The Center for Defense Information
Center for Defense Information
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| October 1, 1998 |
| October 1, 1998 |
Congress Adopts Defense Funding Bill
Center for Defense Information
Senior Research Analyst Chris Hellman
chellman@cdi.org
This week the House and Senate both adopted the Fiscal Year 1999 Defense Appropriations Act, the largest of the three Pentagon funding bills that Congress must enact each year. The bill provides $250.5 billion for FY'99. Congress has already approved the $8.5 billion Military Construction Appropriations bill but has yet to complete work on the Energy and Water funding bill, which includes about $11 billion for the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons programs.
The final version of the Pentagon funding bill was about $450 million below the Clinton Administration's original request. It does not, however, include the nearly $2 billion that the Pentagon has requested to fund continued U.S. military operations in Bosnia over the coming year. Congress is planning on including this money in a special supplemental appropriations bill which it will very likely pass before its tentative adjournment date of October 9.
The legislation does fund most major programs at the levels requested by the Pentagon. Highlights include:
Air Force -- $771 million for long-lead procurement of two F-22 fighters, $14 million below the request; $30 million for an unrequested F-16C/D fighter; and $2.6 billion for 13 C-17 transports.
Navy/Marines -- $2.8 billion for 30 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters; fully funded the $638.8 million request for an LPD-17 assault ship; $1.5 billion for one New Attack Submarine -- now officially known as the "Virginia" class; $2.7 billion for three DDG-51 destroyers; and $611 million for seven V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.
Army -- $272 million for purchase of 29 UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, seven more than requested; $368 million for development of the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, the amount requested; $357 million for upgrades to the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, $71 million more than the request; and the requested $682 million for upgrades for the M1A2 tank.
Ballistic Missile Defense -- Total BMD funding was $3.5 billion, including $951 million for National Missile Defense, as requested; $310 million for the Navy Theater-Wide system, a $120 million increase, $267 million for the Air Force's Airborne Laser system, $25 million less than requested; and $445 million for the Army's Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system, a $376 million cut which reflects the growing concerns about the troubled program.
And while the 1997 Balanced Budget Act kept Congress from making significant increases to the Pentagon budget as in past years, members were able to fund a large number of programs not requested by the Administration. Major add-ons include $465 million for seven C-130 aircraft and a $45 million down payment on a $1.5 billion LHD-8 assault ship. In fact, CDI has identified over $1.5 billion in funding included by Congress that was not requested by the military.
For CDI's complete list of unrequested programs which received funding in the Fiscal Year 1999 Appropriations Act, visit: http://www.cdi.org/issues/add-ons99.html
The Great Terrorism Scare
Center for Defense Information
Chief of Research Colonel Dan Smith, USA (Ret.)
dsmith@cdi.org
On September 9 Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) introduced legislation establishing a "National Commission on Terrorism." Eight days later the Commission was approved as part of the House Foreign Operations Appropriations Act of 1999.
The purpose of this 15-person panel is "to take a close look at the problem of terrorism, including Middle East-related terrorism, to study its origins and develop effective countermeasures and make recommendations to reshape our traditional policy on combating terrorism." The Commission will have six months to do its job.
In introducing his legislation, Mr. Wolf said that "terrorism has become an awful fact of life" and "terrorism is growing." He further observed that "our military, industrial and commercial presence around the globe attracts frustration from many terrorist groups." Then he warned that "America, and the world, must be prepared for new and more deadly kinds of terrorism -- nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons of mass destruction."
This recitation sounds ominous. And in the wake of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, plus the highly publicized campaign to train "first responders" in the event of a nuclear, chemical, or biological terrorist incident in a U.S. city, the average American might well be alarmed.
But the statistics tell a different story.
The Department of State's annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report for 1997 (published in April 1998) notes that the 304 acts of international terrorism worldwide, while an increase of eight over the 1996 figure, represents "one of the lowest annual totals recorded since 1971." Indeed, since 1989, only once (1991) has the number of international terrorist incidents exceeded 450. The report also notes that "more than one third of the attacks in 1997 occurred in Colombia," with 90 of these directed against multinational oil pipelines which Colombian terrorists regard as U.S. targets.
Mr. Wolf's specific mention of the Middle East in connection with terrorism suggests that this is the center of world terrorism or the wellspring for incidents carried out in other parts of the world. But this inference is questionable.
Just as terrorism is a world wide phenomenon, so too are its causes. Most often it involves ethnic or other essentially intrastate quarrels. For example, the State Department attributes the majority of terrorist acts that occurred in Europe in 1996 to be low level harassment of Turkish businesses by Kurdish factions opposed to Turkey's rule in the Kurdish "homelands." Another significant contributor to the number of incidents in Europe in 1996 was the Irish Republican Army which has been fighting both the British government and Northern Irish Unionists for decades. Furthermore, in 1997 Latin America had more than three times the number of terrorists incidents than occurred in the Middle East, and of these only two seemed in any manner to be connected to Middle East groups or issues.
In terms of casualties, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing catapulted North America well ahead of the Middle East for that year -- 1,006 versus 178. Latin America registered more casualties in 1994 , and using the same measure, in 1995 and 1996 Asia far outstripped the Middle East with 5,639 versus 445 and 1,507 versus 837, respectively.
Similarly, the specter of a terrorist nuclear, chemical, or biological attack resulting in massive casualties seems exaggerated. Eihud Sprinzak, Professor of Politics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace, believes that "a massive terrorist attack with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons is [not only] hardly inevitable it is not even likely." He categorizes "superterrorists" -- those who might use these deadly substances to inflict mass casualties -- as either religious millenarians who typically "turn on themselves" and not the public; brutalized groups "reacting to genocide or imminent destruction"; or small cells and "socially deranged groups that despise society and miscalculate" the effects of their actions. Mr. Sprinzak warns that "the level of rhetoric and funding devoted to fighting superterrorism may actually advance a potential superterrorist's broader goals: sapping the resources of the state and creating a climate of panic."
A September 1997 General Accounting Office report says that there are over 40 federal agencies already involved in the fight against terrorism. With some $7 billion going into anti-terrorist initiatives, this arena is becoming the latest cash cow for federal agencies. The White House itself is deeply involved. The sole theme of President Clinton's September 21 address to the United Nations General Assembly was terrorism. Yet, as another GAO report issued earlier this year states, "no analytically sound assessment process, such as threat and risk assessment, "has been made to pinpoint "needs or to establish a roadmap or defined end state of preparedness."
Mr. Wolf's National Commission on Terrorism doesn't need to investigate the causes of terrorist activities directed against Americans. The Congressman has already listed them: our extensive military, industrial, and commercial presence around the world -- to which might be added our cultural dominance. The real issue is not the capabilities of terrorists but their psychology and motivation, both of which are driven by political objectives that can be identified with relative ease. Not so easy is finding the right tools to deal with the root causes of terror. But we have learned one thing: the root causes cannot be dealt with by military means.
A Commission on Terrorism can perform a real service if it can put the whole problem into perspective. The Commission needs to take a hard look at the nature and extent of the terrorist threat and then make some sense of the current sprawling structure of federal and state agencies preparing (or prepared) to respond to incidents when they occur. That would be real progress indeed.
U.S. Arms Policy in Africa: Madeline Albright speaks to the Security
Council’s Africa Ministerial
Center for Defense Information
Research Analyst Rachel Stohl
rstohl@cdi.org
"The trading of arms is disgusting and contributes to horrors around the
world."
Madeline Albright
New York Times Magazine
September 22, 1996
Almost exactly two years later, on September 24, 1998, Secretary of State Madeline Albright delivered a speech to the UN Security Council Ministerial on Africa. Sadly, although there were some successes for Albright to commend, the global arms trade continues to leave victims in its wake. At the UN, Albright’s remarks reflected a focus on small arms and light weapons, outlining new proposals for transparency and control of these deadly arms.
Albright began her speech by recognizing that progress has been made in several African countries that had been ravaged by conflict for several years. However, Albright emphasized that there was still much work to be done and that several countries, such as Angola and Congo, are on a dangerous path to renewed violence and war. "From the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and from Africa’s western coast to its southern highlands, countries which had begun to recover from strife are being swept back into it; societies which were beginning to rebuild are seeing their labors lost; and governments which had moved toward democracy are retreating into tyranny," said Albright.
Realizing that advances in Africa to end civil wars and reduce violence were the responsibility not only of the affected individual countries but also of UN Member States, Albright praised those efforts attempting to reduce the proliferation of small arms and light weapons throughout the region. The working group led by Japan has correctly singled out an area where the international community could quickly make a great deal of difference: the uncontrolled flow of arms, ammunition and explosives into Africa’s tensest areas. "This dirty business fuels conflict, fortifies extremism, and destabilizes entire regions," Albright remarked.
Albright specifically mentioned the role of weapons supplier nations in solving the problems of Africa. "All of us whose nations sell such weapons, or through whose nations the traffic flows, bear some responsibility for turning a blind eye to the destruction they cause. And all of us have it in our power to do something in response," Albright said. In terms of a U.S. response, Albright suggested nine policy prescriptions for Africa in her speech.
1. Commit to full and timely disclosure of all arms shipments into regions of conflict.
2. Seek to build international support over the next six months for a voluntary moratorium on arms sales that could fuel interconnected conflicts.
3. Encourage governments and international and non-governmental organizations to meet to exchange information on regional arms transfers and explore future steps to deal with these weapons.
4. Urge UN Member States with relevant expertise to prepare programs strengthening the capacity of African governments to monitor and interdict arms flows.
5. Develop a clearinghouse for technical information and for rapid exchange of data on possible violations within the UN system.
6. Encourage Member States that do not have national legislation enforcing sanctions and penalizing violations to strive to enact such legislation.
7. Complete, by the year 2000, talks and negotiations under UN auspices on a convention based on the OAS Convention on Illicit Weapons Trafficking.
8. Establish a target date of 2000 to restrict the export of shoulder-fired missiles.
9. Establish an international center to collect and share information on arms transfers.
Albright’s comments were especially noteworthy because it was the first time such recommendations had been made in a comprehensive package in an international forum. The U.S. government has recently begun to recognize the growing problems small arms and light weapons have caused and are looking at ways they can participate in the growing movement to control these weapons. The Administration has even begun a series of informal meetings with members of non-governmental organizations to increase the dialogue on the small arms issue.
As such, Albright’s recommendations for policies that can be undertaken by the United States and other UN Member States are welcome. However, several of the points lack specificity and allow for ambiguity in discussing viable policy solutions. As the number one arms supplier in the world, the U.S. has a large role to play and should be a leader in developing policy options for dealing with small arms.
The U.S. government must carefully establish a plan of action and a way forward for dealing with the massive proliferation and violent use of these weapons. In relying on lofty pronouncements and not providing specific tactics to "do something in response" to the destruction these weapons cause, the U.S. finds itself lagging behind the rest of the world in clearly defining its role in the building momentum to grapple with the problems presented by small arms. The U.S. government must focus on the legal trade in small arms and begin to implement policies that reflect U.S. accountability for its role in contributing to deadly conflicts around the world.