The War Party: The Politics of National Defense

By Peter Storm

The War Party: The Politics of National Defense is written to challenge the widely held misconception that the Republican Party is the party to trust on issues relating to National Defense.
As the author makes clear, for most of the last century, the Democrats were the Party the nation turned to when it became necessary to face the realities of international threats to our freedom and our survival as a great military power.
It explores how the first six democratic Presidents in the 20th Century made strengthening the military their primary focus, while six Republican Presidents worked to weaken national defense.
Finally it critiques the current administrations national security policies and finds areas of serious deficiencies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 24, 2004
• ISBN: 9781462809981

Peter Storm

Peter Storm grew up in the west country, living in Cornwall and Dartmoor, where he found the surrounds steeped in folklore, witchcraft tales and the supernatural. After serving with the Armed forces, traveling around the world, Peter discovered dark tales were as much told there as at home. Raising his interest in horror literature. Growing up with Hammer house films, reading Edgar Allan Poe, William Peter Blatty. King Masterton and Peter Herbert naturally found an interest in creating his own brand of modern horror.

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Copyright © 2004 by Peter Storm.

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Contents

Foreword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Foreword

To provide for the common defense, was not given top billing when our founding fathers met in Philadelphia to write a constitution, but many would now hold that it is our government’s most important function.

That priority ranking developed only as Americans began to recognize that they could not always avoid foreign entanglements and that they lived in an interdependent world. Of our two major political parties, the Democratic Party was the first to embrace this concept and to recognize the need for strong military forces to secure America’s position in this changing environment. The Republican Party saw little need for strengthening the military, and even as WW II was underway in Europe, the 1940 GOP presidential nominating convention held fast to isolationism.

Consequently, for most of the century just closed, military affairs and the responsibility for sustaining a modern military force structure, ensuring that it was adequately equipped with men and materiel, and providing for its modernization, was almost entirely the concern of the Democratic Party. Further, the Democrats had been willing to make available the national defense budgetary levels necessary to accomplish those objectives.

For the GOP, the main concern had always been limiting the size of the federal government, keeping taxes low, and balancing the budget. Or, as enunciated clearly and succinctly in the remarks attributed to President Calvin Coolidge, The business of this nation is business.

Today’s GOP leaders have cast aside what they now see as antiquated concepts of fiscal conservatism. Taxes are still to be avoided, but balancing the budget is no longer a mantra. In the words of Jack Kemp, former Congressman from New York and GOP candidate for Vice President in 1996, The GOP no longer worships at the altar of the balanced budget.

As a result of this apparent GOP turnaround, and its willingness to approve almost any Pentagon spending proposal, the public opinion polls routinely report that the electorate considers the GOP as the party most trusted to provide for a strong national defense.

As we shall see, however, willingness to entertain higher spending levels does not necessarily result in an increase in our national security levels. Up until the current Administration, Republican politicians have often opposed systems that called for careful analysis and review of weapons acquisition and force structure proposals, such as those which characterized the national security approach of the Democratic administrations. Further, any Democrat in Congress who might venture to raise issues such as cost effectiveness during budget hearings or other meetings on defense issues was in danger of being charged with being weak on national defense, or, worse, not supporting our troops.

Clearly, the summary of the two political parties’ approach to national security that I have set forth above differs from the current popular perception, and is in direct conflict with views such as those expressed by Ann Coulter in her book, Treason.

People can, of course, differ on any number of things, but in this area getting at the facts is critical. Will the Republican Party be willing to sustain high levels of defense expenditures over extended periods? And, if it comes to that, will the GOP be willing to raise the taxes needed to support such long time expenditures? Does today’s GOP have the long time dedication to national defense that the Democrats had in the war against fascism and communism over the 50 some years from the 1930s through the l980s?

These questions are rarely raised in today’s political debates. But answers in the positive to each of them are crucial if we are to remain committed to fighting international terrorism for the foreseeable future.

In the chapters that follow, I will deal with how our two major political parties approached national defense issues in the last century and to what extent we can draw conclusions from those disparate approaches to help us answer the questions posed above.

To accomplish this I will, in part, be drawing on my own experiences in this area: first as a Foreign Service Officer serving as a liaison officer between the State Department’s Intelligence Bureau and Army Intelligence; then in the National Security Division of The President’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as Chief of the Land Forces Unit, the Tactical Air Warfare Unit, and finally, the Strategic Retaliatory Forces Unit. My OMB tenure was under four Presidents: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. I ended my government National Security affairs career on Capitol Hill as the senior analyst for International Affairs on the House Budget Committee. My military service was as a member of the Army of Occupation in Germany, and as a member of the Marine Corps reserve. I am a graduate of the National War College.

I will also use National Security Council documents, some recently declassified for this study, and in the opening chapter below, I rely upon documents captured from the Nazi archives upon the fall of Berlin in the closing days of World War II.

Chapter One

Which Party is the War Party?

In an unscripted moment during the 1976 presidential campaign, Senator Bob Dole, campaigning as the Republican candidate for Vice President, stunned his advisors and mystified the American electorate by labeling his Democratic Party opponents, presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and his running mate, vice president candidate Walter Mondale, as the leaders of the War Party.

He hoped to convince his audience that the Democrats would exercise little constraint when it came to spending for national defense, and that the result would be the neglect of important domestic programs, and/or increased government spending and taxes.

Had Senator Dole lost his mind? How could he call the Democrats the War Party? Did he not remember that the Democrats had just four years earlier gone down to humiliating defeat behind their peace candidate, George McGovern? Didn’t Bob Dole understand that it was his own Republican party which was strong on national defense, while the Democrats were inclined to be weak?

The answer is no, Bob Dole hadn’t lost his mind, or his memory either. His characterization of the Democratic Party as the War Party was quite correct, although the Democrats were never really comfortable with that characterization. They considered their high levels of spending on national defense to be part of the effort to preserve the peace, but to be prepared for war, were war to come.

In any case, as Senator Dole made clear, the Democratic Party’s leadership in the area of national defense was established long before the 1976 presidential campaign, and its leadership continued well beyond that time. As the review below will show, through the first nine decades of the 20th Century every Democrat who was elected president following a Republican administration had to make the rebuilding of the national defense establishment one of his top priorities. This list includes: Woodrow Wilson; Franklin D. Roosevelt; John F. Kennedy; and Jimmy Carter. Yes, as we shall learn, the list of those who rebuilt our national defense includes Jimmy Carter.