National Stategies and Capabilities
for a Changing World

Transforming National Defense: Prioritizing the Security Agenda

Keynote Address by Senator Carl Levin

Louis, thank you for the introduction and it's good to be here with you and General Shinseki, General Galvin, Bob Pfaltzgraff, my old college classmate.
When I read the Secretary's comments last week calling for a lighter, faster and better-dressed Army, I got concerned that you might be looking for another keynote speaker, because I'm not as light as I used to be; I've slowed down a little bit on the squash court; and my style-setting clothing standards have resisted change for decades.

Thanks also to the sponsoring organizations for hosting this important conference. I want to particularly congratulate them for the extraordinary timing of this conference, coming as it does at the mid-point of our Presidential campaign.

Whoever takes office next January, one of the most important tasks facing the new administration will be to formulate a new national security strategy. The Department of Defense, in turn, must conduct a quadrennial defense review. Now, I don't plan this morning to explore an exhaustive or comprehensive national security strategy for the next decade. Instead, I want to raise some questions to be considered; suggest some ways that we can prepare our military forces to meet the challenges to our national security in the next decade, including the challenge of conducting peace operations; look at how the United States can work more closely with our friends and allies on international security issues; and conclude with some suggestions on how Congress can better carry out its national security responsibility.

Our nation's overriding strategic objectives have remained fairly constant, including the survival of the United States as a free and independent nation, with its fundamental values and institutions intact; a vibrant and growing U.S. economy; a stable and secure world free of major threats to U.S. interests; the growth of freedom, democratic institutions and free market economies throughout the world linked by fair and open international trading system; and healthy and vigorous U.S. alliance relationships.

Now while our strategic objectives have remained constant, the threats to those objectives have changed over time. One of the greatest challenges is to identify and understand new and emerging threats while keeping an eye on the current and more familiar ones, bearing in mind Disraeli's admonition that "what we anticipate seldom happens; what we least expect generally happens."

There are today, and perhaps always will be, those who feel more comfortable with the relative stability of a bipolar, Cold War-type world, where we have clearly defined sets of friends and enemies. But that world no longer exists, and it may never exist again. In its place is a world where new technology, particularly in communications and information, has made nations and their economies more interdependent; a world where the disappearance of the restraining influence of super power competition has lead to the gradual increase in democratic governments in some regions of the globe and a rise in fanaticism and intolerance in other regions; a world where all people have become more vulnerable to terrorism. In short, it is a world that is not as stable as we would like it to be.

Over the past decade, the actions of the United States and our allies have made a positive difference to this new world order in places like the countries of the former Soviet Union, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor. Now, we may not know who won the Presidential election yet, but we do know that isolationism in America is dead for the foreseeable future—except for perhaps a few isolated pockets of strength in Palm Beach, Florida, where Pat Buchanan apparently did much better than even he expected.

I. Preparing to meet the most likely challenges to our national security

Last year the Joint Chiefs prepared a diagram demonstrating the full spectrum of threats to our nation's security and prioritized the probability of occurrence of those various threats. This threat spectrum demonstrated that the threats which carry the greatest potential damage to our vital interests, such as strategic missile attack and major theater wars, are also the least likely to occur. The more likely threats to our national interest will come from regional conflicts due to ethnic, religious, or cultural differences, or from terrorism.

The terrorist attack on the Cole last month demonstrated once again that our enemies are most likely to use asymmetric means to attack us. They realize it would be suicide for anybody to confront the United States military directly. It is also clear that we will be increasingly challenged by non-state actors. If states are involved, they will seek to hide their involvement.

We need to think carefully about the extent to which we spend limited resources on threats that are the least likely to occur. We also need to determine how best to protect ourselves from asymmetric attacks. For instance, clearly a ballistic missile attack on the United States is a threat, but it is one that we have successfully deterred up until now with our overwhelming military capability to retaliate.

And there are cheaper and easier means of attacking the United States than an ICBM. The borders of the U.S. are notoriously porous. The press reported a year ago that our border patrol agents intercepted in one night 1,400 undocumented immigrants trying to cross into Arizona. Imagine how many people evade customs or border patrol agents and cross illegally into our country every day. And then try to imagine what some of them could be carrying. Last December we were fortunate to arrest a suspected terrorist in Port Angeles, Washington, trying to cross into the United States from Canada with significant quantities of high explosives and detonators.

If I had to choose between a defense against a North Korean ICBM and the development of technology to detect explosives at long range, so as to help protect us from terrorist attacks by a truck or boat loaded with high explosives, I would choose the latter.

We also need to face up to the fact that terrorists will sooner or later attempt to use weapons of mass destruction against us. The U.S. intelligence community cautioned us last year that non-missile attacks against our country with weapons of mass destruction are more likely than ballistic missile attacks with weapons of mass destruction.

I commend to all of you a New York Times magazine article in June of this year entitled "Inside Jihad University: The Education of a Holy Warrior," which provided a chilling picture of religious training in one of the religious seminaries in Pakistan, which the author called a perfect Jihad factory. We need to recognize the extent to which some extremist leaders abuse religion as a tool of hate and intolerance, and we should find a way to expose their efforts as inconsistent with the true tenets of their religion. We also need to make greater use of Red Teams, including the use of foreign-born personnel to help us better understand the thinking of other cultures and the hatreds produced by different experiences. Another important step might be to attempt to convince leaders of all religious faiths to join in a condemnation of terrorist activity.

Finally, we need to work hard to improve our intelligence collection capabilities, particularly human intelligence against terrorists. As the recently released report from the National Commission on Terrorism notes, "Good intelligence is the best weapon against international terrorism."

In addition to focusing on our need to counter asymmetric attacks, the upcoming QDR and the National Security Strategy Review need to carefully consider the types of conflicts that our military forces are likely to face in the future. Building the capability to fight two major theater wars has, until recently at least, been driving us to make major force structure decisions that will equip us to deal with the less likely contingency while leaving us inadequately structured to deal with much more likely contingencies such as peace enforcement, peacekeeping, and humanitarian operations.

I believe we should structure our forces to deal with one major theater war, and one or two smaller scale contingencies. While such a change may not result in any financial savings— indeed, it may cost more—I believe that change may result in a force that is better equipped and trained to handle the conflicts in which our soldiers, sailors, marines, and air men, will most likely be engaged for the foreseeable future. The Army's transformation effort will better enable it to deal with contingencies across the spectrum. This effort deserves support and resources, but we should also be confident that it addresses joint war fighting capabilities, and that any interim capability is both cost effective and operationally sound.

An issue closely related to the two major theater war requirement is the participation of U.S. forces in peace operations. I thought it was very questionable last year to lower an Army division's readiness rating because a portion of the division was participating— and participating very successfully, by the way— in peacekeeping operations in the Balkan.

The authors of a June, 1999 study entitled, "A Force for Peace: U.S. Commanders Views of the Military's Role in Peace Operations," interviewed a number of active duty and recently retired general and flag officers to determine their views on the participation of U.S. military forces in peace operations. The findings of this study were very interesting.

First, the senior officers interviewed unanimously agree that participation in peace operations is in our interest and strengthens U.S. leadership. Two, on the issue of the effect of peace operations on military readiness, the officers reject the criticism that peace operations dangerously compromise war-fighting capability. At worst, they say, it is a mixed bag. At best, in many cases involvement in peace operations actually strengthens war-fighting skills. And third, the officers believe that peace operations generally contribute to rather than undermine troop morale.

In a speech in July of this year, Marine General Tony Zinni said, "In trying to fight our kind of war, be it Desert Storm or World War II, we ignore the real war fighting requirements today. We want to fight the Navy Marine operational maneuver from the sea, or the Army Air Force air/land battle. That's not going to happen. We're going to be doing things like humanitarian operations, peacekeeping and peace enforcement." And then he went on to say, "My generation has not been well prepared for this future because we resisted the idea. We even had an earlier Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who said real men don't do operations other than war. That just about says it all. But operations other than war are our future," said General Zinni.

To prepare for that future, I have a few suggestions.

First, we should encourage our allies not just to participate, but to take the lead in peace operations. We've had some successes recently in that area. The Europeans are now providing 85 percent of the troops in Kosovo and a similar percentage of the economic and other non-military contributions. Australia played the lead role in providing troops for the protection of the people in East Timor. I do not believe that our leadership in the world is dependent upon our always playing the leading role on the ground in peace operations.

I am concerned that we sometimes send ambivalent messages to our allies about this matter. That happened, for example, when the European union member nations, as part of the effort to achieve a common foreign and security policy, pledged to develop the capability to intervene in humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping and peace making operations when the NATO alliance is not itself involved.

This EU initiative was met by a mixture of applause and protests from both the Congress and the administration. One of the shriller complaints was that the EU initiative did not provide a right of first refusal for NATO. The Europeans were stunned. They thought that they were acting responsibly and were responding to a U.S. demand that they do more militarily in their own back yard. In the succeeding months, European ambassadors, foreign ministers, defense ministers, and even prime ministers, rushed to Washington to explain their initiative to the administration and to Congress. More than one such visitor commented to me that it was a case of "damned if we do, and damned if we don't." To make matters even worse, some influential members of Congress and others have responded to the Europeans doing more by proposing that the United States pull its forces out of Kosovo altogether.

Now, I believe it's overdue that the Europeans should assume a greater role in security issues in Europe. Indeed, had they stopped the Serb attack on Dubrovnik at the start of the Bosnian war, much of the human tragedy that followed probably would have been prevented. I don't see that European initiative as a threat to NATO. Have no fear, the European Union will first try for NATO involvement every time. Frankly, my only fear is that the Europeans will not devote the resources to produce the military and civilian capabilities that will be needed for their initiative. I believe that we should do everything we can to encourage them to develop these capabilities.

Secondly, beside encouraging allies to take leadership roles, in areas such as Africa, where outside nations are not willing, and where no single African nation is capable of taking the lead in responding to regional crises, we should continue to work on efforts like the African Crisis Response Initiative to develop the skills of regional nations to conduct combined peace operations. While I recognize that this effort is presently designed to enable the involved nations to conduct traditional peacekeeping operations, I hope that over time they may also be able to conduct limited peace enforcement operations. When the question is asked, why did we act to stop genocide in the Balkans but not in Rwanda, the answer in part is that there is no NATO yet in Africa as there is in Europe. We should keep trying to get African nations to develop a NATO-like multi-national, regional capability.

Thirdly, instead of complaining about the negative impact of peace operations on war fighting skills and warrior ethos, we should focus on identifying and then minimizing those aspects of peace operations that have a negative impact on our armed forces. The Departments of State and Justice have embarked upon a new initiative to identify and train a pool of about 2,000 civilian police volunteers for peace operations. The European Union has followed our lead and recently instituted a process to establish a pool of 5,000 civilian police officers, of whom 1,000 would be ready for deployment within 30 days. The European Union has also decided to establish a rapid reaction facility to mobilize and rapidly deploy non-military forces, including civilian officials and civilian police to peace operations.

Hopefully those initiatives and others will reduce the non-military tasks that the United States and allied military forces have to conduct during peace operations.

II. The United States is out of step with our allies and friends on some critical national security issues

The second topic I wanted to discuss has to do with the movement within the international community towards greater emphasis on multilateral organizations and international treaties to regulate relations and commerce among nations and to maintain or restore the peace and punish aggressors. A good example is the European Union, where its 15 member nations have agreed to a shared sovereignty in a number of areas such as trade, health, and economics, and more recently with respect to foreign and security policy.

The actions of the United States, however, have tended to move in the opposite direction of our allies. For example, the failure of the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; the refusal of the United States to sign the treaty for international criminal court; the possible decision to deploy unilaterally a national missile defense system, and to abrogate the ABM treaty; the unilateral decision to reduce our payments to the United Nations for peacekeeping, and our failure to pay our U.N. dues and assessments; the frequent unilateral imposition of economic sanctions with extraterritorial effect, are all actions that have raised questions among our friends and allies around the world.

In the aftermath of the October '99 vote of the Senate against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a Singapore paper echoed the views of many of our closest allies when it said, "Americans are moving away from international agreements and responsibilities. They seem to see no need to be so encumbered." Both Presidential candidates demonstrated an understanding of the need to be sensitive to other nations' perceptions of our actions. Governor Bush stated, "If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us. If we are a humble nation, they will welcome us." Vice President Gore referred to the need for strategic humility in our dealings with other nations. But transforming those thoughts into true power sharing will require a great deal of thought and bipartisan support.

III. Fulfilling Congressional responsibilities in the area of national security

The final topic that I want to discuss this morning is how Congress is fulfilling its role in the area of national security. I think everyone here will agree with me that Congress needs to approach national security issues on a bipartisan basis. The Senate Armed Services Committee has a pretty good track record in that area. Although partisanship prevented the passage of most significant legislation other than appropriations bills this year, and we still have five appropriations bills to pass, Congress passed the fiscal year 2001 Defense Authorization Bill by an overwhelming vote.

The major disagreement over the continued participation of U.S. forces in Kosovo was debated and decided on its merits and for the most part, on a nonpartisan basis, with Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the issue in the Senate. Senator McCain and I lead the effort to defeat a bipartisan proposal that could have required the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Kosovo by a date certain. Unfortunately, not all national security issues have been dealt with on an equally nonpartisan basis. For example, efforts to address national security issues at the Department of Energy have been undermined by baseless charges that the administration sold sensitive information to China in exchange for campaign contributions. Similarly, committees in both Houses held hearings in which members made unfounded allegations about Chinese control of the Panama Canal because a Hong Kong based international company, the largest container port operator in the world and a company that was formed long before there was a Communist China, won the right from Panama to conduct maritime container operations in ports adjacent to both ends of the Canal.

We in Congress need to emulate the example set by one of my Michigan predecessors in the Senate, Arthur Vandenburg. This Republican Senator began his career as an ardent isolationist, but he became an internationalist after Pearl Harbor and a strong champion of a bipartisan American foreign policy. He was largely responsible for drafting the 1945 United Nations charter, and he steered its passage through the Senate. He played a leading role in constructing the Marshall Plan, and he engineered the Senate ratification of the NATO treaty. We would all do well in the Congress to follow Senator Vandenburg's example by overcoming not only the urge to score partisan points, but also overcoming the urge to protect interests in our own states and districts at the expense of more important national security interests.

In my view, members of Congress too often treat the defense budget as an opportunity to achieve funding for their state or district rather than as an opportunity to improve our national defense. I know few in this audience need convincing that we need to close more military bases since we have a clear excess of infrastructure. And yet, base closure proposals have been defeated in each of the last three years because members of Congress are so concerned about the impact that a new round of base closures might have on bases back home. Both of these very political temptations, adding unneeded items to the defense budget, and opposing more base closings, sap us of resources that we need for important national security needs.

As we look to the national interests, we must work to insure that Congress plays an appropriate role with the President in the all-important decision to use military force. This means that Congress must face up to its War Powers responsibilities and replace the War Powers Resolution with legislation that is workable. Last year, the Senate voted to authorize the use of air and missile attacks against Serbia on the eve of the NATO-lead air campaign. The House of Representatives, on the other hand, on the same day six weeks into the operation allied force, voted not to remove U.S. forces from the operation, but in a tie vote failed to authorize U.S. participation in the ongoing NATO air campaign. It was said at the time with some accuracy that the House voted against moving backward, against moving forward, and tied on staying where we were.

I'm afraid that many in Congress too often want to have it both ways: wanting to snipe at the administration in power and criticizing it for deploying U.S. forces to use force or to participate in peace operations, while seeking to avoid accountability by not voting either to authorize such deployment or to deny funding for such deployment.

The War Powers resolution law is unworkable. No President has ever acknowledged its constitutionality. In its place, I would substitute a guaranteed vote in both Houses of Congress on the request of 20 percent of the members on the issue of cutting off funds where U.S. forces have been deployed into hostilities or in the situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances for a specified period of time. If funding were cut off, a reasonable period of time would then be allowed for U.S. forces to withdraw. That would avoid putting the withdrawal of deployed U.S. forces on automatic pilot despite the absence of Congressional action as the war power act provides. But it would give Congress a practical way to exercise the power of the purse and it would force members of Congress to vote yea or nay and not allow us to have it both ways as the War Powers Act permits.

One final observation. We are blessed to live in a nation whose political institutions and economy are respected throughout the world. With the end of the Cold War, our core values of freedom, democracy, and human rights, appear to be stronger than ever with democratic revolutions changing the history of nation after nation. We also have the most dominant military in the history of the world, a military which at once makes our nation secure and enables us to play a unique role in influencing the course of events outside of our borders.

But the ability to influence events does not necessarily mean the ability to control them. We live in a complex, dangerous world, and we must deal with many interests that are contrary to our own. We should be proud of all that we have achieved in the world. But at the same time, we must be prepared to deal with change, or we could well end up being the victims of that change.
The purpose of this conference is to deal with the changes and challenges facing our great nation in the future. Good luck for a successful conference and thank you again for the opportunity to join you this morning. (Applause)

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: We now have the opportunity for several questions for Senator Levin. Who would like to begin? Please, when you rise, give us your name and affiliation, and do not speak until the microphone reaches you because we're recording the entire conference.

Senator Levin: And please no questions from my staff.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Perhaps while you're thinking of questions, let me pose a question to Senator Levin. You talked about the need to get away from the idea of two major theater wars and the focus on the force structure for one major theater war, and perhaps two smaller types of contingencies. What would the changes in force structure, especially for the Army that this might entail, as you see it, Carl?

Senator Levin: Well, I think General Shinseki is on the right track here with faster, lighter, more quickly deployable forces. The transformation effort which the Army is undergoing I think generally is on the right track. And it's received very strong Congressional support. There was a little bump in that road, but it was not a big one. And General Shinseki addressed it very effectively, and I think we continued on that course in a way which will permit that transformation to continue. But to also do so again with the assurance that the interim force that is there can, in effect, do the job adequately and efficiently and also that the jointness principles which have been adopted will also continue to be in place. But I think General Shinseki on the right track.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Next question for Senator Levin? Please? Would you rise and wait for the microphone? It will be on its way shortly.
Senator Levin: Now, I'm also an expert on chads. So any questions on dimpled, pregnant, punctured, hanging, floating chads will all be addressed in the next panel.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: I thought Chad was a country until recently.

Audience: Thank you, Senator. Byron Callan, I'm an analyst at Merrill Lynch. I wonder if you could address the issue of future resources for the Department of Defense. Do you think there's going to be substantially more budget authority for the Department of Defense in coming years?

Senator Levin: I believe there will be more budget authority, but I don't believe it will be substantial. I think it'll be somewhere along the line of what the candidates have proposed. And probably, if I had to guess, in the absence of some change in the world situation, it will be closer to the lower increase of Governor Bush, rather than the larger increase of Vice President Gore. Now that wasn't what kind of the rhetoric and the atmospherics were during the campaign, where Governor Bush was talking about a stronger military, but actually proposed a smaller increase than did the Vice President.

But I would think there will be an increase, and there needs to be an increase. But that it'll probably be more modest than the Vice President's proposal. And the reason is this. The surplus that has been projected is larger than it's going to be. We've already spent this year, in the appropriation bill— I shouldn't say already. We're going to spend in the upcoming appropriation bills significantly more than the budget level which had previously been assumed. And that is going to reduce the surplus. Now, I've heard reports yesterday that the surplus may actually be larger than projected for other reasons. If so, then I would have to perhaps amend my answer.

But in the absence of the Congressional acceptance of a larger projected surplus, the fact that we've already either used or are in the midst of using a significant part of that surplus for a whole bunch of other purposes, some of which are legitimate, some of which in my judgement are not, will put greater pressure on any proposal for a large increase in the defense budget. But I believe that there will be and should be an increase in that budget.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: We'll take a question from over here, the young lady?

Audience: Thank you. Hi, Senator Levin. My name's Elise Fry. I'm the Director of the National Security Project for a nonprofit organization called Taxpayers for Common Sense. My question for you is what do you think the most effective way of encouraging better spending priorities rather than having parochial interests in members of Congress making national security decisions for us?

Senator Levin: You need a President who will be very strong on this issue. And there's always a counter-pressure politically. But in order to avoid adding items that the military doesn't need, hasn't requested, for which there's no requirement, you've got to have a very pointed, public focus opposing those add-ons. The instinct politically is strong to do things for your district and state. And we are all prone to that. Maybe John McCain is an exception. But most of us are prone to that. Our instinct is to gain something for our states or district. And it's a strong instinct.

And to overcome that instinct, you need somebody, probably a President, who takes a very strong position against add-ons for which there is no military requirement. It is not on any list that the military has given us for the near term. If we don't do that, folks, we are using the very resources which we need to do the things which you're going to talk about here that will allow us to address the real threats that this nation is going to face. It cheats us of the very resources that we need.

So sometimes they're called pork, and I don't want to just label everything pork that is the other guy's project. It's not all pork. And it's not useless. But it's relatively unneeded, much of these add-ons. And that's why when people say, "Do you believe in increasing the size of the defense budget?" My answer usually is a little more graduated than my previous answer. My usual answer is, "You tell me what we're going to spend it on, and then I'll tell you whether I favor the increase." So when I said before that I favor an increase in the defense budget, there's a little asterisk on my approval: provided we spend it wisely.

But just adding to the defense budget doesn't necessarily add to our strength if we don't spend it on items that we truly need. So it takes a real jaw-boning at a very visible level, probably the Oval Office, in order to prevent us from doing what our instincts urge us to do. These are very primal instincts in politicians. And never underestimate it.

And one other comment on this. Presidents need us. They need our vote, and their temptation is to get our votes for what they need. And so they frequently will say, "Okay, I'll get you that project, or I'll get you that item in the budget if you can help me out with the Supreme Court justice confirmation," or God knows what else. So what I'm describing as being, or sounding, perhaps, easy, is not easy for a President to do. But in the absence of that, it seems to me we're not going to be able to have a counter-pressure against this instinct.

M: We have two more questions which I hope we can take. We're just running slightly behind time, but we have a bit of flexibility. So let's begin with the first question here and then the second question over here?

Audience: Dr. Baranick, National Defense University. In a Cold War, we had a threat, we could quantify it, we could build a budget, get bipartisan support for it, and we could quantify it. Now we're talking about missions other than or conflicts other than war which we don't know when they're going to crop up, what they're going to be. How do we build a budget and a force structure, get bipartisan support to support that?

Senator Levin: I think we at least have some experience recently in the Balkans. And we have to build on that experience. I believe what we did in the Balkans will be viewed historically as a major success, providing it continues on the course it's on. Now, it may take us a decade or two before we achieve the ultimate goal we want, which is a stable, democratic, multinational Balkan where people live together in relative peace, if not in harmony.

But folks, what we did there, in Kosovo and in Bosnia, I believe changed European history, and made it less likely that we will ever be pulled in to a much larger war in Europe. And also, I believe, saved NATO from the destruction that the tugs and pulls by Greece and Turkey against each other over those areas would have created. So I think we did the right thing. But to answer your question directly, I think we have already learned something about the costs of those kind of operations, and we have to just use the best minds that we have to project costs into the future. I think we already know, at least some, of those elements from the Balkan experience.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Final question is from over here.

Audience: —There have made eloquent, articulate cases for the growth of a more complex threat environment. In this case, what do you see as the prospects for gaining more resources for departments such as the State Department, the Commerce Department, AID, to better anticipate shape and prevent these complex conflicts and environment threats around the world? And two, what can be done so that department budgets don't get held hostage over issues of family planning, U.N. budget, etc.?

Senator Levin: All right. I think we have a reasonable chance of increasing budgets to address the new threat environment. The more closely and directly and clearly the budget request can be connected to the threat environment, the better chance I believe there will be. This requires us to reshape our own rhetoric, our own thought process, our own presentation of budgets, to connect budgets to the emerging threats. But I think when that is done, there is a growing awareness inside of Congress of the new threat, the newly emerging threats.

We have a new subcommittee, an Emerging Threats subcommittee in the Armed Services Committee, for instance. But other committees as well, I believe, are really sensitive to this. And just the incident with the USS Cole sort of dramatizes what the role must be, for instance, of the other agencies besides the Defense Department. I mean, the USS Cole obviously put a big focus on our defense budget and our ability to fend off these kind of attacks. But you saw our ambassador to Yemen very much involved. Our intelligence resources in Yemen, and a focus on what intelligence did we have? How was it analyzed? Did we know? Should we have known? What kind of infiltration did we have in these groups? What happened a month before in some other place? So the diplomatic role, the commercial role, the intelligence role obviously, all these other agencies and entities are now more and more connected to this emerging threat environment, and I believe to the extent that they can show us the relationship between an increased budget request and these emerging threats, that there's a reasonably good chance of seeing increased budgets for those entities and agencies.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: This is a very good note on which to end this opening session. I know that you will all join me in thanking Senator Levin for his outstanding, comprehensive presentation which gives us a very important conceptual basis on which to proceed in the remaining sessions of this conference. So thank you very much, Carl, for being with us. (Applause)

We'll now take a 15-minute break and please be back here in the next 15 minutes, hopefully no later than ten after ten.

(Pause in conference).