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 Vice President Cheney served
as Secretary of Defense from March 21, 1989- January 20, 1993 during the
Presidency of George H.W. Bush
Richard B. (Dick) Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on 30 January
1941, attended Yale University, Casper College, and the University of
Wyoming, where he earned B.A. (1965) and M.A. (1966) degrees. He went on to
further graduate study in political science at the University of Wisconsin,
and moved to Washington as a congressional fellow for the 1968-69 year.
Cheney entered federal service in 1969 as a special assistant to the
director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. In 1971 he became a White
House staff assistant, and soon moved on to become assistant director of
the Cost of Living Council, where he stayed until 1973. After a year in
private business, he returned to the White House to become deputy assistant
to President Gerald Ford (1974-75) and then White House chief of staff
(1975-77).
In November 1978 Cheney, a Republican, won election as Wyoming's
representative at large in the House of Representatives. Reelected for five
additional terms, he served several years on the House Intelligence Committee
and the House Intelligence Budget Subcommittee. In December 1988 House
Republicans chose him to serve as whip in the incoming 101st
Congress.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cheney worried about the
dangers of nuclear proliferation and effective control of nuclear weapons
from the Soviet nuclear arsenal that had come under the control of newly
independent republics-Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan-as well as in Russia
itself. Cheney warned about the possibility that other nations, such as
Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, would acquire nuclear components after the
Soviet collapse. He supported the initiatives that President Bush and
Russian President Boris Yeltsin took in 1991 and 1992 to cut back the
production and deployment of nuclear weapons and to move toward new arms
control agreements.
The end
of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the disintegration of
the Warsaw Pact obliged the Bush administration to reevaluate NATO's
purpose and makeup. Cheney believed that NATO had to remain the foundation
of European security relationships and that it would continue to be
important to the United States in the long term. Cheney's views on NATO
reflected his skepticism about prospects for peaceful evolution in the
former Soviet areas.
In making broad budget decisions, Cheney held to two overriding
priorities-protecting people programs (including training, pay, housing
allowances, and medical care), and using proven hardware rather than
rushing into complicated new technologies.
Although budget and downsizing issues occupied much of Cheney's time and
attention, international crises could make overriding demands on him. When
some elements of the military in the Philippines attempted a coup against
the government of President Corazon Aquino and strafed and bombed the
presidential palace in November 1989, Aquino asked for assistance from the
United States. Bush and Cheney approved the use of U.S. jets stationed at
Clark Air Base on Luzon to buzz the rebel planes at their base, fire in front
of them if any attempted to take off, and shoot them down if they did. The
buzzing by U.S. planes soon caused the coup to collapse.
Panama, controlled by General Manuel Antonio Noriega, the head of the
country's military, against whom a U.S. grand jury had entered an
indictment for drug trafficking in February 1988, held Cheney's attention
almost from the time he took office. Using economic sanctions and political
pressure, the United States mounted a campaign to drive Noriega from power.
In December, after his defense forces shot a U.S. serviceman, 24,000 U.S.
troops invaded Panama. Within a few days they achieved control and Endara
assumed the presidency. U.S. forces arrested Noriega and flew him to Miami
where he was held until his trial, which led to his conviction and
imprisonment on racketeering and drug trafficking charges in April 1992.
Cheney took a strong stand against use of U.S. ground troops in the
vicious civil war in Bosnia between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims that began
in April 1992. After the collapse of a collective presidency in Yugoslavia
in the early 1990s, the country split into several independent republics,
including the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which declared its
independence in March 1992. Whether and how to intervene in Bosnia evoked
an emotional debate in the United States, but Cheney left office before any
firm decisions were made, and his successors inherited the knotty issue.
In Somalia also, a savage civil war that began in 1991 claimed the
world's attention. In August 1992 the United States began to provide
humanitarian assistance, primarily food, through a military airlift. In
December, only a month before he left office, at President Bush's direction
Cheney dispatched the first of 26,000 U.S. troops to Somalia as part of the
Unified Task Force (UNITAF), designed to provide security and food relief.
Cheney's successors as secretary of defense, Les Aspin and William J.
Perry, had to contend with both the Bosnian and Somalian issues.
Cheney's biggest challenge came in the Persian Gulf. On 1 August 1990
President Saddam Hussein of Iraq sent invading forces into neighboring
Kuwait, a small oil-rich country long claimed by Iraq. An estimated 140,000
Iraqi troops quickly took control of Kuwait City and moved on to the Saudi
Arabia-Kuwait border. Although taken by surprise, President Bush soon
decided that the aggression could not stand. The United Nations took
action, passing a series of resolutions condemning Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait, and eventually demanded that Iraq withdraw its forces by 15 January
1991. By then, the United States had a force of about 500,000 stationed in
Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Other nations, including Great Britain,
Canada, France, Italy, Syria, and Egypt, contributed troops, and other allies,
most notably Germany and Japan, agreed to provide financial support for the
coalition effort, named Operation Desert Shield.
After an air offensive of more than five weeks, the UN coalition launched
the ground war, with the first forces thrusting into Kuwait from Saudi
Arabia early in the morning of 24 February. Within four days Iraqi forces
had been routed from Kuwait and pushed into the interior of Iraq after
suffering heavy losses. Although easily defeated, Iraq's army did
considerable damage while retreating, including setting fire to many oil
wells. By 27 February General Schwartzkopf reported that the basic
objective-expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait-had been met. After
consultation with Cheney, Powell, and other members of his national
security team, Bush declared a suspension of hostilities effective at
midnight on 27 February, Washington time. A total of 147 U.S. military
personnel died in combat, and another 236 died as a result of accidents or
other causes. Iraq agreed to a formal truce on 3 March, and a permanent
cease-fire on 6 April.
Looking to the future, Cheney regarded the Gulf War as the first example
of the kind of regional problem the United States was likely to face in the
aftermath of the Cold War. He thought the successful campaign validated the
broad strategy developed under his direction. A draft Defense Planning
Guidance issued early in 1992 envisioned several scenarios in which the
United States might have to fight two large regional wars at one time-for
example, against Iraq again, against North Korea, or in Europe against a
resurgent, expansionist Russia. The Pentagon later modified this document,
but it gave some indication of what the Defense Department saw as future
threats to the United States.
Just before he left office, Cheney released a paper dealing with defense
strategy for the 1990s in which he elaborated his strategic views,
underscoring the importance of strategic deterrence and defense, forward
presence, and crisis response. He added "science and technology"
and "infrastructure and overhead" to the traditional pillars of
military capability-readiness, sustainability, modernization, and force
structure.
Increasingly, toward the end of his tenure, Cheney had to consider
social issues affecting the military forces, particularly the status of
homosexuals in the military and the role of women in combat. In the face of
pressure from some members of Congress and the public at large, Cheney
reviewed standing DoD policy on these matters. He decided that the existing
policies-a ban on homosexuals serving in the military and the exclusion of
women from combat positions-were correct and did not need to be changed.
During the campaign of 1992 Democratic candidate Bill Clinton said he
favored a change in official policy on homosexuals in the military
services, keeping the issue alive and leaving it to Cheney's successor to
handle.
On 20 January 1993 when the Clinton administration took office, Cheney
left the Pentagon and joined the American Enterprise Institute in
Washington as a senior fellow. He maintained his interest in national
security affairs, speaking and writing occasionally on the subject. Cheney
regarded the successful planning and implementation of Desert Shield and
Desert Storm as his most important achievement as secretary of defense. The
failure to make significant reforms in procurement was his biggest
disappointment. Acting Secretary of the Navy Sean O'Keefe, in an October
1992 speech, pointed to Cheney's capacity for independent judgment as one
of his strongest assets as a government leader. Cheney, according to
O'Keefe, had redefined national objectives, force size, and other elements
of national security in terms of what the future involvement of the military
establishment might be.
Cheney contemplated becoming a candidate for the 1996 Republican
nomination for president but decided against it in 1995. In October of that
year he became president and chief executive officer of the Halliburton
Company in Dallas, Texas.
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