Congressional oversight of the Pentagon has been replaced by hero-worship

The controversy over whether to provide Abrams tanks to Ukraine said as much about the failure of Congressional oversight as it did about NATO politics.  

The Pentagon’s initial argument for not sending the tanks was that they were a complex system that used aircraft fuel and would be too difficult to maintain on the battlefield. In contrast, many military experts saw the German Leopard tank, in the arsenals of several NATO nations, as more efficient, easier to maintain and more useful to the Ukrainians. 

Now Ukraine will receive both tanks, many more Leopards than Abrams. The issue I raise here isn’t whether Ukraine needs an effective tank force, rather, it is whether Congress should pay more attention to the weapons procurement process. Why do we continually build weapons systems like the Abrams tank that are so complex, difficult to maintain and exorbitantly expensive?

Part of the answer lies in the military-industrial complex and its hold on members of Congress. The Defense budget has become a jobs program that produces expensive weapons that often run into problems after they are produced.  

Often the argument we hear is that the defense budget produces jobs and supports our economy. But military weapons are useful for only one thing — combat. Unlike a bus or truck, tanks, ships and planes were not created to serve a domestic purpose and over their lifetime have little recurring benefit to our economy. They provide security of course, yet even there, they too often come up short. 

Take for example the predecessor of the Abrams, the MBT-70, a tank that was initially a joint project with the West German government. When the U.S. Army and the manufacturer insisted on an excessive number of bells and whistles and costs grew exponentially the German government dropped out of the project. They proceeded to build their own tank, the Leopard. Under Congressional pressure, the MBT-70 project was canceled in 1971. 

Where then is that pressure today? Congressional oversight of the defense establishment is practically nonexistent. Cheerleading has replaced the informed scrutiny of effective oversight. 

Last year, the Navy announced the decommissioning of eight Freedom-class warships, built, on average, four years prior, after several breakdowns and other technical failures. The chief of naval operations asserted that the ships “wouldn’t match the Chinese undersea threat.” He didn’t want to spend the $3 billion it would cost to repair them.  

Lobbyists working for companies to be engaged in making the costly repairs to the ships intervened to keep the ships in the active fleet. They lobbied a Congress that should have been asking the tough questions about the manufacturer rather than challenging the chief of naval operations. 

It hasn’t always been this way. In World War II, after a series of accidents involving aircraft and other weapons systems, then-Senator Harry Truman chaired a special committee to look into the problems. He wasn’t criticized as a liberal dove. He was praised for saving the lives of our fighting forces.  

In the 1970s, I staffed a senator from Truman’s home state, Tom Eagleton (D-Mo.). He and other senators were engaged in active Senate oversight. A staff of military experts at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) carefully scrutinized the procurement process and fed senators with useful information.  

Eagleton took the lead in the critical examination of the MBT-70. He later raised serious questions about the efficacy of the Airborne Early Warning System (AWACS) in the European theater. The Air Force, as often happens, was looking backward to develop a system that might have been valuable in the Vietnam War. Department of Defense policy required them to justify AWACS for use in NATO countries. There it was subject to Soviet jamming. 

Eagleton’s questions, informed by the GAO experts and whistleblowers at the Defense Department, caused the Air Force to go back to the drawing board. In the end, AWACS became a useful system in many environments and became more resistant to potential jamming in Europe. 

President Eisenhower in his farewell address warned of the “unwarranted influence” of the “military-industrial complex.”  Now for the second year in a row, Congress has approved more money than the Defense Department requested. Members of both parties try to outdo themselves to show support for a strong defense. 

The same political motivation makes members reluctant to challenge the efficacy of military expenditures. That just leads to the “unwarranted influence” of a system that places a premium on money spent, whether wisely or not.  

The Defense budget shouldn’t be a welfare program. It has a vitally important security function and should be supported. Support, however, also comes in the form of effective and informed oversight. In the past few decades, Congress has dropped that ball and our security has suffered. 

J. Brian Atwood is a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute. He was an undersecretary of State and administrator of USAID in the Clinton administration.