Congressional Use of Strategic Weapons Acquisition to Influence U.S. Arms Control Negotiations

Congressional Use of Strategic Weapons Acquisition to Influence U.S. Arms Control Negotiations

Kevin GenerousUniversity of Connecticut, Ph.D. Candidate

Presentation to the New England Political Science Association2014 Conference, April 26, 2014

Abstract: The US-Soviet strategic arms talks that ushered in the Cold War endgame in the 1980s and 1990switnessed the extraordinary intervention by Congress in the Executive’s traditional policymaking areas insecurity strategy and foreign policy. In the 20th Century Congress rarely succeeded in efforts to re-shapenational security policy and grand strategy. A research puzzle focuses on whether Congress deliberatelymodified nuclear weapons acquisition programs that were simultaneously subject to bilateral negotiationsin order to exert policy influence on the arms negotiation process and to pursue their preferred securitypolicy ends at the expense of the Executive. This paper begins to analyze this puzzle through a contentanalysis to determine deviation from Executive weapons acquisition requests by congressional defensecommittees from FY 1975-FY 1990, and an assessment of the amendment process in each chamber todetermine whether the influence of Hawks, Doves or Owls prevailed in Congressional weapons acquisitionand arms control policy preferences.

1. Introduction: Congress, Strategic Weapons Acquisition and Arms ControlNegotiations

This paper is part of an ongoing doctoral dissertation that

explores congressional policy influence in U.S. foreign policy,

specifically strategic arms control negotiations conduction by the

Foreign Policy Executive (FPE) by means of its constitutional

authority of the power of the purse and oversight over military

weapons acquisition.

This larger research task uses a case study approach

investigating congressional use of strategic nuclear weapons

acquisition in the late Cold War period (roughly 1975-1990) to

influence the conduct of US-Soviet arms negotiations. It explores

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the causal linkage between two developments: the first, the

changing systemic distribution of global power that precipitated

the end of the Cold War, uses Neoclassical Realist (NCR) IR theory; the

second, the contribution of legislative political elites to

facilitating the end of the Cold War strategic nuclear

competition, employs the New Institutionalism’s American Political

Development (APD) theory.1

A central puzzle under investigation focuses on Congress’

contribution to American foreign policy behavior: whether Congress

directed strategic weapons acquisition programs that were

simultaneously subject to bilateral negotiations in such a manner

as to exert policy influence on the arms negotiation process and

general foreign policy outcomes. Specifically, the research puzzle

asks: did Congress manipulate the weapons acquisition process in order to drive U.S.

diplomatic strategy in key negotiation forums? The dissertation also asks, Can

small, elite groups of legislative players, acting on their collective assessments of

1 Two recent works constitute an excellent overview of the Neoclassical Realist andAmerican Political Development theories, respectively. A basic theoretical treatise forNCR, see Taliaferro, Lobell & Ripsman (eds.), Neoclassical Realism, The State and Foreign Policy(2009); The concept of the president as the “Foreign Policy Executive” (FPE) is centralin recent Neoclassical Realist literature. For APD theory, see Orren and Skowronek, TheSearch for American Political Development (2004); For a practical application of elements of bothNCR and APD theory to American foreign policy, see Lindsay, Congress and the Politics of U.S.Foreign Policy (1994) and his other publication on this subject.

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international threats and opportunities, bargain with the chief executive over weapons

procurement as a means to influence the state’s arms negotiation positions and pursue

their preferred security policy ends? The objective is to better understand

why, how, and under what conditions did Congress attempt to influence

American foreign policy through strategic arms acquisition

decisions. Five major strategic weapons acquisition cases subject

to simultaneous, bilateral arms talks covering the 1970s-1990s are

investigated in the ongoing doctoral research.

NEPSA Conference Paper, Purpose. This conference paper represents a

small part of the ongoing investigation into this larger research

puzzle. It focuses on a narrower search: to define and discern

congressional elite attitudes towards strategic weapons

modernization programs and related arms negotiations. It uses a

conceptual content analysis of annual legislative bills and

reports by the Defense Authorization and Appropriations Committees

of the Congress, and the degree to which these committees’

legislative recommendations were accepted or amended by the larger

chambers. Clarifying congressional elite views as to their

perceptions of global threats and opportunities to the state by

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examining their legislative output can provide further theoretical

grist for exploring the larger questions of both why and how

Congress attempts to influence American foreign policy.

This paper, like the larger dissertation project, uses a

heuristic that identifies three categories of congressional

defense elites—Hawks, Doves and Owls—each of which incorporates a

distinct world-view of superpower power relations, the role and

value of strategic nuclear weapons, and strategies to acquire and

control these weapons. 2 The struggle for control over U.S.

strategic weapons acquisition policy and, as a related by-product—

influence over U.S. arms control stances in bilateral negotiations

—can be told through employing these heuristics.3

The conceptual analysis summarized below characterizes two important

pieces of the research puzzle: (1) Defense Committee perspectives

2 Specification of the elite factions is based on a typology by Graham Allison, AlbertCarnesale and Joseph Nye of hawks, doves and owls. The hawk-dove-owl typology serves as aheuristic device to classify congressional arms control policy preferences by weaponsprogram. This typology was created and first identified in Graham T. Allison, AlbertCarnesale and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., eds. Hawk, Doves and Owls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War (NewYork: WW Norton, 1985). In this volume, the authors develop an agenda constructed by theAvoiding Nuclear War Project at Harvard’s JFK School of Government.3 The original typology was employed as a means of differentiating overall policyapproaches to minimizing the prospects for nuclear war. While certain weaponsacquisition programs and approaches might become apparent from their design, this wasnot the focus of the book by Allison, et.al., which makes only passing references to thefive acquisition case studies my doctoral dissertation employs. This paper will focussole on a single case, ICBM modernization.

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on what types of strategic nuclear deterrence capabilities were

needed to address Soviet strategic nuclear threats and that

encouraged stabilizing bilateral strategic arms agreements, and

(2) to what extent the Defense Committees’ preferences reflected

the majority of Congress.

Central Questions Addressed. The main questions this content

analysis addresses deals with congressional defense committees’

approaches to weapons acquisitions that were simultaneously

subject to U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations. This paper addresses

three questions:

Did the Defense Authorizing and Appropriating Committeesexhibit the characteristics of the Hawk, the Dove, or the Owlin the late Cold War period?

On the floor of their respective chambers, did efforts bysome members to amend the defense bills resemblecharacteristics of the Hawk, the Dove, or the Owl?

By what means—innovative legislative procedures—did anychanges made by either the Defense Committees or the Chambersattempt to change the negotiating tactics of the FPE?

Purpose and Conduct of this Content Analysis. Congressional Defense

committees framed their preferences for strategic force

modernization programs in their bills and reports, while the

larger chambers provided a stamp of institutional approval on

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their legislative handiwork, at times challenging the FPE’s

preferences. The purpose of this content analysis is to identify

the intentions, focus or communication trends of the heuristic groups

Hawks, Doves and Owls. The unit of analysis chosen is “U.S.

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Nuclear Weapons,

acquired for Military Deterrence and Arms Control Purposes.”

The type of content analysis conducted here is a conceptual

analysis, the purpose of which is to establish the existence and

frequency of concepts most often represented by words or phrases

in congressional defense report literature on ICBM programs

simultaneously subject to arms control limitations. The analysis

identifies both explicit and implicit occurrences within the

committee texts, as well as the frequency of keywords and

comparative analysis with the types and outcomes of Floor

Amendments offered to alter the Defense Committee bills. Analysis

can indicate a strong presence of positive or negative words with

respect to the proposed research question and the frequency of

keywords associated with Hawks, Doves or Owls indicate which

groups’ policy preferences were reflected in Congress’s weapons

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acquisition decisions in the late Cold War period. Content

analysis helps characterizes attempts made by both weapons program

opponents and supporters to amend the committee-recommended

legislation and thus influence—directly or indirectly—American

diplomacy at the conclusion of the Cold War.

The results of the conceptual analysis subsequently will be

used to conduct a more in-depth relational analysis that will examine

relationships among concepts in a text to determine if different

meanings emerge as a result of the conceptual groupings.

Stages of Analysis for Conceptual Content Analysis: There are four stages

in the conduct of this conceptual analysis:

1. Theories: The research reflects the theories of Neo-Classical

Realism (a theory of International Relations) and American

Political Development (a theory of New Institutionalism in

American Politics). These general theories are applied to the

problem of understanding Congress’s use of weapons acquisition

to influence US arms control policy and strategy, and the

inter-branch negotiation over both arms and arms control.

These are found in the next section.

2. Categorization: The characterization of Hawks, Doves and Owls is

described on page 16.

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3. Concepts: The policy preferences of Hawks, Doves and Owl are

conceptualizaed in terms of, respectively, Damage Limitation, Cost

Reduction/Arms Race Stability, and Crisis Stability. These concepts are

defined on page 17.

4. Codes: Specific codes, or key words in context (KWIC) are

assigned to the Categories and Concepts. These represent the

search terms used to analyze the congressional data sets. These

key words are also used for later data coding necessary to

conduct the relational analysis. These are defined on page 19.

Conceptual content analysis results are found on pages 24-40.

THEORIES: The IR and APD Literature and Two-Level Game Framework.The main thrust of Neoclassical Realism asks: what is the intervening role

of the State in explaining foreign policy actions in IR? NCR adherents argue that

“the scope and ambition of a country’s foreign policy is driven

first and foremost by its place in the international system and

specifically by its relative power capabilities.”4 The recent NCR

agenda posits why, how and under what conditions internal

characteristics of the state intervene between leaders’

assessments of threats and opportunities in the international

system and “the actual diplomatic, military and foreign economic

policies those leaders pursue.”5 This research agenda further4 Rose, “Review Article: Neoclassical Realism And Theories Of Foreign Policy”. WorldPolitics, (1998), 146. 5 Taliaferro, Lobell and Ripsman (eds.) (2009), 28.

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explores how these processes are defined and constitutes a wider

investigation of how top state officials make decisions in three

areas. First, how elites view, assess and react to likely threats

within the international system; second, the development of national

strategies to address these perceived threats; and finally, how they

mobilize societal resources necessary to implement and sustain those

strategies.6 Thus, the study of Congress and the end of the Cold

War appears a fruitful research application and test of NCR

theory.

NCR’s research agenda focuses on the state’s relative material

power, which in this paper suggests is measured by superpower

nuclear arsenals (as opposed to more general foreign policy assets

and interests) as the underlying basis for perceptions of both

threat assessments and strategic opportunities by congressional

and policy elites, perceptions perhaps motivating efforts to alter

a state’s foreign policy stances. Thus, why, how, and under what

conditions the relative material resources of great powers are

constituted and supported – in terms of strategic capabilities and

their impact on the systemic distribution of power as perceived by

6 Ibid., 3-4.

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congressional elites – are central to the research puzzle.

Neoclassical Realist theory therefore can help examine how

congressional perceptions of relative material power in the late

Cold War period shaped both American strategic force acquisitions

and arms control strategies. Applying a Neoclassical Realist

approach to analyze congressional influence on U.S. policy and

strategy requires a structured framework to assess not only the

intervening variable of domestic influences on the formulation of

negotiation positions, but establishing a policy correlation and

exploring causality between the congressional influence and the

overall arms control negotiation outcomes.7

Assessing the intervening domestic variable within a

Neoclassical Realist approach also involves focusing on the

domestic processes of American political structures. As part of

the effort to show how to “bring the state back in” within IR

theory, Gideon Rose points out that “to incorporate state

structure as an intervening variable, one has to know a decent

7 These could be defined as national resource allocations leading to a final treaty (orno agreement) and adjustments to grand strategy. Lobell, Ripsman and Taliaferro (eds.2009) address how foreign policy debates can be framed by domestic debates over threats,strategy adjustments and resource decisions, which in this study constitute Level IIbargaining between the FPE and Congress.

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amount about how different countries' political institutions work,

both in theory and in practice.” 8

How domestic institutions influence overall foreign policy and,

relevant to this study, how Congress may exert its policy

preferences on U.S. arms negotiations, also suggests a theoretical

application of American Political Development (APD), drawn from New

Institutionalism.9 The application of APD in this analysis posits

that the Congress can influence national policy outcomes by

forcing the Executive to accept its policy preferences by means of

innovative legislative procedure. APD investigates the processes

of political change via the historical development of institutions

through analyzing recurrent patterns of order and stability while

seeking sources of change. APD theory points to a dynamic, not

static, understanding of American politics, and demonstrates that

change can be explained by studying institutional flexibility and

adaptability over time, under conditions such as path

dependencies, junctures, punctuated changes, and multiple

8 Ibid., 166.9 New institutionalism focuses on developing a sociological view of how politicalinstitutions interact and the broad effects of institutions on individuals withinsociety. Two major approaches within New Institutionalism are American Political Development(APD) and Rational Choice. This analysis employs an APD theoretical paradigm.

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concurrent orders, and which employ methods such as process

tracing.10

APD theory in the context of this study argues that the ability

to mandate structures and procedures upon the FPE can provide

Congress a powerful means to build their preferences into the

policy-making process without passing policy-oriented legislation

in the traditional manner.11 In this way congressional bargaining

leverage can structure executive branch decision-making in ways

that promote a president’s compliance with explicit legislative

intentions. Indeed, content analysis of Defense Committee reports

herein reveal a series of innovative procedural means by which the

legislative branch creates mandates, reporting requirements,

legislative vetoes, and “fences” and “hooks” on appropriations

that reflect clear congressional policy preferences.

In terms of foreign policy formulation, APD theory provides a

valuable research means to focus on “how” Congress serves as an

intervening variable under NCR theory to influence American

foreign policy. Thus, APD theory can be employed to look at the10 Orren and Skowronek (2004). The process tracing method will be used in the broaderdoctoral research dissertation.11 Lindsay, Congress and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Policy (1994), 282.

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institutional evolution of Congress in foreign policymaking in the

post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era, the historical period of the

strategic arms control cases at the end of the Cold War.

The phenomena of congressional influence on U.S. foreign policy

formulation and arms control negotiation processes through weapons

acquisition and might best be explored by using Robert Putnam’s

model of two-level negotiation games (see Figure 1 below).12 This

study uses Putnam’s model as an organizing concept for identifying

the nature of domestic influences that explain American foreign

policy behavior in the late Cold War period, incorporating both

NCR and APD theory.

Inter-Branch Relations: Foreign Policy Making by Two-Level Games. Applying

Putnam’s two-level game concept implies an ongoing Executive-

Legislative branch negotiation (or struggle) over foreign policy

control that dates back to the republic’s origins. However, since

the second half of 20th century, especially during the early (1945-

1960) and middle (1961-74) Cold War years, the FPE eclipsed12 Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International

Organization (1988), 427-460. See also Evans, Jacobson and Putnam (1993) and Mo (1994),Trumbore & Boyer (2000) and Boyer (2000), who also apply this research to foreignpolicy problems.

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Congress’ role in policy formation. As the US-Soviet global

competition intensified in the 1950s and 1960s, Congress largely

served in a supporting – some say subservient – role of providing

the FPE with the means through appropriations of building and

maintaining national power sufficient to compete with the U.S.S.R.

It rarely challenged the Executive’s overall direction of national

security policy.13

Figure 1:

13 The eclipse of Congress’ constitutional role in war declaration is seen in the Koreanand Vietnam conflict and in the crisis management of superpower relations. In the post-World War II period, the modern presidency became the dominant player in Americanforeign and national security policy and strategy-making. For a critique of thisexecutive-dominant foreign policy paradigm, see Schlesinger’s The Imperial Presidency (1972);for a vigorous defense of it, see John Yoo, Crisis and Command (2009).

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Institutionally, Congress was ill-equipped to address many day-

to-day policy aspects of the Cold War, particularly in an ongoing

management of Cold War crises and challenges of global diplomacy.

While this was foreseen by the Founders in the institutional

design of the political branches, the degree to which the

Executive branch dominated and the Legislative branch acquiesced,

American federative policy had by the 1970s, in the wake of the

Vietnam War and the Watergate scandals, become an institutional

embarrassment to many in Congress. Its main federative policy

tools, its war-declaration power, its treaty-making and

ambassadorial approval powers of advice and consent, were largely

bypassed by the modern Cold War national security apparatus. The

normal legislative process (“regular order”) was also cumbersome

for Cold War security management. Further, Congress’s remaining,

and most potent federative power – the appropriations power

(“power of the purse”) – had become something a president largely

took for granted in providing the weapons and means to fight the

Cold War. Congress did not challenge the FPE’s preferences for

nuclear strategy, doctrine or weapons choices, largely fulfilling

the president’s defense appropriations requests.

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The late Cold War period (1974-1991) presented an opportunity

for Congress to reclaim some of its lost policy influence in

federative affairs. Three reasons explain this opportunity:

First, Vietnam and Watergate politically weakened the

president’s hold over federative policy. This was a result of an

acute erosion of public support for the presidency. A second

reason was the strengthening of congressional means to challenge

the FPE through institutional reform that weakened the committee

seniority system and expanded the number of legislative players in

determining and shaping budget priorities. This resulted in a

resurgence of congressional challenges to executive policy

prerogatives as a new generation of aggressive, younger

congressional policy entrepreneurs emerged after 1974, equipped

with congressional budget process reforms that decentralized

institutional power on the defense policy and appropriations

committees, long dominated by more conservative, compliant and

pro-military chairmen.

A final reason for congressional defense policy resurgence

involved the need to overhaul and modernize American strategic

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nuclear deterrent forces at a time when arms negotiations with the

Soviet Union became an important political imperative. As the

Soviets approached parity in strategic nuclear capabilities with

the United States in the mid-1970s, in part as a result of the

Soviets taking full advantage of provisions of the 1972 SALT I

agreement, the American defense establishment emphasized the acute

requirement to incorporate evolutionary changes in both strategic

weapons technology and employment doctrine that resulted in new

weapons requests coming before Congress at the same time the U.S.

and USSR were entering into prolonged negotiations to constrain

strategic nuclear arms.14

The result was congressional efforts to promote their policy

preferences in federative affairs by demanding more influence in

American security policy making. The instruments of that

influence would center on the defense policy-writing and

appropriations-making committees of Congress, using their most

latent constitutional power for leverage: the “power of the purse”14 The implication of Soviet achieving nuclear parity was the FPE concern over thecontinued validity of the American Cold War grand strategy of containment as a means tomaintain and extend the American post-WW II geopolitical position. A wide range of viewsexisted within presidential administrations as to how Soviet parity might affect theAmerican grand strategy of Containment. Of particular concern: Could the United Statescontinue to contain the Soviet Union under conditions of parity (i.e. without possessingstrategic superiority)?

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and management oversight of the armed forces, especially weapons

development and acquisition.

Inter-Branch Relations on Weapons Acquisition and Arms Negotiations. Using the

latent power of the “functional veto”, Congress would attempt to

influence the shape of US negotiation stances through the

constitutional means of the “power of purse” and defense

oversight.15 Employing this leverage sets the stage for the two-

level game and examines two propositions.

In the first proposition, congressional efforts to influence

U.S. arms control stances is represented as an inter-branch struggle

between the executive and Congress over formulation of national

policy and its implementing strategy. Specifically, the inter-

branch struggle focuses on competing institutional views over the

prevailing external threat environment and strategic opportunities

to address American power potential via weapons modernization and

arms control.

15 John Yoo posits that the latent power of the purse provides Congress with a“functional veto” over most presidential activities, including in federative affairs, bythreatening to de-defund government operations. He also argues that Congress tooinfrequently employs this “veto” in its inter-branch federative struggles with theexecutive branch. See Yoo, Crisis and Command (2009), 76.

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For each executive decision on forces and arms control,

Congress potentially has a direct means to exert its policy

influence. Executive officials must make and coordinate three

determinations on weapons systems that affect arms negotiations:

first, which weapons to permit (or ban) in a treaty; second, which

weapons to fund and deploy given treaty opportunities; and third,

which future weapons to develop unconstrained by treaty

limitations.16

In each of these steps, an assertive and determined Congress

can press upon the Executive its institutional policy preferences

that shape (or re-shape) U.S. negotiation stances that can affect

U.S. foreign policy and nuclear strategy and doctrine. Congress

selectively picks policy fights with the Executive by seeking

points of greatest institutional leverage and by developing new

procedural tools to maximize that leverage.

In the second proposition, the inter-branch struggle is further

complicated by an intra-legislative battle between three diverse and

conflicting views over net assessments of the bi-polar threat

16 Paul N. Stockton, “The New Game on the Hill: The Politics of Arms Control and Strategic Force Modernization,” International Security, (Autumn, 1991), 151.

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environment and the condition of the material distribution of

systemic power, characterized through the Hawk/Dove/Owl heuristic.

This intra-legislative conflict guides the congressional portion

of the inter-branch domestic bargaining over the content of U.S.

arms negotiation stances. Each congressional faction attempts to

exert influence over the FPE on American arms control negotiation

stances and to shape foreign policy behavior by means of non-

traditional and innovative policy and procedural behavior that

represent significant inroads into traditional presidential

foreign policy prerogatives.

The executives spanning these administrations had two primary

objectives in US-Soviet bargaining over arms control and

deployment of new weapons systems. First, they planned to deploy

advanced military capabilities to modernize U.S. strategic

capabilities that, relative to Soviet systems, by the mid-1970s,

were becoming or had become increasingly obsolete and expensive to

maintain.17 Second, imminent deployment of these systems was

designed in part to encourage arms concessions that the U.S.17 The leveraging of new weapons systems as a means to negotiate constraints on thefuture capabilities of the adversary was typical of arms control theories of the 1960s,as developed by American think tanks and academics. See Brennan (1961), Schelling andHalperin (1969) and Hyland (1982).

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leaders hoped would place constraints on existing (and future)

Soviet/Russian strategic capabilities. Using an analogy of the

poker game, U.S. negotiators sought assurance that their stack of

“bargaining chips” (U.S. weapons systems in the pipeline that

would provide advanced military capabilities) would be available

when planned to “bet” with their Soviet counterparts.18 The

presence (or absence) of these high-value chips, in their view,

could significantly influence the way the negotiation game would

unfold, and provide sufficient leverage for the FPE to secure

favorable terms.

Congressional interest in arms control policy typically is

explained by a struggle within Congress (paralleling struggles in

the executive bureaucracy) between arms controllers (“doves”) and

force modernization supporters (“hawks”), with the ideological

divide defined in terms of a desire for either more or less

18 Military advocates would typically promote deployment of these capabilities based ontheir contribution to an evolving military doctrine and mission requirements; few wouldever concede new weapons capabilities would not be required to execute deterrencerequirements, and, if deterrence failed, operational war-time missions. Once bilateral armstalks began, however, civilian decision-makers and arms negotiators in the executivebranch began to refer (at least in public and before Congress) to the bargaining leverageinherent in some new systems and capabilities. Whether this subtle change in programrationale was necessary to increase congressional likelihood of funding new systems, ora matter of actual bargaining leverage is an additional research question to beexplored.

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weapons. Arms control is thus seen by its advocates as just

another means to restrict weapons procurement rather than to shape

or address a distribution of power.

The congressional intervening variables must be operationalized

by the degree to which any of the perspectives of the Hawk/Dove/Owl

heuristic emerge in legislative products that shape nuclear

weapons acquisition programs. These programmatic actions are

designed to promote (1) “crisis stability, (2) damage limitation through

enhanced counterforce capabilities, (3) reduction in weapons cost or

quantity, (4) outright program cancellation, (5) full program authorization, or

(6) conditional programmatic activities (referred to as program “hooks”

because of funding was held up until specific conditions were

satisfied).19 Hawks, Doves and Owls are highly unlikely to support

in the aggregate all of these programmatic actions; for some

programmatic actions, there may exist temporary alliances (e.g.

19 Programmatic “hooks” could be tied to any type of conditions: arms control progress,recommendations of independent expert commissions, successful programmatic milestones(such as flight testing or independent technical reviews, rates of expenditure ofappropriated funds), or whatever restrictions the relevant committee imposed and wasable to incorporate into the final bill which became law. Critics, frequently those inthe executive branch suffering under the restrictions, chafed at programmatic ‘hooks’,which they felt were legislative efforts to either to micromanage the program, ordesigned to deliberately slow down the weapons program and, even perhaps to slowly killa program by raising program cost sufficient to induce a death spiral by peeling awaylegislative supporters concerned about rising program costs.

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Hawk-Owls, or Owl-Dove), while other actions will gather support

for only a single group (e.g. Hawks for full program

authorization, or Doves for outright cancellation). How do these

perspectives and programmatic activities emerge? Evidence can be

found through content analysis of the annual legislative language

in congressional authorization and appropriations bills and

through use of innovative legislative procedures, as well as from

interviews with former congressional members and staff.20

The overall tone and length of congressional debate over these

new weapons programs could theoretically influence Level I

bargaining prospects if the deployment prospects of modern,

technologically advanced systems were cast in doubt. While

throughout the 1950s and 1960s, legislators had reliably supported

new nuclear weapons, after the 1970s many legislators came to

support funding development of strategic programs only to serve as

“bargaining chips.” Thus, congressional support for final

deployment of these American systems could never be an absolute

20 Subject interviews with former members and key staff are also a part of the methodbeing used in dissertation research.

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certainty in the minds of Level I negotiators, whether on the

American or Soviet side of the table.

How would deployment uncertainly affect the credibility of the

U.S. bargaining position? If Soviet negotiators ever came to

believe that, in the absence of an arms deal, future U.S. weapons

capabilities might not be present, then what were their incentives

to make concessions to the United States in areas of comparative

strategic advantage?21 Thus, a FPE would have to carefully

consider Level II bargaining position with the Congress, if he

would want to maintain negotiation credibility in Level I. This

provides an assertive Congress considerable bargaining leverage

should the legislative institution attempt to influence American

foreign policy by means of their weapons procurement authority.

Setting aside the simple poker analysis, within a more complex

legislative process this task of creative a coherent legislative

arms control strategy would involve a difficult coordination of

several key defense committees, dozens of important legislators on

21 As the case studies on SALT and START indicate, this was a great concern among American negotiators regarding the US goal to address Soviet advantages in heavy, multi-warhead ICBMs, which caused American civilian and military leaders such heartburn.

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those committees, a party leadership often sharply at odds with

each other and the FPE’s own priorities, and persuading and

winning the votes of several hundreds of their legislative

colleagues who are also likely divided on the issue. Successful

coordination of this type in the Congress is rare and even rarer

still on issues of high politics and foreign policy.

By examining both inter-branch perceptions of the strategic

environment and how each intra-legislative faction seeks to use its

institutional role in the weapons procurement process as a means

to impose their preferences on the Executive branch, the study

reveals the degree to which Congress as an intervening variable

influences the material and strategic components of American grand

strategy and foreign policy. This should then allow an informed

assessment of how Congress may have uniquely shaped American

foreign policy behavior in the late Cold War and immediate post-

Cold War period.

CATEGORIES: Hawks, Doves and Owls.This typology serves as a heuristic device to classify factions of

congressional arms control policy preferences by weapons program

and strategic objectives.

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Hawks tend to promote aggressive strategic force modernization

in order to retain nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union to

acquire either quantitatively more or qualitatively better nuclear

“swords” than the Soviets.22 In addition, more and modern

technologically advanced weapons also served a purpose to “get

tough” on the Soviets at the bargaining table, through the tactic

of “bargaining from strength.”

In contrast, Doves favored aggressive arms control measures and

consistently oppose development of next generation nuclear weapons

on moral, budgetary or other grounds.23 Funding nuclear weapons is

seen as, at worst, a waste of scarce resources better used

elsewhere in society; at best, nuclear R&D programs are little

more than “bargaining chips” to be traded away in for favorable

disarmament agreements before the need to actually build and

deploy the weapons. As a group, congressional Doves would adopt22 For example President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear deterrence policy was based on thenotion of “peace through strength.” 23 Hawks and Doves are further defined as “Nuclear Hawks” or “Nuclear Doves” forpurposes of this study, although the “nuclear” designation will not be used in the text.This is because some interview subjects felt the use of the term “Dove” implied non-support for a strong national defense. In this study, “doves” may support militaryspending for legitimate national defense purposes, but are opposed to additionalincrements of nuclear weapons in general, or against specific nuclear weapons systemsfor moral, budgetary or other reasons, such as redundancy and/or disagreement withdoctrinal issues. The voting records of some congressional “doves” identified in thisstudy indicate consistent support for conventional military programs, but opposition to1970s-90s-era nuclear weapons programs.

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(sometimes enthusiastically, at other times more tenuously) the

populist “nuclear freeze” movement of the early 1980s and

consistently sought to turn nuclear “swords” into “plowshares.”24

Some policy elites in Congress eventually adopted a “third way”

distinct from Hawks and Doves, a third type referred to in this

study as Nuclear Owls.25 Owls are motivated by a mix of sometimes

conflicting intentions: first, the loss of U.S. nuclear

superiority by the late 1970s with the Soviet Union’s attainment

of rough nuclear parity brought with it uncertainties regarding

the effectiveness of the existing U.S. nuclear deterrent; second,

bilateral arms control negotiations began with great promise in

the 1960s but became stalemated after 1975; and third, a new

generation of U.S. strategic weapons and revolutionary24 The “nuclear freeze” movement was based on the concept of a mutually verifiablesuspension (“freeze”) of all US-Soviet nuclear weapons deployments at existing levels.Advocates argued that this measure would prevent further growth of newer, more dangerousweapons, allowing follow-on negotiations to focus on pursuit of more substantive armscontrol; even if these follow-on talks were unsuccessful, it was argued, a freeze wouldhalt additional nuclear proliferation and lead to the gradual erosion of older weapons’military and political utility. Critics argued that the “freeze” would prevent plannedmodernization in the 1980s of 1960s-era US weapons, and would lock in a Soviet strategicadvantages attaining after they completed a series of generational force modernizationprograms in the 1970s. These programs were seen to have helped the Soviets attain roughstrategic parity with the United States in overall strategic weapons capabilities by theend of the 1970s.25 While the “Owl” moniker was established in the Allison, Carnesale and Nye book Hawk,Doves and Owls (1985), the political origins—if not the moniker—of the Owls can be tracedback to the 1979 abortive SALT II treaty ratification debate and, even further, to thetheoretical roots of arms control writings of Thomas Schelling, Morton Halperin andother theorists in the 1960s.

27


technologies appeared in the development pipeline with performance

characteristics some in Congress felt could threaten the stability

of the mutual deterrence relationship, changed as it might be as a

result of parity; and, fourth, there existed among some in

Congress, in the eyes of critics, a desire to “triangulate” among

Hawks and Doves and posture as ‘moderates’ supporting some nuclear

programs as a means of protecting their political flanks from

attacks by Hawks. These policy elites, academics and think tank

scholars therefore sought to stakeout a distinct approach to

maintaining nuclear deterrence, Carving out the middle position

between Hawks and Doves, Owls could support the arguments of

either group on a case-by-case basis; at other times, they might

stand on completely different grounds to support or oppose the

FPE’s nuclear weapons plans and even formulate their own distinct

policy position.

CONCEPTS: Damage Limitation, Arms Race and Crisis Stability

Grounded in knowledge of post-WW II nuclear doctrine, arms

control theory and recent weapons technological advances, the Owl

school argued for the return to basic arms control objectives.

28


Overall arms control objectives are defined as (1) “crisis stability, or

reduction in the possibility of nuclear war, (2) damage limitation if

war breaks out, and (3) cost reduction in creating stability in arms

competition.”26 Of these three goals, Hawks and Doves generally

claim to support the latter objectives of damage limitation and

cost reduction, respectively. However, Owls tended to focus

principally on crisis stability, allowing Owls to carve out a

distinct space between Hawks and Doves in the policy formulation

debate, one that relies on either arms control, or highly

selective weapons acquisition choices, or a combination of both.

Joseph Nye writes that

Crisis stability remains central to arms control. Althoughnegotiated reductions are one way to seek crisis stability,they are not the only way. What is crucial for crisis stability is to avoidforce structures that would make first strike advantageous, and to improvetransparency, communication and predictability, allowing defense plannersto adjust doctrine and weapons procurement decisions to maximize security—whichincludes deterrence, crisis stability and damage limitation—within resource constraints.27

Introduction of a distinct Owl perspective, seeking a “middle

ground” defined by the pursuit of strategic stability (as opposed to

26 Emphasis added. See Nye, Jr., “Restarting Arms Control,” Foreign Policy, No. 47. (Summer,1982), pp. 98-113. For the original theoretical formulation see Thomas C. Schelling andMorton H. Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control (1961).27 Ibid., 107.

29


superiority), and supporting procurement of carefully “tailored”

nuclear swords, also challenges traditional explanations for

congressional action on strategic arms control and/or strategic

weapons procurement. Arms control agreements would be one way to

mutually incorporate carefully tailored, stabilizing ‘swords’ in

U.S. and Soviet arsenals.

Each congressional faction attempts to exert influence over the

FPE on American arms control negotiation stances and to shape

foreign policy behavior by means of non-traditional and innovative

policy and procedural behavior that represent significant inroads

into traditional presidential foreign policy prerogatives. This

is a conflict characterized by competing factions of congressional

policy elites each with differing perspectives.

CODES: Key-Words-In-Context for Hawks, Doves and Owls

Using data sets described below, Congressional actions regarding

ICBM modernization programs were searched using specific keywords

tied to the categories and concepts characterized in the previous

sections.

30


The frequency and context of these coded keywords in the

congressional data reveal the character of the committees’

preferences for weapons programs as well as arms control

preferences. However, care must be taken in assessing word

frequency. These coded keywords must be understood in their

proper context. For example, Doves will frequently use ‘Hawkish’

or ‘Owlish’ terms as a means to criticize or differentiate

positions (e.g. “counterforce” capabilities as a destabilizing

weapons characteristic), while Hawks and Owls will readily embrace

the term as necessary to enhance deterrence. The same applies to

Hawks and Doves. For example a search of the FY 1974 House

Authorization bill reveals seven instances of the Dovish term

“bargaining chip,” which denotes support for a weapons research

and development program for the sole purse of trading it away in

negotiations rather than preparing it for deployment and

enhancement of U.S. military capabilities. Six of these terms were

found in a “Dissenting View” of a Dove discussing the value of an

ICBM program strictly for purposes a negotiation bargaining chip,

while the seventh instance was found in the committee’s main

31


report in a critical context, indicating the committee’s clear

preference for deployment of the weapon’s military capability.

The totality of the KWIC assessment, however, provides a

reliable means to characterize congressional elites and the

defense committees in the analysis.

Table 1 (see below) shows the integration of Heuristic

Categories, Weapons Concepts and Coded Keywords employed in this

content analysis.

Table 1: Integration of Categories, Concepts and Code Words

Heuristic Category HAWKS DOVES OWLS

Characterization

Tough on Soviets,

Force modernization/ improvement

Limit damage if deterrence fails

Bargain from strength

More/Better “Swords”

Oppose U.S. new generation of nuclear arms

“Bargaining chips”only

Nuclear Freeze “Plowshares”

Seek “middle ground”

Crisis strategicstability

Avoid nuclear war & limit damage if deterrence fails

“Tailored Swords”

Strategic Weapons/ Arms Control Imperative

Limit Damage Cost Reduction,Arms RaceStability

Crisis Stability

KWIC Codes hard target kill counter-force (good)

prompt response deeply buried targets

Cost Reduction: arms control savings too expensive unaffordable not needed

command and control

first strike stability

stable weapon silo vulnerability

32


inferiority launch under attack

Soviet treaty non-compliance

Soviet superiority Strategic parity (bad)

Strategic imbalance

Single-shot kill probability (SSPK)

unnecessary overkill cost of mobility

Arms Race Stability: Arms race bargaining chip action-reaction counterforce (bad) destabilizing hair-trigger overkill mutual verifiable nuclear freeze

force survivability

survivable basing surprise attack strategic parity recallable bolt-out-of-blue Confidence building measures (CBM)

build-down launch on warning Nuclear risk reduction

Analytic Framework/Methodology.

This paper uses a content analysis approach to determine policy

preferences of the key defense committees on ICBM modernization in

the late Cold War period. According to Krippendorf, there are six

relevant questions to address when conducting content analysis:28

1. What data is being analyzed?2. How are they defined?3. What is the population from which they are drawn?4. What is the context relative to which the data are analyzed?5. What are the boundaries of the analysis?6. What is the target of the inferences?

These are addressed below.

Data Sets. Two data sets are used and analyzed: The first is the

Congressional Defense Committee Bills and Reports data drawn from the period

of FY 1974 through FY 1990. These data include both the committee

28 Krippendorf, Klaus, Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology, (2004), 414.[www.contentanalysis.org ]

33

http://www.contentanalysis.org/


and joint conference legislative provisions and explanatory

language that are approved in committee, as well as “dissenting

and additional views” that are included at the end of the

committee reports. These dissents represent the minority views of

individual committee members dissenting from the majority report;

typically these members’ perspectives represent proposed actions

that the majority rejected and are candidates for categorization

as either Hawks, Doves or Owls.

The Bills/Reports data set includes approximately six reports per

fiscal year: A (1) House and (2) Senate authorization report from

both the HASC and SASC, followed by an (3) Authorization

Conference report, where differences between House and Senate

authorizing bills passed in the respective chambers are reconciled

into a common report that – once re-approved in each chamber – is

sent to the president for signature or veto. A signed bill becomes

public law. The remaining three reports represent the

Appropriations process, including the (4) House and (5) Senate

Defense Appropriations Subcommittee reports, followed by a (6)

Defense Appropriations Conference report, which is reconciled and

34


passed in the same manner as the Authorization bill.29 Records of

these committee bills and reports are obtained electronically from

THOMAS, the Library of Congress on-line electronic legislative

information service, which provides access to literally thousands

of committee bills and reports per year. With an average of six

(6) committee reports per year, the FY 1974-90 Committee Bill/Report

data sets includes over 100 committee and conference reports. Just

for ICBM programs alone, in the timeframe under examination, these

data extend to hundreds of pages.

A second data set, Floor Amendments, comes from floor amendments

to the defense committee bills when they are offered for

consideration in the full House and Senate chambers. Amendments

are debated and voted on by the respective chambers, prior to

being sent to a House-Senate conference committee (which is part

of the first data set). Amendment language and votes are drawn

from the published Congressional Record, also obtained electronically

29 In years when one or both of the chambers do not complete their defenseappropriations bills, there may be a temporary “Continuing Resolution (CR) in place ofthe Appropriations Conference, which rolls the unfinished bills into a shortenedversion, bundled with other unfinished government appropriations bills. The CR thenfunds the government in the new fiscal year until regular appropriations are passed andsigned. A CR is not as detailed as a typical Appropriations Conference. Temporary CRshave become more common in recent years, reflecting the dysfunction of the legislativebudget process and/or partisan gridlock and may cover an entire fiscal year.

35


from THOMAS, which documents all daily legislative activities

occurring in the House and Senate chambers.

The ICBM Floor Amendments data set includes 132 amendments

offered in the FY 1974–90 timeframe, defined in the data set by

Fiscal Year, Amendment Sponsor, Sponsor Type (Hawk, Dove. Owl),

relevant Bill being amended (authorization or appropriations),

Outcome/Vote Count, Amendment Summary, and Procedural Means by

which the specific amendment seeks to impose control over policy

or spending.

Content Analysis of Bills/Reports and ICBM Amendments Data Sets. The Defense

Committee Bill/Reports data set of 106 bills and reports extend over

a tumultuous 17-year period covering a range of

national/international events and executive administrations,

including:

Post-Vietnam/Watergate budget process reforms 1970s Détente’s start/finish through the superpower summitry

of the 1980s/90s Signing of SALT I, SALT II through START I arms agreements Four presidencies (Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush)

These years constitute the last third of a roughly 40-plus years

of the Cold War, when the most intensive efforts to negotiate arms

36


limitations and reductions occurred. The Defense Committee reports

often contain long preambles that frame and document the

committees’ perspectives on Soviet threat, arms control

opportunities, defense budget environment and the strategic

rationale and requirements for specific weapons programs. In this

way they are fertile ground to conduct content analysis by coded

keywords.

The texts of the Bills/Reports data are searched using a Key-Word-

in-Context (KWIC) approach that identifies frequency of keywords

associated with the known views of Hawks, Doves or Owls.

“Dissenting and Additional Views” within the reports are searched

in the same manner. In this way, the orientation of each report

can be generally assessed to reflect the views and preferences on

specific weapons acquisition and arms control policies of the

majority of committee members. The orientation of the committee

reports assessed by KWIC content analysis is further established

by characterizing the weapons/arms control preferences of the

dissenting minority views using the same KWIC codes. In many

cases, the same individuals consistently offer similar minority

37


critiques of the committee positions on weapons systems over

successive years. This consistency reinforces the

characterizations of the KWIC content analysis of the parent

(majority-view) committee reports.

The second data source of ICBM Floor Amendments are the House and

Senate floor amendments, which are offered by, and debated among,

Hawks, Doves and Owls. The analysis does not conduct a KWIC

content analysis of actual floor debates texts in the

Congressional Record; since these debates find Hawks, Doves and

Owls together debating proposed amendments, KWIC searches used for

Committee Bills/Reports data would not reveal any useful insights for

this conceptual analysis. Rather, the insights gained from ICBM

Floor Amendments can be obtained by coded identification of which

heuristic group offered the amendment and the judgment of the

overall chamber in either accepting or declining to embrace the

sponsoring group’s amendment; a majority rejection by the chamber

is an implicit endorsement of the defense committee position,

while acceptance of the amendment would indicate chamber consensus

38


of a position contrary to the defense committee’s policy

preference.

Case Study for the Analysis: ICBM Modernization. The larger dissertation

study uses a multi-case study approach involving five weapons

acquisition cases subject to multiple arms control forums over a

20-year period. The cases were selected based on the fact that

some weapons systems were pursued through deployment, while others

were cancelled prior to deployment; similarly, some arms control

forums ended in signed bi-lateral agreements, while others did

not, and some agreements resulted in retirement or withdrawal and

destruction of deployed weapons. This case selection approach

allows both within- and across-case analysis and robust

examination of the role Congress and its actions might have on

American negotiation stances and US-Soviet arms control outcomes.

For this paper, however, only a single case is used. This case

chosen reflects ICBM modernization programs (the Minuteman III,

MX/Peacekeeper, Small ICBM, and related basing and technology

development programs), conducted across a 17-year period. As ICBM

modernization was frequently the highest profile and most

39


controversial weapons acquisition issue in this period, there is a

robust record of congressional activities that could be

extracted/excerpted from the committee the Bills/Reports data set and,

for ICBM Amendments data set, from the Congressional Record pages.

This paper therefore conducts a “within case” context analysis.

Content Analysis Results.

A preliminary conceptual analysis was conducted and tallied via

the KWIC assessments of committee reports and a quantitative

assessment of the success-failure ratios of floor amendments

offered by Hawks, Doves and Owls. Analysis of the data sets using

both qualitative and quantitative measurement revealed the

following regarding the Main Questions:

Q: Did the Defense Committees exhibit the characteristics of the Hawk, the Dove, or the Owl in the late Cold War period?

Historically, the Defense Committees have been far more hawkish

than the general congressional population. This is a function of

defense committee member self-selection, subject expertise and a

focus on national security. While the 1970s reforms resulting in

a lessening of the hawkish bent of the defense committees –

generally because more dovish members were encouraged and

40


emboldened to join these committees and challenge the status quo –

Defense Committees in the period examined still reflected the

defense program and policy preferences of the Hawk or Owl.

However, the characterization was not completely static; over

time the degree of hawkishness ebbed and flowed, allowing in a

greater degree of either Owlish, or in rare cases, Dovish

perspectives. These periods of fluidity to some extent reflected

the geopolitical and domestic politics of the period. These

periods can be generally separated into four chronological blocks.

For example, the FY 1974 through FY 1976 period reflected the

most Dovish of the 17-year period. What explains this

development? This was the by far the most anti-military period in

the time range—in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam

withdrawal, and the election of the highly dovish ‘Watergate Class

of 1974” to Congress. Geopolitically, US-Soviet relations were

entering a period of “détente” characterized by warming political

and economic relations and the signing of the SALT I Interim

Agreement and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; in the domestic

afterglow of these arms treaties, with SALT II negotiations

41


starting, the major weapons procurement program of the period, the

B-1 bomber, faced tough sledding and enhanced scrutiny from

defense committees. Institutionally, the Congressional Budget and

Impoundment Reform Act of 1974 created opportunities and

incentives for more dovish members to join the defense committees

and challenge the prevailing FPE policy preferences. The post-

Watergate Defense Committees were also more skeptical of Defense

Secretary Schlesinger’s public articulation of a new nuclear

weapons employment (targeting) doctrine – driven by rapidly

evolving technology developments pursued by both US and Soviet

military establishments – that rendered most existing U.S.

strategic nuclear weapons both increasingly vulnerable to surprise

attack and less effective in their deterrence function.30

While KWIC assessments make this the most Dovish of the four

periods, Doves nevertheless still dominate the dissenting views,

as illustrated in Figure 2 below. This underscores the overall

dovish nature of the committees and the generally anti-defense

environment of the period.

30 National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 242, 1974.

42


Figure 2: FY 74-76 Dissenting Views

FY 74FY 75

FY 76

02468

101214161820

OWLDOVEHAWK

The next period, FY 1977 through FY 1981, saw a swing back

towards a more Hawkish perspective among the committees, driven by

a growing concern by Hawks that US-Soviet détente was a bad

bargain for the United States and the Soviets were aggressively

pursuing a strategic nuclear weapons doctrine and capability that

rapidly approached strategic nuclear parity with the U.S. The

impending loss of what had always been unquestioned U.S. strategic

nuclear superiority earlier in the Cold War was fueled by the

defense community debate of the CIA’s controversial and hawkish

“Team B” findings that determined Soviet intentions and

capabilities were considerably more threatening than previously

believed by the national security establishment. In addition,

43


former SALT negotiator and long-time defense expert Paul Nitze’s

formation of the “Committee on the Present Danger” encouraged a

more hawkish posture critical of the results of the SALT I and ABM

Treaty agreements. The Committees stressed Intelligence Community

confirmation of Soviet deployment more accurate and MIRVed

warheads on their large, heavy ICBMs that created a impending

vulnerability of the entire U.S. fixed silo based Minuteman ICBM

force; the achievement of Soviet nuclear parity appeared to be

accelerating at a time when all three legs of the U.S. strategic

Triad (land-based ICBMs and bombers, and submarine based sea-

launched ballistic missiles) required upgrading and modernization,

a highly expensive program. President Carter’s cancellation of

the B-1 bomber in 1977, and the outright rejection of his “deep

cuts” SALT proposal led to a more Hawkish perspective on all

defense committees, symbolized by Democratic Hawks such as Sen.

Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a prominent and influential SASC member,

who promoted strategic nuclear programs while criticizing Carter’s

SALT II negotiating strategy. The least hawkish of the four

defense committees was the House Appropriations Defense

Subcommittee. Yet a more aggressive and muscular Soviet foreign

44


policy, culminating in their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979,

which also shelved the Senate’s ratification of the much

anticipated, but long-delayed SALT II treaty, brought both Carter

and the Congress to raise the defense budget and boost strategic

nuclear weapons programs even before the election in 1980 of the

decidedly more hawkish Ronald Reagan. The FY 77 through FY 81

period was certainly more hawkish than the previous period, but

was also trending “Owlish,” mostly due to skepticism towards

basing of the MX missile in an expensive, complicated mobile and

deceptive basing mode that even Reagan rejected outright upon

entering office in 1981. Analysis of the dissenters showed a

greater balance between Hawks and Doves in the FY 77-81 period. A

large spike in Hawk dissent in FY 81 reflects the degree of

unhappiness with the Carter Administration (see Figure 3 below).

45


FY 77 FY 78 FY 79 FY 80 FY 810

5

10

15

20

25

FY 77 - 81 Dissenting Views

Series3Series2Series1

This surge is explained by Hawk demands for greater defense

spending (at a time of growing Owl influence), as well as the

Hawks’ vocal concerns over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,

Iranian hostage crisis and aborted rescue mission, and an

expression of the ‘Sagebrush rebellion’ by Western legislators

unhappy over the administration’s MX/Multiple Protective Shelter

(MPS) basing mode plan which planned to incorporate thousands of

square miles of territory in Western states.

Ironically, in the third period, FY 1982 through FY 1987, the

defense policies of a hawkish Reagan administration helped to

accelerate the Defense Committees’ overall trend towards a more

Owlish stance. This was a result of a number of factors,

Owl

DoveHawk

46


especially negative public reaction in both Western Europe and the

United States to the U.S. and NATO military buildup designed to

counter Soviet programs; by 1980, the first “nuclear freeze”

resolutions were introduced in Congress, the result of a growing

anti-nuclear grass-roots movement. This was also in reaction to

Reagan’s robust substantial nuclear modernization program, which

accelerated counter-force strategic weapons and sought to

immediately deploy the MX missile in interim, silo basing.31 This

decision came despite the previous six years of the Defense

Department’s efforts to promote a mobile MX by emphasizing the

dangerous vulnerability of America’s silo-based ICBMs. Reagan

faced stubborn congressional committee resistance to silo-based

MX, and the administration badly bungled a proposed series of

quick-fix, poorly conceptualized and publically articulated, MX

basing schemes, which were all rejected by the congressional

Defense Committees. To make matters worse, the administration

enthusiastically, and very publically, embraced the counter-force

nuclear doctrine that had essentially already been de facto American

policy under both Ford and Carter, but now characterized by anti-31 Interestingly, Reagan also cut in half the number of proposed 10-warhead MX missilesfrom the 200 Carter has proposed, by requesting only 100 deployed missiles.

47


nuclear advocates as a “nuclear warfighting” doctrine. These

actions encouraged the idea that nuclear war was not outside the

realm of acceptable policy to the administration, which further

alarmed congressional Owls. With new counterforce weapons now

nearing development or in the pipeline, such charges sounded

credible. Administration officials also made impolitic and

frightening public comments about surviving nuclear warfare,

further fueling the popularity of the nuclear freeze movement.

Reagan’s own rhetoric added to the fire, with public comments

characterizing the Soviet Union as a state ruled by leaders “who

reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to

cheat” and openly regarded the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

Such rhetoric shook the confidence of an American public that had

just elected Reagan to take a firmer stance with the Soviet Union,

and pushed the Defense Committees towards the Owls’ influence.

The Defense Committee reports were generally on-board Reagan’s

strategic policy goals – that the modernization of aging U.S.

strategic forces was imperative, and that new strategic systems

must be more capable – but often disagreed at the means and

48


acquisition strategies Reagan pursued. Again, the least Hawkish

and most Dovish defense committee was House Defense

Appropriations. This disagreement accelerated the Owlish trend of

the committees’ actions. They were generally critical of Reagan’s

initial START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) proposal, seeing

his calls for mutual deep cuts in the most dangerous weapons

systems (not unlike Carter’s in 1977) as either naïve or lacking

negotiating credibility; they insisted a more credible proposals

be forthcoming or else his strategic weapons acquisition programs

would suffer. As the Reagan strategic buildup continued, Owls

insisted that the U.S. keep within the (unratified) SALT II

constraints as long as the Soviets did also; they actively

encouraged a “build-down” concept (where newer, but fewer, modern

systems would replaced older weapons) to counter the popular-

sounding nuclear freeze concept, and continued efforts to block or

cancel MX deployments unless it was in an acceptable and

survivable basing mode. With the imminent threat of MX

cancellation in late 1982 and with strong encouragement by Owls,

Reagan created a blue-ribbon presidential commission (the

Scowcroft Commission, chaired by former Ford NSC advisor Brent

49


Scowcroft) to recommend a final solution to the MX basing issue.

Their report in March 1983 was a conscious, political effort to

encourage a Hawk-Owl coalition in Congress: it recommended that

the 100 multi-warhead MX missiles be based in existing Minuteman

silos to immediately address a perceived imbalance in ICBM

counter-force capability (pleasing the Hawks), but moving

expeditiously towards developing a small, single-warhead missile

in a mobile mode that promoted, eventually, a more stable force

posture (which pleased the Owls). The Small ICBM was designed to

diminish Soviet attack incentives (in reducing the value of each

individual single-warhead missile, the cost to attack was both

dramatically was increased and complicated), and promote a

mutually stable ICBM force structure and arms control regime

incorporating the build-down concept. The plan displeased

congressional Doves, who now had not just one, but two new ICBMs

to work to de-fund; Doves faced a political master-stroke aimed at

peeling away political moderates, who wanted to support a

reasonable defense plan other than the more radical nuclear

freeze.

50


The effect of the Scowcroft Commission plan was to forge what

was (hoped to be) a lasting moderate defense coalition on

strategic forces between Hawks and Owls; however, almost

immediately, Reagan jeopardized this coalition by introducing a

wild card that severely tested the “Scowcroft consensus.” On March

23, in a speech announcing his support for the Commission’s plan,

Reagan inserted into the end of a speech a plan for a high-level

defense research effort to render nuclear ballistic missiles

“impotent and obsolete” by creating a “strategic defense

initiative.” The plan – not well discussed internally or

telegraphed in advance – caught even some of Reagan’s top military

and political advisors flatfooted. Quickly dubbed “Star Wars”

after the popular movie, Reagan’s strategic defense research

initiative injected a great degree of uncertainty into what had

become (since the 1972 ABM Treaty) an assumption of offensive-

based nuclear means to assure deterrence (the so-called concept of

“mutual assured destruction,” or MAD). Defense committee members

gave it either mixed, or publicly muted reviews, while raising a

number of conceptual problems with the idea. How would “Star Wars”

interact with Reagan’s own ambitious strategic offensive

51


modernization plan? Could the nation afford such a plan along with

existing force modernization plans? How would the US-Soviet

strategic relationship transition from an offensive to a defensive

dominant deterrence posture? How would the U.S. arms control

strategy be affected? How would the Soviets react? The March 23

speech raised many difficult questions that tended to rally Hawks

around the concept (perhaps at the cost of their allegiance to the

MX/Small ICBM compromise), while raising Owls’ strategic concerns

(by questioning Reagan’s strategic logic, and his commitment and

ability to fulfill the Scowcroft bargain), and gave the Doves

another Reagan defense program to target.

While it was hoped the Scowcroft consensus would finally

resolve the MX issue, it did not. Some moderate Owls began to

waiver when the Soviets walked out of the START talks in Geneva in

December 1983. This Soviet move was ostensibly because Reagan held

firm on a 1979 NATO decision to deploy intermediate range nuclear

Pershing II ballistic and ground-launched cruise missiles in

response to a large Soviet buildup of SS-20 missiles designed to

intimidate NATO governments, which were also under pressure from

52


anti-nuclear mass movements. However, it was also in part to

protest and undermine Reagan’s Star Wars proposal, which the

Soviets could not match technologically, and which potentially

could challenge the huge Soviet investment in ballistic missiles.

The lack of an ongoing strategic arms negotiation for the first

time since 1969, created political problems for Reagan, especially

for the MX prospects. Congress effectively blocked the funding for

MX by “fencing” procurement funds unless Reagan could somehow coax

the Soviets back to the bargaining table, or somehow demonstrate

that the Soviets were “negotiating in bad faith.” It appeared to

be a lose-lose proposition, one that didn’t incentivize the

Soviets to return, and proved to be a political test of Reagan’s

political credibility.

In a complicated series of legislative provisions detailed in

the FY 85 bills, the administration was required to successfully

win four separate votes (one to authorize and appropriate funds

for MX, in both the House and Senate) or see the MX cancelled

outright , a mere year after the Scowcroft report. By expending

much political capital, the administration prevailed in each of

53


the four votes, preserving the FY 1985 MX program; while it

appeared the Scowcroft consensus had remained intact, however, the

success came at a price. Shortly afterward, Sen. Sam Nunn, the

influential SASC ranking member and top Owl in the Senate,

introduced a measure to permanently cap deployment of MX in silos

at 50 missiles in the FY 86 Authorization bill. Any addition

missiles would have to be deployed in a survivable, congressional

approved, basing mode. While the Air Force would work hard over

the next several years to develop and advocate for a satisfactory

rail-mobile basing mode, the “second fifty” MX basing debate would

drag on for another five years, but ultimately the MX program was

permanently capped at fifty missiles.

The Owls’ capping of MX based in silos at 50 missiles weakened

the Hawks’ resolve for supporting the Small ICBM part of the

Scowcroft deal, and official administration and Pentagon support

for the program was weak, even bordering on hostile. Still the

“Scowcroft consensus” limped along through FY 1988, with the Small

ICBM and MX Rail-Garrison programs being alternately twisted and

54


re-shaped by the Defense Committees that appeared unable to fully

support one or the other.

Figure 4: FY 82-87 Dissenting Views

FY 82 FY 83 FY 84 FY 85 FY 86 FY 87024681012141618

FY 82 -87 Dissenting Views


Dissenting views in this period reflects firm and consisted

opposition by the Doves to the Reagan defense modernization

program. Hawk dissent was relatively muted in the FY 82-85,

reflecting general satisfaction with Committees’ support for

55

Owls

Doves

Hawks


strategic programs; the large spike which occurred in FY 87

reflected the growing tendency of the Owls to increasingly

restrict the Administration’s SDI program, and perhaps

anticipation that the Scowcroft consensus on ICBMs among Hawks and

Owls was beginning to fracture as key Owls showed reluctant

support for a “second 50 MX” deployment in any basing mode. Owl

dissent in the FY 82-84 period reflected concerns and warnings by

key Owls such as Sen. William Cohen (R-ME) on the credibility of

Regan’s START proposals and the advocacy of the build-down

concept. The large spike in FY 86, the year (1985) that Sen. Nunn

capped the MX in silos program at 50 missiles, reflected a

tendency of Owls to questions administration priorities,

especially what they saw was an overemphasis on pushing SDI

program before key strategic policy questions had been addressed.32

The fourth and final block, covering FY 1988 to FY 1990, moved

from the Owlish to favor the Doves’ intentions. An advantage to

the situation of effective gridlock on MX and Small ICBM was that

both programs survived and provided to the Soviets evidence of two32 For example, Sen. Nunn had been increasingly speaking out in public forums as well asin SASC hearings, asking how a more defense-dominant deterrence would emerge, and howthe SDI program rationale could be integrated in the administration’s own strategicoffensive force programs.

56


possible American mobile ICBM programs, which may have benefitted

the FPE in START talks. The Soviet side was also pre-occupied

from 1983 through 1985 with a leadership succession crisis, which

eventually saw the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev, an unusually

dynamic and vigorous Soviet leader. The resulting “Gorbomania”

swept Western capitals, led to a succession of high-profile and

dramatically contentious Reagan-Gorbachev summits from 1985

through 1988 that eventually produced an INF treaty in 1987, START

progress under a Defense and Space Talks forum that included

discussion of strategic defense research programs, and

establishment of Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers, a congressional

Owl project focused on lessening the risk of accidental or

inadvertent nuclear exchanges.

The summits also created an atmosphere of hope for progress in

non-arms control areas that eventually led to the fall of the

Berlin Wall in November 1989, and the loosening of the Soviet hold

on Eastern Europe, and eventually the Soviet Union itself.

This ambitions and hopeful period saw the gradual unraveling of

the Scowcroft consensus, as budget pressures, especially in the

57


Gramm-Rudman-Hollings sequestration statute, undermine the

strategic, political and budgetary consensus for a two-ICBM-plus-

Star Wars defense program. The final collapse of both the

Scowcroft coalition and political support for a robust “full up”

vision originally articulated by Reagan in 1983 SDI is evident in

the increasing resistance in the Defense Committees to Reagan’s

defense requests, and the paring back of the SDI program. Figure

5 shows a surge in dissenting views by Hawks, directed at cutbacks

in SDI funding and declining MX/Rail-Garrison; the Hawks also

become more critical of the Small ICBM program.

Figure 5

58


FY 87 FY 88 FY 89 FY 900

5

10

15

20

FY 87 - 90 Dissenting Views


While this gave the Pentagon an opportunity to de-emphasize the

Small ICBM program, it also emboldened Doves to finally kill the

MX Rail-Garrison program in the House’s FY 90 defense

authorization bill. Dove dissents in the FY 89-90 timeframe were

the least numerous in the time series examined in this paper.

Taken by surprise by the House leadership’s retreat from the

Scowcroft consensus in the FY 90 bill, House Republican Hawks, who

felt betrayed by the move, in retaliation eliminated Small ICBM

funds, with help on the House floor from the Doves. While both

programs were somewhat restored in conference, the political

“consensus” unraveled, to the benefit of congressional Doves, who

saw no serious deployment prospects for either program after this

time. The ICBM modernization program in the 1990s would consist

59

OwlsDovesHawks


largely of upgrading the Minuteman III ICBM, which was based on

mostly 1960s technology and had been first deployed in 1970.

Characterization of Dissenting Views. This assessment is based on a KWIC

content analysis of the Committees’ reports. This assessment is

also reinforced by keyword analysis of the “dissenting and

additional views” of some minority Committee members who

overwhelmingly reflect the dissent of the Doves. The entire

breakout of FY 1974 -1990 dissenting views is show in Figure 6.

Figure 6

FY 74

FY 75

FY 76

FY 77

FY 78

FY 79

FY 80

FY 81

FY 82

FY 83

FY 84

FY 85

FY 86

FY 87

FY 88

FY 89

FY 90

0510152025

FY 74 - 90, Dissenting Views

OWLDOVEHAWK

Figure 6 shows a dominance number of dissents coming from the

Doves, which confirms a general tendency of Committee majorities

to reflect the program and policy preferences of Hawks and Owls.

These minority views are most often expressed as a result of the

60


member being on the losing end of the program and policy debate in

the full or subcommittee markups, where the bills and report

language are drafted. Thus the characterization of dissenters is

in direct contrast to the preferences of the committee majorities,

which usually held more Hawkish or Owlish program and policy

views. The data in Figure 7, using the same KWIC content data,

show the share of dissenting views by heuristic type from 182

dissenting and additional views in Defense Committee reports from

FY 74 - FY 90.33

While there was always a consistency of minority Dove dissents in

the period, Hawk dissents tended to be grouped around either

perceptions of increased external threats Hawks felt the

committees were inadequately addressing (FY 77 through FY 81), or

when cherished programs were being threatened by either Owls or

Doves (SDI, MX/Rail Garrison in FY 87 and FY 88). Finally, Owlish

dissents tended to be more “shots across the bow” directed at

administration officials, such as Sen. Cohen’s FY 84 and FY 85

dissents advocating the build-down concept and threatening

33 In instances where there are multi-member submission of views, each members’ viewsare counted individually.

61


withdrawal of his support for the Scowcroft coalition if the

administration did not formulate more serious proposals on arms

control.

Figure 7

31%

61%

8%

Dissenting Views on Defense Committees, FY

74 - FY 90HAWK DOVE OWL

ICBM Floor Amendments

Q: On the floor of respective chambers, did efforts to amend the defense bills exhibit thecharacteristics of the Hawk, the Dove, or the Owl?

Q: By what means—innovative legislative procedures—did either the Defense Committeesor the Chambers attempt to change the negotiating tactics of the FPE?

It is also clear from both the same KWIC content analysis of

Dissenting Views and an assessment of ICBM Floor Amendments offered

62


to the Defense Committee reports that the minority dissenters in

committee are the most likely proponents and sponsors of floor

amendments.

The answer to the second and third questions employs the ICBM

Floor Amendments data set to analyze floor amendment sponsorship,

success/failure and actual content, to determine the following:

Sponsorship : What % sponsors were Hawks, Doves or Owls?

Success : What % of each groups’ amendments passed on floor?

Content I : What procedural means/constraints did proposed

amendment impose?

Content II : What % of amendments had overt linkage to arms

control?

Amendment Sponsorship. The sponsorship for floor amendments could

be by single groups, or , at times alliances made for specific

purposes. Figures 8 and 9 display amendment sponsorship breakdown

by fiscal year defense bills, and by overall percentage,

respectively.

Figure 8: ICBM Amendment Sponsorship (by Type/Coalition)

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FY 80

FY 81

FY 82

FY 83

FY 84

FY 85

FY 86

FY 87

FY 88

FY 89

FY 90

0

5

10

15

20

25

ICBM Floor Amendments by Sponsor/Year

DOVE-OWL HAWK-OWLOWLDOVE HAWK

These data again demonstrate the dominant effort (50%) by the

Doves to alter the majority perspectives of the Defense

Committees. However, more relevant to amendments offered is the

degree of success attained in this effort.

Figure 9: ICBM Amendment Sponsorship (by percentage)

HAWKS 6%

DOVES50%

OWLS 19%

HAWKS-OWLS 7%

DOVES-OWLS 8%

ICBM Floor Amendment Sponsors, FY 80-90

64


Success: How successful was each group? This involved what percentage of

each groups’ amendments were successful passed on floor. Figures

10 documents the groups’ success rates in the aggregate, while

Figures 11 through 13 look at each group’s “batting average” for

floor success.

Figure 10

HAWK - Pass, 14%

HAWK - Fail, 7%

DOVE - Pass, 19%

DOVE - Fail, 32%

OWL-Pass, 24%

OWL - Fail, 4%

Floor Amendments Pass/Fail FY 80 - 90

Figure 11

65


.

Passed, 87%

Failed 13%

ICBM Amendment "Batting Average" - OWLS (.872)

Figure 12

Passed, 67%

Failed, 33%

ICBM Amendment "Batting Average" - HAWKS (.666)

66


In terms of averages, the Owls “batted” at a much higher rate

(.872) than either Hawks or Doves, winning in 34 of 39 efforts on

the chamber floors. Hawks, however, won two-thirds (.666) or 10

of 30, of their floor battles. Of the three groups, Doves were the

least successful (.375), although far more prolific, taking far

more “at bats” (72) than either Hawks or Owls, although prevailing

far less often (only 27 times). Given the Democratic majority

control of Congress during most of these years, and given chamber

rules, the higher amount of the Doves’ amendment offerings can be

attributed to party leadership sympathy for the Dove position.

This is especially true in the House, where the Rules Committee,

controlled by the Speaker, frequently dictates the number and type

of floor amendments allowed on any bill.34

Figure 13

34 While the Senate was held by the Republicans between 1981 and 1987, key years in thisanalysis, Senate rules are more flexible than in the House when allowing minoritymembers to offer amendments on the floor. In both chambers in these years, majorityleadership frequently allowed a wide range of floor amendments to be offered on defenseauthorization and appropriations bills.

67


Passed, 37%

Failed, 63%

ICBM Amendment "Batting Average" - DOVES (.375)

Content I: Did proposed amendment reflect Hawk, Dove or Owlish goals?

Figure 14 shows the legislative vehicles and means for Congress

trying to impose policy direction on the FPE.

Figure 14

any x3

any x4

x6 x3 only

x3, x5

x3, x7

x3, x5, x7

x3, x5, x7, x8

x3, x4, x5, x7, x8

any x8

any x9

0

40

80

120

Procedural Means Employed by ICBM Floor Amendments

KEY: Procedural Innovations:x3 = Weapons Funding (budget authority or appropriated levels)x4 = Expert Commissions (outside panels to study/make recommendations)x5 = Legislative Vetoes (allowing Congress altitude to allow spendingx6 = New Group Franchises (creation of new bureaucratic structures by Congress)x7 = Mandates & Conditions (imposed requirements or conditional approval)

68


x8 = Studies & Report Reqts (formal reporting requirements’ similar to x7)x9 = Sense of Congress (non-statute statements of policy intent; typically non-binding)

The data show that Congressional floor amendments most frequently

attempted to use program funding (‘x3) as the most effective means

of leverage. His indicates a desire to use appropriations as a

“functional veto” over presidential policy preferences.

Additional frequent use of mandates and conditions (‘x7’), often

tied to report requirements (‘x8’) was also a favorite means.

These, when combined with funding constraints imposed considerable

program management constraints on defense officials and tied

release of funds to information requirements, which in turn,

frequently led to additional conditions the following year.35

Finally, a large number of procedural means involved “sense of the

Congress” (or House or Senate) statements, which, although non-

binding, often indicated clear statements of congressional policy

preferences, which the FPE could not completely ignore if he did

not want future bills and reports to contain new mandates and

conditions.

35 Defense Department program managers frequently complained of this legislative“micromanagement”, when, in fact, such oversight is clearly within the constitutionalauthority of Congress, as provided in Article I, Section 8.

69


Content II: Another key question involves the linkage between ICBM

programmatic actions and arms control. Figure 14 looks only at the

overt linkage, detailing what percentage of amendments had any

overt linkage to arms control policy.

This area is more subtle, and goes to the heart of the more

difficult research question of whether Congress used program

acquisition oversight and funding to try to influence arms control

strategy and policy. Most of the 42 arms control–related

amendments reflect “sense of the Congress” type of amendments,

mostly un-controversial statements of support or congressional

preferences desired to register a member’s support for an

important national goal with constituents. It is thus a far less

useful indicator of congressional intent to use weapons

procurement as policy leverage. By what means did any changes made

by either the Defense Committees or the Chambers attempt to change

executive tactics?

Figure 14

70


PASSED FAILED WITHDRAWN0

20

40

ICBM Amendments - Arms Control Related -

Pass/Fail

To ascertain this requires going beyond the content of the data

and speaking to principals via detailed subject interviews or

researching available memoir or oral history data. Analysis of

these types of data would also require a relational content

analysis, rather than the conceptual content analysis used here.

These efforts are part of the larger, ongoing dissertation

research.

Inferences Drawn

The conceptual content analysis presented here reveals important

inferences regarding a larger research effort. From the content

analysis, it can be concluded that, during this period of time:

Committee Reports. Analysis reveals there is clear influence

dominance by the policy preferences of the Hawks, for a critical

period in the Reagan Administration, by the Owls. The dissenting

71


views were dominated by the Doves, reflecting a minority view in

the Defense Committees, which strengthens and helps validate the

KWIC analysis and assessment of Hawk-Owl dominance on the Defense

Committees.

ICBM Modernization Floor Amendments. Analysis reveals that efforts

to overturn or alter the Defense Committees’ preferences on the

chamber floors was robust and often successful. Here again, the

Doves (often members of the Defense Committees and who had offered

minority dissents in the committee reports) were most likely to

offer amendments, but also were the least successful in doing so.

The great success of the Owls in their floor efforts to amend the

bills demonstrates perhaps the strength of their appeal to the

lager Congress, at least for a time in the early to mid 1980s.

The Hawks also shared in this success to a lesser degree, but

their efforts showed a degree of support from the larger

institution.

Implications for U.S. Arms Control. It is more difficult to draw

discernable inferences in this area, based on a conceptual content

analysis alone. Additional research and application of a more

relational content analysis can provide a clearer picture, as can

72


the conduct of subject interviews with contemporary prinicipal

actors and analysis of memoir and documentary evidence.

However, the results presented hear can point the way by

providing some empirical evidence necessary to address larger

questions of policy influence and NPD and APD theory.

Specifically these include,

How did congressional policy preferences on weaponsacquisition and arms control contrast with the executiveadministration?

To what degree did the contrary (or coordinating) preferencesof the Congress change or influence the negotiating stancesof U.S. arms control policy; in other words, didcongressional influence help or hinder the executive innegotiating with the Soviet Union and thereby positivelycontribute to the end of the Cold War?

What do these results indicate regarding the validation orrefutation of NCR and APD theories?

Future Research Efforts. Future research efforts in this area are to

code remaining bills and report and dissenting view texts of all

five program case studies into manageable content categories in a

more sophisticated computer-based analysis. An on-line computer

analysis tool that allows for mixed method qualitative and

quantitative analyses (Dedoose.com) is being employed for the large

case study program data sets, interviews and archival materials.

73


This tool is useful and preferable for both ease of detailed

coding, analysis speed and presentation of results and analysis.

74


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Congressional Use of Strategic Weapons Acquisition to Influence U.S. Arms Control Negotiations

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