The Center for Defense Information
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| September 28, 2000 |
| September 28, 2000 |
Of Presidential Endorsements -- An Opinion
Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.), Chief of Research, dsmith@cdi.org
With national security seemingly absent from the top campaign issues, Americans may be forgiven if they skipped over the minor media blip about 93 veterans and pro-military pundits who endorsed the Bush-Cheney ticket in late September. After all, defense in this campaign doesn't seem to hold the public's attention like it did ten years ago before the world turned upside down.
But the public should pay attention, for numbered among those 93 are a fair sprinkling of very senior, recently and not-so-recently retired officers.
So what? Once a military person leaves the force through resignation or retirement, there is no legal or institutional bar to speaking out on issues. That is what these retired officers have done -- simply stated their preference for the next president and vice president and said why they made their choice.
But is it so simple?
The answer must be "no," for when it comes to the military, the profession of arms occupies a very unique niche among the many associations and professional organizations in the nation.
The proof of this is readily at hand. Since 1983 the Gallup Organization annually has asked the public in what American institution they have the most confidence. For the first three years church/religion was the choice of most ("great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence). In 1986 the military assumed the top rating, and except for 1987 when church/religion tied for first, the profession of arms has occupied the number one position without a break. Even the end of the Cold War seems to have made little difference: throughout the 1980s and 1990s the public's confidence rating never dropped below 60%, usually falling between 63-68% (it was 85% right after the Gulf War victory). In the June 2000 poll, the military's 64% was a full 8 percentage points over the next category.
In this age of 24 hour news, particularly in the aftermath of "splendid little wars," top ranking military officers quite readily become both role models and celebrities in their own right. This is an unsettling trend in a democracy where the rule is civilian control of the military. It is even more unsettling when the civilians charged with overseeing national security lack personal military experience or even empathy for the conditions of military life. In such circumstances, the role of senior military officers to provide advice to their civilian superiors can too easily become advocacy.
Moreover, in our modern era shedding the uniform does not automatically mean shedding the celebrity status that may have been acquired with it. (In some cases, retired officers actually assume celebrity status because news outlets themselves have a dearth of reporters who have any first-hand knowledge of military affairs.) While the public might be interested in what a well known retired officer thinks about military policy and programs -- and be interested in which candidate is favored as the next commander-in-chief -- the views and endorsement will be taken and evaluated as those of a knowledgeable American who has every right, even a duty, to speak.
But when a group of retired "celebrity" officers band together for the expressed purpose of making a highly-publicized political endorsement, the equation changes to the detriment of the serving military and the institution of the armed forces in a democracy.
The public, when it pays attention to endorsements by professional groups -- doctors, dentists, lawyers, trade unions, police, etc. -- assumes that the group's endorsement embodies a significant degree of self-interest for the members of that organization. Such endorsements are thus received with some reservations about their objectivity in terms of declarations of supporting good public policy.
The danger that surfaces when a high-profile endorsement is made by a group of equally high-profile retired officers is that the retirees may be seen as a stalking horse for the serving military which is supposedly apolitical as an institution. Should this appearance of political institutional advocacy ever take root, it would breach psychological and constitutional barriers as fundamental to our democracy as the separation of church and state. Inevitably the armed forces would find themselves significantly lowered in the public's esteem -- and eventually in the level of public and even congressional support.
As if to reinforce the point, by happenstance the McCormick Tribune Foundation released the results of its August 1999 Cantigny Conference on The Military and the Media: Public Perceptions. This meeting brought together one and two star officers and media representatives to discuss perceptions of each other and the public's perceptions of the two institutions as reflected in another Gallup poll.
At first glance the public poll revealed an apparent contradiction. Forty-three percent of the public believes it is not getting "adequate information to make informed judgements about military and national security matters." Yet on specific topics such as terrorism, casualties, readiness, physical (war) damage, military quality of life, and sexual misconduct "less than half said they want to know" about these while more than 50% said they had a "right to know" except on the last issue.
What this poll data suggests is that the absence of information has led to a lack of interest among the public in the military as an institution. This lack of interest easily slides into a failure to discriminate between those whose active status restricts them to advice and those whose retired status frees them to advocate. Thus, once again, group advocacy becomes a form of self-serving "information" that undermines the democratic tradition of an apolitical military institution.
The military says it wants the public to pay attention to its role and its requirements. Fair enough, and necessary. But the Pentagon should not be placed in the position of being possibly relegated in the eyes of the public to simply another special interest group. Unlike the "wrong" candidate getting into the White House, that would be a real blow to our democracy.
Canada Hosts Conference on War-Affected Children
Rachel Stohl, Senior Analyst, rstohl@cdi.org
From September 10-17, the Government of Canada hosted an International Conference on War-Affected Children in Winnipeg, Canada. The conference was intended to develop a framework for action on behalf of children worldwide. Significantly, the conference marked the first time that youth were treated as equal partners with governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other political actors. Approximately 50 youth participated in the conference, expressing their concerns about priorities and providing recommendations for future advocacy and policies.
Because war impacts all aspects of a child's life and society's ability to provide necessary stable supporting structures and services, the conference agenda was diverse. Topics included small arms, child soldiers, HIV/AIDS and other health concerns, education, refugees, accountability, and impunity from justice. In order to conduct discussions effectively, the conference was organized into different sessions. For two days, the youth met alone to discuss their experiences and solidify recommendations. NGOs conducted a day-long meeting to coordinate an action plan. For three days experts on war-affected children, including the youth and NGO participants, met to develop a framework for future action. The last two days of the conference were a ministerial-level meeting to which approximately 135 governments sent representatives, including 50 Foreign Ministers, to develop an agenda for action. An estimated twenty expert delegates were invited to the ministerial-level meeting.
Officially, the conference produced two documents: a summary by the Chairs of the Experts' Meeting and an Agenda for Action from the ministerial-level meeting. Both documents will be used as the background and framework for discussions at the UN Special Session on Children in September 2001. The NGOs also presented a program of action for NGOs, governments, donors, aid agencies, and international organizations that was far more aggressive in its agenda than the official conference documents.
The Summary by the Chairs of the Experts' Meeting is a framework of commitments to war-affected children. The summary contains seven major and immediate priorities including: the entry into force of the International Criminal Court Statute, universal ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the child on the involvement of children in conflict by the Special Session on Children in September 2001, the development of an effective international monitoring network to ensure systematic reporting on child rights abuses in all conflict-affected and conflict-prone countries and to ensure that follow-up actions are taken urgently and responsibly, and the commissioning of a study on the impact of small arms on children to be done by the International Conference on Small Arms in 2001 with prescriptions for concerted follow-up action.
The Agenda for Action on War-Affected Children included fourteen points that governments identified as priorities for action. Even though this document was non-binding and was not a treaty in any sense of the word, the end result was extremely weak and non-specific. Rather than challenging states to move further, the Agenda for Action is a benign description of general areas of concern. While certainly the subjects contained within these fourteen points (e.g., suffocating the supply of small arms, increasing accountability, ending impunity, ending the targeting of children) are on point, the content of the Agenda does not mandate or even encourage specific actions in defined time periods. As a result, the Agenda for Action remains another example of governments placing domestic and international political considerations ahead of the welfare of children.
During the ministerial-level conference, several governments committed of resources and enunciated policies that would assist war-affected children. The Canadian government committed over $30 million for aid programs, including support for a youth network and NGO network. Among other financial commitments, the United States pledged $1 million per year for four years to the International Committee of the Red Cross for programs to assist women and girls in conflict.
While the United States did allocate financial resources to help address war-affected children, it nonetheless remains an obstacle to initiatives that could yield concrete results quickly. The United States is the only country in the world, other than Somalia, that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the primary treaty involving the rights of children. Further, the United States remains opposed to the International Criminal Court, the intended forum for prosecuting those who abuse the rights of children. The United States also has not yet ratified the Optional Protocol to the CRC which establishes 18 as the minimum age for participation in armed conflict. Providing resources for children is necessary and laudable, but until the United States accedes to the treaties that protect children, commitment to the welfare of the world's children will be little more than pro forma.
On close examination, the entire international community's failings are obvious. Although there are treaties protecting civilians and children during war, the implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of these agreements remains dismal. Too often governments and opposition groups in conflict both ignore their international obligations and act with impunity, often targeting children specifically because of their vulnerability, violating their human rights. Real solutions to the problems caused by war will not be solved with rhetoric but with honest and real commitments. In the year leading up to the UN Special Session on Children in September 2001, the international community has an opportunity to make up for past failures. For the sake of the world's children, this chance cannot be sacrificed by international politics or other, more "pressing" agendas.
For more information on the International Conference on War-Affected Children, visit the conference's official website.
Service Chiefs Call for Additional Pentagon Spending Increases
Christopher Hellman, Senior Analyst, chellman@cdi.org
As they have for the past several years, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) appeared before Congress this week to share their views about the state of the U.S. military and the adequacy of projected Pentagon budgets to ensure the continued readiness of the armed forces. General Henry Shelton, Chairman of the JCS, along with his colleagues, gave an overview of current readiness of U.S. forces and made specific comments about each of the individual services.
Since 1998 Congress has asked the JCS to come up to Capitol Hill and give a frank assessment of the state of U.S. troop readiness. As Senator John Warner (R-VA), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, put it, "You are the most impartial, non-political source of this information...You're the trustees...for everyone who proudly wears the uniform of the services."
In his prepared remarks, General Shelton stated that the "first to fight" units -- those which would be deployed immediately in a crisis that required a major military response -- are at prescribed readiness levels and are sufficient to meet even the "most demanding scenario" of U.S. military strategy -- fighting and winning two nearly simultaneous Major Theater Wars (MTWs). The General went on to say, however, that while the United States could fight the first MTW with "moderate" risk, the "low readiness rates of later deploying forces, combined with capability shortfalls in our strategic lift and other critical support forces, results in a higher risk for the second MTW."
In opening his remarks, General Shelton acknowledged that assessing the readiness of U.S. forces is not a straightforward task. In order to address the readiness issue, "we must first ask the question, 'Ready for what?'" The answer the Pentagon arrives at continues to focus on fulfilling the two MTW requirement.
According to a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), current levels of military spending are insufficient to support the force structure needed for the two MTW requirement. CBO estimates it will cost an average of $340 billion annually -- roughly $50 billion above present levels -- to keep U.S. forces at their present size, modernize their equipment, and maintain current readiness levels. With this information in hand, the JCS informed Congress that they need an annual increase of between $48 billion and $58 billion to maintain the current force and ensure future readiness.
In introducing its findings, CBO emphasizes that when estimating the size of the Pentagon budget three factors need to be considered: first, whether the U.S. national security strategy is appropriate to respond to likely threats to U.S. security; second, whether DoD's military forces and modernization programs support this strategy; and third, whether the proposed budget is sufficient to maintain those forces and carry out these programs?
The report focused only on the last of these three questions, as it relates to the current force structure. Yet it is really the first two issues -- whether the U.S. national security strategy is appropriate and the force structure the correct one to support it -- that are the critical ones. CBO recognizes this point, warning that without the comprehensive review necessitated by the first two issues "the appropriate level of budgetary support for national defense cannot be determined."
General Shelton fails to take these factors into account when he attempts to answer the "ready for what" question. General Eric Shinseki, the Army's Chief of Staff, in his statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, alludes to the potential repercussions that this failure has for correctly answering this question. Said General Shinseki, "We all know that the Cold War ended and we keep saying that the Cold War is over...but as we look around we continue to live with vestiges of that 40-year legacy, and perhaps most visibly in the way we describe our readiness today."
Pressure Growing to Lift Iraq Sanctions -- Pressure is mounting to lift, or at least ease, the U.N. economic sanctions on Iraq, with France and Russia leading the effort. In the last week both nations have sent civilian aircraft to Bagdad with out prior permission from the U.N. Sanctions Committee. Meanwhile, Syria added its voice to calls to lift the sanctions after a visit to Damascus by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Both the visit and Syria's statement are viewed as examples of the recent warming of relations between the neighboring countries after years of hostility.
Bush Sees TacAir Modernization Program as Excessive -- According to Richard Armitage, an advisor to Governor George W. Bush, if elected, the Republican presidential nominee will look at the current Pentagon plan to purchase roughly 3,000 tactical fighter aircraft. While the Governor hasn't decided what reductions are called for, according to Mr. Armitage "he's noted that the 3,000 number seems to be a bit much."
Navy Reverses Position on Foreign Ship Purchases -- According to the Washington Times, the Pentagon recently drafted a proposal that would permit the U.S. Navy to purchase foreign-built combat support ships, contrary to current U.S. policy. The proposal received strong opposition from the U.S. shipbuilding industry. So much so that on September 26, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, said that the idea had "emphatically not" been endorsed by Defense Secretary Cohen. "People in [the Pentagon] com up with ideas all the time," said Adm. Quigley, "but in this case, there is no intention to move that forward."
CWC Update -- According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), as of August 1, 2000, 135 countries are States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and 98 of these have ratified the CWC. There are 21 states who are non-signatories. The United States ratified the CWC on April 25, 1997.
Quotation of the Week -- "You know, here children start firing guns when they are 12 years old. So every Chechen is a danger. The only way to end this is to kill them all." Boris M., a Russian soldier in Chechnya. From the Washington Post, 9/21/00.
This week on America's Defense Monitor: "Isolating America"
Is America becoming increasingly isolationist? The Congress has rejected treaties on landmines, a court for war crimes, and will not pay U.S. dues to the United Nations. The public is right to ask whether major increases in military spending for programs like ballistic missile defense and hi-tech fighter planes are a better investment in the long run than fostering regional peace initiatives, helping our former enemies become democratic friends, and using diplomacy to help prevent conflicts.
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NOW AVAILABLE! CDI's Issue Brief "National Missile Defense: What Does It
All Mean?"
As the debate in the United States on the planned deployment of the national missile defense (NMD) system heats up, the Center for Defense Information (CDI) has released a timely Issue Brief, "National Missile Defense: What Does It All Mean?" on this important national security issue.
The Issue Brief is designed to offer unbiased, in-depth, and up-to-date information on all aspects of the NMD debate to citizens, educators and decision-makers nationwide. Missile defense has gained additional prominence as one of the most divisive and defining issues in this year's presidential campaign. The 56 page document includes the following:
In addition to the print version, CDI is preparing a web site with further information on the National Missile Defense program. Each section in the print version will be updated on the web, on an as-needed basis, to keep the document current.
Readers of the Issue Brief will further benefit from access to the latest CDI documentary on missile defense, "Star Wars: New Hope or Phantom Menace?" This thirty-minute film contains interviews and testimonies by the nation's foremost experts on missile defense. A transcript of the film is available on the Web.
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