Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee

HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

June 23, 2004 Wednesday

SUBJECT: U.S. GLOBAL DEFENSE POSTURE

CHAIRED BY: REP. DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA)

WITNESSES: DOUGLAS FEITH, UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY; RAYMOND DUBOIS, DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INSTALLATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT; LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES CARTWRIGHT, DIRECTOR OF FORCE STRUCTURE, RESOURCES AND ASSESSMENT, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF; LINCOLN BLOOMFIELD, JR., ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU OF POLITICAL AND MILITARY AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE

LOCATION: 2118 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

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REP. RICK LARSEN (D-WA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First a comment. I want to harken back to Congressman Snyder's question with regards to consideration of-I think you could call it countering --

MR. FEITH: Countering ideological support?

REP. LARSEN: Countering ideological support. It could be that Dr. Snyder-I could be rephrasing his thought here, but I thin the caution which he was perhaps putting out there was that we need to be very mindful of putting a new footprint in places that, to use a Cold War analogy, would be the equivalent of putting a base in the middle of GDR-that is, there's a Boston Globe article of June 12th that the staff reports sites about potential candidates in Africa can be Morocco or Algeria-of course Morocco has been a long-time ally, but it's also been a target. And so are we inviting something that we don't want to invite by placing our folks where they don't-where they maybe could be somewhere else and do the job just as effectively?

So just perhaps as a twist on what his question was about, just some food for thought, Secretary Bloomfield, Secretary Feith's comments talking about legal arrangements and so on, just from a State Department perspective do you see the end game with new countries for new bases, do you see those legal arrangements as (global-run ?) treaties or do you see them more as rental agreements, for lack of a better term? How does the State Department see these?

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REP. LARSEN: Secretary Feith, I want to give you an opportunity to answer that as well and give us some thoughts on that. But I also want to ask a question of you, and if you'd combine or separate your answers, however it may be. Certainly I think it's accurate-when you said we're not going to build new bases, say, in some generic Eastern European country-I won't get into specific names-but is it accurate to say that we will be putting no capital investment into facilities? And the reason I ask that question-also relate that to the same Boston Globe on July 12th that mentioned a couple of African countries as possible strong candidates for new bases-maybe they were inaccurate in saying "new bases," but it still seems a capital investment-likely U.S. capital investment will be going into these countries. And I want to tie that to some of the concerns being expressed here about base closures, BRAC and so on. If we're putting U.S. taxpayer-presumably defense dollar investment into maybe upgrading facilities as opposed to full-blown new bases, those are dollars that are not going into perhaps bases here in the U.S. to accommodate people either moving back here or to accommodate additional missions being placed at bases. So, if you could comment on that, and then perhaps return to the treaty versus rental agreement question, I'd appreciate that. Did you get all that?

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REP. LARSEN: Okay, thank you, and just one final comment, if I may, and-I'll be quick, Madeleine, here-you mentioned earlier about some of these countries wanting us to be there-Eastern Europe and you're maybe thinking they may offer help on construction, help on this and help on that. I just-just-you know-don't get excited. Be conservative about what they might provide. They may want us there, but they have what we want-space-and so I just don't want you to be coming back to us in a year saying, "Well, we underestimated exactly what they wanted out of us, and now we're going to need to put, you know, more dollars forward to get what we need there." It's just kind of a pull back on the reins in terms of that a little bit. Thank you.

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