Washington

Every once in a while the heady feeling comes over Washington that it is participating in an event of epic and historic proportions. Thus it was this year, in the battle between a significant proportion—compared with the way it had always been— of the Congress and the Administration over the issue of military spending. The journalistic truisms are that it was a “historic debate”; that “never again will the Pentagon’s requests go unquestioned.” And the participants in the attack fairly unanimously believe that they accomplished quite a lot and that the future is with them. Com pared with their announced goals of defeating the antiballistic-missile system and cutting $10 billion from the Pentagon budget. their hard achievements were minuscule. Therefore, given the logic and validity of the position that the defense budget is out of proportion, the questions are: What did happen? Why did not more happen? And what can happen next?

The sudden virulence of the antimilitary debate drew from a variety of sources. A number of domestic programs were underfunded, and the military budget, traditionally approved by Congress almost routinely, was an inviting target. The Pentagon’s budget had nearly doubled since the Democrats took office in 1961, reaching $81.1 billion as Lyndon Johnson departed for Texas. And some politicians were beginning to realize that an end to the Vietnam War would not necessarily bring about a significant reduction in the Pentagon’s share of the budget.

The new willingness to question the military was in part due to the fact that they were losing a war. That the ultimate responsibility was with the civilians who sent them into it was of little consequence, probably because so many politicians had concurred in that decision. The military had misled the civilians and the politicians, it was charged, and that was probably all of a piece with how much money they said they needed for national defense. The military were no longer presumed to be omniscient on military matters. Finally, there was the all-important matter of timing. All of these factors might not have counted so much if it had not also been true that the Nixon Administration’s slow pace, particularly at the beginning, meant that not much else was going on. And, as is often the case, the press and the politicians reinforced each other, spurring each other on. When, later in the year, the politicians’ interest in this “historic” issue flagged, so did that of the press.

The anti-militants

There were, in fact, two separable parts to the attack on the Pentagon tins year: one to reject the ABM, and one to pare the budget for other weapons systems. The near victory in the Senate for the opponents of the ABM, as compared with the relative ease with which amendments to cut out other weapons were defeated, is in itself instructive. The ABM was an unusual kind of issue, having to do with a new generation of nuclear weaponry and the delicate possibility of a nuclear agreement with the Soviet Union. More painstaking work was undertaken by its opponents. But even that was not quite enough. In part, the intensity of the anti-ABM sentiment was a fluke, provoked by good old American feelings about real estate as much as by concern about the danger of raising the level of the

balance of terror, or spending more billions for a weapons system of dubious efficacy. When various communities found that they had been selected lor missile sites (under the former Sentinel plan, before it was modified by the Nixon Administration into the Safeguard plan to protect missile sites instead of cities) , they vociferously declined the honor. It was then that the issue became one of major proportions. The halting of the Sentinel site construction by the Nixon Administration, and then the proffering of an ABM system with an entirely different rationale, including a change in the enemy it was supposed to defend us against (Russia in lieu of China) , raised more doubts whether its proponents knew what they were about.

No one worked harder to fan those doubts, or had more effect, than a collection of scientists all too familiar with the properties of nuclear power. The Council for a Livable World, a Washington organization of nuclear physicists and other scientists, helped to stir up the “no missile in the backyard” sentiment. Then, through a series of lunches and dinners, they proceeded to educate senators and their staff members about the workings and dangers of anti ballistic missilery.

This novelty of legislators sitting down to learn for themselves and make up their own minds about a difficult and arcane matter, and finding that after all they, too, could grasp it, was what set the ABM issue apart from previous defense questions and led to the unprecedented challenge to the Pentagon’s authority. Others, in particular former Democratic Administration officials, began to be called to Capitol Hill to explain to the lawmakers about other vulnerable parts of the defense budget, and even about what the politicians had been doing all those years when they had concurred in whatever the Pentagon and its friendly congressional committees said was needed. One senator who was there reports that when a former official pointed out to a group of senators that they had been equipping the Pentagon for the extremely unlikely task of fighting, simultaneously, an all-out, non-nuclear as well as nuclear war with Russia, and also one with China, and also a limited war somewhere else, even Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, long the Senate’s leading defense expert, was amazed.

The legislators were emboldened not only to question the wisdom of the Pentagon but also, and perhaps even more important, that of their own Armed Services Committees, whose militant lead they had, by congressional custom, habitually and willingly followed. During the McNamara years, it was the uniformed military and the Armed Services Committees of Congress against the Pentagon civilians. McNamara’s efforts to bar new weapons systems were attacked on Capitol Hill, and often overridden. By contrast, Secretary Laird was able to cancel some systems with impunity.

The challenge to the ABM, however, never would have come as close to success in the Senate had its leaders not been such respected members of the institution as John Sherman Cooper, Republican of Kentucky, and Philip Hart, Democrat of Michigan. The reluctance to challenge the committee system runs very deep, each senator knowing that there but for the grace goes his own present or future power. Nor would the challenge have come as near to its mark had it not been for the continuing work, the daily contacting and trading of information on the part of Cooper’s and Hart’s legislative assistants, William Miller and Muriel Ferris, and Edward Kennedy’s and Mike Mansfield’s assistants, Dun Gifford and charles Ferris, all working closely with Tom Halsted of the Council for a Livable World. An informal caucus of other senators’ aides, sometimes as many as forty, was convened and met frequently throughout the debate. The staff group discovered from the ABM issue that the information on weapons systems can be obtained—often through the clandestine help of sympathetic Pentagon informants—and understood. They then developed material for assaults on other Pentagon proposals. Though not unprecedented in concept, this was as extensive and cooperative a legislative effort as had been mounted in recent memory.

Yet it failed. The effort to block construction of the Safeguard system was defeated—by only one vote, to be sure, an unaccustomed show of strength on such an issue. After that, things fell apart. After two months of debate, opponents had r\cut only $190 million from the $20 billion bill. Amendments to limit, prevent, or postpone development or construction of a new manned bomber, a new nuclear aircraft carrier, the behemoth C-5A transport plane, a new Navy F-14 fighter to protect aircraft carriers were all rejected, despite serious questions as to their necessity or efficacy. Congress failed to force a halt in development of multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRV’s), pending a possible agreement with the Soviet Union to bar the weapon; the Administration’s negotiating position is let there be MIRV’s. The only amendments which carried were those which the defenders of the Pentagon, led by Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis, Democrat of Mississippi, were able to modify or reinterpret to their own purposes.

The more dismal record in the House of Representatives was expected. It is a more conservative body by inclination, and by habit not a place of serious debate. The House is big and unwieldy, and short of chaining the members to their chairs, it is difficult to keep them on hand for any length of time. The House is even less inclined than the Senate to challenge its committees, and in contrast to the Senate leaders, Speaker John McCormack stood four-square with Mendel Rivers, the Armed Services Committee chairman. It is a place where the flamboyant Rivers can still, by way of explaining the defense budget, cry out that “America is too young to die” and not get laughed out of the chamber. Whereas John Stennis, in an attempt to defang the Pentagon’s critics, had his committee cut almost $2 billion from the Administration’s requests, Rivers’ group added another billion for Congress’ pet service, the Navy, and another several million for a plane that even the Air Force does not want (only its manufacturer, Northrop, does) , and is not even to be used by the United States; it will be given away in a Lady Bountiful gesture to our less sophisticated “Free World allies.” All of the attempts on the House floor to reduce the amount of military spending in the bill were easily defeated. (At this writing, the military appropriation bill, as opposed to the authorizing legislation which generated the extensive debate, had still to be considered. But, barring major new developments, this second round was not expected to produce a major battle.)

Ego

There are varying reasons why the critics did not do better, all of them instructive. Some were tactical. The debate went on for too long in the Senate and covered too many subjects. Unaccustomed to the pressure of thinking through a difficult subject for themselves, and of having a lengthy debate intrude upon their schedules, the senators were weary of it at the end of the month-long consideration of the ABM. When, after the three-week August recess, they had to resume discussion of several more amendments on other weapons systems, they were anxious to get on to other things, or back to the office, or out to make a speech, and the Pentagon critics seemed pestiferous.

The more the critics pursued, the more soured the Senate atmosphere became. Having shown uncommon opposition to its Armed Services Committee on the ABM vote, the Senate now was anxious to return to its more accustomed and comfortable way of doing business. The recess gave the Pentagon and its allies time to regroup and reinforce their troops. The Navy worked so hard to defeat the amendment to postpone the new nuclear aircraft carrier that Senator Walter Mondale, sponsor of that anticarrier amendment, remarked, “The last time there were that many Navy people up here in the Capitol was when the British were burning the joint.” By seeming to be unselective, the senators who pursued the attack found themselves in the position of being portrayed as zealous disarmers, rather than protectors of the public purse. “Cutting the budget has an inchoate constituency,” said Mondale. “The Navy has a real one.”

Senators may be just people who happened to end up in the Senate instead of a factory or a boardroom or a law office, but once there they take themselves very seriously indeed. (There are few more pathetic sights in Washington than an exsenator.) The ego problem was insufficiently appreciated by some antiPentagon tacticians, and at various critical points they found that Senator X could not be persuaded to beseech Senator Y for his vote, or compromise an amendment to accommodate Senator Z.

Moreover, liberals seem congenitally incapable of sustained cooperation, and the work against the ABM exhausted their capacities for mutuality; after that, they resumed marching in different directions. There was no real leadership after the ABM vote. On occasion inexperienced or unpopular senators became the sponsors of the various amendments, often by default. There was little work done to persuade senators who might have been persuadable. And here, too, the outcome was affected by chance; the events on Chappaquiddick Island removed Edward Kennedy from a role as a continuing leader of the Pentagon’s opposition; tiie death of Senator Dirksen induced the gleam of leadership in the eyes of a good percentage of Senate Republicans, who tumbled over each other to conduct themselves as party regulars until the question of succession was settled.

But there were deeper reasons for the critics’ failure to do better, reasons that will be of more importance over the long term. The central problem was that there was no focus or conceptual framework to their position. They lost not least of all because they conducted the argument on the Pentagon’s terms. They took it weapon by weapon, asking. Will it work? Will it add to the nation’s defense? In the first case, the answer is unknowable until it is tried, which it usually won’t be. The military’s defenders are fond of arguing that the fact that a weapon hasn’t been used proves just how valuable it is. In the second case, the answer is invariably, to some degree, yes. The more profound issue is whether, after a certain point, any more national defense is worth the expense, but this is not the line of reasoning which politicians were ready to advance.

The attempt to defeat the ABM was almost successful in part because it got beyond the old arguments, but it didn’t get far enough. A great torrent of words was spent on what the enemy was doing, and whether ABM would work or not, an issue which only confused the public, if not the senators themselves. Perhaps it would work, and perhaps someone someday in the Kremlin would intend ill, or go mad. And in that case, perhaps the ABM would buy a slim margin of safety. The most fundamental argument against the ABM was that, given the limits of national resources, and given other needs, the money should not be spent on the ABM. Some of its opponents understood this, but apparently the time has not yet come for that sort of talk.

Melvin Laird has said that we should sacrifice “no option necessary to cope with the possible development of potential threats,” a concept which leaves limitless possibilities of spending for defense. The Joint Chiefs of Staff can always argue that a new ship buys more safety than an old one and a manned bomber buys more safety than no manned bomber and win the argument on those terms. And that is precisely what happened when the Senate took up the individual amendments on various weapons.

Sometimes they were even further off the mark. Senator William Proxmire’s main argument against the C-5A was that the contracting procedures were poor and had led to unconscionable cost overruns, and when the Pentagon announced that they would fix that, he had nothing left to say. At that point the issue became one of national defense, and the senators were, as always, for that. No amount of railing against the “military-industrial complex” will make it go away, for as long as the government buys arms, there will be one. Perfect contracting procedures and saintly contractors would not resolve the problem of how much it is in the national interest to buy.

Some men who were in the Pentagon under the Democrats are thinking along these lines, and urging that it is time to advance the terms of the debate. Paul Warnke, formerly an Assistant Secretary of Defense, suggests that “now it’s time to take another step and say ‘let’s decide what contingencies are most likely and most important and let’s prepare for that.’ The political leaders have to be willing to say to the American people we will be ‘less safe’ than before, and we will be. But that much safety is no longer a good buy.”Harold Brown, another former Pentagon official and now president of the California Institute of Technology, argues that “it has always been said that if we’re going to make a mistake, make a mistake on the side of safety. But you have to make a distinction between safety and excess. If you had to say one should always err on the side of excess, then it wouldn’t be said.”

A few of the congressional critics did begin to raise this sort of reasoning. Proxmire, as chairman of a joint economic subcommittee, did hold hearings on the relationships of military expenditures to other national needs, something the Armed Services Committees do not consider. George McGovern, in arguing against the new manned bomber, urged that “we should settle at the outset whether bombers have any meaningful role to play at all-Our tenure

as a viable democratic society,” he said, “depends as much upon our approach to these urgent [domestic] requirements as it does upon our ability to acquire more, new, and better weapons. We simply cannot afford to build systems which are unnecessary or unworkable. Before we decide to ‘err on the side ot strength,’ we must determine whether it is necessary to err at all.” Representative Otis Pike, like McGovern a man who raised questions about military spending before it became the fashion, and a dogged critic of the Pentagon, did speak in the House debate about the relevance of the choices made for defense to other things. “Our ships are old,” he agreed, in arguing against Rivers’ extra billion dollars for the Navy. “But there are ‘an awful lot of things in this country that are old. We have some old schools in this country. We have some old hospitals in this country, and we have some old highways in this country. We have air that smells old and water that is just as old. .. .”

Lid

Besides showing that outsiders could invite themselves into discussions of defense, causing the congressional committees to be slightly less magnanimous about the Pentagon’s requests, and spreading the awareness to the public that something was amiss, the Defense critics also take justifiable credit for the fact that the Nixon Administration itself made cuts first of $1.1 billion, and then of another $3 billion, in the defense spending planned for this year by President Johnson. Yet the way that the reductions were made shows what the critics are up against, and the limits on their power. First the $3 billion in cuts was evenly allocated among the services —$1 billion each for the Army, Navy, and Air Force; second, except for the cancellation of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, announced earlier in the year, none involved decisions to forgo new and expensive weapons. The Air Force reduced the number of training hours for pilots; the Army cut troop levels in anticipation of planned post-Vietnam reductions; the Navy retired old ships which it plans to replace.

All of this is of a piece with the new system of decision-making which Laird is installing at the Pentagon, one in which the Chiefs will have a far more important role than they did in the McNamara days. In one respect, the Laird system will make more sense. For political (“missile gap”) as well as strategic reasons, when the Democrats took over at the Pentagon, their instructions to the Chiefs were simply to report to the civilian leaders what weapons they needed, without qualification, to meet all of the commitments and contingencies which had been assumed during the cold war. Until then, the Eisenhower Administration had been holding down defense costs by relying on the threat of using the United States’s then nuclear superiority to keep the world in line, and with a predetermined ceiling on the Pentagon budget.

When Kennedy and McNamara lifted the lid, the Chiefs inevitably requested far more for defense than the political leaders were prepared to permit them. This led to a further discrediting of the judgment of the Chiefs. The civilians did not mind at all letting the press and public know of the absurdity of the military requests, and of how the civilians had chopped them down. Now, under Laird, the Chiefs will be given what is described as a “target area”— an amount roughly equivalent to the final budget figure sought—and told to plan within that. At least in the short term, Messrs. Laird and Nixon have gotten the message about the way the winds of public opinion on military spending are currently blowing, and will request a still further reduced Pentagon budget next year.

A more important question is what is in that budget, and how it is arrived at, and what the long-range prospects are. In that sense, the way the cuts were made this year is not encouraging. Items which cost little now, but will involve great amounts in future years, were not disturbed. The equivalent cuts among the services indicated a lack of central direction. Left to their own devices, the services will make their own plans without regard to overlap or coordination. The Air Force, for instance, has little interest in spending its part of the budget to provide airlift capacity for the Army. The Navy is largely an air force on boats, and the admirals prefer the surface fleet to the nuclear-missile-equipped Polaris submarine, the nation’s most effective nuclear weapon. Each service covets its own antiballistic-missile system; Air Force leaders prefer bombers to missiles. It therefore requires very tough leadership at the top, and a willingness to reject the Chiefs’ proposals again and again, in order to impose any sense on the Pentagon budget. Yet Laird has made it very clear that the services are to be restored a greater voice in defense planning, and around the Pentagon there is talk about how there is going to be a lot less “second guessing.” How much all of this is a matter of atmospherics, or where it will lead, not even Laird yet knows.

But there is precious little that Congress can do about it. The Congress can hector and intimidate and even delete, but it cannot run the government. The Nixon Administration has decided that the Pentagon will now plan for only one major and one minor war. The Chiefs, however, sniffed that change coming some time ago, and have been ahead of the game. They have been saying that as it happens they are in fact prepared to fight only one major and one minor war: they can always write a paper citing the need, in terms of national security, for whatever they say they see a need. It takes a lot of courage to face them down, a quality of which the President has not demonstrated an abundance. The Administration is considering an idea which the Pentagon critics have put forward: an annual statement of foreign policy into which military policy would presumably fit. But, like many changes the critics advocate, this might turn out to be merely a mechanical, not a substantive, reform.

Those who led the assault on the Pentagon budget this year are planning another, better-coordinated fight next year. There have been efforts to hold the congressional staff group together, and provide it with new material. The Brookings Institution, a Washington research center which houses several former Democratic Administration officials who were heavily involved in the educating of the politicians who took on the Pentagon, will be issuing its own studies of strategic policy and the Pentagon budget. These will be drawn upon by the politicians and the press. There is consideration being given to abandoning the weapon-by-weapon approach and trying instead simply to lower the total amount the Pentagon may spend—a primitive approach, and a sign of Congress’ limits.

The critics of the Pentagon on Capitol Hill argue that they came a long way this year, and that any major effort of this sort takes at least three years—a time, probably not coincidentally, that brings us to the 1972 elections. But Washington is very fickle about its “great issues”— civil rights, poverty, and does anyone remember reciprocal trade?— and there is simply no predicting how long this one will be with us.

The men at the Pentagon do not exactly plan to sit around and take a battering in the meantime. First, they are very intent upon “restoring the credibility” of the Defense Department, as they put it. That is why Mr. Laird appointed a commission to review its procedures, and why he avoids making predictions about when the Vietnam War will end. A presidential adviser reports “with great sadness” that he expects a reaction on the right against those who have been attacking the war, tlie Pentagon, and the armaments. As Defense officials view it, when the shouting died this year, the politicians voted, time after time, for defense. Yet they feel that they did not “communicate” the Pentagon’s position very well, and they plan to try harder next time around.

As they look to the seventies, and as they read the threats from Russia and China, they find America underpreparing, particularly in strategic weapons, and they see the ABM as only the beginning. “People accused Mel of exaggerating the threats during the ABM debate,” says one of his associates. “They are going to find that he understated it.” The Pentagon leaders realize correctly that there has been a fairly sudden political change in this country, which for the first time in a long while lias made attacking the Pentagon, as one put it, “low-risk politics.”He said, “If within a couple of years we have not made it high-risk politics, we will not have done our job.”

ELIZABETH B. DREW