An excellent example of the roles of the two houses in affecting military policy and administration through the budget process was furnished by the Defense Department Appropriations Bill for Fiscal 1953. For three months, from January 10 to April 3, 1952, the bill was before the House military appropriations subcommittee. The subcommittee was divided into four subsubcommittees on the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Military Public Works. Hearings before the full subcommittee lasted twenty-six days: six days for general policy issues concerning the Defense Department as a whole; twelve days devoted to the policy issues of the individual military departments; eight days for the detailed review of proposed appropriations for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The item by item consideration and justification of the appropriation requests for the military services took twenty-three days before the Navy subsubcommittee, twenty days before the Air Force subsubcommittee, and twenty-two days before the Army subsubcommittee. Twenty-three civilians and 93 officers appeared on behalf of the Navy, 43 civilians and 132 officers for the Army, and 30 civilians and 102 officers for the Air Force. Virtually none of the testimony of these witnesses dealt with problems of servicewide policy and interest, and virtually all of it concerned specific items of minor importance. The subcommittee eventually made cuts totaling $4,230,000,000 in seventy-eight different items from the recommended appropriations of $50,921,000,000. The debate on the floor of the House the second week in April brought to the fore three general policy issues which had not previously been subject to considered discussion: (1) the size of Air Force appropriations involving the issue of whether to achieve a 143 wing Air Force in mid-1955, 1956, or later; (2) the size of naval construction funds involving the issue of building another Forrestal-class carrier; and (3) a proposed limitation of Defense Department expenditures (not appropriations) for fiscal 1953 to $46 billion. On all three issues the House voted in favor of economy. But the significance of its action was not in the careful consideration of these issues — they did not receive that either in committee or on the floor — but rather that the three were separated out from the mass of other minor issues and details as the three problems which involved major and controversial considerations of public policy. Fifteen of the twenty days of hearings before the Senate military appropriations subcommittee between April 10 and June 21 were devoted almost exclusively to these and other major policy issues. Most of the testimony came from secretaries, assistant secretaries, and military chiefs. The nature of the Soviet threat, the impact of the military budget on the national economy, the relative desirability of different types of military force, the strategic role of carrier air power, manpower policy and procurement, the significance of alternative readiness dates in the military build-up — all received extensive, intelligent, and thoughtful discussion. The Committee voted to reverse two of the snap decisions made by the House, recommending elimination of the expenditures limitation and approval of the Forrestal-class carrier. In two days of Senate debate, June 28 and 30, discussion again centered upon the major policy issues. The Senate approved the Committee recommendations in two cases, but also voted in favor of a 143 wing Air Force by the middle of 1955, restoring $600,000,000 to Air Force procurement funds. The decisions of the Senate reversing the House on all three major issues of policy were accepted by the conference committee and written into law.
It is difficult to see how this budget process could be improved upon. Appropriations details were considered first by a number of small committees working upon different parts of the budget. Their actions were then brought together and approved by the House. Out of this process developed major issues which were then explored thoroughly by the Senate committee and voted upon by the Senate. In general, the Senate tended to be successful in getting the House to accept its decisions on these issues. Throughout recent years the discussion of military policy before the Senate military appropriations subcommittee has been informed, intelligent, and focused upon the most important current issues. The green volumes of Senate hearings are, in fact, one of the best sources for the general nature of American military policy. It was in this forum, for instance, that the implications of the 1953 and 1954 cuts by the Eisenhower Administration in the Air Force and Army were most thoroughly explored. Indeed, so far as one can tell from the information available, it would appear that the 1953 Air Force cuts received somewhat more careful consideration in the Senate committee than they received in the executive branch itself.
THE SEPARATION OF POWERS VERSUS MILITARY PROFESSIONALISM
THE PREWAR PATTERN OF MILITARY-CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS. Throughout most of American history, the inherent conflict between the separation of powers and objective civilian control has been more latent than overt: the separation of powers exercised a delaying, restraining influence upon the development of military professionalism. The Cold War, however, with its requirement of continued high level defense activity, markedly increased the tension existing between military professionalism and the separation of powers. The increased importance of military policy made the pattern of congressional-military relations which prevailed after 1947 distinctly different from that which existed prior to 1940. The earlier relations were primarily between Congress and the more civilian, supply, and logistic elements in the armed services. The technical services of the Army — the Corps of Engineers, the Quartermaster Corps, the Ordnance Department, the Signal Corps — and the bureaus in the Navy — Yards and Docks, Ordnance, Supplies and Accounts, Construction and Repair, Steam Engineering — had the most intensive and sustained contacts with Congress. The contact of the professional chiefs of the military forces with Congress tended, on the other hand, to be distant and sporadic. This pattern was to be expected, so long as Congress was more interested in the disbursing side of the military establishment than in its fighting side. In dealing with Congress, the chiefs of the technical services and bureaus functioned in part as expert technical advisers and to an even greater extent simply as the representatives of specific organizational interests within the military departments. They did not act in a professional military role. Indeed, they might just as well have been the representatives of civilian agencies. No real elements of civil-military relations were involved in these contacts. The bureaus and services in many cases built up close relations with particular congressional blocs and congressional committees based upon simple mutuality of economic interest. The extreme case, of course, was the complicated pattern of relationships existing among the Army Corps of Engineers, the rivers and harbors lobby, and congressmen from southern and midwestern states. The connections of the Engineers with Congress were fundamentally similar to the congressional relations of other executive bureaus in the Agriculture and Interior Departments which likewise had closely associated client-groups.6
The relative lack of importance of military policy issues and the relative disinterest of Congress in such issues also permitted the professional military chiefs in dealing with Congress to act primarily as spokesmen for the executive branch. So long as Congress did not give considered attention to military policy matters, it did not require professional military advice. Consequently, the military chiefs in dealing with Congress, particularly with respect to the military budget, did not present their own independent professional estimates of military needs but instead loyally supported the recommendations of the President. This behavior in part reflected the injunction of the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 that “No estimate or request for an appropriation and no request for an increase in an item of such estimate or request . . . shall be submitted to Congress or any committee thereof by any officer or employee of any department or establishment, unless at the request of either House of Congress.”7 So long as Congress was not interested in arriving at its own conclusions on military policy and drawing out of the officers their independent views on defense spending, all that the military could do was to support the President. Looking back to the early twenties, General Marshall once commented that
Speaking very intimately,
I saw General Pershing [Chief of Staff of the Army] in the position where his views didn’t count at all. He never could get them up for consideration. And yet he was a man of great prestige in this country. But the cuts, and cuts and cuts came despite what he felt. The main reason for this was that he had no opportunity to give public expression without being in the position of disloyalty. Of course, he never would have done that.8
Military officers universally felt bound by the President’s decisions: “In the Budget we are presenting,” said General MacArthur in 1935, “we are merely the agent of the President.”9 Earlier, the Army Chief of Finance had explicitly informed Congress that the President’s policy was the controlling factor which prevented the War Department from presenting its needs directly to Congress: “I think when the Budget has once been approved by the President and transmitted to Congress, it is his budget estimate and no officer or official of the War Department would have any right to come up here and attempt to get a single dollar more than is contained in that estimate.”10 This was standard military thinking and practice prior to 1940. The only significant exceptions occurred with respect to the naval construction acts. The greater importance of the Navy to national security led to direct dealings between Congress and its professional leaders, and the General Board of the Navy did not hesitate to make its views known even when they lacked presidential approval. Even with respect to the Navy, however, communication was limited. The issue only really arose in connection with the occasional acts of great importance, and prior to 1913, the views of the General Board were not even made public. The astonishing aspect of this entire pattern of relations was the extent to which Congress acquiesced in the subordination of the military professionals to the President and accepted the denial to it of direct professional advice. This could only happen because military policy was in general not particularly important and Congress was in general not particularly interested. Where it was important as in the Navy bills and the National Defense Acts of 1916 and 1920, Congress did insist upon hearing directly from the professional chiefs. But these were exceptions to the prevailing pattern.
CONGRESSIONAL ACCESS OF THE MILITARY CHIEFS. The continuing importance of military policy after 1945 shifted the principal locus of congressional-military relations from the technical services and bureaus to the professional military chiefs. The full implications of the separation of powers could no longer be avoided; the relations between Congress and the military became a problem in civil-military relations. If Congress was to play its part in determining national military policy, it required the same independent professional advice which the President received. Previously congressmen had only occasionally asserted their right to the direct views of the military chiefs. After World War II they regularly insisted in earnest that the military leaders be free to present their views directly to congressional committees. With respect to the military budget in particular it was argued that Congress could only discharge its constitutional responsibilities if it was able to compare the purely “military” recommendations of the Joint Chiefs with the President’s budget “compounded of a number of extramilitary considerations . . .”* The legal milestone marking the shift from the prewar pattern was the provision in the National Security Act of 1949 permitting a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present to Congress “on his own initiative, after first informing the Secretary of Defense, any recommendation relating to the Department of Defense that he may deem proper.”11 This was the first statute in American history authorizing a professional military chief to take his views directly to Congress. While it did not make the Chiefs of Staff the principal military advisers to Congress as it made them with respect to the President, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense, it did nonetheless free them from the legal restrictions of the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act. This legal authorization, however, could become inoperative without the political means of protecting the military chiefs against pressure or retaliation from the executive branch. After the dismissal in 1949 of Admiral Denfeld, Chief of Naval Operations, following his participation in the B-36 hearings, the House Armed Services Committee warned that any further “intimidation” of this nature would lead it to “ask the Congress to exercise its constitutional power of redress.”12 This “constitutional power,” however, is one which it is easier for Congress to assert than to exercise. Few effective devices are available to it to protect military officers against executive action.
This vulnerability of the chiefs places a tremendous burden upon them as to whether to speak up or to remain silent. What is the proper course of professional behavior when called before a congressional committee and invited to criticize the President’s recommendations? How strong should be the doubts and disagreements of a chief with the President’s policy before he takes the initiative in criticizing it before Congress? The annual psychic crisis of the Chiefs of Staff before the congressional appropriations committees is a new but apparently enduring phenomenon in American government. If the military chief accepts and defends the President’s policies, he is subordinating his own professional judgment, denying to Congress the advice to which it is constitutionally entitled, and becoming the political defender of an administration policy. If the military chief expresses his professional opinions to Congress, he is publicly criticizing his Commander in Chief and furnishing useful ammunition to his political enemies. There is no easy way out of this dilemma. Military leaders in the postwar period varied in their behavior from more or less active campaigning against presidential policies (the admirals with respect to unification and the B-36 controversy) to the defense of presidential policies which ran counter to their professional judgment (General Bradley with respect to the Fiscal 1951 budget). A middle course, however, appears to be the most professionally desirable one. Complete silence before Congress or rigid adherence to the presidential line is no longer the proper behavior. The military chief has the professional duty to speak frankly to both President and Congress. As Admiral Radford stated in contrast to the military opinion of the 1920’s:
. . . we cannot function under our form of Government unless the Congress of the United States is able to get full and frank and truthful answers from any witnesses who appear before their committees. I feel that military men appearing before committees of Congress, if asked for their own opinion, should give it as truthfully and frankly as they can.13
General Ridgway’s behavior under Senate questioning in 1954 and 1955 reflected an effort to find the proper path. In both cases, the general emphasized his acceptance of higher level executive decisions fixing the size of the Army which obviously did not accord with his own judgment. In 1954 he gave his own views in executive session; in 1955 he presented in public his military opinion on the desirable strength of his service.14
The maintenance of this pattern of behavior requires the mutual restraint and conscious cooperation of military man, legislator, and executive. Military professionalism and objective civilian control become impossible if the administration punishes officers for presenting their professional opinions to Congress, if congressmen insist upon using the soldiers to embarrass the administration, or if the soldiers stray beyond their field of expertise into those of politics and diplomacy.*
THE SEPARATION OF POWERS VERSUS STRATEGIC MONISM
INTERBRANCH RIVALRY AND NATIONAL STRATEGY. While it is almost constitutionally impossible for the United States to have a highly effective system of civilian control, it is also constitutionally impossible for it to suffer from a condition which civilian control and military professionalism normally serve to prevent. This condition is prolonged adherence to a national military policy of strategic monism, that is, primary reliance upon a single strategic concept, weapons system, or military service as the means of achieving military security. The opposite, strategic pluralism, requires a wide variety of forces and weapons to meet a diversity of potential security threats. Strategic monism is incompatible with a high level of military professionalism becaus
e it presupposes an ability to predict and control the action of possible enemies, a willingness to pursue a more activistic and, possibly, more aggressive foreign policy, a reluctance to “play it safe” by covering all bets, and, usually, an acceptance of a lower level of total military expenditures.15 A system of civil-military relations which maximizes civilian control and military professionalism normally tends to produce decisions favoring a pluralistic strategy. In the United States, however, a pluralistic tendency is achieved not through a high level of professionalism but through the operation of the separation of powers.
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