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EDITORIAL Pentagon shows disregard for budget,
treaties
Two recent reports remind us again exactly who holds sway in
government when it comes to getting the lions share of public money.
The first, called More Pentagon Follies, was released
by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group that supports fiscal
responsibility, and The Council for a Livable World Education Fund, a nonprofit
corporation that wants dramatic cuts in defense spending. The report is based
largely on news stories and investigations by the U.S. General Accounting
Office and the Defense Departments inspector general.
Among other things it considers payments for corporate
restructuring, known in some quarters of Washington as the money for
nothing policy. The Department of Defense has been providing large,
profitable defense contractors with substantial subsidies since 1993 to cover
restructuring costs associated with corporate mergers, says the
Follies report. So far this year, DOD acknowledges spending at
least $817 million for this purpose.
The official explanation: The government wants to encourage
companies to become more efficient so that they can build weapons at lower
costs. But if the efficiencies to be gained by restructuring are so obvious, it
would be reasonable to expect business to do it without government rewards.
A few other Pentagon follies, as detailed in this years
report:
- A third deluxe 18-hole golf course is in the works at Andrews
Air Base near Washington. Construction costs have soared to $7 million from the
projected $5.1 million. Defense officials say that the golf course is the
answer to military morale problems, which can be traced in part to crowded
military golf courses. More golf courses also are needed, according to military
logic, to repair morale after the damage inflicted by -- you guessed it --
defense cuts!
- Despite all the talk of downsizing and congressional concerns
about officer inflation, the Pentagon wants to add dozens of new
generals. The Marine Corps, which received a dozen new generals last year, now
has a total of 80 generals to oversee 174,000 troops -- one more than it needed
to command 475,000 troops in 1945.
- The Pentagon recently completed work on a $5.1 million chapel
at a naval training center in San Diego that is scheduled to close this year.
This follows a familiar pattern. A 1995 study by the Pentagon found $263
million worth of construction projects at military bases that were either
scheduled for closing or had already closed.
- Navy officials, reliving the glory days of the $435
hammer and the $640 toilet seat, have paid far more money than necessary
for various supplies and parts. The Navy paid $127.46 for an aluminum washer,
for example, that could have been obtained for $10.50 or less. Nearly $2,000
was spent on a $103 gas bottle.
- The Defense Department has admitted that it simply cannot
account for $18 billion. And that appears to be optimistic. The GAO puts the
figure at more than $43 billion.
Meanwhile, according to another report, this one from the Natural
Resources Defense Council, a recently declassified Department of Energy
document contains plans for designing nuclear weapons and simulating nuclear
explosions in apparent contradiction of the goals of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. If implemented over the next decade as planned, said the report, the
program could erode important U.S nonproliferation objectives as well as
undermine political assurances the U.S government has given to other nations.
The Natural Resources Defense Council report analyzes the
Department of Energys Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program and
represents the first public airing of declassified portions of the Green
Book, DOEs comprehensive road map of U.S. plans and
ongoing programs involving the nuclear weapons stockpile.
While the U.S. government is not now designing or producing
advanced new types of nuclear weapons, it is enlarging its capabilities to do
so while continuing to design nuclear explosive packages to replace warheads on
existing systems such as the Navys Trident II missile.
The United States sought and achieved both the indefinite
extension of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995 and the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty in 1996, partly on the strength of assurances that it would not
design new nuclear weapons. Yet some of the ongoing and planned activities of
the Department of Energys stockpile program come into conflict with those
assurances. (The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been endorsed by the United
Nations and signed by over 140 nations, including China, Russia and the major
nuclear powers. Although President Clinton signed the treaty in 1996, it has
not yet been ratified by the Senate.)
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, in spite of
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the United States is planning to:
- significantly expand its base of nuclear weapons knowledge by
building extensive above-ground experimental facilities for nuclear weapons
physics and conducting underground high-explosive experiments with plutonium
and other nuclear materials at the Nevada Test Site;
- develop within the coming decade comprehensive
three-dimensional, computer simulations of nuclear weapons performance,
resulting in a virtual testing capability;
- develop and integrate into existing weapons improved
components, such as new radar, detonators, neutron generators and boost-gas
transfer systems;
- rebuild and certify the performance of weapons with modified
nuclear components;
- modify and repackage existing nuclear weapons and conduct
flight tests to certify their ability to withstand the stresses of new
stockpile-to-target sequences, such as high speed earth penetration to destroy
hardened underground targets with reduced collateral damage;
- design, simulate and fly weapon prototypes and certify both the
nuclear and stockpile-to-target performance of new weapon designs as possible
replacements for existing weapons.
What missed opportunities when the talk about spending cuts
continually bypass the Defense Department. Washington would do well to talk
more about the need to slash military welfare.
But the Pentagon need not worry about being harassed. It goes on,
apparently without regard for budgetary restraints at home or treaty
limitations negotiated with partners abroad.
National Catholic Reporter, September 12,
1997
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