Mr. SNYDER. It is on page four of the summary, No. 1, and the second sentence of the paragraph, ''although a global competitor of the United States is unlikely to arise within the next 25 years'' . . . well, our discussion around here is about will China be, and your conclusion is it will not be a global competitor to us in 25 years. It still may be an emerging power and so on. But tell me how you reach that conclusion.
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    Senator RUDMAN. Well, we are saying that for the next 25 years, this country will be dominant militarily and economically, and that there will not be a rival to us as a superpower, as we see it, in the next two and a half decades. That is not to say we don't think China will be a major force and someone to deal with, but we are saying that we do not think that there will be a replication, if you will, of what happened from 1955 or 1958 until 1990 with the Soviet Union and the United States being the two existing superpowers who were always head to head. We do not think China either economically or militarily will reach that point in 25 years. Maybe it could have been more clearly written, indicating there will be plenty of nation states that will be big enough and strong enough to give us a number of problems should they wish to. We meant global competitor, where we stand today, and where we think we will stand then.

    Mr. SNYDER. In fairness to your report, I think it does say that talking about emerging powers.

    Thank you again for you time, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Senator HART. We used a rather classic definition, I think, of what a peer competitor would be, and that includes three or four categories, military being one but also economic and having a global reach politically and all the rest. And when you use America as the standard, it is going to be very, very difficult for any nation, including China, with all of its resources, to reach the standard where we are. It also, by the way, includes, factors in, the standard of living of its own people.

    Mr. SNYDER. Thank you.
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    The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Thornberry.

    Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I want to first applaud your work and the time you are putting in here. Like my colleague from Arkansas, I get frustrated that so much of our time and effort, it seems in Congress, is what is on the plate in front of us, whether we are going to fund the F–22 or not or whatever. My sense is that with a few exceptions in the Pentagon, like Andy Marshall's shop, there is not much forward thinking there either.

    So a lot of us are so busy worried about what is in front of us, we are not thinking ahead and what the proper path is.

    I am delighted that each of you has undertaken to participate in that effort.

    There have been some comments, I suspect you have heard, that on the first phase of your report that this is nothing new, this is nothing earth shattering, it is kind of standard stuff that most people agree with. But it does seem to me, if you take what you find seriously, there are some pretty strong implications. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where you are going with some of this. For example, weapons of mass destruction are spreading and we have got to maintain a robust nuclear deterrent, that has some strong implications for where we spend money, what we put time and effort on, and our future security. But what I want to ask about is your last conclusion, number 14, which says that the emerging security environment will require different military and other national capabilities.
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    Now, throughout the literature and comments, and throughout the Pentagon, people are using words like transformation and revolution in military affairs and it is getting stuck on everything. But there are some people who believe that we—some of the changes Senator Hart mentioned in your opening comments, that we are undergoing such a degree of change that it is very rare, the Tofflers think it is only the third time in a thousand years that we have had this degree of change, other people can find ten military revolutions, but the implication of that is pretty significant because if this is just kind of an evolutionary thing where we can go faster and stealthier, then it has a lot of implications for what we buy and what we put our time and effort on. If it is a different degree of change, it has enormous implications for what we do, not just what we buy but the way we think.

    I guess what I would like to know is, what do you all think about this change? How big a degree of change is it? How much of it is lip service given to evolution and how much of it is really profound that ought to shake and require us to have a different view of things?

    Senator RUDMAN. Well, let me start off by saying, obviously, I cannot truly answer—or we cannot truly answer your fundamental question at this point, because that is where we are headed and we have got to get through phase two in order to get to phase three. But I think that there is an answer to your question, at least to look at the environment, the background against which we are measuring all of this. This is a continuation of something that, you know, I believed ever since I essentially was in the Senate and tried to implement change.

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    Your fundamental question is will this be a different kind of change? I think the answer is absolutely. If it is done right, it will probably be done rapidly and it will be done to meet what the Congress decides it believes the structure ought to look like. Let me tell you exactly what I am talking about.

    Since the end of World War II, the United States military force, although having changed enormously in many ways, would be quite recognizable to someone who fought on the European land mass in 1944 to 1945. Heavy tank divisions, airborne divisions, engineer battalions, infantry which has become more mobile, the helicopter, of course, divisions, those have replaced the cavalry but that, you know, is the last time, if anybody wants to think about it, that that force was used that way. I can tell you from personal experience, Korea was not that way at all. It had the same units but they fought differently. They were lighter. They had to be quicker. They couldn't use tanks because of the terrain. Artillery could not be moved. Infantry could not be moved along roads because there weren't any roads to move on.

    Vietnam was a totally different kind of a war and yet the Army structure, to take the Army and Air Force, to a large extent looked very much like it looked at the end of World War II. Some would argue today, and I am one of them, that it still looks a lot like that, and maybe it should. But if we decide it shouldn't, and I have no idea where we will come out, then you can imagine the kind of reorganization that we could come up with in this final report that could cause you unmitigated grief for the next several years, because there are constituencies that will fight any major change that is recommended by you, by us or by anyone. So I am going to tell you, speaking now again for myself, my guess is that this report will recommend major change, major change.

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    Why do I say that? Because I think looking at what we come up with as the threats to this country and having a sense of what the strategy probably will be, I do not believe a force structure that was good in 1946 will be good in the year 2025. I am speaking personally.

    Senator HART. I think the phrase you used, Congressman, is the most important thing that has been said here today, and that is ''think differently.''

    We are in a period of revolutionary change, not evolutionary, in my judgment. To believe that the defense of this country in the 21st century is an evolutionary process is to miss a huge historic point, and that is the next century, as far into it as we can see, is not going to resemble the past one, the one we are closing out, very much, and certainly not militarily. I think Senator Rudman is absolutely right.

    I was instrumental, almost 20 years ago now, in forming something I think is now defunct, called the Military Reform Caucus, 1981, 1982. Our premises were that defense is based upon three things. One is, first of all, people. The second is strategy, tactics and doctrine. The third is weapons.

    Now, all of you, as I did, spent 90 percent of our time on weapons and on budgets, how much, quantitative. If you have got—if you don't have the right people, you can have the best weapons and still lose. Even if you have the best people, if you don't have the right strategy, tactics and doctrine, if you are not fighting the real world, if you are not dealing with the real world, you will lose. It is only after you get the people and the strategies, the tactics and the doctrine, that you then begin to look at weapons.

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    If I could advise this committee, with all due respect, it is to resist the temptation to put so much of your time on the weapons and the money, and put much more time—focus on the caliber and quality of the people and, of course, the whole retention issue is a big one here, but also the way those people think. If you don't have the right people and they are not thinking right, all the weapons in the world aren't going to solve the problem.

    Mr. AUGUSTINE. I would like to just briefly comment as well. I think it is true that our entire commission believes that we are entering an era of enormous change in any number of arenas that impact national security. But I would also like to offer a word of caution, and that is that in many cases the threats that are emerging tend to be in addition to, rather than purely instead of, some of the threats we have seen in the past. We still worry about Iran and Iraq and North Korea. There could be problems in Taiwan, and Russia still remains an enigma. How it will evolve isn't at all clear. All of those offer threats of a somewhat conventional nature. But now we have to add on to that this new threat to the homeland that could be in the form of—the area that I worry the most about are biological threats and what is evolving in that area; some truly frightening possibilities. Certainly chemical warfare, cyber warfare, the possibility of interfering with the Nation's air transport system, I am afraid perhaps relatively easy to do. So I would just add that the challenge we face could be a much greater one and it is certainly more complex than the one we faced the last few decades.

    The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Allen.

    Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Gentlemen, I want to also congratulate you on your work, and wish you well as you proceed.
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    In looking at this report, there was—most of it, I looked at it, I read, I found it compelling, interesting. One piece of it was puzzling to me, and I want to raise a question about that piece, because as you go through it, on the one hand you are saying there is likely to be no peer competitor to the United States for the next 25 years, that much of the conflict in the world will come out of what our—be internal to existing nation states, that we face what we can only describe as asymmetric threats to the population of this country. Then you get to paragraph ten and that is what I want to ask you about.

    Paragraph 10 reads, space will become a critical and competitive military environment. The U.S. use of space for military purposes will expand, but other countries will also learn to exploit space for both commercial and military purposes. Many other countries will learn to launch satellites to communicate and spy. Weapons will likely be put in space. Space will also become permanently manned.

    I am puzzled by that, because of the enormous cost of putting weapons in space and, as you say, the absence of a peer competitor at least for the next 25 years. I can imagine, without getting too specific, that certain Asian countries would want to have spy satellites up so they can see what's going on in a neighboring country, but the—it seems to me that the weaponization of space, the development of weapons in space, would only likely begin as a deliberate policy decision of the United States Government; that as strong as we may be economically and militarily, we are much stronger when it comes to our space program.

    So my question, really, what underlies that? I am sure something underlies it. It was the piece of the report that I was most puzzled by.
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    Mr. AUGUSTINE. Your question is really an excellent summary of, I think, what we see the situation to be. The high ground in military matters, in combat, is becoming space, both for observing and for communicating and for other things.

    You pointed out, I think, a very important factor that in a sense is a blessing when it comes to space and that is there is a very high entry threshold to build a space force. Unlike CBR weapons and cyber warfare, it doesn't lend itself to terrorism, fortunately. Only rather major powers will be able to build space forces.

    I think our view would be that we are looking five years ahead. When one looks 25 years ahead, at the current rate of progress, there are probably half a dozen nations, I won't try to name them, but a half dozen nations that would be able to build military forces in space if they chose to do that. I think you are quite correct. It is not something that is likely to happen tomorrow. It is not likely to be a proliferation problem with small nations but it could well be a problem for the long-term.

    Placing weapons in space, unless you have rather exotic weapons, directed energy weapons, is a very inefficient process, but it does have the one benefit that it—or two benefits. One is the psychological benefit and the other is the virtually instantaneous response.

    So I think that you have to view that particular observation we have made as one toward the end of the period rather than toward the beginning.

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    Mr. ALLEN. As a follow-up, would you—well, this is maybe for your future deliberations but it would seem to be logical that this is a case for a multilateral agreement to set some parameters on weapons in space. I am sure you haven't gotten to that stage. If anyone would like to comment on that I would be interested.

    Ambassador. YOUNG. Maybe, Mr. Congressman, we have been going to too many James Bond movies, but the recent immigration of Russian Mafia types in the Caribbean posed a real threat drugwise to certain island nations there, just in the last ten years. It is not beyond imagination that some of the Russian nuclear scientists would be in that group.

    The thing we are saying is that there are so many variables, that an intelligence defense system for the 21st century has got to consider those possibilities.

    Mr. ALLEN. Good. Thank you very much.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

    Mr. Hill.

    Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Hart, I would agree that the charge of your commission is a very important one, one that I am taking very seriously. But Senator Rudman, you mentioned the fact that the workings of this commission and its workings, that it is not staff driven. I have been in Congress now for nine months and one of the big surprises is the level of hyperbole and exaggeration in trying to get to the truth of things. You are going to be making several recommendations, but I did notice that Senator Boren and Lynne Cheney have resigned from this commission. I think it is important for me at least to ascertain as to why they have made that resignation because both of these people are very reputable, and they had obviously good reasons why they resigned. Would you address that?
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    Senator RUDMAN. I would be delighted to. Let me first say that I was very unhappy that David Boren felt it necessary to resign. He had a dispute with the leadership of this commission. And I must say, that I have great respect for him, but I disagreed with his reasoning. I think that whether you live in Washington or you are down in Oklahoma, you have to strongly rely on someone to move the work along. You cannot micro-manage that kind of work. I don't try to do so and maybe I am wrong and he is right. But essentially, he resigned because he felt he was not having enough input into the formulation of phase one.

    Well, I can only say when we finally put phase one together, we did it around the table with interactive computers, with every member of the commission having a computer in front of him or her, looking essentially at a screen and writing it together as group. So I think had David stayed longer, he would have found his fear was really ill founded.

    As far as—Lynn Cheney was a friend and someone I had known for a long time. For some reason she didn't like some of the syntax that we used in one of these bullets or two of these bullets. We attempted to accommodate that concern. The accommodation did not work. We tried very hard to make it work, but for reasons that only she could tell you, she elected to step down. We have high regard for her and we wish she had stayed on.

    I might say that she did share—I want to be totally open with you—that she did share Senator Boren's earlier concern that it was too staff driven, but I will tell you that of all of the things that I have been involved in in this town, this is the least staff driven. If you look at the names of the people who are inside here, you might get some idea why. I just want to spend 30 seconds on that because you asked a good question which has not been covered by the press particularly, will now, and that is fine.
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    Anne Armstrong from Texas, a former member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, former ambassador to London; John Dancy, the very well-known, the very well-known correspondent for NBC, 30 years covering the world; Leslie Gelb, the Director of the Council for Foreign Relations; Lee Hamilton, known to all of you—.

    Mr. HILL. My predecessor, by the way.

    Senator RUDMAN. I know that. Donald Rice, former head of RAND, former Secretary of the Air Force; Harry Train, four star Admiral, former CINCLANT, highly regarded all over this city as a thinker. I think we all know Norm Augustine's incredible record of service to this country and leadership in industry. John Galvin, former head of NATO. Newt Gingrich, who, when he left the Congress we asked him to come on the commission because, after all, he had been one of the people who thought of forming it. Lionel Olmer, former Secretary of Commerce, knows a great deal about the world and Asia; James Schlesinger, known to everyone here; and Andrew Young. I read that list for one reason, Congressman. If you think that is the kind of group that is going to be staff driven, then you haven't met this group.

    Senator HART. Let me just add, to be very blunt with you, there is a tension that affects all of us. It is a tension between wanting to totally control, as commissioners, wanting to totally control what we put our names on and finding the time to be able to do that. I think the two distinguished Americans who have not been able to go forward with this have felt that tension the most. That is, wanting to drive this virtually every day, but at the same time not having the time to be able to put into it. It is—it has been for the last year very time consuming. It is going to get worse. I would suppose, I hope not, but I would suppose in the next year and a quarter there will be other defections—defection is the wrong word, retirements. It may be because of the time requirements. What we are all trying to do is control this product that we put our names on, but to do so as volunteers, as people who have other obligations. So a delicate balance is being sought and I think for 14 of us achieved.
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    Ambassador YOUNG. If I could say that the biggest strain I think I find is not just the time that is required to attend the sessions and to keep up with the materials, but to anticipate the controversy that we are likely to generate and the time that it is going to require defending our own reputations. We potentially have a lot at risk here. Most of us are in retirement and not really concerned about what you think of us. But it is going to be—we are likely to be seen to have betrayed some of our constituencies. That is never a happy place. But the diversity of this, well, Newt Gingrich and I have been across the border one county or another for a long time now, and we have learned to sort of get along and disagree without being disagreeable. We are still opposite sides of the spectrum. We are going to have to come up with a consensus here that is going to embarrass one or both of us all the time. Maybe that is the strength of the commission.

    The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Abercrombie.

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to say to Senator Hart by way of introduction, I find it interesting the reference to 1812 in the attack on American soil. But even though we were still a territory and not yet a state, I think Pearl Harbor would probably qualify in there; although it helps to make a point and this has to do with the intelligence side. I will await the second and third phases. I don't think that it does us much good to get into abstract philosophical discussions now.

    I wanted to remark before, Ambassador Young, with regard to the Sudan. I am probably one of the few Americans that has ever been the entire length of the Nile River through the Sudan on the White Nile all the way down to Uganda. It was some years ago that I backpacked around the world and got to Khartoum and received permission from the governor general to travel south, principally, I think, because I was from Hawaii. It amused him that someone would ever leave Hawaii to come to Sudan. I found this all over the world, as a matter of fact. People were constantly wanting to know what I was doing there when I could be home.
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    Nonetheless, traveling by paddle wheel steamer, which I expect is probably still in use on the Nile there, what struck me more than anything else is the utter lack of education that I had and that we have about the world around us. For example, I doubt—and I have done this in lectures to school children, for example, trying to explain what geography is all about. Most people haven't a clue that the Sudan is two-thirds the size of Europe, that the Sudan swamp, the great southern swamp is essentially two-thirds the size of Great Britain, that the Sudan itself is as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, as you pointed out. Not that this is a point to be made about information, please, or quiz show on arcane information, but I am talking about perspective.

    I would hope that in the next two phases, and I guess this is my question to you at this juncture, is it your intention when relating the next two phases, to particularly 12, 13, and 14, particularly No. 12 on page six, ''U.S. intelligence will face more challenging adversaries, and even excellent intelligence will not prevent all surprises,'' that will you be examining how we go about educating ourselves as to what the context and reality is of the world around us culturally speaking, historically speaking, et cetera? Failure to do that, I think, will lead us into more Vietnams, will lead us into more unpreparedness as we had in East Timor or even in dealing with questions about the Sudan. How can we exert moral authority or any other kind of authority if we don't have a proper understanding of something as simple as the geography of the area that we are dealing with? The Sudan, after all, is a construct of British colonialism and a residue of the colonial history in Africa that not everybody may be completely familiar with.

    Ambassador YOUNG. Congressman, I have not been all of the way down the river, but I have been to the Sudan a number of times and was involved with President Carter both in government and since in trying to bring the disparate forces there together. You are quite right. One of the reasons why we have not done anything there is that for so long our intelligence was only concerned about the communist threat. We did not see the relevance of all of the potential of those kinds of situations. I think one of the things that we see as the result of the kind of world that we are in now is intelligence has to be much broader as well as deeper. The fact that—I think of the five people that came to the Carter Center to talk about the Sudan, 36 of them had Ph.D.s from American universities. But we had no engagement with them through our State Department particularly. They were not—we just had not had much involvement with them.
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    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Because my time is short, I just want to say that I agree with you on that. I would hope that as we take up the question of intelligence and arriving particularly at what Senator Hart spoke of in terms of strategy, tactics, and background, understanding what our interests are and so on, that we perhaps have an even deeper—if we talk about broad versus narrow, I hope the broad definition would include bringing in even more the academic and intellectual community, those who have some cultural awareness and perspective into the Pentagon, into our discussions, into this committee, for example; and perhaps much less on the logistics of—not much less, but at least equal time for the understanding of what we are dealing with as opposed to merely whether we are technologically prepared for asserting ourselves militarily.

    Senator HART. It was, in fact, the National Security Act of 1947 that created the Central Intelligence Agency. Given the mandate of the Secretary of Defense to start with a clean sheet of paper, it is not inconceivable that this commission could recommend the creation of a totally new intelligence apparatus or community to broaden and deepen our understanding of cultures and histories.

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much. I hope that you will also take up the question of encryption. I probably find myself—as long as we have syndromes here of left and right and so on, I am probably way to the right of most everybody, I guess, on this committee and certainly where the Administration is at the moment—on the question of encryption. I find it ironic that there would be a proposal to give the FBI tens of millions of dollars to try to overcome the encryption that we are going to sell everybody. So people can make money while, I believe, we put our security at risk.
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    Just as a case in point, from today's Miami Herald on the kidnapping taking place in Bogota and in Colombia, rather, by the ELN, the point made by the present kidnapping, guerillas
take—''roadblocks are common in Colombia—'' I am quoting now—''and guerillas often take numerous people. Rebels have begun using portable computers to check data bases to determine the assets of potential kidnap victims.''

    This on the one hand is amusing but in the technological world we are dealing with now, it is a reality. It has to do with bio-terrorism, it has to do with all of the other possibilities that might be taken up. So I would hope that you would address the question of encryption in the overall context.

    On that, finally, from me, I hope you will take up in the second and third phases when you deal with the question of bio-terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and so on, some of the actual costs and logistical difficulties that we will face internally domestically in the United States. I have here a copy of an article from the paper in Honolulu yesterday, a story by Helen Alton, the title of which is ''State works on bio-terrorism action plan.''

    What they are talking about is, partially at my urging and of course by the recognition of the governor and others, the mayor of the city of, county of, Honolulu, we are working with the Department of Health and Human Services, we are working with the Department of Defense, we are getting grants, $516,000 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another $300,000 from the Department of Defense for training and equipment.

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    In other words, we are already up to almost a million dollars here already in Federal grants just trying to get prepared in one little place in the United States for what would happen should we find ourselves the victim of bio-terrorism. I think that would have to be multiplied enormously all around the country. So I would hope that as you consider phase two and three, you take into account some of what you expect to be the real costs of actually preparing the Nation, if we decided that is what we needed to do, to meet the question of potential bio-terrorism and the weapons of mass destruction.

    The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Abercrombie. Mr. Saxton.

    Mr. SAXTON. First, let me say I guess in kind of reaction to—I think it was 2 or 3 questions ago relative to why everybody who began as commissioners didn't continue. I for one recognize what an important job you are doing and how difficult it must be, having been a member of the House now for 15 years. One of the conclusions that I have come to about our system of government is that a) we are very reactive, and b) we are very comfortable in doing the things that we have been doing all along, and therefore don't take advantage of the opportunities that we have as an institution to look forward. You are making a great effort to look forward and to draw some conclusions about some very, very important aspects of life as we know it. We appreciate that very much.

    Norm Augustine and my friend from Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie, have touched on a subject that I have spent a great deal of time studying over the last year, that is bio-terrorism. It is part of a bigger question. The question is emphasized in your conclusions over and over again. Just let me make a couple of references to this. You say in this—in your conclusions that America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland. That is not something that we all think about very often nor do we like to. ''States, terrorists, and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption and some will use them.'' We all don't like to think about that very much and I am glad you have taken this opportunity to point it out.
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    You go on further, saying in conclusion, No. 9, ''The foreign crises will be replete with atrocities and the deliberate terrorizing of civilian populations.'' You go on to say in No. 11, ''The essence of war will not change. What will change are the kinds of actors and the weapons available to them.''

    These are all scary thoughts to us as Americans because, as you have correctly pointed out and others have pointed out, we are not accustomed to having to worry about attacks on our country. We are more accustomed of thinking about war as two sides facing off against each other in conventional ways someplace else in the world. There is a certain level of comfort that Americans have been able, historically able to draw from that.

    When Norm Augustine mentioned the issue of biological weapons or bio-terrorism, as it was just pointed out by Mr. Abercrombie, it struck home with me because from what you had pointed out in your conclusions and from the studies that I have been involved in over the last year or so, there are a number of issues that we have not dealt with very effectively. They have all been touched on here today. The nuclear threat, of course, and the delivery mechanisms, either conventional mechanism or perhaps a suitcase type of scenario; cyber warfare that frankly many of us know very little about but that we need to be aware of as we move into the next century; radio frequency weapons for people who have—many of us have become concerned about and the effect that it might have on Wall Street, on our power grid, on our transportation and communication systems; chemical attacks which are more frequent than we would like to see.

    But bio-terrorism is something that we have not paid a lot of attention to. I would just like to ask each of you with regard to these relatively new threats and, from my point of view, infancy, if you will, or inability to deal with them, how should we as an institution be moving forward with regard to these threats against, as you pointed out, our homeland?
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    Senator HART. This is a subject, of course, of the next two phases of our report. I hate to keep reiterating that, but these are exactly the kinds of things that we are going to try to come to grips with. I think it is back to an observation I made earlier. We are going to have to think differently. We are going to have to think about threats that are new and think about them, to use the buzz word of the time, outside the box. That is to say, outside conventional traditional military solutions. The response to threats of these kinds, cyber threats, biological, chemical, are going to have to engage the American population.

    I am a great advocate of, I guess, of remodelling and revitalizing the National Guard Reserve. I am now just one person talking. I think defense of the homeland is going to have to involve those branches of our Armed Services in ways that the traditional military cannot and probably should not respond to for a lot of constitutional reasons. We are going to have to think of nonmilitary assets, how to engage the private sector with all of the talent and capability it has at becoming part of the homeland defense; that we can't just say to the Defense Department, defend our country against these kind of threats. Lockheed Martin, all kinds of industries in your home states and districts, are going to have to become part of this defense. It will be in a way, I think, the kind of citizen soldier that some of the founders of this country thought would be the backbone of our defenses.

    So if we are entering a century in an era where we at home are under attack or could be under attack, we are going to have to think totally different. The only solution isn't the 82nd Airborne Division and Trident submarines. In fact, those are probably not the right solutions.

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    Senator RUDMAN. There is no question that phase three will contain some specific structures recommended to deal with it. I am sure that you are aware that there are things going on in the government right now to protect infrastructure, to start to get some of the National Guard units prepared for local emergencies and disasters with biological warfare, with other agents. We are going to have to address it because obviously you have all focused, almost everyone here has—if they mentioned anything, they have mentioned that section of the report because that is the most startling, and the one that we don't want to hear and we don't want to think about because as Americans we have always been safe. That is something that happened someplace else. So, obviously, we don't think that will hold for the next 25 years. I think we are bound in our phase three to come up with specific recommendations because let's face it, we don't have a structure in place right now to adequately deal with that. What we are doing is building off old structures and maybe that is not the way to go. So unquestionably, that will be addressed, Congressman.

    Ambassador YOUNG. I am always concerned, Congressman, when we have to talk about things like this that I always want us to go on to say that if it happens, it will not succeed. I use as an illustration the tragedy that we experienced in the middle of the Olympics. It wasn't a massive destruction, but it was devastating to everybody for about 24 hours. Then people were more determined than ever to carry on. I think that is—there may be terrorist attacks, but I don't think they will in any way deter the spirit of the American people or their determination to continue to fight for the values for which we stand.

    Mr. AUGUSTINE. Your question of what we can do, Senator Rudman has said that will be the topic of our remaining work. I think one can see the basic structure. Certainly, the first step is to try to deter such attacks and that suggests that we need intelligence that is not only better but of a different kind than we have had in the past. It suggests that maybe we need international bodies, political bodies that will work together to deny sanctuaries to such terrorists. Then there is the matter of preparing to deal with actual cases of terrorism that may occur. The great fear I have is that if we do not take adequate steps to deal with what I think will be a very real threat, that we will somehow become inured to this, that it is a fact of life that we can't deal with, and that we will find ourselves living in a nation as we do today where we lose 40,000 people a year in automobile accidents and just accept that as a part of life. That would be my greatest fear, that terrorism might drive us to that kind of a point. I think that we can prevent that.
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    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, if I may just take 30 seconds to conclude, the chairman and I met late last week and talked about this subject, about how we configure ourselves to do a better job of thinking ahead about some of these issues. I would just like to note and kind of congratulate the other body, the Senate, under the leadership of Senator Warner and particularly Senator Pat Roberts. They have established a subcommittee on their Defense Committee on emerging threats, a great move in my opinion, and I am glad that they have done that. Perhaps they will be effective in looking ahead in that way and I am saying this in the hope that as the chairman and I talked about late last week in the upcoming years so that we will be able to focus on making some changes along that line as well.

    Thank you all for what you are doing and we appreciate it very much.

    The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kasich.

    Mr. KASICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I first came to Congress 17 years ago all of these guys were important. They remain important today. It is great to see Mr. Augustine and the work that he did in the '80s, meeting the challenge of procurement which, of course, started with George Washington and will continue as long as we have a military.

    Senator Rudman was, I think, the first guy I went to see about hammers and wrenches that cost too much. I don't know Ambassador Young, but I certainly am aware of your distinguished service and a lot of the controversial issues that you raised during the course of your career and you are to be saluted.

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    And, of course, Senator Hart. You probably don't remember me but when we were doing Goldwater-Nichols I reminded you when you said, how do you know that, I said, well, I read your book, that is how I know that.

    As far as I am concerned—.

    Senator HART. That is very unfair, Congressman.

    Mr. KASICH. I think Senator Hart is one of the most talented people that I have ever had the privilege to serve with. I hope to get to know him better.

    I just wanted to lay out three or four things. First of all, you have Chuck Boyd with you. The staff is doing a lot of writing and if Boyd is doing the writing, he can write for me. He is a brilliant man. I think very highly of him.

    First of all, the issue of jointness. Bill Owens left the Pentagon because I think he felt he would have to jump out the window he was so frustrated by the inability to really drive jointness, and that is to put the military at one table under civilian control and have a dramatic reform of the way that building works. Goldwater-Nichols happened, I think, in about 1984. I think it is about time to start rolling out this whole issue of jointness. I think it is ultimately one of the ways in which we can more effectively plan and save money. I hope, Senator Hart, you might speak just a moment about jointness.

    Two is proliferation. I am amazed at our commitment to profit over security. I remember back when the United Nations tried to start a register where people would be forced to list the deals they were about to engage in and the country, the President never drove that issue completely. But it just seems to me as though it is vital that we get an outside board to try to drive the government, Mr. Augustine, away from sales and more in the direction of how we get a handle on proliferation. They say, well, if we don't sell, the British will sell. I thought we were a leader in the world. If we are a leader in the world, why don't we break some knuckles and force some people to understand the consequences of selling high technology items to the enemy. I would hope that you would consider that. Maybe you might comment, Mr. Augustine, about the proliferation argument, profits, and what we can do to march together in the world.
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    Technology, Mr. Young, may be—I know about the tremendous poverty that we see around the world. But the Internet may offer us a great opportunity for the American citizen to be able to communicate with citizens around the world so they can get a better sense of what we are all about. Maybe we need to undertake a citizen to citizen movement. Because I was just amazed at that New York Times article two or three months ago that said now that we have conquered the world, the world hates us. They look at our stealth technology which scares us. Perhaps we need to link American citizens as much as we can with our citizens, but yet at the same time if America would just spend the few dollars in Africa, think of the tremendous good will and impact that we could make with such small investment. Maybe you could comment on those targets of opportunity for the United States to leverage small investments for huge rewards.

    Then, finally, I think Neil Abercrombie touched on something that makes a lot of sense in the area of culture. I just wrote down here ''fundamentalism''. We don't seem to understand in Turkey we connected ourself with the KLA, which was the staging point for bin Laden, who I still don't think we understand. In Afghanistan we never began to understand the fundamentalists that drove that country. In Indonesia we are only beginning to understand Moslems and Timorese Christians. In Algeria I don't think that I need to tell you the tremendous pressure between the government in power and the movements internally that threaten to overthrow that government and our actions. But how are we ever supposed to operate in the world when we do not understand the cultures of the peoples involved? Maybe, Senator Rudman and Senator Hart, you can comment on how we can, in fact, establish some sort of center of cultural understanding, just the connection to the KLA.

    Finally, Mr. Augustine, you talk about the world resenting us. I just was amazed every night to watch the damage assessment reports from the Pentagon in Kosovo. There was a large element of arrogance attached to the way in which we discussed it. We are going to have to learn how to deal with the way in which we handle our military activities in a way that perhaps demonstrate a commitment to ideas rather than a report to the New York Times and the Congress. If you could talk just a bit about, Ambassador, about our ability to leverage; Gary, maybe a little bit about jointness and some proliferation issues from Mr. Augustine, and maybe a little bit about this cultural side of things. It might be helpful.
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    Ambassador YOUNG. Let me just very quickly say that I think we have the resources within this country. We have not always focussed on them, but when we look at where our policies have worked and defended our interests, they have included in addition to the military, the universities, the religious community, and also the immigrants from those areas. I keep going back to the Olympics, but when we were trying to figure out what was going on, how we were going to get to know the people from all over the world, 85 countries that were voting, we found somebody in Atlanta that could speak every language and that essentially briefed us. We don't always do that officially. I remember once going to the White House for a briefing on Somalia and then getting into a cab with a Somali cab driver. I frankly got a better briefing from him.

    Senator RUDMAN. Let me try to briefly answer your question. Obviously, people within the intelligence community have been telling us for a long time that one of their shortcomings were languages. There have been efforts made by the Congress to help those agencies improve their language skills. But I think it goes far beyond that. You all have to decide how to allocate resources. But if you want to understand cultures better, I don't think that the way that you do it is by reducing the number of consulates in the world. You look at the reduction in State Department—I am speaking personally now because you didn't ask me a question that this commission could answer, but I can't resist the opportunity. I am fairly well-known for being a bit of a skin flint with spending money. The chairman of the Budget Committee and I used to talk about that a lot. I would like to think that I inspired him a little and he did do just that. But the fact is that when you start cutting consulates and cutting people on the ground in all of these places all over the world and you expect to understand more about their culture or to know ahead of time what might happen there, I don't think that it is going to happen unless you have some new way to do it. I, frankly, think that we don't put enough money into some of the places that would pay the greatest dividends.
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    Mr. AUGUSTINE. You asked that I address the subject of military sales and I will do so and try to be very brief because it is obviously a topic that one could spend a good deal of time on. I think the most important thing that I would have to offer is that military sales, sales of military equipment, is a matter of national policy. It is an issue of national policy. It is not an issue of business or commerce or profit. Decisions on what should be sold to whom and when, in my judgment, are totally the province, and should be, of the Nation's elected officials and not issues for business people to deal with. Having said that, there are clearly benefits to sales of certain equipment to our allies, our NATO allies being a classic example. You are very familiar with those benefits. I won't elaborate them.

    At the same time there are great liabilities of selling military equipment and militarily-related equipment to our adversaries and, as you said, to the enemy. I think firms or individuals who trade with the enemy should come under the most severe penalties.

    Senator HART. On the issue of jointness, we will always have distinctive services. The Navy sails its ships, the Air Force flies its planes, so on and so forth. I do take note again historically that the National Security Act of 1947 established the United States Air Force. If we use that as a template, it is not inconceivable that we can recommend the establishment if not of a new service, at least some new hybrid forces that don't look like anything that we have today or look like an extrapolation of some things that are emerging through the jointness process.

    If we are living in a century, if we are entering a century of rapid change and the need for rapid response, we will have to forego some of the luxury of military bureaucracy that we have had in the past where services fight it out, they spend a lot of time fighting out whose job it is to respond and who gets the credit or who gets the resources. So if we do become an anticipatory society, what we have to do is think about the biological threat, the chemical threat, the nuclear threat, particularly on our homeland and have prepared ahead of time ways of responding quickly. Not only to contain the damage, but to help the population that has been affected, to rebuild the infrastructure, to bring back the morale that Andy Young has talked about. I think we shouldn't wait until that happens. I think the challenge for all of you and all of us is to not think about the worst possible thing, but in degrees of probability, what might happen and get our national security structures—intelligence, armed services, and all of the rest—to begin to anticipate how to respond, as I said earlier, to bring in the Reserve, the Guard and Reserve, the domestic homeland forces. General Boyd has pointed out that in Goldwater-Nichols I did achieve or did focus upon jointness at the service chief level. It is not out of the question that we will recommend something like a Goldwater-Nichols II with an interagency type of jointness or even, as I said, new hybrid forces the likes of which we haven't seen before.
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    Mr. SKELTON. If the gentleman would yield, I was going to mention the two Congressional efforts involving jointness. One was the one that the Senator just mentioned, Goldwater-Nichols which, as you know, has as a requirement for advanced rank, the joint experience. The second is a panel of this committee back in 1988 on military education which established two phases of jointness and education, phase one at the intermediate level, Command General Staff College, and the other is down in Norfolk, Virginia, the Armed Services Staff College. I think it is an area that has received within the military a great deal of attention and maybe we don't talk about here in this committee as much as we should, but I think from the vantage of a couple of years being here, we have made great strides in those two areas.

    Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, if you would at least have a conversation with Admiral Owens about his view on jointness, I think it would be helpful. But Ambassador Young, let me just tell you I was Saturday—Sunday night at the wedding of my great friend, the former chairman of this committee, Ron Dellums, who is now engaged in an effort to try to fight AIDS in Africa. They got commitments from some pharmaceutical firms that are pretty staggering. Think if the United States could invest a few dollars in purely a humanitarian effort. When they see those stealth bombers floating, maybe the neighbors will say, we may not like what the United States is doing, but as a result of their efforts, private and governmental, they saved my kid.

    Maybe you ought to think about that in your report, the more an effort to talk about this whole foreign aid, State Department, Department of Defense effort to spread good will in some very meaningful ways to simple folks around the world.

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    The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

    Let me just say, gentlemen, I appreciate what all of you are doing. I think when the next two phases are concluded, you will have rendered a very great service to your country.

    What worries me is that these things that you talk about, these threats could happen in the meantime. They aren't necessarily 25 years away. What concerns me is the American people aren't engaged on this. On the list of things at the top, we are not even in the top ten of concerns that the American people have right now. They can't conceive of these kinds of threats being a reality. That is what concerns me.

    I hope and pray that they won't happen before your report is concluded and you will be able to influence people in the meantime that there is a real grave concern about these things.

    Senator RUDMAN. Mr. Chairman, if I may, and you have just reminded me of something that General Boyd reminded me of earlier that I should do, we are tying to get people to understand the issue. We do have a website which I will give you some statistics on. To me it was startling. I asked them to tell me again. I thought they made a mistake.

    The website is www.nssg.gov. It received 1.5 million inquiries in the first 10 days of the publication, of which 15,000 were actual downloading of the 150-page report. Now, how many of those were in China, I don't know. How many in the United States, I don't know. But I expect that the overwhelming majority of the United States, a lot of academic interest. But one and a half million hits and 15,000 downloads, at least, Mr. Chairman, somebody is paying attention although we fully agree not enough.
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    The CHAIRMAN. Yes, Mr. Bateman.

    Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for indulging me. Something that we haven't spoken of specifically today but you are going to be forced to look at, people like Congressman Skelton and I have been saying for the past several years that the authorized end strength of our Armed Services is deficient for them to perform the missions to which they have been assigned. Yet, we having been saying that for the last two or three years, we now find ourselves, through the combination of retention performance and recruiting, to where we can't sustain the presently authorized end strength. Now, as you look at the restructuring and the modernization and the technology, maybe you will find ways that you can do without people and still perform all of these missions. But believe me, you are going to have to look at the personnel equation and how do we sustain the number of people that the strategy that you determine is important and essential is going to be implemented by people of talent and in sufficient number. I wish you well in looking at that.

    The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. I would continue on with what I was on.

    For instance, most people don't realize in this country today when I asked our military leadership what kind of risk we run in this world in trying to defend against potential threats that we have, there used to be moderate to high risk. Now it is been upgraded I understand to high risk. People don't understand what that means.

    For instance, we lost at Pearl Harbor a couple of thousand casualties. We are thinking in terms of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. That is what high risk means. Most people don't understand it. I guess maybe they think it is just too inconceivable to think of that happening and so I don't want to think about it. We don't want to think about it. Your job is to try to help us to get people to think about these things because they are out there. And it could happen, as I said, not 25 years, it could happen this next moment. And we are not prepared to defend against them. We are not prepared and people don't understand that.
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    Bless your hearts, God bless you, I hope that you can convince people enough of the seriousness of the situation. Thank you again for what you are doing.

    Senator HART. Mr. Chairman, thank you and thank the members.

    The CHAIRMAN. The committee is adjourned.

    [Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]