In My Time - Dick Cheney [125]
The Defense Department, in my experience, is better at both strategic policymaking and at producing rigorous “lessons learned” reports than any other agency in government, and the individuals I had in key slots, such as Paul Wolfowitz, Andy Marshall, Scooter Libby, and Eric Edelman, were some of the best strategic thinkers around. It was to this group I looked when I determined that we needed a new defense strategy for the post–Cold War world. Working with retired Lieutenant General Dale Vesser and Zalmay Khalilzad, who were also part of the policy planning shop, they produced the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, which was a fundamental revision in U.S. defense policy and strategy.
The DPG represented a shift from a focus on the global threat posed by the Soviet Union to defense planning based on regional threats. It also noted that we would work to “preclude hostile, nondemocratic domination of a region critical to our interests” as well as work to preclude the emergence of any hostile powers that could present a global security threat. There was a focus on alliances among democratic nations and the enhanced security that cooperation could bring. We would not only anticipate and plan for a future security environment, but also work to shape it so that we could advance U.S. security objectives.
We would actively encourage former Warsaw Pact countries and, in time, even former Soviet republics to join in the alliances of democratic nations that had so effectively kept the peace. We would strengthen our common defense arrangements. We also recognized the growing threat of proliferation and emphasized that we would work to update our strategy for countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.
The 1992 Defense Planning Guidance was very significant in the way that it addressed critical global strategic shifts and set out a sound basis for the United States to continue to enhance its own security and that of its allies in the years to come. As I left office in January 1993, we published the “Regional Defense Strategy,” an unclassified strategic plan that incorporated much of the thinking in the Defense Planning Guidance.
The RDS emphasized that U.S. leadership would continue to be crucial in the new defense environment. Our preference was to counter threats whenever possible with friends and allies at our side, but we were clear that America must lead. “Only a nation that is strong enough to act decisively,” it said, “can provide the leadership needed to encourage others to resist aggression.”
IN RESPONSE TO THE fall of the Berlin Wall I had ordered a review of our major aircraft needs across the military services. I asked the services to look at whether we should move forward in building and buying planes like the B-2, F-22, C-17, and A-12, in light of the changed global security environment. I came into office inclined to support the construction of the A-12, the navy’s carrier-based stealth bomber, and in April 1990, I testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee in support of moving forward with it. “It’s a good system,” I said, and “the program appears to be reasonably well-handled.” A few months later, when I was informed that the contractor had cost overruns they could not absorb and would not be delivering the planes on time, I was, needless to say, not pleased. I had testified to the Congress in good faith that the program was on track, only to learn later that it wasn’t. We launched a review to determine why the information I had received was not accurate. As a result a number of individuals involved with the program inside the Pentagon were disciplined and removed from the program. Ultimately, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition resigned.
Over the coming months it became clear that there were more significant cost overruns, technical problems, and delays. If the program were to proceed, I would have