Les Aspin
Leslie Aspin Jr. was an American Democratic Party politician and economist who served as the U.S. representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district from 1971 to 1993 and as the 18th United States Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1994.
In Congress, Aspin had a reputation as an intellectual who took a middle-of-the-road position on controversial issues. He supported the Reagan administration regarding the MX missile and aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, but he opposed the B-2 bomber and the Strategic Defense Initiative. He played a major role in convincing the House to support the January 1991 resolution supporting the use of force by President George H. W. Bush against Iraq, after it invaded Kuwait.
As Secretary of Defense, Aspin faced complex social issues, such as the roles of homosexuals in uniform, and of women in combat, as well as major decisions regarding the use of military force in Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti. He proposed budget cuts and restructuring of forces as part of the downsizing of the military after the end of the Cold War. The deaths of U.S. soldiers in Somalia because of inadequate military support led to his resignation.
Early life and education
Aspin was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from Shorewood High School. He attended Yale University, where he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity, and graduated summa cum laude in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts in history. Aspin then attended the University of Oxford, where he received his Master of Philosophy in economics in 1962. He later received a Doctor of Philosophy in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966.Aspin met his wife, Maureen Shea, in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Shea, a graduate of Hollins College, was working for a research firm interviewing Vietcong defectors when the two were introduced by a mutual acquaintance. After the project was completed she moved to Wisconsin to work on Aspin's unsuccessful bid for Wisconsin State Treasurer in 1968. The couple became engaged in October 1968 and married in January 1969 in Shea's hometown of Hillsdale, New York. The couple divorced in 1979 and had no children.
Aspin served a brief tenure as a congressional staff member for United States Senator William Proxmire. As an officer in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1968, he served as a systems analyst in the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, serving in the Office of Systems Analysis. Before his election as a Democrat to Congress in 1970, Aspin had been active in Wisconsin politics and had taught economics at Marquette University.
U.S. Congress
Aspin ran as a peace candidate in 1970, opposing the Vietnam War. In the Democratic primary he was opposed by Doug La Follette, who was endorsed by the party. Aspin lost the initial count by a few dozen votes, and initially refused to pay for a recount out of his own pocket. It was only after his Kenosha County campaign director, Edwin M. Andersen, was able to garner financial support from numerous supporters, however, that the legendarily thrifty Aspin then demanded a recount and won the primary, by a few dozen votes. In the general election he defeated the incumbent, Henry Schadeberg.Aspin was elected as a Democrat to the 92nd and to the 11 succeeding Congresses and served from January 3, 1971, until his resignation January 20, 1993. Aspin began his career in the United States House of Representatives as an outsider but honed his particular interest and expertise in defense matters. Before and during his tenure in the House, he had opposed the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. In April 1972, he sued Department of Defense in District Court for the U.S. Army to release the Peers Commission investigation of the My Lai massacre.
In his early years in Congress, he often issued press releases critical of shortcomings he detected in the armed forces. In 1973, he criticized the Air Force for devising a plan to purchase 200 beagle puppies, tie the dogs' vocal cords, and conduct tests of poisonous gases. After Aspin began a publicity campaign against the Air Force's plan, an outraged public sent a record number of letters to the Defense Department, surpassing the amount ever sent about any other subject. In March 1974, Aspin told an audience at Brown University, including future 4-star General Wesley Clark and four West Point cadets: "You, the young officer and cadets sitting there - never in your lifetimes will you see us intervene abroad. We've learned that lesson."
By 1985, when Aspin became chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he was recognized as a leading defense authority. His chairmanship caused controversy among some House Democrats, particularly because he supported the Reagan administration's policies on the MX missile and aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. Although temporarily removed from his committee chair by his Democratic colleagues in January 1987, Aspin weathered the crisis and regained the chairmanship three weeks later. He again broke with many Democrats in January 1991 when he issued a paper supporting the Bush administration's intention to use military force to drive the Iraqis from Kuwait. The accuracy of his prediction that the United States could win a quick military victory with light casualties added to his reputation as a military expert.
Secretary of Defense
Nomination and confirmation
Aspin served as an adviser to Clinton on defense matters during the 1992 presidential campaign. Given Clinton's lack of military experience, appointment of a prominent and respected defense expert to head The Pentagon seemed desirable. Because of his leadership position in the House, Aspin's views on defense issues were well known. He was skeptical about the Strategic Defense Initiative, and favored a smaller Navy, a cut in U.S. troops in Europe, and further reduction of military personnel strength. These positions, along with the assumption that Aspin would work toward a substantial cut in the Defense budget, worried the military. Defense industry leaders applauded Aspin's selection because he favored maintaining a viable defense industrial base. Although questioned extensively, Aspin won easy confirmation in the Senate.Agenda and early difficulties
"Shortly after he took office, Aspin discussed dangers that had emerged with the end of the Cold War: the uncertainty that reform could succeed in the former Soviet Union; the enhanced possibility that terrorists or terrorist states could acquire nuclear weapons; the likely proliferation of regional conflicts; and the failure to take adequate account of the impact of the state of the domestic economy on U.S. national security interests. Given these conditions and the end of the Cold War, it seemed clear that the Pentagon was entering a period of potentially profound change. Aspin looked like a sound choice to manage this change.As it turned out, Aspin faced difficulties from the beginning. A serious heart ailment put him in the hospital for several days in February 1993, after barely a month in office. A month later he was back in the hospital for implantation of a heart pacemaker. Even so, he had to deal immediately with the highly charged question of homosexuals in the military, a controversy left over from his predecessor Dick Cheney's tenure. That had become an issue in the 1992 campaign, when Clinton had promised to end discrimination against homosexuals. During his confirmation hearings Aspin indicated that he would take action quickly, and on entering office he presented a plan to the president to discuss the matter with Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presented a timetable leading to an order dealing with the matter. This plan provoked widespread protest from all sides on the issue."
Gender and sexuality in the military
The fallout from the controversy wounded both Clinton and Aspin politically and dragged on until December 1993, when, after many months of equivocation, confusion, and more controversy, Aspin released new regulations, known as the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexual conduct in the armed forces: Applicants for the services would not be asked about their sexual orientation, and homosexual orientation would not disqualify anyone from service "unless manifested by homosexual conduct"; military personnel would be judged on suitability for service, not sexual orientation; separation from the service would be based on homosexual acts, same sex marriage, or statements by an individual that he or she was bisexual or homosexual, with the person accorded the opportunity to rebut the presumption of homosexual acts; DoD criminal investigation or law enforcement organizations would not investigate solely to determine a service member's sexual orientation, and sexual orientation questions would not be included in personnel security questionnaires; finally, service members would be informed of DoD policy on sexual conduct during their training. This compromise policy, issued after an agonizing and divisive public debate, did not completely satisfy any of the concerned parties.Also on the social side, Aspin had to deal with the volatile question of service women in combat. In April 1993 he announced a revised policy on the assignment of women in the armed forces: The services were to allow women to compete for assignments in combat aircraft; the Navy was to open additional ships to women and draft a proposal for Congress to remove existing legislative barriers to the assignment of women to combat vessels; and the Army and Marine Corps were to look for opportunities for women to serve in such components as field artillery and air defense. Meanwhile, Secretary of the Air Force Sheila E. Widnall became the first woman service secretary.
Defense budget and "bottom-up review"
Development of the Defense budget for FY 1994, beginning on 1 October 1993, remained Aspin's biggest task. The budget process proved more complicated than usual, owing to Clinton's campaign pledge to reduce DoD funding and to a "bottom-up review" of the military structure ordered by Aspin shortly after he took office. The end of the Cold War and the consequent opportunity to cut military costs clearly called for the kind of reevaluation of ends and means that the bottom-up review might contribute. A Pentagon steering group chaired by Under Secretary of Defense John M. Deutch and including representatives from various OSD offices, the Joint Staff, and the services conducted the review.Because of the growing threat of regional conflicts, Aspin wanted to have a strong capability to carry out limited military operations, including peacekeeping, and to maintain "a strong peacetime presence of U.S. forces around the world". The bottom-up review report, which Aspin released in September 1993, took into account strategy formulation, force structure, weapon systems modernization, and Defense infrastructure. The report projected a reduced force structure still capable of fighting and winning two simultaneous major regional conflicts. Forces would include 10 active Army divisions; 11 carrier battle groups, 45 to 55 attack submarines, and about 345 ships; 5 active Marine brigades; and 13 active and 7 reserve Air Force fighter wings. The report also called for additional prepositioned equipment and airlift/sealift capacity, improved anti-armor and precision-guided munitions, and enhanced Army National Guard combat brigade readiness.
The conclusions of the bottom-up review influenced the development of the FY 1994 Defense budget, although detailed work on the budget had begun as soon as Aspin took office. In March 1993 Aspin introduced a FY 1994 budget proposal costing $263.4 billion, about $12 billion below current levels, and reflecting cuts in the military services similar to those later included in the bottom-up review. To some critics of high military spending, Aspin's budget plan differed little from that of the Bush administration.
In the fall of 1993 Aspin began to tell the White House that the five-year Defense budget, reflecting the results of the bottom-up review, would exceed the more than $1 trillion projected by the Clinton administration. In December 1993 he put the anticipated shortfall at no less than $50 billion, the consequence of inaccurate inflation estimates, a military pay raise, and failure to account for other Pentagon costs, including peacekeeping operations. The size of the force needed to meet the two regional wars scenario contributed to the projected budget shortfall. Furthermore, Aspin was on record as favoring the use of U.S. troops in regional conflicts, as opposed to other decisionmakers, including General Colin Powell, chairman of the JCS. Aspin's departure from office early in 1994 left further decisions on the Defense budget to his successor. The final FY 1994 budget amounted to a little under $252 billion in total obligational authority.
Like his predecessors Carlucci and Cheney, Aspin faced the perennial issue of base closures, which could also affect the Defense budget. In March 1993 he released a plan to close an additional 31 large military installations and to shrink or consolidate 134 other sites, projecting a savings of over $3 billion a year beginning in 2000. A new Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission approved the proposal, which went into effect when Congress accepted it as a package.
The SDI program also held important budget implications. In May 1993 Aspin announced "the end of the Star Wars era," explaining that the collapse of the Soviet Union had determined the fate of SDI. He renamed the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and established its priorities as theater and national missile defense and useful follow-on technologies. Aspin's assignment of responsibility for BMDO to the under secretary of defense signified the downgrading of the program.