June 21, 1974
Page 20483
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, would the Senator yield?
Mr. NUNN. I will be glad to yield to the Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to commend the distinguished junior Senator from Georgia for his contribution in the development of the bill that is before us.
He was a member of Senator METCALF's subcommittee. I was privileged to be a member as well. The distinguished Senator and I did not always agree in our votes on this measure as it developed in the subcommittee. But I must say that I was impressed with his ability to grasp the complexities of the problem, to deal with them, to develop viable ideas for resolving them and then, with the qualities of character and personality that enabled him to work amicably with those of us who disagreed with him. I think it was a very interesting exercise.
I was especially pleased on a personal basis with the column that appeared in this morning's Washington Post by Stephen S. Rosenfeld entitled "Senator Nunn's NATO Maneuver."
I think that Mr. Rosenfeld did an excellent job in capturing the essence of the distinguished Senator's abilities that he has demonstrated in the Committee on Armed Services and on the floor of the Senate.
I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, that this article be included in the RECORD at this point with my comments.
There being no objection, the newspaper article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
SENATOR NUNN'S NATO MANEUVER
(By Stephen S. Rosenfeld)
Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), 35 years old, not 20 months a United States Senator, saved NATO the other day. His was as solid and deft a parliamentary performance in the national security area as the Congress has seen in years, belying the common notion that a legislator must have seniority or "power" to get something important done.
What Nunn did was to block – and re-channel – a campaign led by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) to demobilize 125,000 men out of American ground forces overseas. This was the 1974 model of the now-traditional "Mansfield Amendment" to enact unilateral troop cuts in Europe.
Anticipating this campaign, Armed Services Chairman John C. Stennis (D-Miss.) last February sent the member he has called "last but not least" on his committee, on a study mission to Europe. Nunn, a great-nephew and once a staff aide of the late House Armed Services Chairman Carl Vinson (D-Ga.), occupies the Senate seat – and the Armed Services seat – of the late Richard Russell (D-Ga.). "We have military bases in Georgia," Nunn explains. "People in the South are much more tuned to a military and patriotic spirit than some of the other sections."
A lawyer and four-year state legislator, Nunn recalls putting in 100 hours preparing for his European trip – "getting through the first layer of propaganda." His report, "Policy, Troops and the NATO Alliance," though covering an oft-plowed field, nonetheless startled specialists with its freshness and command.
Nunn thinks the Mansfield Amendment approach could produce results – lowering the nuclear threshold, undermining the force reduction talks – that the country wouldn't like. He concluded his report with a call for the administration and Congress to find together "a long-range NATO stance that we are willing to live with, politically, economically and militarily."
In pursuit of just such a joint long-term stance, Nunn then wrote three amendments to the basic military procurement bill.
Nunn had already, last year, joined with Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.), an acknowledged expert at legislating policy by amendments, to sponsor an amendment requiring the NATO allies to pick up a greater share of the cost of maintaining U.S. troops in Europe or to face a reduction in U.S. troop commitments. That amendment, almost everyone agrees, has been extremely effective, where years of State Department entreaties had not.
The three new amendments were designed to provide a constructive alternative to Mansfield, one answering to the same world-weariness and the same felt need to update American policy but doing so in a way that would not upset negotiations with the Russians or unduly alarm the Allies.
One amendment makes it the sense of Congress that NATO support units (the Alliance's notoriously long "tail") be cut by 20 per cent in two years, the men to be replaced – if the administration chooses – by combat soldiers ("teeth").
The second requires the Pentagon for the first time to justify the numbers and purposes of the outsized and unplanned U.S. force of 7000 "tactical" nuclear warheads in Europe. Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) had investigated this matter during the year but it took Nunn with his non-threatening Southern manner to move into it legislatively.
The third amendment compels the Pentagon to report on what it's doing to reduce the costs and the loss of combat effectiveness stemming from failure to standardize NATO equipment.
Politically, these amendments have a broad appeal, promising more military efficiency to defense conservatives and greater civilian control and lower costs to defense liberals. Ideologically, they are neutral. The Armed Services Committee endorsed them unanimously, though House conferees' approval remains uncertain.
In the Senate debate on the Mansfield Amendment the other day, Nunn, who is a pleasant- looking soft-spoken fellow with a drawl, stood right up to the Majority Leader. He was well prepared. He had a folksy Georgia story about a preacher ready for a change of pace. Quite firmly, he managed to steer the whole debate away from the controversial ground of whether in general the United States should be doing more or less, into the smoother area of how specifically we ought to proceed. And, in a word, he won.
When I talked with Nunn about this a few days later he was sure, but self-effacing, pleased with his success while intent on saying nothing that could give umbrage to his Senate brethren. He is not one for debates on great issues. He thinks national security debates can and should be waged on the basis of what is "effective and sensible." "You must be armed with a good bit of background to get down to the quick," he added.
What will Nunn be looking into next? His chairman Stennis wants him to get into personnel, he said – it takes 57 per cent, by some counts 67 per cent, of the military budget. I found myself thinking: Go, Sam, we're watching.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the Senator has now impressed me with respect to his work on the budget bill and with respect to his work in the Armed Services Committee, and I predict a promising future for him in the Senate.
Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague and friend from Maine.
I will say many times during the course of this budgetary hearing, which took hundreds and hundreds of hours, and which received very little attention from either the public or the media for a long time, the Senator from Maine and I did disagree on occasion. Many times, however, I was persuaded by the fundamentally sound logic that my colleague from Maine displayed.
I will have to confess that sometimes I kept arguing even after I was convinced he was probably correct.
Mr. MUSKIE. It is a typical senatorial trait, I might say.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, May I say to the distinguished Senator from Maine and the distinguished Senator from Georgia that I had also intended to ask that the commentary which appeared in this morning's Washington Post entitled "Senator Nunn's NATO Maneuver," written by Stephen S. Rosenfeld, be printed in the RECORD, because I think it is a commendatory and worthwhile article, and I wish to join the distinguished Senator from Maine in all the kind words – and well deserved they were – which he had to say about the Senator from Georgia. I ask the Senator from Maine if he will allow me to have the privilege of joining with him in inserting this commentary in the RECORD.
Mr. MUSKIE. I am proud to have the Senator join me in that request.
Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader, and I really would like to say in reply that I believe the majority leader has done as much as anyone I know to point out many of the real, legitimate frustrations that we in America have with our NATO allies. I believe the majority leader's work in this regard has contributed significantly to real movement within the alliance to address many of these legitimate grievances. I believe the alliance is moving now, and I believe much of that movement can be attributed to the efforts of the majority leader in pointing these problems out. Although we did not agree on the conclusion, we did agree on many of the frustrations. I look forward to the opportunity to continue to work with the majority leader, the Senator from Maine, and many others to move toward correcting many of these frustrations we do have in dealing with our NATO allies, because I think NATO remains an important part of our national security as well as the security of the NATO countries.
Mr. MANSFIELD. There will be a continuing effort, I assure the Senator.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the conference report occur immediately after the vote on the Wheat Convention.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Have the yeas and nays been ordered?
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The yeas and nays have been ordered.
Who yields time?
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President, on behalf of the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. McGOVERN), I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I understand that while I was temporarily off the floor, there was some discussion about the makeup of the budget committees. I would like to endorse the view that the budget committees be as broadly based and representative as possible, and that we do not resort to the rule of seniority automatically to exclude from the committees younger members who have shown an interest in this legislation and who offer the qualities of character and ability to carry that responsibility.
I know that this was the sense of much of the discussion in the Committee on Government Operations as we considered the budget committees, and I simply wanted to make this point on the Senate floor as we come to the closing moments of deliberation on this measure so that the record may be clear.
I thank the distinguished majority whip for yielding to me.