A Real National Security Debate
MAYER, WILLIAM G.
A Real National Security Debate Some issues are too important not to have a partisan fight over. BY WILLIAM G. MAYER IT WASN'T A SPEECH you'd expect to cause an uproar. Karl Rove, President Bush's...
...From the very beginning of his first Senate campaign in 1990, Wellstone advocated large cuts in military spending—not incremental trimming here and there, but deep cuts in defense...
...The public wasn't too concerned about the nation's security in 1990 or 1996...
...The last time this issue came up before the Senate, in 1997, Republicans voted against the motion 54-1...
...Did Wellstone's and Harkin's actions make it more difficult for America to respond effectively to the events of September 11...
...A good case can be made that in his past campaigns Harkin derived some net political advantage from his calls for defense cuts...
...Similarly, Democrats and Republicans have long taken opposite positions on whether it is desirable to make public the total amount the United States spends on intelligence activities...
...While running for president in 1992, Harkin called for a 50 percent reduction in the military budget...
...The more important question is, How exactly will we enhance our national security...
...By any reasonable standard, it should be...
...But if this is an explanation, it is not an excuse...
...With the end of the Cold War, he insisted, America no longer needed a very large or powerful military...
...Many Democrats will no doubt insist that they have ready explanations for the votes they cast throughout the 1990s...
...Wellstone should not be allowed to walk away from that long record simply because he has been singing a slightly different tune for the last eight months...
...In 1999, he was one of just five Democratic senators who voted against a defense authorization bill that included a 4.8 percent military pay raise, at the time the largest military pay raise in 18 years...
...intelligence activities...
...In 1997, a similar amendment attracted 114 Democratic supporters...
...In 1995, Wellstone voted to freeze defense spending for the next seven years...
...The issue is not patriotism...
...But the Democrats, as their behavior last January makes clear, will do their very best to try to keep the subject off the William G. Mayer is an associate professor of political science at Northeastern University...
...To be sure, all of the votes just mentioned were cast before September 11...
...For his first 11 years in public life, in short, Wellstone staked out a clear philosophy of national defense...
...In an op-ed written in 1990, for example, Wellstone advocated cutting "at least $200 billion in the military budget over the next five years" (this at a time when total defense spending was just over $300 billion...
...military...
...Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, addressed the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee on January 18...
...table this fall and to argue that any attempt to raise it is illegitimate...
...In 2002, these issues ought to be part of the debate...
...House minority leader Richard Gephardt, speaking one day later at a meeting of the DNC, called Rove's statement "shameful," adding, "This is not a partisan issue...
...In 1999, the Senate put together what one might have thought was the most inoffensive possible resolution on this issue, pledging to deploy an "effective" nationwide defense system "as soon as technologically possible," while also promising to continue negotiated reductions in nuclear forces...
...Many have given tangible evidence of that commitment by serving in the military or by doing substantial volunteer work...
...As it is, military analysts may at some point raise questions about just how well prepared the American military was to take on its new assignments in Afghanistan...
...it wasn't even frozen for seven years...
...Rather, we needed to put "gunboat diplomacy" behind us and "move forward toward global cooperation...
...More important, cutting the defense budget solved an otherwise difficult problem for Harkin: It allowed him to explain how he could increase spending on education and health care without increasing taxes...
...We elect our public officials to exercise foresight, not just to react to crises after the fact...
...The Democratic response was swift and harsh...
...They should not be given a free pass on the matter...
...Even many Democrats who cultivate an image of being moderate or conservative, such as Max Cleland of Georgia, have sometimes voted against missile defense...
...For all their agreement on a number of fundamental goals and values, Democrats and Republicans have sharply disagreed about the best ways to achieve those goals...
...Democrats and Republicans have sharply disagreed about how to protect the nation...
...It will be a signal disservice to the principle of democratic accountability if Harkin is not required to defend his record just because it no longer works to his benefit...
...The problem was all the things he did prior to that time, when he manifestly failed to understand what he was dealing with...
...But it is almost inconceivable that the fighting would have gone so smoothly if the military budget had been cut in half ten years ago—partic-ularly if we had halted work on both the B-1 and B-2 bombers...
...It is no defense of Neville Chamberlain to say that after September 1939 he did everything in his power to oppose Hitler...
...Or take the issue of a national missile defense system, which is starting to look a lot more appealing to many people given what we know now about Osama bin Laden's obsession with acquiring weapons of mass destruction...
...And the 1999 pay raise did pass...
...If the Democrats' recent mistakes are not that serious, they are of the same type: a simple failure to recognize that, even with the Cold War over, the world was still a dangerous place...
...Many Democrats spent much of the 1990s advocating positions and voting for national security policies that were ill-advised at the time—but look particularly embarrassing in the aftermath of September 11...
...Take the case of Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota...
...The point is simply that they should be required to provide those explanations...
...In 1998, for example, the House of Representatives considered cutting the intelligence budget by 5 percent...
...Every member of Congress and every candidate running for that body presumably loves our country...
...We need to be clear from the outset about just what the issue is that ought to be debated...
...If democracy means anything, it means that they ought to be held accountable for those decisions...
...Democrats supported it 42-2...
...We can go to the country on this issue," Rove said, "because [voters] trust the Republican party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America...
...For all the concern that Democrats have expressed over the failure to foresee the attacks of last September, throughout the 1990s Democrats were quite willing to reduce intelligence spending...
...But it is not enough just to say that we all want to protect the nation and leave it at that...
...Take the issue of U.S...
...Not, Which party is better at protecting American national security...
...National security should not be declared out of bounds simply because Democrats—or editorial writers—think the subject is unseemly or inappropriate...
...The military budget was not cut by $200 billion or 50 percent...
...Wellstone and Harkin are admittedly exceptional cases, but only in the extremity of their opposition to defense spending...
...The same point applies to Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, who is also up for reelection this fall...
...But, Is national security a legitimate issue at all...
...Like Wellstone, he has voted for just about every resolution to cut defense spending that has made it to the Senate floor...
...He also urged that we "halt work" not only on a national missile defense system, but on the B-1 and B-2 bombers and the Midgetman missile...
...The tempest blew over in a couple of days, but it offered a preview of what may turn out to be one of the most significant questions in the 2002 campaign...
...Looking ahead to the midterm elections, Rove suggested that the Republicans had a number of issues that resonated well with the American people and might therefore serve as a basis for GOP success— among them the administration's handling of the war on terrorism...
...One of them was Dick Durbin of Illinois, now desperately trying to convince that state's voters that he is a proper guardian of the nation's security...
...They should take the debate to the voters...
...The answer is probably no—but only because their advice was generally ignored...
...Republicans opposed the amendment 196-21, but Democrats supported it 98-95...
...One of the cornerstones of Harkin's career has been his opposition to defense spending...
...The Democrats, by contrast, argued that while keeping the total spending figure classified might have been a reasonable policy during the Cold War, it was no longer necessary...
...Calling Rove's comments "nothing short of despicable," Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said, "For Karl Rove to politicize the issue is an affront to the integrity of the entire U.S...
...Republicans insisted that this was inadvisable, since it might give adversaries a better sense of American capabilities, particularly if these were in the process of being changed...
...Across a considerable range of defense and national security issues, party-line votes—with most Democrats on one side and most Republicans on the other—are actually quite common...
...Just three senators voted against this bill...
Vol. 7 • June 2002 • No. 40
