Industries of the Apocalypse

The Defense Department says closing military bases gives communities new opportunity to expand their tax bases and diversify their economies, which is sort of like looking at losing a limb as a weight-loss strategy. But it is certainly true that new industries arise quickly when even mention of closing a base is made. One of those industries is Panic, another is Fear and a third is Conspiracy Theories.

The Kittery-Portsmouth area saw an example of the last earlier this week when a local newspaper passed along the idea that the Maine and New Hampshire congressional delegations might not bust a gut to make certain the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard survives the 2005 base-closure round because its members receive campaign money from General Dynamics, which might want to privatize the base. On average, the politicians’ take was about $12,000 each. I have no idea how interested General Dynamics is in the shipyard, but even if the company could find a way to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to these politicians, it still wouldn’t be enough to cover their added campaign costs of explaining how the base was lost.

Nationwide, politicians have spent a lot of time explaining. From 1988 to 1995, according to Defense’s Office of Economic Adjustment, closure or major redirection of a base was approved for 387 sites. And General Dynamics moved into each one of them – wait, that’s not what happened at all.

What happened was that congressional delegations made their strongest pitches for their local bases. They held hearings, conducted tours, made certain that Defense not only got fully reacquainted with its base but received the right emphasis: Whatever particular need the nation had at the moment, the base in question filled superbly.

Then, 387 times, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission made its decision and the congressional explaining shifted from military to constituent.

The Navy reports that it is 6 percent over capacity so cuts somewhere within it seem inevitable. The Kittery-Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (if you’re from Maine, you are obligated to refer to it with the “Kittery” to be clear which side of the border it falls on) is one of four naval yards. The others are at Pearl Harbor, Norfolk and Puget Sound. Portsmouth employs about 4,600 people, more than half from Maine, who refuel, maintain and overhaul Los Angeles- class nuclear submarines. Starting about a dozen years ago, the employees there began developing a reputation for doing high-quality work ahead of time and under budget and are said to be a model for other yards. The new BRAC round stresses the need for bases to perform multiple functions; Portsmouth is home port to Coast Guard cutters, which, incidentally, makes its use in Homeland Security, well, superb.

George Lauffer, former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an expert on BRAC at Potomac Advocates in Washington, says there’s actually little any member of Congress can do to save a base, which was the purpose in setting up the Base Realignment and Closure Commission originally – to remove politics from the process. So what about all the activity from delegation members? “Most of it is for show,” he said. “I don’t think they have an influence within the commission, though they may have some at DoD.”

Congressional delegations themselves perpetuate the illusion that they can determine whether a base remains open or closes when they talk about fighting for a base. This naturally draws the public conclusion that if a base is closed a delegation has not fought hard or well enough. Senators and representatives don’t like to think about this, I imagine, but their authority for keeping a base open when Defense wants it closed is limited. (This is not news to the people of Limestone, who can describe in detail just how limited.)

That suggests part of the energy that goes into the show of protesting a base closure would be more usefully directed at preparing for what would happen post-closure. Sen. Susan Collins responds that it is risky to indicate to BRAC that anything but keeping a base open is acceptable. But Mr. Lauffer says, “I think those folks [at BRAC] realize that communities have to explore plans and have those contingencies on the shelf. I don’t think it signals anything.” Some states, such as California, have aggressive backup planning, some do not; it would save everyone time if there were a definitive answer to end the confusion over which is the better path.

One of the stronger opening arguments against the BRAC process was offered by Sen. Olympia Snowe last May, when she reviewed for the Senate 20 years of threat assessments by the military, emphasizing the point that once a base is closed, the facility and the expertise disappear and there’s no going back.

Sen. Snowe began with the 1983 Marine bombing, the TWA flight 847 in ’85, Berlin disco bombing, Pan Am 103 and then compared these events with the ’91 base-closing report. “The most enduring concern for U.S. leadership is that the Soviet Union remains the one country in the world capable of destroying the U.S. with a single devastating attack. But when it came to terrorism, they said: Our efforts to promote regional stability and to enhance the spread of democracy will continue to be challenged by insurgencies and terrorism.”

She went on to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 Tokyo subway attack. “Still there was no mention of terrorism, no mention of asymmetric threat, and no references to homeland security. And this is less than six years before Sept. 11, when we had those catastrophic and devastating events.” Her point was that BRAC is supposed to anticipate what is likely to happen during the next 20 years, but Defense has trouble knowing what is happening currently or even what happened months or years earlier.

It’s a fine argument and an important caution. The Senate heard it, the BRAC process continues anyway and the Maine and New Hampshire delegations are fighting to save Kittery-Portsmouth. Should they fail, they can count on adding a fourth industry to the region: Blame, whether deserved or not.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.