be an international effort to fund productive work for these people. I wouldn't rule that out.

world a heck of a lot safer and more secure place today. And the key to those relationships in a security sense is to have coordinated security policies, to have forward-deployed U.S. forces and to have the capacity to reinforce those forces.

Program Direction

Q. Mr. Secretary, in making
some calls today on your budget,
quite apart from the nuclear area
for which there's universal support
and enthusiastic support, the
criticisms fell into two general
categories, and I thought I'd share
them with you .... First of all,
about 60 percent of the real cuts
that you're making over the next
five years fall into these two big
weapons systems that you're
terminating, the B-2, which was
substantially killed by the Congress,
and the Seawolf, which now lacks a
mission. So there's a general
feeling that maybe you and your
colleagues might be amenable to
other kinds of cuts in programs that
Congress might pass. Second is in
the European theater: Despite the
drawdowns that Chairman Powell
described for us, many are
focusingon No. 1, the 150,000 U.S.
troops that remain in Europe; No. 2,
the portion of active duty forces in
CONUS (continental United States)
which remain allocated to the
European theater; and No. 3, the
reserves that remain allocated to
the European theater. And quoting
from a paper that Sen. (John)
McCain circulated recently, he said
this means that close to half of our
FY 1997 force structure would be
reinforcements whose primary
mission would essentially consist of
refighting World War II against a
Warsaw Pact enemy that no longer
exists. So that second category of
questions is, is this really the
priorities that make sense and the
way you want to allocate scarce
resources at this point in time?

Cheney. I haven't seen John
McCain's paper. So I'm reluctant to
comment on it in detail. Let me just
take that the proposition that
somehow the '97 force is going to
be devoted to fighting the old
Warsaw Pact in Western Europe. |
just think that's hooey. It's just not
true. I think the key is for some of
my friends on the Hill to sit down
and read our previous statements
and testimony that we've offered as
an administration, read the
president's speech, go back to
Augustof 1990 and Aspen (Institute

Symposium), Aug. 2. Read the new national military strategy laid down by the chairman and the Joint Chiefs, look at the defense planning guidance that has been produced, the massive efforts under way.

And we've said over and over and over again that we are not interested in refighting the Cold War. And it's a charge, I would assume, that comes from people who simply aren't up to speed with all of the other things that we've done. With respect to the notion that somehow our budget cuts up here are not significant or that this is sort of an opening gambit, if you will, and that we need to do more, I am always reminded that the people that yell the loudest about cut the defense budget deeper, cut it faster, cut it farther, are the ones who never supported us in the first place.

Back in the height of the Cold War, they were against building Peacekeeper missiles. They were against building B-1s and B-2s. They were against deploying Pershing Ils and ground-launch cruise missiles in Europe. They have never supported a strong national defense. And there's no reason why we should expect them to support a strong national defense after the Cold War has been won. But if they'd had their way, we would never have prevailed in the Cold War. And I don't think we ought to take counsel now, any more than we should have in the past, from people whose view of an adequate national defense is, you know, firstclass coast-defense capability. That's not what we're in business to do. We've laid out a very strong philosophy and policy to counter that.

I thought the president was eloquent on the subject last night. I was not as eloquent, but I tried to address some of the same concerns in my opening remarks today in terms of how it is we won the Cold War, what we got out of that, the importance of the United States staying firmly engaged around the world. We can do it for less money, we can do it for fewer forces, we can do it for lower cost, but it's absolutely essential that we stay tied in to this alliance of democracies that has made the

Old Thinking

Now, the other thing that's working here, I think, is the notion that somehow let's call it old thinking on Capitol Hill. Not everybody on Capitol Hill is guilty of old thinking, but some are. ! could probably name names, but I won't. It's the idea that somehow the big budget deficit problems we are faced with are the result of too much defense spending. ... The level of defense spending, the extent to which this department is a burden on the American taxpayer, the extent to which we're siphoning off a large percentage of the federal government's resources to finance the nation's security, is rapidly declining. And some of my friends up there over the years have wanted to solve all of their problems by cutting the defense budget, either because that's the only way they see to address the budget deficit or because they want the resources to increase the budget deficit, go spend it on domestic programs.

You are not going to solve the nation's long-term deficit problem by dealing only with 16 percent of the federal budget. And that's all we're going to be taking by the time this plan's implemented. When we complete our five-year defense program, we'll be down to a little over 16 percent of federal spending on defense. If you're still worried about the federal deficit, I would say to my friends on Capitol Hill, sooner or later you're going to have to look at the other 84 percent of the budget. You can't keep taking it out of defense and expect that to solve your problem.

The president, I thought, was very firm and forceful last night. He's comfortable with the cuts that he recommended, based on what we recommended to him from the department. It is that set of cuts that we feel comfortable making that do not enhance the risk to the United States. But he also made it abun

"The decisions we're making are not just about the economic impact of the choices that have to be made or the impact back home in various and sundry congressional districts that are affected. The choices are about preparation for the next time we go to war."

Cheney

dantly clear that he is not prepared to accept a budget that takes us beyond those cuts and that would in fact put the future security of the nation at risk. It's a very serious proposal and ought to be treated as such ....

Q. Can I ask a question that's sort of a variant .... From the howls that we've heard of pain on Capitol Hill from this budget, it's very clear that many lawmakers had hoped that you would focus on manpower in your search for savings rather than on procurement. And indeed that they might act to shift that balance so that more manpower would be cut in the '93 budget and perhaps less procurement. The president last night in a clear sort of veto threat, I suppose, said this deep and no deeper. Is it also this plan and no other plan? | mean if they shift that ...

Cheney. Boy, is that a tempting question. I don't want to be in the position where we say to the Congress that they've got to approve this plan without change. I'm not foolish enough to think that that's realistic, and I think it would not do service to the very legitimate role Congress has in this whole operation.

I do have an obligation to recommend to the president and to the Congress those things that I think make sense, to point out if they are pursuing a course of action or considering a course of action that I believe would be detrimental

in terms of our overall security posture. The idea, for example, that you can get significant additional savings in manpower in '93 makes no sense at all. We are taking the force down now just as rapidly as we can take it down without breaking it. And the only people who are going to suffer, if in fact we do that, will be our men and women in uniform. They'll suffer if you try to take it down any faster, because we won't have any choice them but to actively engage in RIFs. But you'll also destroy the morale of the force, you'll destroy that combat capability that was so impressive in the gulf last spring.

We are doing everything we can to comply with the desires of the Congress to spend less money on defense and to take advantage of the fact that it's a somewhat safer world now than it was a few years ago. But we have to do it intelligently, and what has changed out there now is those set of circum

stances that led us to pursue the acquisition strategy of old and to decide that we needed to modernize our forces rapidly with things like the B-2, the Seawolf,etc., Block III tank.

We believe that if you're going to change our strategy and our force structure based upon the changes that have occurred in the world, then you go after modernization. You don't take force structure down any faster than we already are, not only because it will be unfair to the all-volunteer force we've got out there now, but also because it would be just plain stupid from the standpoint of national security policy. ...

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee: Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the administration's budget request for fiscal year 1993.

When I appeared before you last February, America was at war in the Middle East, our most significant test of arms in 20 years. In the Soviet Union, communist hardliners had cracked down violently on Baltic independence movements. Soviet strategic modernization programs continued, while plans for Soviet economic reform lay dead at birth. Even so, the department announced plans to reduce dramatically America's armed forces pursuant to a new, regional defense strategy.

When Chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell and I appeared before you last year, we proposed a multiyear, 25 percent cut in American forces. By 1995, those cuts would reduce from 1990 levels our active duty Army force structure by roughly a third, from 18 divisions to 12; our Air Force by a quarter, from 36 fighter wing equivalents to 26, including a cut of nine active and one reserve fighter wings; our Navy by a fifth, from 546 ships to only 451; our reserves and civilians by over 200,000 each.

We had announced plans to cancel 100 weapons programs and to close or realign well over 200 facilities worldwide. These cuts would reduce the U.S. military to its lowest end strength since before the Korean war; they would cut our share of the federal budget, once as high as 57 percent, to 18 percent, the lowest level in 40 years. The

defense budget would fall by 1997 to roughly 31/2 percent of GNP (gross national product), by far the lowest level since before Pearl Harbor.

We based those sweeping reductions not on the somewhat sobering prospects of the early winter of 1991, when war loomed in the gulf and Soviet reformers were under siege, but on the promise of change symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall 15 months earlier and on the new, regional defense strategy President (George) Bush announced in Aspen, Colo. on Aug. 2, 1990 – the day Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq. That strategy was designed not simply to react to probable reductions in the Soviet threat, but to help shape the future security environment.

predicted Eastern Europe would escape Soviet domination by Thanksgiving. In early 1990, few predicted America would be headed for war by Labor Day or would have half a million troops in Saudi Arabia by New Year's. Even at the end of that war, few appreciated the strength of Saddam's nuclear program. In early 1991, few predicted the Soviet Union would be gone by Christmas. In earlier times, we failed to predict the Soviet development of atomic weapons and Sputnik, the North Korean invasion of the south or the Japa nese attack on Pearl Harbor.

These are significant failures to predict major events over very short time frames; our ability to predict events over longer periods is even less precise. The history of the 20th century is replete with instances of major, unanticipated strategic shifts over five-, 10- or 20-year time frames. Sophisticated modern forces take many years to build. A proper appreciation for uncertainty is therefore a critical part of a realistic defense strategy that builds forces today for crises five, 10 or 20 years away.

But America cannot base its future security on just a shaky record of prediction or a prudent recognition of uncertainty. Sound defense planning seeks to help shape the future. That is what the president's regional defense strategy seeks to do.

The containment strategy we pursued for the past 40 years successfully shaped the world we see today. It's important for all of us to remember why we have enjoyed the favorable changes in the world

Passing of the Threat

With the passing of the traditional Cold War threat a global war beginning on short notice in Europe - we could identify some missions and forces no longer needed. But we built our regional defense strategy and the base force to implement it not by cutting down from Cold War levels, but by judging what would be needed to further democracy and our national security interests in a post-Cold War world. We took a completely fresh look, a zero-based look at our security needs.

Shaping our future security environment means more than simply accounting for changes in anticipated threats. World events repeatedly defy even near-term predictions. In early 1989, few

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