Abstract
The september 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have changed everything. Thousands of families have been devastated. The nation as a whole has been drastically altered. And the change is nowhere more apparent than in Congress.
Ushered out were vital policy debates on national missile defense, a $33 billion increase in the military budget, and major reform of the Pentagon. The administration even submitted a proposal–later modified–to eliminate all restrictions on arms sales to countries that participate in the war against terrorism.
But this altered agenda has affected more than national security issues. With the attention of the White House and Congress focused on the response to the September 11 attacks, other issues have likely disappeared from the agenda for the remainder of the year. Opposition to tapping the Social Security and Medicare surpluses dissolved overnight. Prospects for a prescription drug benefit, campaign finance reform, a patients' bill of rights, and the administration's prized “faith-based initiative” have now faded.
The new agenda has focused on war against Osama bin Laden, reconstruction in New York and Virginia, heightened airline and airport security, airline bailouts, tightened border controls, and expanded government powers to fight terrorism.
One of the first legislative casualties was the battle against the Bush administration's crusade for a layered national missile defense, the possible unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and a rudimentary missile-defense deployment in Alaska as early as 2004.
Before September 11, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin had united his committee's 13 Democrats in favor of reducing the administration's $8.3 billion request for missile defense. They had also endorsed a provision that would have required the administration to return to Congress to seek approval for funding of any missile defense tests that would violate the ABM Treaty.
On September 7, all 12 of the committee's Republicans opposed both these decisions, as well as the entire Defense Authorization bill. But four days later the world changed. And on September 19, Levin removed the key provision requiring further congressional approval of missile defense. A few days later, he threw in the towel on the $1.3 billion cut, reaching a face-saving compromise with ranking Republican John Warner that would permit the money to be used either to fight terrorism or for missile defense.
Levin felt he had no choice; the politics of missile defense had changed radically. He declared: “I strongly believe that the missile defense provisions took an appropriate step on an issue of national importance…. In my view, however, this is the wrong time for divisive debate on issues of national defense. We cannot let issues like this pull us apart and undermine our common sense of national purpose in fighting terrorism.”
In the House, an amendment to cut the missile defense budget by $918 million had been proposed by two leading Armed Services Committee Democrats–Missouri's Ike Skel-ton and South Carolina's John Spratt. It also evaporated. Instead, key members of the committee compromised on a new level of $7.9 billion for missile defense.
The fight on missile defense will certainly resume next year. It will be years before any system can be deployed, and it will be even longer–if ever–before missile defense technology will be proven reliably consistent and effective in real-world situations.
Not surprisingly, a reading of views expressed by members of Congress indicates that those who had supported missile defense before September 11 felt the attacks confirmed their support for deployment; skeptics felt that the fight against terrorist attacks was much more critical than spending billions on an unproven technology to cope with the unlikely threat of rogue missile attack.
The politics of the military budget were similarly upended. As the August congressional recess ended, the Senate and House Budget Committee chairmen had appeared ready to try to block the administration's July 2001 request to tack on an additional $18.4 billion to the military budget, raising the total to $343.5 billion. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Congress instead approved an emergency supplemental appropriations bill for $40 billion, half for reconstruction and half for security–much of which will be handed to the Pentagon. There is little doubt that the administration will request increased military budgets in future years as well, and some predict that the military budget could top $400 billion in a few years.
Defense hawks like Republican Congs. Duncan Hunter of California and Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania were quick to take advantage of the situation. Weldon was quoted in the September 21 Defense Daily: “We in the Congress have said that the president's [defense] budget was good but was nowhere near what was necessary before the attacks.”
The legislative aftermath of the attacks is not entirely negative, however. Congress finally approved a bill paying a significant portion of the U.S. debt to the United Nations. Key members decided to drop the conditions they had placed on appropriating $582 million in back dues, and on September 24 the House adopted the bill by voice vote. The Senate had adopted an identical bill 99-0 on February 7.
Then too, a Bush administration that had vigorously pursued a unilateralist approach to foreign policy suddenly discovered the virtues of multilateralism and international cooperation. In its first eight months in office, the administration had abandoned the Kyoto talks on global warming, pulled out of negotiations on the Biological Weapons Convention Protocol, weakened a U.N.-sponsored accord on small arms, and threatened unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty.
After September 11, the United States began working to build an international coalition against terrorism and to win support for military action against Osama bin Laden. There is now at least a possibility that the administration may hesitate before announcing an end to the ABM Treaty. The administration was asking Russia to provide intelligence, logistics, and bases as it prepared to go to war in Afghanistan. An abrupt announcement on ABM later this year could seriously jeopardize Russian cooperation. On September 21, Senator Levin told Congressional Quarterly: “In this setting, when they [the administration] realize how important it is that we be part of a coalition, I think they're going to be a little less likely to break that treaty quickly.”
Finally, there could be renewed administration interest in pursuing nonproliferation and nuclear reduction measures. Terrorists demonstrated on September 11 that they will use any weapons at their disposal. As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting on September 17: “Making progress in the areas of nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament is more important than ever in the aftermath of last week's appalling terrorist attack on the United States.”
Whether the Bush administration concurs is less certain. But one trend is clear. The pragmatists in the administration–particularly Secretary of State Colin Powell–seem to have risen in favor. For months, Powell had been overshadowed by administration ideologues. After September 11, Powell led the charge to build an international coalition. In light of this new power lineup, there is a remote possibility that there could be renewed consideration of a START III agreement, strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention, and increasing funding for nonproliferation activities in the former Soviet Union. Moreover, it is unlikely that the administration will take action to withdraw from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.