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In recent years, the strategic relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China has become increasingly strained. Relations reached a new low last year when a U.S. aircraft accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during NATO's Operation Allied Force campaign against Yugoslavia. Despite U.S. apologies, Chinese assertions that the bombing was deliberate led to government-sponsored demonstrations, violent protests against the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and the severing of contacts between the United States and China.

On June 20,1999, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed to the "Joint Statement Between the United States and the Russian Federation Concerning Strategic Offensive and Defensive Arms and Further Strengthening of Stability" that called for discussions later this summer on a third Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START III) treaty and on strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. According to Administration officials, these discussions will begin in Moscow on August 17th. However, serious questions remain over whether the Administration's commitment to continued reductions in nuclear arsenals and past treaties in particular, the 1972 AEM Treaty will serve to increase or decrease American security in a rapidly changing and increasingly dangerous international environment.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for the development and maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Much of this important work occurs at the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia nuclear laboratories in California and New Mexico and involves the most sensitive American nuclear secrets. For many years, the adequacy of security measures at these facilities has been subject to criticism, and in 1994, background checks on foreign visitors to the Los Alamos and Sandia weapons laboratories were suspended. At the same time that the number of foreign visitors and from sensitive countries increased from 500 to more than 1,600 between 1988 and the mid-1990s, DOE's countermtelligence budget was declining. A series of reports by the General Accounting Office documented serious security risks inherent in DOE's foreign visitors program.

On February 1st, President Clinton delivered his defense budget to Congress, officially beginning the fiscal year 2000 defense budget cycle. Although U.S. military forces continue to confront a series of worsening problems, the President's admission last fall that the services are facing serious quality of life, readiness and modernization shortfalls, and his recognition that increased defense spending will be necessary to address them, marked an important milestone in the defense debate.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's most recent and most serious challenge to the international community halting all Cooperation with United Nations weapons in inspectors has brought the United State the closest to war with Iraq since 1991. Moreever, the United States has again refrained from military action in exchange for a last-minute promise from Saddam Hussein that he will allow UN weapons Inspectors to resume their work unconditionally. This continuing pattern of Iraqi behavior placing obstacles in the path of weapons inspectors and then removing them in the face of a threatened military response has raised new questions regarding the credibility of the United States and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent Iraq from reconstituting its ability to develop or use weapons of mass destruction.

Developing and deploying systems to defend against ballistic missiles has been a highly controversial issue since l983, when President Reagan first challenged the scientific community to develop ways of rendering nuclear ballistic missiles "impotent and obsolete". Indeed, this challenge remains a formidable one, and the task of destroying ballistic missiles after launch is often likened to "hitting a bullet with a bullet."

"This conference report maintains much of the focus and emphasis of the bipartisan bill that passed overwhelmingly in the House last May. By providing adding additional funding for quality of life initiatives and key readiness and modernization accounts, this bill attempts to address many of the personnel and military readiness issues that are becoming everyday news. "The conference has done its best in an untenable situation. We have reprioritized within a declining defense budget to better address quality of life, readiness, modernization shortfalls. As such, the conference report reflects significant improvements in many elements of the President's budget request. However, as the Joints Chiefs of Staff apparently briefed the President earlier this week, without additional defense resources to reverse the fourteen year pattern of defense spending decline, the military services will be unable to stabilize their shrinking force structures, protect quality of life and readiness and modernize rapidly aging equipment."

On May 15, the Defense Department is scheduled to submit to Congress the results of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the blueprint that is intended to shape American military strategy and determine the structure of U.S. forces in the future. Though the final version of the QDR has yet to be released extensive press accounts and other sources reveal the scope of the review and the course it is taking. The likelihood of worsening mismatches between military strategy and resources under the QDR has caused many, including a number of senior military officers, to conclude that the prime goal of the review has been rationalizing smaller defense budgets rather than actually tailoring U.S. military forces and budgets to the strategic needs of the post-Cold War world. The artificial constraint of limited defense budgets led one senior general to conclude that "we still have dollars driving THE QDR instead of strategy," Similarly, the report of the National Defense Panel, the independent board of outside experts mandated by Congress to assess the QDR, is expected to emphasize the strategy-resources mismatch in its report accompanying the QDR, which is to be submitted to the Secretary of Defense December 1, 1997. "The QDR talks the talk' when it comes to strategy," said one panel member, "but doesn't seem to walk the walk' when it comes to budgets."

At their recent summit in Helsinki, President Clinton and Russian Preside Yeltsin reached agreement on several arms control issues. Two of the most significant involve the relationship between the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and theater missile defenses (TMD) and further reductions in strategic nuclear weapons. The White House described the TMD agreement as a "major breakthrough." However, outside observers, including many in Congress, believe the deal struck in Helsinki may hinder the U.S. ability to develop and deploy advanced theater missile defense systems to protect U.S. troops abroad from ballistic missile attacks - attacks like the Iraqi SCUD missile that killed 28 American soldiers during the 1991 Gulf War.

On May 15, the Defense Department is scheduled to submit to Congress the results of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the blueprint that is intended to shape American military strategy and determine the structure of U.S. forces in the future. Though the final version of the QDR has yet to be released, extensive press accounts and other sources reveal the scope of the review and the course it is taking. From the outset, the review's one fixed variable has been the size of the defense budget. Despite vows by senior Department of Defense civilian and military officials that "everything is on the table," the underlying premise of the QDR is the assumption that the defense budget cannot be increased. For several months, Secretary of Defense William Cohen has maintained that "the QDR is not, in essence, a budget-driven exercise... .What we're doing in this QDR is trying to find the right mix of strategy, programs, and resources." But Cohen also has said, "Just as we have to be realistic about the many threats that we face in the world today, we have to be realistic about the kind of environment that we re operating in as far as fiscal restraint.

The state of U.S. military forces today is being most directly influenced by two competing pressures: The post-Cold War defense drawdown and the expanding demands of manpower intensive peacekeeping and humanitarian operations known collectively as "operations other than war". These pressures are having a significant impact on the readiness of U.S. military forces and are placing at risk the decisive military edge that this nation enjoyed at the end of the Cold War - an edge that was clearly demonstrated during the Gulf War. Despite the repeated assurances of senior Administration officials, the readiness of our armed forces is suffering.